Winter of Famine, Our Position, & The Proletarian Class Struggle - Le Proletaire (Revolutionary Communists)

France

"IT IS THE WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES WHO HAVE LOST THE WAR. . ."

Our good comrade, K. J. Kenafick, again gives us the opportunity to present the views of revolutionary sections in Europe.

20th May, 1947.

Dear Comrade Dawson:
I am forwarding herewith some translations from the French papers mentioned in my last communication.

The first one with which I shall deal is Le Proletaire, organ of Revolutionary Communism, published at Lyons, the issue in question being that of last January.

Its leading article is entitled "Winter of famine, after 18 months of capitalist 'reconstruction' in Europe, and throughout the world."

The article says:

"'Give us bread, or shoot us!' cry the demonstrators in the towns of Italy.

"'We have sown and we are hungry, we have produced coal and we are cold,' declare the workers of the Ruhr.

"'We have toiled for two years, and the restrictions are the same, if not worse,' agree the workers of France and of the whole world.

"For the French situation is inseparable from the international situation.

"After 18 months of capitalist 'reconstruction,' not only in France, but throughout the whole world, real wages are continuing to fall, prices are continuing to soar, and restrictions are becoming worse in all countries, from England to Russia, from America to Japan

"In Europe and in the colonies, millions of young people, of maimed persons, and children are wandering in rags across devastated and starving countries.

"In Central and Eastern Europe snow covers the ruins on which will fight the armies of the two new blocs which stand face to face.

"Why reconstruct?

"Famine is general in Germany, in Greece, in the Ukraine, in the East Indies.

"Strikes follow each other in Italy and in Austria.

"Inflation is shattering Hungary.

"In France the miserable 25 per cent. increase in wages has long been annulled by the giddy and continuing soaring of prices.

"It is the workers of all countries who have lost the war, and it is the capitalists of all countries who have won it.

"It is war economy that is continuing and the means: Guns, aeroplanes, atomic bombs, and not bread, butter, boots, and houses for the workers.

"The avalanche of elections and referenda have changed nothing. It is nothing that in France we have voted eight (8) times since the 'Liberation.' The result? The same bourgeois class and the same oppressor State exploit the workers, carry on their Imperialist war in Indo-China, reduce to slavery 700,000 prisoners of war, and are preparing other things of a similar kind.

"The international bourgeoisie is trying to set the workers of other countries against the American miners. The method is an old one.

"The American miners, in defending their standard of living against capitalist rapacity, show that it is possible to paralyse and to stop the war machine of international capitalism, which, in the final reckoning, depends on the goodwill of the toilers.

"But the American miners' strike also shows that the old Trade Union method is inefficient when confronting the concentrated strength of the State as employer, the boss-State.

"The entire working class must overstep Trade Union limitations, unleash the expropriating general strike, overthrow capitalism and its State, and take possession of the means of production in order to finish, once and for all, with an accursed and condemned regime."

---

The policy set out briefly in the foregoing article is expended in a long article in the same issue. entitled "Our Position." I shall proceed to give the more interesting and relevant portions.

"Revolutionary ideas cannot be the artificial product of a study circle, which, separated from the working class, 'works out,' in a sealed room, a programme 'for' the working class; we reject such intellectual pretensions, which contain in embryo the whole of bureaucratic degeneration; revolutionary ideas can only be the result of the living experience of the class struggle of the international proletariat, in which all revolutionaries must actively participate.

"The following declaration is the result of long and conscious participation in working class struggles, a landmark in a continuous and unending evolution, and, as such, a modest contribution to an effort which can only be international.

"The means of production to be directly and entirely in the hands of the toilers.

"The point which seems of cardinal importance to us is that of the relation between the means of production (machines and raw material), and the producers (the proletarians). The separation between the means of production, and consequently all the power and all the material wealth on one side, and the toilers on the other, is characteristic of all class society.

"In capitalist society, where the productive forces have become enormous and capable of producing abundance for all—steam, motorisation, modern machinery, electricity, atomic force, are all available—the separation of the modern means of production from the proletarians, the producers of these enormous forces becomes a source of poverty, of hunger, and of permanent and devastating war.

"Only the suppression of this disastrous separation, the achievement of the direct and complete, the disposal of the means of production by all the toilers, can save society from a monstrous barbarism.

