Notes on Decadence theory

I think that I will handle your points in separate posts, so here is point one:

I don't think that the workers' experience of it was as a class war. To the working class I would be pretty sure that it appeared as a war between two factions, whether you want to call them capitalist or not is besides the point, opposed to their interests. How was the interest of the working class served by dying for the profits of the Northern capitalists.

I don't think that whether communism was on the agenda is a really relevant question. Workers struggle to defend their immediate interests. There is a direct link in today's situation, when all that capital can offer is an ever increasing cycle of war, not to mention the destruction of the environment itself, and communism. This is also related to the fact that capital can not offer any meaningful permanent reforms. However, if we had our time machine, and you went back, and argued that workers should die for the expansion of the proletariat, so that one day it could achieve communism, I would not be surprised if they laughed at you.

Again the same point applies. Communism springs from the immediate interests of the working class. One could include the struggle for education within this, but not a struggle to expand capital, and therefore increase the size of the proletariat.

I will come back to part three soon.

Devrim

Yes, this idea has some good points. the problem is that the third point is I think of the upmost importance relating to how we view the development of communist theory, and practice, and I think would tend to spill over into the other points. Let us stick with this and give it a go though.

Yes, I think that both you and Marx are mistaken here. Your method is right though in suggesting that there are two possibilities, either you, and by implication Marx, are wrong on this particular war, or this casts doubt upon 'the general characterisation of the period as a whole as progressive'. Despite this, I would suggest that there is a third possibility, that even tough capitalism may have been progressive , it was not in the interests of the working class to extend its development, but rather to defend its position within it. It was not in the immediate interests of workers to die in war. the American Civil War also brought massive austerity measures down on the working class just as war does today.

This question comes to the heart of the discussion. The working class was right to fight alongside the bourgeoisie when it advanced their immediate interests. The reason that it was right was because in advanced their immediate interest, not because the advance of capital laid the material basis for communism.

I think that there is much of value in Marx. His work is not a religious tome though. There are errors within it. Identifying those errors does not imply an abandonment of Marx's contribution, nor an adoption of utopianism, or anarchism.

My point here is that the working class struggles for its own immediate interests. Today there is no contradiction. In the ascendant period you are suggesting there was. I can agree with that point, but I would say that the working class was still right to struggle for its immediate interests, and not for the development of capital.

But as you said before there is no contradiction between the immediate struggle of the working class and its struggle for communism and I agree with your characterisation of this period. There is a difference in periods here. The tactics of the communist movement are in the immediate interests of the working class in every day struggles. The reason that I suggested that workers would have laughed at you is that you would have been arguing against their immediate interest. Today our daily activity in every struggle is directly linked to the struggle for communism (I want to raise another point here, but I will do it on a different thread).

There was also opposition to the war on a class basis in the North. Also workers today would be right to strike to stop interventions. That is a class line. There is a difference between this and acting as a recruiting sergeant for the union.

I don't argue against the struggle for abolition having been a part of the class struggle. I argue that it was also part of the ideological support for a war, which was fought between two anti-working class factions. As I said above there is a difference from workers striking to stop their own governments intervention, and acting as a recruiting sergeant for the union.

I agree here. I think that you have misunderstood me. I was talking about the struggle for education in the ascendant period.

Devrim

This certainly clarifies your position and brings into stark relief the fundamental disagreements between us here. Alf has already made the point concerning the historic dimension of the working class struggle. This historical vision springs from the proletariat's nature as a revolutionary class.

The unions are a case in point. The bourgeoisie were completely mystified by the appearance of the unions. Workers sacrificed significant portions of their wages to build these organs. They were often imprisoned and killed in defence of their unions. Often the defence of the union was seen as more important than immediate struggles. From a bourgeois point of view, where is the logic in reducing your living standards to build organs (largely ineffectual to start with) that will ... improve your living standards?!

Although the role of the unions today is completely different, in that period the formation of these organs served a long-term goal, just as all the other reforms for which workers bitterly struggled. It sprang from a deep-seated historical dimension to the struggle and not simply a reaction to immediate conditions.

