A second opposition document has a quite different analysis than that of the text reviewed in the previous posts.  It is written by a member of the German FI section and a member of the French Anti-capitalist Party, into which the section in that country dissolved itself.

It argues that there has been a second major wave of capitalist globalisation, which amounts to a new phase of capitalist development.  It notes that “this new stage [of capitalism] results from the development of the properties and contradictions of capitalism, which it accentuates and brings to a higher level, an “epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system”, the objective conditions of which have matured and strengthened worldwide.”  Unfortunately this line of analysis is not explained or developed further.

This new phase of development has taken place “after a long period of defeats and decline of the labor movement”.  It also notes that the victory of Stalinism in the world labour movement and suppression of its revolutionary rivals “left the revolts of oppressed peoples the prisoner of nationalism in the aftermath of World War II.”

It notes that “the proletariat was unable to give it an internationalist perspective. This revolutionary wave, however, shook the world by enabling millions of oppressed people to break the yoke of colonial and imperialist oppression. But far from moving towards socialism, the new regimes sought to integrate the world capitalist market.”

“A new international division of labor is taking place through the economic development of former colonial or dominated countries, especially the emerging ones – a globalization and not a mere internationalization of production, “an integrated world economy” in Michel Husson’s words.”

It also notes that “the neoliberal offensive . . . led to the collapse of the USSR”; that “capitalism has triumphed worldwide” and that “the balance of power has changed, the combination of economic neoliberalism and imperialist militarism has destabilized the entire planet. The first world power no longer has the supremacy it enjoyed: a new rival, China, is emerging in a multipolar world. The instability of international relations can no longer be contained by a single power which, in turn, feels threatened.”

“The emergence of new powers with imperialist views or regional powers which defend their own interests increasingly undermines America’s leadership capacity and makes the international situation more chaotic. The US response is Trump’s policy “Make America great again”, to assert their economic and military supremacy through trade war, protectionism and militarism.”

“How far can the tensions and imbalances go? In the long run, nothing can be ruled out. We need to understand the possible evolution of the world situation to formulate a solution to the crisis we are being dragged into by the ruling classes. There is no reason to rule out the worst hypothesis, a globalization of local conflicts or a widespread conflagration, a new world war, or rather a globalized one. The evolution of the war in Syria is another example of that as was the war in Ukraine.”

“A more aggressive imperialist policy of China could result from its internal contradictions, from the inability of the Chinese ruling classes to address social issues, to perpetuate the social order without providing an outlet for social discontent. We are not there, but nothing allows us to rule out the possibility that a war for global leadership may be the outcome.”

This section of the text is concluded with the following summary:

“The ruling classes and countries face a crisis of hegemony which opens a revolutionary period. It creates the conditions for the birth of another world.”

The next section, “the rise of a powerful international working class”, notes that “the world working class has grown considerably within a global labor market in which workers compete, jeopardizing the gains of the “labor aristocracy” in the old imperialist countries and undermining the material basis of reformism of the last century.”

“The working class is more numerous than ever: in South Korea alone, there are more wage-earners than there were in the whole world at the time of Marx. The working class forms between 80 and 90% of the population in the most industrialized countries and almost half of the world population. Overall, the number of industrial workers rose from 490 million worldwide in 1991 to 715 million in 2012 (the data is from the International Labor Organization).”

“We must make our main concern the task of rebuilding or building a class consciousness. The labor movement is on the defensive but is engaged in a long and deep process of reorganization we want to help and contribute to its organization as a class, ‘as a party’.”

The document makes a number of points on what it believes are the implications of its analysis for the elaboration of revolutionary strategy.  This includes the view that the material basis of reformism is weakened because imperialist superprofits are eroded, and that the internationalisation of the world economy “gives internationalism a concrete expression rooted in the daily life of millions of proletarians.”

While the latter is more straightforwardly true and needs to be elaborated, the former assumes that greater hardship will generate, or at least more readily facilitate, development of class consciousness among the working class; and this is controversial and not at all obvious.

The document states that “the fight against the rise of reactionary, nationalist, neo-fascist, or religious fundamentalist forces generated by the social decomposition produced by the policies of the capitalist classes is now the central political issue. The solution lies in a class policy for the revolutionary transformation of society.”

Again, this is true; we only need look at the reaction in Britain to the rise of some far-right forces to see the left rush to action in order to oppose this far-right, with little more than a platform of opposition.  The blindness of some is revealed by some groups doing this while also being supporters of Brexit, which has strengthened the far right they wish to oppose.

Unfortunately, again, while it is correctly noted that “our main concern [is] the task of rebuilding or building a class consciousness”, the problem is how this is to be done and, for a workers’ party, how to assist the development of the working class movement upon a socialist basis.

The document notes that “a revolutionary party cannot be proclaimed. It is formed in the struggles and will only play a decisive role when it becomes a mass party and has the political and organizational means of putting forward a consistent revolutionary orientation, of organizing mass struggles and of leading broad sectors of the working class. ”

Its answers however, which consist of two parts, are not convincing:

The first is organisational: “Aware that this mass party cannot be the result of a linear development of any small organization whatsoever, we seek to bring together and unite the revolutionary forces, organizations and militants who fight against capital and the bourgeois order, for the abolition of the capitalist system and for socialism.”

The second is programmatic: “we should define the central elements of a transitional program for the twenty-first century and its declination according to the different regions of the world, especially at the level of Europe, and from there, the bases and the framework from which we could combine construction policy and initiatives for regrouping anti-capitalists and revolutionaries.”

The first seeks a solution in uniting revolutionary organisations around a revolutionary programme when they seek to justify their separate existence on the basis of their programme.  Upon such unity it is argued that others will then be convinced to join, begging the question why they have not joined one of the existing organisations already.

The document states that “consequently, our efforts of political and organizational regroupment can in no way allow any misunderstanding: an association of revolutionary and reformist forces can ultimately only weaken the strength of our program and our intervention.”

There is however a world of difference between weakening your politics in order to create a reformist or politically confused organisation, until you don’t know what your ‘real’ politics are, and working alongside larger numbers of workers with confused or reformist ideas in parties and movements, in the knowledge that it is only with the workers that one can move forward.

The text provides a better analysis of the development of world capitalism and also of the historic development of the working class and its movements, and a more sober assessment of their subjective weaknesses compared to the working class’s growing objective strength.  It also makes salutary points on the need to rebuild or build class consciousness, and that the labour movement is on the defensive but is engaged in a long and deep process of reorganisation.

But its perspective on how all this can happen is weak and it has nothing to replace the idea of the majority that the leap to relevance of small Marxist groups can be made by the perspective of trying to collaborate in building “broad parties”, even though its criticisms of the latter are correct.

Ultimately it suffers from the same debilitating perspective of the other opposition; that it seeks to build a separated revolutionary party that will lead the working class to state power when it must see the process from the other way round.  This is, that it is in the development of the existing working class and its existing movement from which a working class party will be created.

Working alongside reformist workers will therefore be inevitable.   The question is, on what basis do you work with them, what sort of movement do you seek to build with them and on what programme do you seek to unite in struggle with them?  Once you understand that you can build no movement without them and therefore develop no meaningful programme separate from them, the questions facing Marxists appears differently from one of numerical recruitment to organisations with revolutionary programmes that are incapable of implementation because they are divorced from the mass of the working class.

Back to part 6

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