"Consequently, we separate ourselves forever from all schools, and from all currents of private capitalism or of State Capitalism, which mean to maintain or re-establish obstacles or barriers, even 'provisional' ones, between the means of production, the wealth of the world, and the proletarians, producers of all this wealth. We fight against all States, governments, bureaucracies, technocracies, Parties and Trade Unions which, instead of the proletariat, mean to direct production, whilst according to the producers, the right of 'control' or of 'collaboration.' These systems can only render permanent the production and extraction of surplus value, and, consequently, the exploitation and the oppression of man by man, wage-slavery, famine, and war.

"We fight against the petty-bourgeois and bureaucratic tendencies, vestiges of the old working-class movement, which declare the proletarians to be unfit to direct production themselves, and which, in that way, try to justify the maintenance of capitalist slavery, whether on the basis of private Capitalism or of State Capitalism.

"The petty-bourgeois intellectuals and the supporters of the old working-class movement are incapable of recognising the possibility and the necessity of the libertarian Commune, they are incapable of giving an objective analysis of events. That is because the petty-bourgeois intellectuals play a directing role in Capitalist Society (whether private capitalism or even more so, State Capitalism), and they have decided to preserve their privileged position, which is based on wage-slavery, on the exploitation and expropriation of the workers. The ideas of the bourgeois or petty bourgeois intellectuals are determined by their social situation.

"Therefore, it is not to be wondered at that the aim of these petty-bourgeois intellectuals, in the working-class movement itself, is fundamentally different from that of the proletarians; they consider as 'Utopian' the suppression of the wage-system, and the real power of the workers, whilst the revolutionary workers know in general very well that the toilers are very capable of directing production and that society can be without bureaucrats and bourgeois intellectuals.

The Old and the New Working-class Movement

"The old working-class movement, political, Parliamentary, and Trade Union, is characterised by the struggle for improvements within the framework of the capitalist regime. But capitalism having now arrived at the final limits of its possibilities, such improvements are no longer possible. The lowering of the standard of living of the toiling masses is general and world-wide. This reduction is leading to the systematic extermination of tens of millions of toilers in economic crises, in murderous Imperialist wars, and in famine, atomic bombardments, and gas chambers.

"The old working-class movement is dead, because there is no longer any place for it. The remnants of the old working-class parties and of the Trade Unions have become cogs of the capitalist State machine, and active supporters of Imperialist barbarism. The use of the old method of struggle in the present-day situation would be as effective as a primitive weapon against a modern fortress.

"The new working-class movement is still not born. It is being born in conditions of struggle fundamentally different from the old ones. It is being born in slave labour camps, in the revolts of the 'wild' strikes against State Capitalism. The insurrection of the sailors of Kronstadt against the then developing State Capitalism was one of the first and preliminary battles of this new working-class movement.

"The new working-class movement cannot limit itself to struggles which are purely in the nature of immediate demands, for every such struggle calls for the mobilisation of the repressive forces of the boss-State. Every struggle for immediate demands tends at once to a revolutionary struggle between the whole working-class and the boss-State. The new working-class movement passes beyond and rejects Parliamentarianism—a pure swindle in a more and more totalitarian age—and Trade Unionism—which is more and more a cog wheel of the exploiter State.

"The new working-class movement cannot be anything else but communist, revolutionary, libertarian, and international, because the reformist, Statist, individualist, partial, local, solutions are no longer possible.

"The old working-class movement, of bourgeois legality, of Trade Unions, and of Parliamentary parties, is characterised by its closer and closer collaboration with the bourgeoisie; this old movement is being progressively replaced by another which is characterised by the direct action of the masses, unauthorised strikes, workers' councils, a social and a violent struggle against all the bourgeoisie and its State, for the proletarian, international, and libertarian Commune.

"The profoundest cause of this change is the transformation of a capitalism which had at first been revolutionary, then liberal, then monopolising and Imperialist, into a State Capitalism which is entirely counter-revolutionary and barbarous. It is the exhaustion and the decadence of capitalism which have transformed the working-class movement. Against the new concentration of the class enemy, a new method of struggle imposes itself, new forms of struggle are born, and with them a refashioning of revolutionary strategy and theory.

The present-day division and confusion of the proletariat are only a transitory phase towards a new outburst of class forces. In the little illegal revolutionary groups which consider the autonomous movement of the toiling masses to be essential, there is still, and inevitably, a mixture of old out of date formulae and new revolutionary ideas insufficiently developed. Only the development of the class struggle with complete this process.