With regard to the Civil War, the workers (if not the bourgeoisie) were on the side of the abolitionists, not the Union in itself. Marx was quite dismissive of Lincoln personally, describing him as an unremarkable man. Further:

It is clear from this that Marx's support is for the radical tendencies in the Union that spring mainly from the most industrialised areas of the US i.e. the most proletarianised. Further in this text, Marx points out other concessions that are being wrung from the ruling class: "Apart from its financial legislation, it [Congress] passed the Homestead Bill, which the Northern masses had long striven for in vain; in accordance with this Bill, part of the state lands is given gratis to the colonists, whether indigenous or new-comers, for cultivation". This esentially forced the return of vast tracts of land to the masses for their free use and the idea of Homesteading is largely what constituted the "Amercian dream" in this epoch.

More importantly, the origins of the American Civil War must be remembered here. The Southern states seceded not because the North threatened to ban slavery. They did so because Lincoln had promised to prevent the spread of slavery. Had the North lost, many class comrades would have found themselves back under the plantation owners heel.

To the working class, slavery is repugnant. In Europe, the proletariat's origins lie in the semi-slavery of the feudal manor, from which it escaped to the cities in spite of the far worse living conditions (initially at least) of the latter. Despite this, Stadtluft macht frei was the motto of the early proletariat, when it wasn't choking on the fumes of industy. This will for freedom, the desire to abolish serfdom and slavery springs from the proletariat's historic nature not simply as a class fighting for its own immediate interests. That desire still exists today, which is why the bourgeoisie is forced to maintain an enormously expensive democratic apparatus and that only the weakest and/or most defeated fractions of the proletariat can be controlled by direct dictatorship (Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, etc.).

Today, this natural revulsion towards absolutism is used to dragoon the workers into imperialist wars under the banner of "democracy". The difference today is that there is no possibility of a progressive outcome to any of these wars and here I think we agree. But it is a mistake to project modern conditions onto the past. National liberation struggles could be progressive in certain circumstances in this epoch. Unions were important organs for the defence of the working class. And there were certain progressive causes, such as the abolition of slavery, the struggle for the vote, education etc. that ameliorated the condition of the working class within capitalism and began to equip it with the cultural development necessary to its revolutionary future. (Part of capitalism's progressive role is to create the working class and equip it in this manner.)

It's not a question of treating his work "religiously". As I tried to point out earlier, Marx could have been wrong about the Civil War but correct in his overall method. It would be helpful if you could clarify this because you say "That [striking against military intervention] is a class line. There is a difference between this and acting as a recruiting sergeant for the union [Union as in US?]". Although not explicit, this strongly implies that Marx crossed the class line in supporting the Civil War. Is this what you mean?

Do you consider the support for the Civil War a tactical error i.e. do you think that particular war was reactionary and the workers' movement was wrong to support it? Or do you think that all wars in this period were reactionary because (a) all wars are reactionary regardless of the historic period or (b) because capitalism was already decadent at this point in time?

It's more a question that if we're to reject Marx's method, we have to substitute another whether we're consciously aware of this or not. Your method so far appears characterised by:

- a rejection of this historic dimensions of struggle and/or a conflation of this struggle with immediate interests;
- a dismissal of the importance of the historical development of capitalism as a necessary precondition of communism. (e.g. "I don't think that whether communism was on the agenda is a really relevant question.")

These two factors are vital to Marx's method. They form the "scientific" core to what Marx and Engels characterised as "scientific socialism" which progressed beyond a simple moral rejection of capitalism but explained the historical processes which drove the class struggle (this didn't mean rejecting morality per se, but showing its material origins).

Lastly, I think you've misread my point on education. I was trying to demonstrate - against your assertion that the objective possibility of communism (and thus the development of capitalism itself) was irrelevant - that all reforms only have worth if capitalism is expanding. Therefore, the development of capitalism is in the interests of the working class. Today we have to get rid of it because it is no longer developing the productive forces (on of which is the working class itself) to their full extent. It is now a barrier to progress.

Hi Mikail

I have no doubt there are many struggles around unionisation in Turkey. In the UK many struggles are also fought around the defence of existing unions. The grip of union ideology on the class should never be underestimated.

