Marxism and Anarchism

[p006] Marxism and Anarchism on an accounting with the history of Stalinism, their growing claim to be the only true defenders of the conquests of the October Revolution, herald a mighty wave of revolutionary struggle being prepared among the workers and the youth. As the inconclusive assembly of Communist Party world leaders showed, the Stalinist move- ment is no longer what it was. It now has to cope with a situation very different from that of the 1930s where it is impossible to disguise the fact that it has passed definitely to the side of the preservation of the bourgeois social order. The role of the French Communist Party in the May- June events was a striking confirmation of this. Never had the leadership had to struggle so hard with its own militants to win them over to support the line. Never have the arguments given to justify a betrayal been so thin and unconvincing. Only two months later the same Communist Party was obliged to express its doubts about Soviet inter- vention in Czechoslovakia. In the other Com- munist Parties, too, the events in France and then the Czech drama have shaken the party members, stimulated doubts and discussion and weakened the hold of the apparatus. With the new and forthcoming upsurge of the working class the Stalinist bureaucracy will less and less be able to play the role of a brake. The international crisis is reflected even in the parties which retain a Strategically vital position in the working class, particularly in France and Italy. In the smaller parties the decomposition has reached a more advanced stage and the possibility of their exer- cising any real influence over the development of the class struggle has been greatly reduced. Operating on the international scale, the Stalin- ist bureaucracy in Moscow draws its own conclu- sion from the events of 1968. It fears the prole- tarian strength of May-June, which eventually re- moved de Gaulle, just as much as does the bour- geoisie. It fears that successful workers’ revolution in Western Europe would be the signal for political revolution in Czechoslovakia and _ throughout Eastern Europe, and even in the USSR itself. For these reasons, the Russian Stalinist leaders have tried desperately to ensure the Republican President Nixon of their desire to collaborate in Europe. Thus Kosygin and Brezhnev press for all kinds of European security guarantees as well as plans for economic co-operation, hoping that im- perialism will stabilise Europe. It promises to col- laborate, as Nixon reported on his return from his 1968 international tour, in clearing up the ‘trouble- spots’ like Vietnam and the Middle East. Mean- while it hastens, through provocations and 3

[p007] calumny, to work for the isolation of the Chinese Revolution. It condemns the Chinese leaders as advocates of a third world war in order to con- solidate its own alliance with the imperialists, as well as to isolate the Chinese revolution from the struggles of the masses in the rest of Asia, and all over the world, thus preserving the rela- tive equilibrium of international class forces upon which the bureaucracy rests. At the recent Moscow Conference of Commun- ist Parties, the Kremlin bosses tried to re-impose what they could of the old orthodoxy. They des- perately wanted to set the seal on their ‘normali- zation’ of Czechcslovakia, and to be able to guarantee to the imperialists their control of the world’s Communist Parties. For these reasons they found it necessary to try to regulate as far as possible the divisions within the bureaucracy internationally as well as in the Soviet Union itself. But they are unable to control the extent to which many of the Parties adapt now more directly to their own bourgeoisies. Similarly the national Stalinist bureaucracy in Rumania, like its counterparts in every Eastern European coun- try, will seek out to a certain extent its own, relatively independent, links with imperialism and the world market, within the general principles of ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘peaceful competition’ elaborated by Moscow itself. The invitation of Nixon to Rumania might not have been timed with Soviet agreement, but it is of course entirely consistent with the course long ago charted and embarked upon by Moscow itself. The crisis of imperialism presents great oppor- tunities for the Fourth International. It is neces- sary to work out in each country a tactical line which will force the Communist party leaders to expose the counter-revolutionary nature of their politics before their members and supporters. This is especially so where the Communist Party is the principal party of the working class, as in France, Italy, Greece and other countries. Here the Party must be confronted squarely with its responsibi- lities, up to and including the forming of a govern- ment of which the working class demands socialist policies. Only by a struggle which will take the working class through such experiences with its reform- ist and Stalinist leaderships can it be brought to an understanding of the need for an alternative. A propagandist fight against Stalinism and reform- ism is not sufficient. The task now is to intervene to break the hold and influence of the Stalinist and reformist leaderships on the working class, to expose the crippling effects of their policy and 4 ideology in practice. The way in which this task is carried forward will obviously depend upon the political weight of the Communist Party in each country and the precise way in which it is affected by the joint crisis of imperialism and the bureaucracy. However, it is clear that this is an international question which requires the streng- thening of the Fourth International and a con- sistent fight for its programme. Workers in the capitalist countries must, while preparing to over- throw their own bourgeoisie, also aid and support the political revolution of the working class in the workers’ states. The success of the political revolu- tion both requires this support and will open the way to the revolutionary overthrow. against capitalism. 6d. back: Paper 10s. wo = N hon ® > ° 7) a] i © = ® rz) ~~ o Available from New Park Publications Ltd. 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p008] calumny, to work for the isolation of the Chinese Revolution. It condemns the Chinese leaders as advocates of a third world war in order to con- solidate its own alliance with the imperialists, as well as to isolate the Chinese revolution from the struggles of the masses in the rest of Asia, and all over the world, thus preserving the rela- tive equilibrium of international class forces upon which the bureaucracy rests. At the recent Moscow Conference of Commun- ist Parties, the Kremlin bosses tried to re-impose what they could of the old orthodoxy. They des- perately wanted to set the seal on their ‘normali- zation’ of Czechoslovakia, and to be able to guarantee to the imperialists their control of the world’s Communist Parties. For these reasons they found it necessary to try to regulate as far as possible the divisions within the bureaucracy internationally as well as in the Soviet Union itself. But they are unable to control the extent to which many of the Parties adapt now more directly to their own bourgeoisies. Similarly the national Stalinist bureaucracy in Rumania, like its counterparts in every Eastern European coun- try, will seek out to a certain extent its own, relatively independent, links with imperialism and the world market, within the general principles of ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘peaceful competition’ elaborated by Moscow itself. The invitation of Nixon to Rumania might not have been timed with Soviet agreement, but it is of course entirely consistent with the course long ago charted and embarked upon by Moscow itself. The crisis of imperialism presents great oppor- tunities for the Fourth International. It is neces- sary to work out in each country a tactical line which will force the Communist party leaders to expose the counter-revolutionary nature of their politics before their members and supporters. This is especially so where the Communist Party is the principal party of the working class, as in France, Italy, Greece and other countries. Here the Party must be confronted squarely with its