"From the Russian Revolution to the World Revolution"

"The Russian Revolution of 1917 was at the same time the last bourgeois revolution and a preliminary fight for the future world proletarian revolution. It was the last bourgeois revolution, because the first World War, the check to the proletarian revolutionary movements which succeeded it, and, State Capitalism having definitely closed the era of bourgeois revolution and bourgeois democracy; the bourgeoisie has become an absolutely reactionary, counter-revolutionary, and decadent class in all countries of the world, colonies included. The proletarian revolution is everywhere on history's order of the day.

"Like the Revolution of 1789, the Revolution of 1917 overthrew and destroyed the feudal system, but it went further—the Russian proletariat, stronger and more class-conscious than that of 1789, did not limit itself to overthrowing absolutism, but, organised in its workers' councils, and soldiers' and sailors' councils, it expropriated the bourgeoisie, and took into its own hands the means of production, and all power.

"In this sense it continued the work of the Paris Commune of 1871, and opened a cycle of proletarian revolutionary movements in Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc.). This first international proletarian revolutionary wave was thrust back by the international bourgeois counter-revolution, which triumphed under the form of Fascism, whether, White, Brown, Black or Red.

"In Russia itself, the bourgeois counter-revolution, by expropriating the proletariat and throwing it back into slavery, inaugurated State Capitalism, the supreme and decadent form of contemporary capitalism.

"The bourgeoisie of all countries, after having crushed the revolutionary proletariat immediately prepared the second Imperialist World War. To the ten millions of dead of the first World War are to be added the fifty millions of dead, and as many cripples and lunatics of the Second World War. Paralysed by the Fascists and Stalinist terrors, and above all, by the great falsehood about State 'Socialism' in the U.S.S.R., the proletarians of nearly all countries did not react in a revolutionary fashion against this Second World War.

"'Why have a revolution if the victorious Red Army is bringing us Socialism? Let us have confidence in our leaders'—such was the reaction of the toiling masses of Europe during the Second World War.

"The result was the murderous prolongation of the Imperialist War, the destruction of European industry by bombings or dismantlings, mass deportations of workers, the disillusionment of the toiling masses fallen under the yoke of the 'liberating' armies, whether Russian or Western, and the accelerated preparation for the Third World War.

"The issue of the Second World War poses in a trenchant fashion all the questions of proletarian revolution, of the emancipation of the human race. The tragic issue of the Second World War shows the errors and the omissions in the old theories and demands, and renders possible new and fundamental theoretical explanations. The old working-class movement has become State-capitalist, the new one is yet to be born. It does not exist as yet, it is only in embryo. In the same way the new theory is at yet only germinating. Our task is to recognise it and to express it.

"The material and ideological solving of the Russian 'enigma' will permit a new progression of the international proletariat. The continuation of Imperialist world war would lead—at the price of victims which a victorious revolution could have averted—to the wearing out and crushing of Russian Stalinism. The revolutionaries must look ahead and prepare ideologically for this event, which will shake the world.

"Only proletarian revolution could have prevented the race towards the Third Imperialist World War; only the proletarian revolution can prevent catastrophe. In spite of the devastations, in spite of the possible destruction of a great part of the human race, the social problem would remain to be solved, and the proletarian revolution would remain on the order of the day and would present itself as the only solution.

"International, Libertarian, Proletarian and Revolutionary Communism

"The ideology of the new working-class movement is that of international, libertarian, proletarian, and revolutionary Communism.

"Communism, because the society which will succeed to capitalism cannot be other than that in which the means of production, and consequently, abundance, will be achieved for all and by all. Such a society is called communist.

"Revolutionary, because only the proletarian revolution can achieve this communism; never will the bourgeois and its State, nor the other privileged social strata yield place to the proletariat; an implacable proletarian civil war will have to drive them out.

"Libertarian, because communism is inconceivable without liberty; the proletarian revolution is anti-State and anti-Government; liberty must exist for all, and for all tendencies in working-class democracy; this liberty is indispensable for the achievement of communism.

"Internationalist, because the proletariat is an international class, and its revolution can only triumph, and communism can only be achieved, internationally.

"Against the Labels of the Past, for Revolutionary Synthesis in Direct Action

"We reject the out of date and empty labels, which tend to divide the revolutionary workers. Thus, we consider as destitute of sense, the labels of 'Marxism' and 'Anarchism,' which often set against each other revolutionary proletarians who fundamentally think the same. Official 'Marxism' has been compromised by its policy and by the Imperialist and State Capitalist practice of the official Marxism of the second, third and fourth 'Internationals,' and by their satellites of the 'Left.' Official 'Anarchism' has been compromised by participation in Government in Spain, by a reformist Trade Union practice, and by a propaganda which has at times been patriotic.