Its power springs from exactly the characteristics I pointed out in my previous posts: their history as authentic and essential proletarian organisations. Today this is no longer the case. The fight for unions - just like the fight for reforms, suffrage, etc. - can no longer have any meaning because of decadence. Today, this sort of struggle is representative of a working class still under the grip of bourgeois ideology, a class still unable to fully develop its own consciousness.

The bourgeoisie has done everything in its power to reinforce the unions. Firstly, its counter-revolution annihilated or absorbed most of the revolutionary organisations the working class had created to advance its consciousness. Deprivation of these organs - and more importantly, the discrediting of the very idea of them - has severely retarded the proletariat's ability to develop its consciousness. Secondly, the replacement of these organs with various leftist groups (Trotskyists, Social Democracy, etc.) has allowed the bourgeoisie to continue its assault on consciousness because all these groups defend unionisation to the hilt. These two factors have prevented the working class as a whole from fully reappropriating the bitter lessons learned about the unions and union structures in the decades since WW1.

The unions are further reinforced - especially in repressive regimes - by the fact that they are often persecuted by the state. Workers see organs that claim to defend them being attacked by organs that openly repress them and naturally take the side of the former. But workers in this situation are just as manipulated as those who follow the Maoists in Nepal, or Castro's movement in Cuba, etc. It's only when they begin to struggle directly for their own interests and that the unions and the political currents attached to them attack workers in return that their true function is unmasked.

To sum up then, struggles around unionisation represent a development in militancy but a lack of class consciousness. Without consciousness, militancy is useless and can even be turned against the working class. On the other hand, the fact that workers see there is need to struggle can sometimes open up a real questioning that can develop that consciousness.

I'm not sure I'm the best person to speak to about how to intervene anyway, to be honest Mikail. Best to speak to a group like the ICC about that.

Re the workers' riots in the North against the war, I agree that we should be critical of the idea that this was a genuine proletarian response to the war. The fact this particular incident you mention involved the lynching of black people should give us pause for thought!

I agree that the historic goal for the workers movement is communism but the question is how realisable is this at a given point in history. Today, I would argue that the objective conditions for communism are in place, so therefore the primary goal of the proletariat is to struggle for communism. This doesn't preclude immediate defensive struggles, but even the form and content of these struggles tends to take on a revolutionary content when not contained.

In the epoch of the American Civil War, I don't believe the objective conditions for capitalism were in place. There was no true world economy, capitalism was still expanding vigorously, etc. In America, as in parts of Germany, the bourgeoisie was still eliminating the last of the feudal (or quasi-feudal in the US case) structures that were impeding its development. In other words, capitalism was still laying down the objective conditions necessary for communism. In this situation, the working class had a certain, if limited, interest in supporting this process while also vigorously defending its own interests by trying to steer this development in the most progressive path possible.

The long-term interests of the proletariat were undoubtedly served by forcing the issue of the war, not simply about preventing slavery from spreading but to abolish altogether, thus freeing hundreds of thousands of human beings from a particularly repugnant bondage and, just as importantly, by challenging the revolting ideology that reduced hundreds of thousands of human beings to a subhuman status.

It's true that they may well have also been a proletarian reaction against the war, but in the circumstances of the time where could it go? Without a prospect for world revolution its only success would have been in limiting the North's war effort and condemned the masses in the south to slavery and possible even the spread of slavery northwards.

I'm quite aware, of course, that similar arguments are now used to justify proletarians fighting for example in WW2. But this is purely superficial. In WW2 the objective conditions for world revolution were still present. What was missing was the subjective factor. Revolutionaries cannot create the objective conditions for communism, only capitalist development could do that. What they can do is influence the subjective factor, the proletariat's class consiousness and so it was quite proper for revolutionaries to resist the proletariat's enrolment in the Second World Massacre.

I hope that's clarified my position somewhat.

Me too. In fact they struggle against their immediate interests, led as they are by the braying donkeys of the left who are hungry as ever to analyse our defeats in servitude to their middle class task masters.

Unfortunately, decadence can be a rather subtle concept but in the broadest outlines, it basically means that each society has a "sell-by" date. When a new social order appears, it goes through a period of growth. The economy generally functions well, there is a high level of cultural output, philosophy, science and ethics all show progress. Eventually this expansion runs into either external or internal limits. For feudal society this was basically a slowing down of land reclamation, the Roman empire ran into the logistical problems of managing a large slave empire.