responsibi- lities, up to and including the forming of a govern- ment of which the working class demands socialist policies. Only by a struggle which will take the working class through such experiences with its reform- ist and Stalinist leaderships can it be brought to an understanding of the need for an alternative. A propagandist fight against Stalinism and reform- ism is not sufficient. The task now is to intervene to break the hold and influence of the Stalinist and reformist leaderships on the working class, to expose the crippling effects of their policy and 4 ideology in practice. The way in which this task is carried forward will obviously depend upon the political weight of the Communist Party in each country and the precise way in which it is affected by the joint crisis of imperialism and the bureaucracy. However, it is clear that this is an international question which requires the streng- thening of the Fourth International and a con- sistent fight for its programme. Workers in the capitalist countries must, while preparing to over- throw their own bourgeoisie, also aid and support the political revolution of the working class in the workers’ states. The success of the political revolu- tion both requires this support and will open the way to the revolutionary overthrow against capitalism. 6d. 10s. x ° o a - o a o a : Price Hard 21s. cover Available from New Park Publications Ltd. 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p009] The article which follows is a translation of the text of a lecture given at a meeting of the Cercle d’Etudes Marxistes de Paris on November 28, 1968. During the May-June events petty-bour- geois anarchist trends were prominent, especially among. students, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit became an _ internationally- known figure. Like Herbert Marcuse and others who are enjoying a vogue, he claims that Marxism is out-of-date and denies the role of the working class and of the revolu- tionary party. Such ideas have been taken up in this country in the revisionist camp and need to be firmly opposed. Bloch shows from history and Marxist theory how absurd many of the anarchist pretensions are and how unfounded are the claims to modernity made by Cohn-Bendit and others. Their central ideas were, indeed, put forward by a Proudhon and Bakunin and disposed of by Marx, as Bloch points out, a century ago. \ Anarehisin at This contribution will therefore repay care- Say = ful study and should enable the struggle y, against anarchist trends to be placed on a solid theoretical foundation. The original lecture was followed by an open forum in which a number of anarchists expressed their points of view. [The Editors.] © by Gerard Bloch [Editors' Note.—Quotations are from Daniel Cohn- Bendit’s ‘Leftism’. These have been translated for this article, and are referred to here by indicating the page numbers in ‘Leftism’. ] Any references to the English edition of this work are to ‘Obsolete Communism, the Left-Wing Alternative’ Mikhail Bakunin (Penguin Special). Karl Marx Marxism and Anarchism 5

[p010] The article which follows is a translation of the text of a lecture given at a meeting of the Cercle d’Etudes Marxistes de Paris on November 28, 1968. During the May-June events petty-bour- geois anarchist trends were prominent, especially among. students, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit became an _ internationally- known figure. Like Herbert Marcuse and others who are enjoying a vogue, he claims that Marxism is out-of-date and denies the role of the working class and of the revolu- tionary party. Such ideas have been taken up in this country in the revisionist camp and need to be firmly opposed. Bloch shows from history and Marxist theory how absurd many of the anarchist pretensions are and how unfounded are the claims to modernity made by Cohn-Bendit and others. Their central ideas were, indeed, put forward by Proudhon and Bakunin and disposed of by Marx, as Bloch points out, a century ago. Karl Marx — — This contribution will therefore repay care- ful study and should enable the struggle against anarchist trends to be placed on a solid theoretical foundation. The original lecture was followed by an open forum in which a number of anarchists expressed their points of view. [The Editors.] by Gerard Bloch {Editors' Note.—Quotations are from Daniel Cohn- Bendit’s ‘Leftism’. These have been translated for this article, and are referred to here by indicating the page numbers in ‘Leftism’. ] Any references to the English edition of this work are to ‘Obsolete Communism, the Left-Wing Alternative’ Mikhail Bakunin (Penguin Special). Marxism and Anarchism 5

[p011] IT IS ALMOST exactly a century ago, in September 1868, since Bakunin founded the ‘International Alliance of Socialist Democracy’, the public cover for a secret organization, in order to wage a struggle inside the International Workingmen’s Association against the General Council, which had been directed by Marx for four years since the founding of the International after the St. Martin’s Hall meeting. Bakunin escaped from Siberia, where he had been deported by the Tsar, after many years’ imprisonment in the Peter and Paul fortress, and returned to Europe in 1862. In 1863 he settled in Italy and there he founded the ‘International Fraternity’, the first of the secret societies around which his main activity always centred—Marx, on the other hand, worked to bring together the pro- letarian masses in their class organizations, around the International. In September 1867 Bakunin joined the ‘League of Peace and Freedom’, an international organization of bourgeois democrats, hoping to use it as an instrument for introducing his own ideas into the International. But the In- ternational, determined to stick to a class line, firmly rejected the League’s proposals for unifi- cation at its Brussels Congress (September 1868). Bakunin, who had only joined the International as an individual member in July of the same year, then broke with the League and founded the Alliance, which called on the General Council of the International to recognize its programme and rules. Thus began the historic conflict between Marx and Bakunin, a conflict between two dif- ferent programmes, two strategies for revolution, two conceptions of history and of society. To see that this conflict has a renewed relevance today, if indeed it ever ceased to be relevant, it is sufficient to quote Cohn-Bendit’s reply to the question: ‘Whom do you recognize as having influenced your ideas? Marx, first . . .?’ when he said: ‘I am, if you like, a Marxist in the same way Bakunin was. Bakunin translated Marx and, in his view, Marx had not developed new theories, but, starting from the theories of bourgeois con- sciousness, had formulated the possibility of a re- volutionary social consciousness. Bakunin has in- fluenced me more...’ Cohn-Bendit, of course, made an enormous howler in describing Marx as the theoretician of the antagonism between two sets of ideas and not of the struggle of the exploited class against the exploiters; in addition to which he prefers to forget that Marx was above all, a revolu- tionary, always ready to abandon or postpone his theoretical research to take up his post in the struggle, as he did in Germany: in 1848, or to provide the International in its early years with a theoretical, political and organizational structure and devote himself, with tireless patience, to the day-to-day work of the General Council. But, most of all, Cohn-Bendit is incapable of understanding that for Marx, revolutionary theory and practice were indissolubly linked, to such an extent that Bernard Shaw, that coryphée of the petty-bour- geoisie, hit the nail on the head when he wrote, intending to belittle Marx, that in Capital, Marx talks about the bourgeoisie like a war correspon- dent in the class war. But we do not propose to go into all these questions here. If the present revival of anarchist ideas can very largely be explained by the fact that many young people, disgusted with Stalinism, confuse Stalin- ism with genuine Marxism—this would make a detailed comparison of Marxist and anarchist posi- _ tions all the more necessary. Furthermore, it is essential to put forward, in opposition to anarchist ideas, a genuine Marxist view, not