"However, it is not a matter of totally rejecting the two original revolutionary schools. The new working-class movement has need of a synthesis of the revolutionary sides of both Anarchism and Marxism; this synthesis will be achieved in the class struggle itself.

"Henceforth one can say that it will reject the later distortions and compromising actions, but also the errors and the original omissions which contributed to present-day compromising actions.

"In our opinion, it will express, by the scientific and revolutionary of historical and dialectical materialism, the permanent proletarian revolution which will be internationalist, anti-Parliamentary, anti-Trade Union, anti-State and libertarian.

"The Dutch idea of workers' councils' Communism is one of the tentative moves—still insufficient and probably unconscious—towards such a revolutionary synthesis. Workers' Councils' Communism is at the one and same time both the most advanced point of the old working-class movement and, insofar as its propagandising for the new movement, the negation of the old working-class movement.

The revolutionary idea has need of a permanent development.

"It is in this sense that we present the following programmatic declaration."

The declaration just mentioned repeats in more detail a good deal of what has been said already in the article. Starting with the heading: "State Capitalism and the Proletarian World Revolution," it goes on to say that State Capitalism is the last stage of Capitalism and reinforces and augments the necessary conditions for the proletarian world revolution. The internal contradictions of capitalism are becoming worse, and increasingly lead to war. Only the development of revolutionary resistance on the part of the working-class can end Imperialist world wars. Capitalism is leading to the increasing impoverishment of the working-class and the ruin of the middle classes. In these circumstances it can only maintain itself by means of Fascism, as in Germany, Italy and Russia. But it is only the classless Communist society that can do away with the contradictions of society. This will mean the emancipation not only of the proletariat, but of the whole human race.

"As the State is always an instrument of oppression by exploiting classes, the workers' power (the Commune) can no longer be called the 'State,' for it comprises the totality of toilers organised in their workers' councils."

"The evolution to a classless society is only possible on an international scale."

THE PROLETARIAN CLASS STRUGGLE

The article under this heading goes on to say that to Revolutionary Communists stand at all times, in all circumstances, under 'democracy' or under Fascism, in peace or in war, for an active struggle for the workers' immediate demands, against all exploitation and oppression, and for the proletarian revolution. They stand neither for purely active work, nor for mere theoretical study. They refuse to separate study from action. "Revolutionary Communism draws its revolutionary ideas from direct action, and it animates revolutionary action by the ideas gained in revolutionary practice."

"Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary action."

"All detachment from the working class can only lead to bourgeois degeneration."

"We support all the immediate demands of the proletariat (increase in wages, the fight against the high cost of living, better food supply, improvement of the conditions of work). We take part in all the activities of the working class which have for their aim the achievement of such immediate demands, that is, we take part in strikes and demonstrations, and we invite the workers to strengthen and extend those activities; we push on towards the revolutionary solution, and we link the immediate demands to this final goal."

At the same time, the article emphasises, mere reformism is to be opposed, that is to say, the policy that presents the immediate demands as the principal aim. The Revolutionary Communists endeavour to raise the level of working-class consciousness. "They point out that it is impossible, under the capitalist regime, to achieve an important or enduring improvement for the workers, and they openly say that any improvement can only be maintained by the direct revolutionary action of the masses, and that only workers' power and the classless society will render possible a definite and unlimited improvement in the standard of living of the toilers."

"TRADE UNIONS AND WORKERS' COUNCILS

"Trade Unions had their origin in the guilds of artisans under liberal capitalism. They organised the workers according to their trades, which indicates progress in relation to guilds, but which still means a division of the toilers in modern industry.

"Independently of the treachery of the official Trade Unions, the Trade Union method is out of date as such. A strike by a single trade is doomed to defeat. The era of individual Trade Union struggle crowned by effective success is closed. The fight for partial demands, or even for a whole trade, renders indispensable the mobilisation of the entire toiling class.

"The Trade Unions have lost the progressive role that they played in the ascending period of capitalism, which terminated in 1914. It was also in 1914 that the Trade Unions, in common with the parties of the Second International, passed over to the side of Imperialism and drove the workers of all countries into the Imperialist massacre.