When this point is reached the economy begins to falter. A society that once seemed to run itself now needs more and more intervention from the ruling class to keep going. As a result the state expands (absolute monarchy in feudalism, the divine emperor in Rome), trying to hold together a society that more and more tends to tear itself apart. Exploited classes begin to revolt more and more (slave revolts in Rome, Peasant Revolt in Britain). Cultural production and philosophy now tend towards pessimism, "the end of the world is nigh", corruption within the ruling class becomes rampant, war becomes more and more widespread, etc.

For the Marxist Left, capitalism definitively became historically obsolete with onset of WW1. This is not to say that signs of its degeneration hadn't appeared beforehand, with the Long Depression of 1873 – 1896. Just prior to this, the Paris Commune showed that the struggle of the exploited was entering a new phase. But WW1 was the point when it became clear that capitalist society had nothing to offer but barbarism.

For a more in depth study of decadence, try the ICC's pamphlet here. The first three parts are very readable and demonstrate the general concept and how it manifested in previous societies. The bits after are a bit harder as they deal with economics, but well worth the effort.

this is very interesting. I have never thought this way before. Maybe the same can be said about capitalism since -for instance in the case of us.- the state consume the total %45-50 of the GDP.

Interesting account demogorgon, but I thought that decadence theory rested heavily on the idea that there was an absolute limitation on further expansion and that we faced a period of crisis and war? That's a bit different from your description.

Not deranged from the point of my weekly shop at Asda. This approach is only a step away from declaring life sacred. Besides, enough is produced. It rots in warehouses awaiting a buyer.

I don't think anyone argues with the idea that capital's expansion has led to (and been the product of) a lot of barbarism. However I think there are a couple of things that makes Decadence Theory, at least as proposed by the ICC, not very persuasive.

1. The relatively clear date - 1914, when the Socialists in Germany voted for war credits

2. (and most importantly), the idea that during capital's ascendant period, all kinds of things - national liberation, unions, social democracy were fine because they aided the progressive development of capital, but that as soon as capital became decadent (1914) they switched into a weapon of the ruling class. This allows them to excuse all kinds of anti-working class shit from the Second International - especially the Bolsheviks, enabling them to claim that people they claim heritage with were right all the time, even when they were wrong.

I'm paraphrasing obviously, and will probably be told I'm misrepresenting as well.

Now there's people like Loren Goldner, even Bookchin, who I think hold some kind of decadence theory - Goldner with Fictitious Capital and Bookchin with Libertarian Communism or Ecological Collapse (can't remember the specific phraseology). I think those tend to be more about showing the relative youth and fragility of the capitalist system, whereas decadence, to me, seems to be rolled out when ancestors need excuses made for their mistakes.

catch

A couple of responsed to your points.

This miscomprehension is partly the fault of those of us who defend decadence theory for often using a kind of shorthand in talking about 1914. I did say earlier that signs of capitalism's growing difficulty appeared beforehand with the Long Depression, Paris Commune, etc. What the war provided for the revolutionaries of the time was clear, irrefutable evidence that capitalism was no longer offering even the "relative progress" Lurch described above.

It wasn't the voting for war credits that signified decadence, the war itself did that. The credits vote showed the final integration of social democracy into the bourgeoisie, even if this was the culmination of a process that had been going behind the scenes (one which the Marxist Left had resisted, cf Luxemburg's struggle against Bernstein, the Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks, etc.).

This is a more serious misinterpretation. I don't have the slightest qualm about criticising Lenin for being completely wrong about national liberation in his period. National liberation did have a place but it was long gone by his time. The Bolsheviks never understood the role of the unions either, partly because the unions were really undeveloped in Russia. Defending the Bolsheviks as proletarian springs from the fact that they were the only serious group that a) defended internationalism and denounced the war, b) called for world revolution, c) denounced the traitors of social democracy d) called for the soviets to take power. Their errors had serious consequences for the revolution and Left Communists both now and then take them to task for it without hesitation. But, for us, that isn't enough. We seek to understand what led to these errors and learn from them.The problem was the difficulty of understanding the new period, a point on which all revolutionaries hesitated.