reformist, Stalinist, centrist or revisionist distortions of Marxism. If, 51 years ago, at the beginning of ‘State and Revolution’, Lenin had to point out: ‘In such circumstances, in view of the unprece- dentedly widespread distortion of Marxism, our prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught’—what words would be required to describe the distortions of Marxism existing today, after 45 years of Stalinism? Today, to cite but one example, when someone like Herbert Marcuse can in cold blood give the title Soviet Marxism to a - work summarizing the ideology of the Soviet bureaucracy! Finally, if, for us Marxists, anarchist ideas are, in the last analysis, the result of the pressure of petty-bourgeois layers on the pro- letariat, that in no way absolves us from the obli- gation—quite the opposite, in fact—of getting down to an analysis of the ideas as such. Only by an analysis of their content can we throw light on their social roots. We therefore propose to compare succinctly the Marxist and the anarchist positions on the following four problems: the nature of the re- volutionary forces in our epoch; society after the social revolution; the State; and the relation between the masses and their vanguard. For con- temporary anarchist views we shall refer mainly to the review Noir et Rouge’, which over the last few years has systematically attempted to 1 Noir et Rouge. French journal, mouthpiece of an anarchist-communist tendency in the so-called ‘liber- tarian’ movement. [Ed.] Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p012] Herbert Marcuse: enjoying a vogue define the teachings of anarchism in a precise way. Its failure is, in our opinion, all the more significant. Finally, in passing, we shall settle a few accounts with revisionists who claim to be Marxists whilst distorting Marxism. Where are the forces for revolution? In his main theoretical work Statism and Anarchy, written in 1873 shortly before ill-health obliged him to cease all activity, Bakunin, in a polemic against Marx, gave his views on this topic quite unequivocally: Nowhere is the social revolution as near as in Italy, yes, nowhere, not excepting Spain even, al- though the latter is officially in the middle of a revolution, and in Italy everything is apparently calm. In Italy an entire people awaits the social revolution and day by day advances consciously towards it. You can imagine how widely, how sin- cerely and passionately the proletariat has accepted and continues to accept the programme of the In- ternational. There does not exist in Italy, as in many other European countries, a separate layer of the working class, part of which is already privi- leged, thanks to high wages, and even boasts a certain acquaintance with literature and which is so imbued with bourgeois ideas, aspirations and vanity that the workers who belong to this milieu differ from the bourgeois only in their social posi- tion, not their politics. In Germany and Switzer- land especially there are many workers of this type, whereas in Italy there are very few, so Marxism and Anarchism few that they are lost in the mass and have no influence over it. What predominates in Italy is ‘a proletariat in rags’.2 Messrs. Marx and Engels and in their wake the whole school of German social-democracy refer to it with the utmost con- tempt, quite wrongly, because it is in the ‘pro- letariat in rags’, and not in the layer which has risen to the middle class, that the spirit and the power of the coming social revolution is to be found. We shall deal with this point in greater detail later; for the moment we shall do no more than draw this conclusion: it is precisely because of this massive preponderance of the proletariat in rags in Italy that the propaganda and organization of the International Workingmen’s Association have taken their most enthusiastic and most genuinely popular form in that country; and for that very reason propaganda and organization have overflowed from the towns and quickly won over the rural population. Bakunin also includes the intellectuals among the revolutionary forces, especially poor students who ‘bring positive attainments, methods of abstraction and analysis, as well as skill in organiz- ing and forming alliances, which in turn create the enlightened fighting force without which vic- tory is inconceivable’. As for the workers in the advanced countries, as he writes a bit further on, they are ‘not des- perate enough’. You can see how Bakunin’s method is opposed to Marx’s. Marx, working to provide the struggle of the proletariat for socialism with a scientific basis, which could stand up to any test, came up against the Utopian ideas of Weitling, who, like Bakunin, considered only the lumpenprole- tariat to be really revolutionary. Bakunin’s method is idealist. He looks for the source of the drive to revolution in the desperate feelings of the poorest layers, particularly of the peasantry, and he sees their lack of culture as an advantage. These uncultured masses need leaders. They cannot find leaders in their own ranks because of their lack of culture, but they will find them in the intelligentsia particularly. We shall now hear what Cohn-Bendit has to say: It is of prime importance to state forcefully and dispassionately that in May 1968 in France the industrial proletariat was not the revolutionary vanguard of society. It was the heavy rearguard. The most conservative layer, the most mystified, 2 In German, ‘lumpenproletariat’, a term which has passed into common usage since the ‘Communist Manifesto. [G.B.]

[p013] the most caught up in the traps and snares of modern bureaucratic capitalism was the working class . . . This assertion . . . cannot be explained away purely in terms of an analysis of labour bureaucracies . . . The students, for the most part, are not poor; confrontation aims at the hierarchi- cal structure, oppression in comfortable surround- ings . . . Besides, in the French working class there are wide areas of real poverty, wages less than 500 francs per month, dirty noisy factories without air-conditioning, where workers are bawled out by the foreman, the overseer, the works’ engineer. Finally you have 20th century industrial France, which raises, in the context of relative well-being, the problems of the rela- tion between the leaders and the led and those of the aims and objectives of society. And after a lot more on the same lines he con- cludes: ‘The revolutionary students can play a very important part in changing this picture’. Thus, for Bakunin, the industrial proletariat is not the motive force of revolution because it is not poor enough; for Cohn-Bendit it is the rear- guard because it is too poor. But what they both have in common is the idea that the vanguard, the revolutionary cadres, are the students—precisely because, according to Cohn-Bendit’s definition, they are not poor and have no vulgar material preoccupations . . . It would be interesting to find out what French students Cohn-Bendit went around with, who were so well-off. What is more interesting is the attack on the Marxist thesis of the revolutionary hegemony of the proletariat made by contemporary theoreticians of ‘confron- tation’ a century after Bakunin, with different, even opposite arguments. The most important fact in May-June 1968 was not ten million strikers, but the palavers in the Sorbonne . . . And the lumpen ‘katangais’*® were the real cream, vanguard of the vanguard! We shall now descend even further and bring up these unforgettable lines from the book by the revisionists Bensaid and Weber :° The revolutionary opposition, which had dis- appeared for a long period, was revived in May by the student movement. It took on this role. 3 Leftism, p. 125. Translated from the French text and not taken from the English version of Cohn- Bendit’s book. [Ed.] 4 Ibid., p. 125. 5 Mercenaries said to have fought in Katanga who were allowed to instal themselves in the Sorbonne while the students were in control of the buildings. [Ed ] 6 Leaders of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolu- tionnaire, inspired by Ernest Mandel and the re- visionist trend he represents. [Ed.] 8 Wilhelm Weitling like Bakunin considered only the lumpenproletariat to be really revolutionary Carried forward by the general upsurge of struggles, the student movement played the role of vanguard which had been abandoned by the workers’ parties.’ And further: [The students] came to line up alongside the work- ing class in struggle; but, on the other hand, it was the most resolute workers, the most militant, who demanded they come to the Sorbonne... Faced with the bankruptcy of the Communist Party and the CGT, the leading workers turned to the students as a substitute, an alternative leader- ship.® This predestination of the students to lead the working class has its theoretician: Ernest Mandel, of course. Speaking at the Mutualité on May 9, he said nothing about ‘neo-capitalism’ or about ‘structural reforms’, on which, it is well-known, he is the specialist—nor did he talk about the epicentre of the revolution, to be found, once and for all, in the backward countries—no, he presented, according to Bensaid and Weber ‘a noteworthy analysis of the student revolt in the imperialist centres, based on a new appreciation of the position occupied by intellectual labour- power in the process of production’.’ For, believe 7 Mai 1968, p. 142. 8 Ibid., p. 158. 9 Ibid., p. 130. Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p014] Daniel Cohn-Bendit: palavers in the Sorbonne more important . . . lumpen ‘Katangaies’ in this vanguard it or not: ‘All the present-day features of the student milieu must be traced to a fundamental phenomenon, emphasized by Comrade Mandel on May 9 at the Mutualité; namely the reintegration of intellectual labour into productive labour, the transformation of men’s intellectual capacities into major productive forces of society’.” ‘Inteliectual labour-power’? We must now spend a little time on these theories, the essence of which is common to Mandel and the Stalinists, and which are sup- posed to be based on certain passages in the first manuscript of Capital. Marx’s notes recently appeared in a French translation under the title: Fondements de la Critique de V’économie politique (Foundations of the critique of political economy)." All those who, like Mandel and Pablo, have re- jected the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International, attack first and foremost the famous thesis which is the cornerstone of the programme: ‘Mankind’s productive forces stagnate.’ They forget that the Marxist concept of productive forces encompasses mah as a principal productive force 10 Ibid., p. 29. 11 Sometimes known as the Grundrisse after its German title; only relatively short passages have been translated into English so far. [Ed.] Marxism and Anarchism and that, in a society which accumulates destruc- tive force, which condemns the great majority of mankind and an ever-growing portion of the working class of the advanced countries to poverty and hopelessness, the productive forces have effec- tively ceased to develop. Confusing science and technique with the pro- ductive forces, they maintain that, on the con- trary, the productive forces are going through an unprecedented development. This should lead them to conclude that, in line with Marxist theory, the mode of production which is capable of such an upsurge of the forces of production, capitalism, has an unshakable stability. This is the meaning, in fact, of the Stalinists’ ‘new democracy’. Mandel is naturally more sophisticated. But he still claims —like Garaudy,” for instance—that the intellec- tuals in this society play a new and determining role—that the students are the vanguard, that the working class is no longer the revolutionary class. Thus he links up with Cohn-Bendit. According to all these ‘theoreticians’, the emancipation of the working class . . . will be the task of the students (the ‘intellectuals’ according to Garaudy—and we should not forget that in Stalinist language, ‘in- tellectual’ is camouflage for ‘bureacrat’). But we come back to the actual text of Marx, upon which, they claim to base themselves : The exchange of living labour against materialized labour, i.e. the manifestation of social labour in the antagonistic form of capital and wage labour, is the final development of the value-relation and of production founded on value. The premise of this relation is that the total sum of labour time, the quantity of labour used, repre- sents the decisive factor in the production of wealth. Now, to the extent that large-scale industry de- velops, the creation of wealth depends less and less upon the labour-time and the amount of work put into it, and more and more upon the power of the mechanical agents set in motion in the course of the work. The enormous efficiency of these agents, in its turn, bears no relation whatsoever to the labour-time immediately involved in their _ production . . . It depends rather upon the general level of science and the progress of technology, on the application of this science to produc- tion... . Real wealth now develops, on the one hand, thanks to the enormous disproportion between the labour-time expended and its product, and, 12 Roger Garaudy, a leading French Communist Party theoretician, one-time loyal Stalinist, now a critic of some policies of the leadership from a right- wing standpoint which resembles that of the Italian CP. [Ed.]

[p015] on the other hand, thanks to the qualitative dis- proportion between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and the power of the production pro- cess of which it is in charge; that is what large-scale industry shows us. Labour thus presents itself not so much as a constituent part of the process of production. Man’s behaviour is much more that of a super- visor and controller vis-a-vis the process of pro- duction. (This is so not only for machinery, but just as much for the co-ordination of human acti- vities and the circulation between individuals) .. . The development of fixed capital indicates the extent to which science in general and knowledge have become an immediate (direct) productive force, and, consequently, to what extent the vital conditions of society’s progress have become sub- ordinated to the control of the general intelli- gence and bear its mark; to what extent society’s productive forces are produced not simply in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate (direct) organs of social praxis (practice), of the real living process. Must we conclude, therefore, that, insofar as _ science ‘becomes an immediate productive force’, capitalism becomes capable of guaranteeing a new stage of the progress of civilization? Marx’s point of view is the exact opposite. According to him, this process brings the historical contradiction of capitalism to its culminating point and renders the proletarian revolution so much the more urgent: So soon as labour, in its immediate (direct) form, has ceased to be the principal source of wealth, labour-time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and exchange-value ceases to be the measure of use-value. The surplus-labour of the masses has ceased to be the condition for the development of wealth in general, just as the non-labour of others has ceased to be the condi- tion for the development of the general forces of the human brain. . ." The labouring masses must therefore themselves appropriate their surplus-value. Given this fact free time no longer has a contradictory nature. From now on, necessary labour time is measured according to the needs of the social individual, and - the development of society’s productive forces increases with such rapidity that, while production is calculated according to the wealth of all mem- bers of society, so the amount of free time in- creases for everyone. True wealth means, in fact, the development of the productive force of all the individuals. Hence- forth, it is no longer labour-time, but free time which is the measure of wealth. 13 Fondements de la _ critique de _ Uleconomie politique, Vol. II, pp. 221-223. 14 Ibid., p. 222. 