"Since 1914 at least, one can no longer separate the struggle for immediate demands from the struggle against the State. In the period of war (and, since 1914, the whole capitalist system has found itself in a period of war), the slightest strike for an increase in wages must weaken the 'war effort,' and must provoke State repression.

"The workers are obliged to confront State repression. The struggle for immediate demands rapidly becomes a revolutionary struggle. All struggles against the employer becomes a struggle against the State, and against the Parties, and the Trade Union bureaucracy, which are no longer anything else than cogs in the State machine. To maintain this struggle, the workers find new forms: strike committees and workers' councils.

"State Capitalism, the supreme form of capitalist exploitation, is developing everywhere. Strikes were forbidden at first in the colonies, next, in the period between the two First World Wars, in Russia, Italy, Germany and in all countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Trade Unions have become there State organisations, obligatory organisations, which imprison and control (act as spies on) the workers.

"The war of 1939-45 strengthened the development of State Capitalism, and the reactionary role of the Trade Unions, in all countries. All the strikes since the end of the war have been guided directly by strike committees, arisen directly from the masses, and against the official Trade Unions. These strike committees are only the embryonic form of the workers' councils (soviets), of the first workers' revolutions, those of 1905, 1917, 1919. Later on, they will develop into organs of struggle, revolutionary control, and power.

They are characterised by:

"Direct election by all the toilers in the actual workshop itself.

"They are controlled and revocable at any moment by the toiling masses who have elected them.

"They comprise and include all toilers without distinction of opinion or of belief, Unionist or non-Unionist, organised or unorganised.

"They pass beyond, consequently, even the broadest Trade Union framework.

[Class-conscious UNITY is stressed here AS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PAYING OF UNION DUES.—Editor S.A.W.C.]

It is, therefore, no longer a question of 'leaving' the Trade Unions or of 'staying in them, or of 'seceding' or of 'preserving Trade Union unity,' or of forming a 'new Trade Union; it is a question of passing beyond Trade Union limitations, or taking the decisions for struggle, at 'the factory itself, without troubling about the Trade Union leaders.

"The proletarian is finding again its fighting unity in strike committees, workers' councils, in organisms of struggle and of control, issuing directly and democratically from the masses, and always controllable and revocable by the masses.

"The strike committees are born in the fight for immediate demands, they develop, organise and propagandise this fight, they develop in the fight itself, and are capable of becoming workers' councils, that is to say, organs of combat and of revolutionary power destined to sweep away and to replace the capitalist State itself."

"BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY"

[THE DELUSIONS OF THEORETICAL REVOLUTIONARY "Plans" and/or the Labor Call's (5/6/1947) advocacy of "Socialism Without Bloodshed!". "A revolutionary situation is independent of the will of all parties." —Editor S.A.W.C.]

Under this heading the article denounces Parliamentarianism as being a camouflage for exploitation and oppression. The Revolutionary Communists reject all participation in Government of any kind, and any support of a Government. Thus they reject the idea of a "transitory programme," opportunist illusions, and the idea of a "Workers' Government." "Outside workers' power, there are only Capitalist Governments." They reject the idea of a "United Front," which is a Parliamentary device. "We oppose to this the unity of struggle of the working class in direct action." consequently, all elections and referenda should be boycotted.

"To bourgeois democracy, which is ending up State Capitalism or in Fascism, we oppose by the proletarian democracy of Workers' Councils."

IMPERIALIST WAR

Under this heading the article goes on to say that capitalist contradictions in society are producing a state of permanent war and of accentuated State Capitalism.

In case of another war, the Revolutionary Communists will continue their policy of revolutionary defeatism in all countries, including fraternisation and the transformation of the Imperialist War into a civil war and international Social revolution. This policy is therefore opposed to both patriotism and pacifism. As the proletarian revolution is both possible and necessary in all countries of the world, the Revolutionary Communists oppose all ideologies of "liberation" or of "national independence," or any Nationalist movement directed by any bourgeois fraction.

"The Proletarian Revolution and Workers' Power (The Commune)

"The proletarian revolution can only break out if an objective revolutionary situation really exists; such a situation is independent of the will of all parties. It is characterised by:

"(a) An internal crisis of the bourgeoisie, incapable of solving its own contradictions.

"(b) A period of struggle of the working class which is regaining its class consciousness and commencing to form its own organs of struggle.

"In such a situation the spontaneous outbreak of the proletarian revolution is on the order of the day.