Secondly, the defence of unions and social democracy of the period is not because they aided the progressive development of capital, but because they allowed the working class to defend and improve its position within capitalism. If you write off the second international you need to write off many strands of anarchism too, especially on the union question: anarcho-syndicalism (a reaction against beauracratic degeneration) still used the fundamental union form. Some anarchists rejected social democracy but many in Russia (especially Kropotkin) rallied to the Kerensky government. Bakunin propagated a pseudo-socialist pan-Slavism.

I think you're far too simplistic about this issue and confuse defending the core proletarian nature of a current with excusing every single error and mistake a current may make.

Well, you can compare wars and crises in the 19th century, to those in the 20th for quite clear examples. Crisis in the former spurred new development. Crisis in the 20th spurred deindustrialisation and financerisation of capital.

The SDP in Germany campaigned for democracy in Germany's autocratic state, etc. as the Chartists had campaigned for suffrage in Britain. They politicised whole generations of workers and were clearly part of a process of the working class organising as a class, just like the unions were. They were also a clear advance on the utopian sects of the early 19th, late 18th century, don't you think?

That's not to say they didn't have serious problems. Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Engels comments on the Efurt Programme outline the critique of the Marxist Left. The point is that it was possible at that time for revolutionaries to act within a reformist movement that was still capable of gaining real reforms for workers in the hope of steering the movement to a revolutionary course - don't forget the 2nd International signed a resolution condemning the 1st World War before the fact and this had tremendous resonance in the working class. The parties that then supported the war betrayed their own declared principles.

The fact that Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks (for all their own weaknesses) were able to break and able to declare for world revolution showed there was a real working class life in the movement. Most of the calls for world revolution came from those who had previously been in the 2nd international.

Kropotkin was merely one of many, showing that the same disease that infected social democracy also infected anarchism. But it seems we agree on this. The Makhnovists were a movement worthy of support (even if they based in the peasantry rather than the working class) and the way that the Bolsheviks stabbed them in the back was disgraceful, but there were authoritarian streaks in Makhnovism which other anarchists of the time didn't fail to point out. They had no problem in removing Bolsheviks from workers Soviets (which were firmly behind the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine for the most part).

Both.

I didn't deny this, I merely said that wasn't their raison d'etre, which was to defend workers within capitalism. Most of the improvements that benefitted the working class also benefitted the bourgeoisie in the long term. As was discussed earlier in the thread, the development of capitalism also benefitted the working class. Although there were clear class antagonisms, the expansion of the system was a positive thing for humanity, the "relative progress" Lurch refers to. As long as such progress was possible, workers had an interest in supporting it wherever possible.

It was precisely because these organs were only ever designed to work within capitalism that they become useless once decadence arrives and the imperative for the struggle is to get rid of capitalism. The alternative you seem to present is similar to Devrim - that world revolution was possible at any point, regardless of the development of the productive forces (including the working class itself). Were all the struggles for

My apologies, I find it difficult to keep up with everyone's politics on here.

If you're against the 2nd International and much of anarchism, unionism, etc. does this mean you're against all the struggles for reforms in the 19th century? The example of education was given earlier, what do you think about that?

Just briefly, in what way is this so different from the unions in for example China, Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh which are either illegal or are subject to mass repression now? Note, I'm not necessarily supporting those unions, but in what way are they integrated into the state in such a qualitatively different way to the way the illegal, armed unions between 1800 and 1900 weren't?

Clearly historical conditions changed during the 130 year period that you described. Are you going to try to claim that I think they didn't? However I don't think that this means that capitalism was "decadent", there's still plenty of primitive accumulation going on now, and similar processes of industrialisation in China, India etc. to what happened in Britain a century or two earlier, except it's going on at hyper-speed under different circumstances. Capital is still expanding though, still finding (and creating) new markets. It doesn't show any immediate signs of supercession (unlike c.1917-1936) and I'm not convinced even ecological collapse will wipe it out.

I'm not pro-union, I've been very, very critical of the IWW on this forum consistently as well, and I'm no great fan of anarcho-syndicalism, but it's not decadence theory that leads me to these views, it's an analysis of their limitations as forms (and content as well sometimes) in particular historical circumstances. I don't see a need for a meta-narrative from capital's point of view to explain that.