10 If labour-time is the measure of wealth, that means that wealth is founded upon poverty, and that free time results from the contradictory basis of surplus-labour; in other words, this state of affairs assumes that the whole of the worker’s time shall be considered as labour-time, and that he himself is dragged down to the level of a simple labourer and subordinated to labour. This is why the most up-to-date machinery today forces the worker to work longer than did the savage, or rather did the labourer when he worked only with more rudimentary and primitive imple- ments.4 In a word, in the capitalist system, the trans- formation of science into an immediate produc- tive force, far from liberating the workers, con- Stantly aggravates their enslavement still more. At the same time, the capitalist system does not negate itself: its reason for existence is to produte exchange-values, measured by labour- time; and capitalism continues to reduce the amount of labour socially necessary for the produc- tion of a given sum of commodities. Its motive force is the production of surplus- value; however, only living day-to-day labour produces surplus-value; and yet the portion con- tributed to the productive forces by the immense accumulation of means of production, machines, automatic control mechanisms, the product of past labour, increases ceaselessly. Science becomes an immediate force of produc- tion: for this reason it is urgent that the working class expropriates capital and socializes the means of production. Marx’s conclusion is the direct opposite of the conclusions drawn by Mandel, Garaudy and com- pany. Have we gone a long distance from Cohn- Bendit? Certainly not. The critics of the ‘consumer society’—as if the bad thing about this society was that it satisfied too well the material needs of its members !— proceed from the same misunderstanding, a basic one, of the Marxist notion of productive forces— the same replacement of Marx’s materialist method by the method of idealism. That is why they place the students at the head of a revolution which consists of ‘criticizing’ (e.g., the ‘critical university’ of Marcuse, the God of Bensaid and Weber as well as of Cohn-Bendit and Rudi Dutschke) the values of modern society —a revolution in the realm of ideas, an idea of revolution—and not, for the producers, by taking 15 [bid., p. 226. Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p016] possession of the means of production, thus open- ing the way to the total re-conquering of the forces of production, to the transmutation of the productive forces of mankind into human produc- tive forces, orientated no longer towards the pro- duction of exchange values but of use-values, of wealth, of goods for the unlimited satisfaction of the material and spiritual needs of men. Society immediately after the Social Revolution We shall again start with Bakunin who talks about ‘a current that is in essence new, and which aims to abolish all exploitation and all oppression, be it political, juridical, governmental or adminis- trative, i.e., to abolish all classes through the economic equalization of all property, and the destruction of its last rampart, the State’. This text demonstrates, among other things, Bakunin’s profound ignorance of economics, noted by Marx. He proposes the economic ‘equalization’ of all property. That means the continuance of the law of value, and of money, which is the measure of property, and their ‘equali- zation’! (The programme of the ‘Alliance’ already included ‘equalization of all classes’ which the General Council correctly criticized.) For Marx, socialism, the classless society, pre-supposes a development of the productive forces on such a scale as to allow of the unlimited satisfaction of all needs (and not the ‘equal’ satisfaction of needs!). It can only reach its full flowering when value, money and the division of labour have withered away and disappeared. For this very reason socialism is not possible on the morrow of the revolution. The development of the pro- ductive forces must first be accelerated, and science, the ‘direct productive force’, be put at the disposal of humanity, not of private profit or the forces of destruction. In the meantime, in the transitional society, value, money, wages continue to exist and wither away gradually whilst aliena- tion gives way to the satisfaction of human needs, productive labour-time diminishes and ‘leisure time’ increases. For Bakunin, just as revolution is seen as an act of will, ‘equality’ would be achieved immediately afterwards, by another act of will. That could just as well have happened 2000 years ago as today. So it is ho great surprise to find, as we shall see next, that Bakunin’s disciple Cohn- Bendit considers ‘a profound and thoroughgoing change of thinking’ to be necessary! For our present-day anarchists do not take economic laws any more seriously than Bakunin. Marxism and Anarchism Thus in Noir et Rouge, No. 30, we read: We think that a short-term economic organization in a country must take account of the different regions, reduce the natural economic imbalances, distribute the products equitably. Federation is an economic imperative to avoid, or at least com- pensate for, the differences: in development which lead to internal migrations, antagonisms, political and social divisions. Similarly, it is necessary to reduce the wage-spread as far as possible to avoid the dispersion of capital for individual ends and the consolidation or creation of social castes, tend- ing to preserve their own existence by co-option, when economically, fundamentally, the only worth- while criterion is value or capacity. This value, if it is to be preserved as such, must be permanently revocable. It is likewise to be expected that the interests and privileges of certain layers of society will disappear and that distribution will be as direct as possible so that the major share in the market value of a product should accrue to the producer, while being easily accessible to the con- sumer. , . . Nor do we think that it is necessary to establish a transitional stage between capitalism and the economic measures we have described. . Finally, we do not think that contemporary society, once taken in hand and _ re-organized, can lead to abundance, or that science can settle all the problems. Such a view is mythical and artificial. We must work uncompromisingly today within the framework of the society we live in. This needs no commentary. Of course it will all be achieved ‘within the framework’ of capitalist ‘society’, in the grip of the law of value, under — the benevolent eye of the capitalist State ... There will be no abundance, we shall all tighten our belts ‘equally’ together! Which inevitably brings to mind the anarchist Trotsky knew in his youth, who in reply to the question, ‘How will the railways run in anh anarchist society?’ made this unbeatable reply: ‘Why the hell should I want to travel on the railways under anar- chism?’. The old favourite of ‘self-management’ is no different. We shall skip the glorious experiments in self-management carried out in May in this laboratory or that University Institute, setting aside such vulgar realities as the relations of the laboratory or the Institute with the rest of the world, with loans, grants, wages fixed by the capitalist state, etc. not to mention the ‘experiments in self-management’ in this or that small firm, ignoring its relations with the capi- talist market, the banks, etc. . . . Cohn-Bendit is in this respect no more imaginative than Bakunin or Noir et Rouge. After preaching ‘a 11