"This revolution in general cannot overthrow capitalism if it does not profit by the lesson of past proletarian struggles. The revolutionary party must actively aid the working class in its revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the proletarian revolution is not the work of a party, but the work of the working class itself; consequently, working class power is not the power of a party, but that of all the workers.

"Workers' power means the organised masses of armed workers, in the councils. The bourgeois State which can be neither 'purified' nor 'taken possession of' must be completely suppressed and destroyed by the proletarian revolution.

"In workers' power there is no longer any particular 'apparatus' separated from the masses, there is no longer any bureaucracy nor secret police, nor privileged stratum. The working masses themselves directly guide economy, policy, and all the affairs of society.

"For this reason, and above all, after the experience of Russia, it is no longer permissible to speak of a workers' 'State.' Besides, Marx and Engels themselves only spoke of a 'semi-State' which 'withers away,' and they sometimes proposed speaking of the 'Commune,' a more accurate term.

"We reject all theories tending to camouflage State Capitalism as a Workers' State. A national workers' State living peacefully side by side with the capitalist world, or the workers' State in a single country in the middle of the capitalist world, does not exist, never has existed, and never can exist. . Theo theory of the 'Workers' State in a single country,' in peaceful relations with the capitalist world is a National-Reformist theory, which has engendered the equally National-Reformist theory of 'Socialism in a single country.' Both theories server the interests of State capitalism. All speculations or the possible degree of the so-called 'degeneracy,' and the reformist means of remedying it, are based on the false theories, and are to be rejected.

"The dictatorship of the proletariat, established at first in one country, can only be the opening of the international civil war, the elevation of the proletarian masses into the dominant class, the declaration of the proletarian revolution in permanence, till the crushing of the international bourgeoisie, till the establishment of international workers' power, a prelude to the classless communist society.

"The Revolutionary-Proletarian Organisation"

"It is not by chance that it is only in the last section that we speak of the revolutionary party; contrarily to what many others think, and what we ourselves thought before, we consider as primordial and decisive the action of the proletariat, and not that of the party or the group. Our conception of the proletarian revolution determines our conception of the party.

"It is not the intellectuals who bring class-consciousness to the proletariat, quite the contrary. Class-consciousness is spontaneously born in the class struggle. The petty-bourgeois intellectuals obscure class-consciousness; the revolutionary party must clear it and raise it.

"The task of the proletarian-revolutionary party, group, or federation is not to make the revolution in place of the proletariat, but ideologically to aid the proletariat to accomplish its historic mission.

"We are against a party revolution, and against a party power which could only lead to State Capitalism and to a bloody oppression of the working class by a new bureaucracy.

"Only a proletarian revolution which has been willed, understood, and achieved by the working masses themselves can be lasting and solid and lead to a real workers power, to the communist classless society.

"Therefore, it is not at all a question of tactics, but a question of principle. The different idea about the role of the party finally lead to very different results; either to barbaric State Capitalism or to the proletarian and libertarian Commune, to the classless society.

"The revolutionary organisation of the proletariat must at all times be ideologically independent of all parties and currents at the service of the bourgeois, or which justify solutions favourable to private or to State Capitalism.

"Historic experience shows that these parties or groups cannot be 'set to rights.' Consequently, we reject the entry of revolutionaries into any such organisation, or group, which would be equivalent to the liquidation of the revolutionary organisation.

"For the same reason, in cases where an opportunist current advocating or achieving class collaboration, exists in a supposedly revolutionary organisation, and whether this current is a majority or not, revolutionaries must separate from it.

"The structure of the proletarian-revolutionary organisation must be on the following principles: Free discussion of all political questions, and freedom of expression for all tendencies and fractions, whether minority or majority. Decisions are arrived at by majority decisions, except, obviously, if they violate fundamental revolutionary principles. Whilst accepting majority decisions, minorities have a permanent right of public criticism.

"This structure of the revolutionary party is derived from our conception of the revolution and of the proletarian Commune. The authoritarian and anti-democratic structure of the opportunist parties and groups is the expression of the reactionary and State Capitalist Society for which they are really fighting.

"The working class being an international class, and the proletarian revolution being an international process, the revolutionary organisation of the proletariat must be international.

"In workers' councils democracy (the libertarian and proletarian Commune), the revolutionary organisation is only one fraction among others. Its ideas are rejected or accepted, not by any sort of bureaucratic pressure of any kind, but by their justice, and by their force of conviction that they have.