[p017] profound and thoroughgoing change of thinking’® he writes : The abstract relation between things having value is incarnated in money, another abstract power, incarnating in turn the play of laws which in all real respects are beyond the control of men in general. Labour power, on the other hand, is a characteristic common to all men. The measure of the time each producer devotes to labour is the hour of labour-time. And the measure which allows us to calculate labour-time (crystallized in all the products of human activity, with a few exceptions: scientific research and other creative work) is the hour of average social labour-time, the basis of the communist production and dis- tribution of goods. But, you may ask, what is the difference between value-money and the ‘consumption-note’ calcu- lated on the basis of an hour of average social labour-time? In the capitalist regime exchange is the expression of a basic fact: the immediate pro- ducer is not master of the means of production and social labour belongs to the ruling classes. The latter divide the products as a function of ‘property rights’, ‘the degree of skill’, the laws of the market and other laws, according to an enormous number of factors and rules, sometimes corresponding to reality but always distorted by the division of society into classes—of which trade union organizations are one expression. But when average social labour-time serves as a base for calculating production and consumption there is no longer any need for a ‘wages policy’; the pro- ductive forces, i.e., the will of the producer or the existing productive capacities, automatically determine the volume of consumption, global as well as individual.” This whole rigmarole boils down very neatly to Proudhon’s theories of ‘constituted value’, theories which consist in preserving the good side of capitalism after destroying the bad, ‘organizing’ capitalism, ‘regulating’ the law by organizing ‘direct exchange of their products’ measured in labour-time between the producers—in other words a return to handicrafts and small-scale agricultural production. All of which was refuted by Marx—122 years ago. Cohn-Bendit is definitely right. He is a disciple of Marx, after the fashion of Bakunin. This Cohn-Bendit also pronounces himself in favour of a ‘plan, the broad lines of which would be put before everybody and which would be decided by everybody’*® through a system of councils. What he does not seem to have realized is that once adopted by a majority, the plan necessarily becomes law for everyone, 16 Leftism, p. 117. 17 Ibid., p. 119-120. 12 because it is an entity—and therefore presupposes a certain degree of constraint, ‘in other words these councils will pay a political role, in short, they will exercise state power! It is only when abundance makes any kind of limitation on con- sumption pointless, eveh in the form of labour- time notes, that ‘rule over men will make way for the administration of things’. The State The mystique of the State, carefully cultivated by the bourgeoisie—the State whose ‘reason’ is not of this world, the State which like God is endowed with a capital letter by the bourgeoisie —-is mystified in a reverse way by the anarchists. For them, the State is not an historical product of the division of society into classes, which can- not be ‘abolished’ and must disappear with class society—it is a phenomenon in itself, the incarna- tion of the devil. Here are a few paragraphs from Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchism, with the com- ments Marx wrote in the margin of his copy: B.— If there is a State, it must necessarily involve dictatorship, and therefore slavery; a State with- out slavery, open or concealed, is unthinkable— and that is why we are the enemies of the State. What does ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ mean? M.—It means that the proletariat, instead of struggling in isolation against the economically privileged classes, has acquired enough power and organization to employ general coercive measures in the struggle against them. But it can only use economic measures which destroy its own characteristic of being a class of wage-earners and thus, its class nature. Its rule is therefore ter- minated when its victory is complete. B.—There are about 40 million Germans. Will they all be members of the government? M.—Of course. For the whole thing begins with the self-government of the Commune. As you can see, Marx and later Lenin saw the workers’ State as being one in which ‘every house- wife’ should exercise State power. It should also be remembered that Marx concluded in 1852 that the proletariat could not take over the old bourgeois State machine but would have to destroy it. We know what conclusions he was to draw from the Paris Commune, conclusions which Lenin took up and extended in State and Revolution. This causes Noir et Rouge to make the rather naive statement that: The anarchistic attitude of Marx did a lot, un- fortunately, to propagate the idea of a dictator- ' 18 I[bid., p. 117. Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p018] ship among the masses . . . Lenin fully exploited this confusion in State and Revolution.(!) The necessity for a (state) power as an instru- ment of the masses, the need for a concentrated force to lead the fight against the bourgeoisie, and the cul-de-sac of anarchism, have been re- soundingly proved in the Spanish Revolution. It is well-known that when all the conditions for a government of workers’ councils had been ful- filled, when the central committee of the Cata- lonian militia was virtually the organ of the workers’ power, the leaders of the organization to which the majority of the Spanish workers workers belonged, the CNT-FAI, entered the ‘republican’ bourgeois government and participated in the reconstruction of the bourgeois State, up to and including the repression of the May 1937 workers’ insurrection in Barcelona, thereby opening the way for the Stalinist counter-revolution and ultimately for the victory of Franco. Spain therefore remains a focal point around which anarchist thinking on the State desperately revolves. Thus in Noir et Rouge No. 36, one of the Spanish collaborators of this review writes: No-one can minimize the importance of the prob- lems posed for the anarchists on July 20, 1936, when they realized they had control of the situa- tion, but did not know what to do with it. We blame them not for retreating from an anarchist Marxism and Anarchism The CNT-FAI : nearly a million members organized in the centres of production—a persuasive force dictatorship, but for having opted for counter- revolution. The dilemma as it was posed, i.e., dicta- torship or entry into the government, is false. From the anarchist point of view, joining the government and dictatorship are one and the same. And two like things cannot constitute a dilemma ,.. With these 200,000 armed men and nearly a million members organized in the centres of pro- duction, the anarchists represented a respectable economic power and a no less considerable dis- suasive force. Work to consolidate, develop and strengthen this force, in the face of the war, the attacks of the State and the revolution, would have made us invincible and at the same time made our work for the anti-fascist cause more effect- ive. As if ‘economics’ and ‘politics’ (the State) were separate worlds! As if there could possibly be an ‘economic power’ which was not the power of coercion of one class over another (in this case, of the working class over the bourgeoisie)! As if 200,000 armed men constituted an ‘economic power’ unconcerned about the reconstruction of the (bourgeois) ‘republican army’ or the ‘repub- lican police’! ... This sort of rubbish is not very far from ‘student power in the universities, workers’ control of the factories, etc.’, and police- 19 Noir et Rouge, No. 36, pp. 26-27. 13

[p019] The first Soviet coalition government, January 1918: (I. to r.) Steinberg (Left SR), Brilliantov (Left SR), Alexeyev, Bonch Bruevich, Tomsky, Shlyapnikov, Proshyan (Left SR), Lenin, Stalin (standing), Kollontai, Dybenko (standing), Podvoisky, Chicherin State power in the Elysée, CRS power in the barracks... But in No. 37 of Noir et Rouge another Spanish anarchist has written: If it had only been a question of revolution, the existence of the government, far from being a factor in our favour, would have constituted an obstacle to be destroyed; the fact is, we had to face up to the requirements of a violent war, with international complications. we were linked to international markets and a world of sovereign states. And to organize and lead this war, in the circumstances in which we found ourselves, we did not have at our disposal an organization capable of replacing the old governmental apparatus.” In other words, anarchists can carry out a revolution in ‘favourable conditions’—peaceful conditions—but not in the real conditions, those of civil war (those of any real revolution). They have not got the necessary ‘organization’ The ‘organization’ they lack is Marxist theory —the Marxist programme of workers’ councils. Of course, the workers’ State—any workers’ state—cah degenerate. Of course, as the Soviet Union has shown, this degeneration can assume monstrous proportions. It is, however, hardly necessary to recall that the conditions in which the Soviet Union degenerated—isolation of the workers’ state in a backward country, in which the proletariat, itself still backward, constituted a weak minority of the population—are scarcely likely to be repeated, and that the possibilities opening up for a victorious working class in Western Europe will be incomparably more favour- able, in countries in which the working class, pos- 20 Ibid., No. 37, p. 23. 