"With the achievement of the class Communist society, there disappears also the revolutionary-proletarian organisation."

Oft the Stalinists they say:

"Stalinism is the political form of Russian State Capitalism. It is not essentially distinguishable from Fascism. In the countries occupied by Russian Imperialism it is playing the role which was played by the Quislings of German Imperialism. In other countries it fulfils the function of a Fifth Column. Everywhere it destroys by terror and violence the proletarian-revolutionary movements, and works for the maintenance and the strengthening of Capitalism under its State form."

"The parties of the Second International are for the establishment of State Capitalism (nationalisation), with 'democratic' concessions to private capitalists and to dissatisfied workers. In Central Europe, in France, and in Italy they have been outdone by Stalinism. In England, in Belgium, and in the Scandinavian countries they are trying to carry out the formula above-mentioned."

"Trotskyism," which is the Left Opposition, and appendix, of Stalinism, is for a moderate and democratised State Capitalism, for the unconditional defence, the reform, and the extension of Russian Party Governments, and for a United Front with the Communist Party in all countries. Another Trotskyist tendency which denounces "collectivist bureaucratism," advocates the same State-Capitalist measures within the framework of 'democratic' Capitalism, namely, nationalisation, Communist-Socialist Governments, Trade Unions, etc.

The fourth group attacked in this subjoined note is that of the Bordiguists, followers of the Italian Left Communist Bordiga, who led the Leftist revolt within the Communist International, before Trotsky, and had affinities with the "Workers' Opposition" in the ranks of the Russian Communist Party in 1923. They apparently believe themselves to be the only true inheritors of the Gospel of Lenin, as against both Stalin and Trotsky. It is this group that publishes L'Internationaliste, organ of the Communist Left, which is described as a new series of L'Etincelle (the Spark).

Of this group the Revolutionary Communists say:

"Bordiguism is not essentially distinguishable from Trotskyism. It stood for the defence of the Russian State and of the Stalintern up to 1935, and it advocates a new State Capitalism under 'Governments of a new Communist Party, opposed to proletarian and libertarian Communism. This bureaucratic and authoritarian Government will alone dispose of the means of production, from which the workers will be separated; therefore, exploitation and the wage-system will continue. Bordiguism rejects freedom of organisation, and freedom of expression for other parties and tendencies in a democracy of Workers' Councils. It reserves to Trade Unions alone the role of 'defence' of the workers against their State, and it is only in the Trade Unions that it promises to tolerate other tendencies."

"All these currents, and those related to them, are currents of State Capitalism. They mean to strengthen, or to modify, but, anyway, to maintain the separation of the producers from the means of production. Trotskyism and Bordiguism propose to create new parties which will replace the old parties in their task, and which would renew bureaucratic tutelage.

"From all these tendencies we are separated by the barrier which separates State Capitalism under all its forms from proletarian revolution.

"It is not the same with the Anarchist-Communists, and the proletarian Communist tendencies within the old 'Marxist' parties; such proletarian tendencies exist particularly in the Internationalist Communist Party of Italy [section of the Communist Left] and in certain sections of the 'Fourth International' [official Trotskyists]. These tendencies are detaching themselves from the old working-class movement and are evolving on to class positions. The divergencies which we have with them are placed within the revolutionary movement itself.

What distinguishes us from the Anarchists is not their anti-State, libertarian, and revolutionary ideas—of which we entirely approve—but the Trade Union, individualist, co-operativist, nationalist conceptions which belong to the old working-class movement of the liberal epoch, and which are out of date in the epoch of State Capitalism."

This is the end of the subjoined note to the long article by the Revolutionary Communists on their general position.

That position should be of considerable interest to your readers, throwing light as it does on developments even here in Australia. Whether all points of their programme—particularly their absolute rejection of political action—could be regarded as suitable for adoption here is another matter, and one which some of your correspondents might like to discuss.

Their criticisms of other parties seem to be pretty just, except as regards the Bordiguists, who, as far as I can judge from their papers, do not really stand very far from the Revolutionary Communists. This tendency, however, to be over-critical and to split hairs, is eminently characteristic of the European Socialist groups to-day, and needs to be replaced, in my opinion, by a more tolerant and understanding attitude towards those who, after all, are working in the same direction, if any good results are to be achieved for the emancipation of the proletariat.

Yours fraternally,

(Sgd.) K. J. Kenafick.