14 sessing powerful traditions of organization, is the majority of the population—where the material conditions for the workers’ state will from the start be incomparably better—where, in addition, long isolation of the revolution after the first victory is most unlikely. Of course, any workers’ state, because it is at the same time, in Lenin’s words, a _ bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie, will involve bureau- cratic tendencies, a danger of degeneration. Should we therefore in May 1968 have refused to assemble, together with the central strike committee, the concentrated force of the pro- letariat for the assault on the power of the capi- talist class? Is that the reason why we, the Marx- ists, were the only ones to raise this slogan? Is it not clear that to give up the demand for power to the workers’ councils is to give up all idea of overthrowing the bourgeois state? Let us deal in this connection with a few fool- ish ideas. ‘One party in power and the rest in prison’, was never a Bolshevik principle, quite the opposite. The Bolsheviks only used repres- sive measures against the petty-bourgeois parties reluctantly, because they collaborated with the White Guards in an armed struggle against the Soviet power. Need we remind you that the first Soviet government, following the October Revolu- tion, was a coalition government of Bolsheviks and left Social Revolutionaries? And that it was not the Bolsheviks’ doing that the Mensheviks were not associated with it? And that this coali- tion was broken not by the Bolsheviks, but by their partners? There remains the question that the measures advocated by Lenin (following Marx) against Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p020] Lenin: advocated measures against bureaucratic tendencies bureaucratic tendencies—recall at any time of the delegates by those who had elected them, limiting the salaries of officials, including govern- ment officials, to the level of a workers’ wages, etc. may turn out to be insufficient. That is one of the reasons why—although, in the objective conditions of a defeat of the pro- letariat internationally, nothing could have pre- vented the bureaucracy from taking over in the Soviet Union—we, as Marxists, revised one of the 21 conditions of the Communist International on this point by emphasizing in 1946 that the trades unions must preserve their autonomy not only in relation to the workers’ State (as Lenin demanded in 1920-1921) but even in relation to the revolutionary Marxist party. There is also the question that the masses, having experienced Stalinism, will be incomparably more vigilant about any manifestation of bureau- cratism, even embryonic, when the revolution is next victorious. But above all it must be said that the pre- tension of abolishing the State by decree has the same idealist and voluntarist nature as the claim that ‘equality’ can be established in the same way (or that you can abolish religion by writing “Death is everlasting sleep’ on cemetery walls). Let us repeat; to give up the struggle for Marxism and Anarchism workers’ councils, for the dictatorship of the pro- letariat, is to give. up the fight for the socialist revolution. The relationship between the masses and their vanguard On the question of the necessity of an organi- zation for the vanguard of the working class, the same infantilism, mixed up with moral considera- tions, appears to govern the idea of the anarchists. Of course this does not, for good reasons, prevent them setting up organizations like other tenden- cies in the labour movement. Thus in Noir et Rouge (No. 18) we read: ‘Creating an organization before creating the anarchist man is like beginning to build a house with the roof’. But how can ‘the anarchist man’ be created in capitalist society? We are not told. It is only assumed that there are ‘some ethical factors without which it appears fruitless to build any sort of organization’. These ‘ethical factors’, seem to consist of asking whether ‘an anarchist can be on friendly terms with a fascist’ and things of that sort. At this level not much can be added. For Marxists, the organization does not have an ‘ethical’ but an emphatically political foundation: its programme. It is perhaps more interesting to consider the way in which Cohn-Bendit sees the relationship between the spontaneous action of the masses and the intervention of a revolutionary organiza- tion in the specific case of the occupation of the Sud-Aviation factory at Bouguenais (Nantes) on May 14, 1968, which gave the signal for the general strike. For those honourable gentlemen Bensaid and Weber the question is simple, as it was for almost all of the press: it was not the starting point of the general strike. For Cohn-Bendit, the problem is more complex. He writes on page 71 of his book: Once the general strike had been decreed, a new step foward was taken with the occupation of Sud- Aviation at Nantes. [In the English version (p. 67) we have: ‘Perhaps the most concrete expression of this new sense of purpose was the occupation of the Sud-Aviation workers at Nantes. The work- ers, by imitating the students, were rediscovering a form of action that they had far too long dis- carded while playing the parliamentary game of the Stalinists’.] Then, on page 98: On Tuesday, 14th, late in the evening, those occu- pying the Sorbonne learned that the Sud-Aviation factory at Nantes had been occupied; and this movement, which was still spontaneous, was rapidly to spread. (The emphasis in these two passages 15

[p021] Sud Aviation, Bouguenais (Nantes) May 1968: intervention of a revolutionary organization gave the signal for the general strike added by G.B.) [See page 91 of English version.] Finally, on page 172: From. May 14 the Sud-Aviation factory at Nantes was occupied and the director was shut in his office ... The Force Ouvriére trade union contains many left-wing militants. The departmental federa- tion of this trade union has been known for its leftism for many years and is opposed to the national-reformist orientation of the national lead- ership of Force Ouvriére. It was not by chance therefore that it was the Sud-Aviation factory at Nantes and not some other factory which gave the signal for the strike. [See page 155 of English version. Work it out for yourself and take your choice! That must be the reaction of the unhappy reader of the worthy redhead. The reader is in any case not permitted the honour of knowing who these pre- sumed ‘leftists’ in Sud-Aviation could have been. It was none of his business. The occupation of Sud-Aviation is, however, a remarkable example of what can be done, in a favourable situation, by a revolutionary organi- zation which has carried out, year in and year out, on the basis of a Marxist programme and slogans, and a tactic worked out at each stage, patient, systematic and persevering work.” But we must now consider in parenthesis the 21 Bloch is referring in particular, of course, to militants in the plant who belonged to the French Trotskyist movement, the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste. [Ed.] 16 relationship which exists between a revolutionary situation and the revolutionary party. On two miserable little falsifiers and the motives for their falsification We open the above-quoted book of Bensaid and Weber at page 166; these two gentlemen write: ‘Much was said in May, from one platform or another, about revolutionary crisis, conditions or situations. It is not enough to choose one’s term on the basis of a snapshot which shows only the power vacuum. To judge more calmly the character of the situa- tion it is useful, at the risk of being thought ‘old- fashioned Marxists’, to refer to Lenin and to his famous criteria enunciated in The Collapse of the Second International. There a situation is called revolutionary when the following four conditions are present: —that those on top can no longer govern as before; —that those underneath no longer want to live as before; —that those in between lean to the side of the proletariat; ——that there exists a revolutionary organization capable of overcoming the crisis through revolution. To what extent were those essential factors brought together in May? And naturally they conclude, after lengthy deli- beration, that, because there was no ‘organized revolutionary force’, ‘the situation remained pre- Fourth International, Summer 1969

[p022] revolutionary’ (p. 177). Therefore the working class should not have fought for power. This enables them to avoid explaining why they were hostile to the slogan of a Central Strike Committee (the situation, as you see, was not revolutionary—nor were they either) and to be ironical at the expense of the old-fashioned people who demanded that the workers’ organi- zations call a million workers out on to the Champs Elysées on May 30. We understand why they feel hurt. For our two gentlemen are not ‘old- fashioned Marxists’ by any means; they are ‘neo- Marxists’ who have constructed a neo-Lenin for their own convenience. One will look in vain in The Collapse of the Second International for the four conditions which they give. On the other hand the following lines, which are worth quoting in full, will be found there: A Marxist cannot have any doubt that a revolu- tion is impossible without a revolutionary situa- tion; furthermore, not every revolutionary situa- tion leads to a revolution. What, generally. speak- ing, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we point to the following three main symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling class to maintain their rule in an unchanged form; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class which © causes fissures, through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. Usually, for a revolution to break out it is not enough for the ‘lower classes to refuse’ to live in the old way; it is necessary also that the ‘the upper classes should be unable’ to live in the old way; (2) when the want and suffering of the oppressed classes has become more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who in ‘peace time’ quietly allow themselves to be robbed, but who in turbu- lent times are drawn both by the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action Without these objective changes, which are not only independent of the will of separate groups and parties, but even of separate classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The sum total of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation. This situation existed in 1905 in Russia and in all epochs of revolution in the West; but it also existed in the sixties of the last century in Germany, and in 1859-1861 and 1879-1880 in Russia, although no revolution occurred in these cases. Why? Because not every revolutionary situa- tion gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of such a situation when, to the above- mentioned objective changes, a subjective change is added, namely the ability of the revolutionary Marxism and Anarchism class to carry out revolutionary mass actions strong enough to break (or to undermine) the old govern- ment, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls’ if it is not ‘dropped’... Will this situation last long? And how much more acute will it become? Will it lead to revolution? These things we do not know, and nobody can know. Only the experience of the development of revolutionary sentiments and the transition to re- volutionary action on the part of the advanced class, the proletariat, will show that. There can be no talk in this connection about ‘illusions’ or about repudiating ‘illusions’, since no Socialist ever gave a pledge that this war (and not the next one), that to-day’s (and not tomorrow’s) revolu- tionary situation would give rise to revolution. What we are discussing is the undisputed and fundamental duty of all socialists: the duty to reveal to the masses the existence of the revolu- tionary situation, to make clear its scope and depth; to awaken the revolutionary consciousness and the revolutionary determination of the prole- tariat, to help it pass to revolutionary actions, and to create organizations, suitable for the revolu- tionary situation, for work in this direction.” The relationship between the objective revolu- tionary situation and the vanguard, between the masses ahd the conscious factor, is so clearly indicated in the foregoing that there is very little to add. Yes, the situation was revolutionary in May 1968. That is why it was necessary to define the slogans and strategy of the struggle of the masses for power. It was moreover the only way to move towards the construction of the revolu- tionary party, the reconstruction of the Fourth International, the indispensable instrument for the final victory of the socialist revolution. This is what our two neo-Marxists are in no. danger of doing; they only lack a programme, a banner and a backbone. They say, to be sure, that the Marxist programme, the Transitional Pro- gramme, is outmoded; they do not know what to put in its place and they scarcely care; empiri- cism is so much more comforting! At least they know one thing: that they are in no danger of having to face the difficulties of a revolutionary situation—because for this it is necessary to have ‘an organized revolutionary force’ and they haven’t the least chance of building one! Let us return to the problem of the party, and the anarchist criticisms of the idea of the revo- lutionary party. It is necessary to underline that, 22 This passage is taken from the English translation which appears in the pamphlet The War and the Second International, Little Lenin Library Vol. 2, pp. 11 and 13. [Ed.] 17

[p023] Pierre Broué: his History of the Bolshevik Party should be consulted as in the case of the State, Stalinism has falsified the problem. When one thinks of that party (i.e. the Communist Party) one thinks immediately of a monolithic party related to the masses in the same way as a general staff is related to the army. Nothing is more foreign to Marxism. The history of the Bolshevik Party (and for this purpose the 18 book by P. Broué, Histoire du Parti Bolchevique, should be consulted), until it was destroyed by the bureaucratic counter-revolution, was that of a constant struggle of tendencies and factions; and it cannot be otherwise for an organization which, subjected to all the pressures of hostile class forces, but armed with the Marxist method, struggles to win leadership of the proletariat and leads it to the assault on bourgeois power. Drawing the lessons of this experience, the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (French section of the Fourth International) wrote into its statutes not only the right to form tendencies but also the right to form factions. Was it on these grounds that Saint Marcellin” dissolved it? The life of an authentic revolutionary organiza- tion has nothing in common with its bureaucratic caricature. At the Second Congress of the Com- munist International there were representatives of the Spanish CNT. Lenin and Trotsky hoped that it would join the International without making any conditions regarding its anarchist ideology. Here again it was the anarchists who broke with the Marxist ‘sectarians’ and not the reverse. Certainly the revolutionary party can degenerate just as can the workers’ state. Social forces hostile to the proletariat can destroy the party of the proletariat. Must it be concluded from this that the proletariat can do without an organi- zation which sums up and puts into conscious terms, in its programme and action, the lessons of the experience of a century and a half of workers’ struggles? As Marxists we consider that this programme is the Transitional Programme of the Fourth In- ternational. The Marxists consider that this pro- gramme is the expression of the tasks of the pro- letarian revolution in our epoch, that of the death agony of capitalism. They are ready to debate it, in the framework of working-class democracy, with all proletarian tendencies which effectively struggle against the dictatorship of capital. Does that mean to say that they think that the class struggle has nothing more to teach them? One would have to be a fool to believe that when the greatest revolutionary struggles in history are approaching. 23 The OCI was one of the organizations banned by Minister of the Interior Marcellin in June 1968. [Ed.] Fourth International, Summer 1969