Retreat into the Factories
In effect the retreat into the factory which was a feature of the AAUD-E's
revolutionary politics, coupled with the rejection of all parties without
distinction as products of bourgeois politics, is not a development of
working class politics but a sign of the renewed domination of bourgeois
politics and ideas OVER the workers. Organised within the factory, away
from 'political manipulation', free from the 'contamination' of bourgeois
ideas, the working class is to develop itself solely on the basis of its
organisation as an economic class 'for capital' and somehow transform
itself [rather like a caterpillar transforms itself into a butterfly] into
a 'political class', the class that socialises society and the economy
through revolution. It is very difficult to see how this transformation
comes about.
The 'Einheitlern' also asserted that the proletarian revolution is
fundamentally an economic revolution. We shall now turn to examine this
notion more critically.
The Revolution - primarily Economic ?
We have seen that under the pressures of war, the focus of the workers
struggles moved or shifted from the parliamentary area to social and
individual ones. This is not a shift primarily from 'politics' to
'economics', nor is it the shift of the same struggle to a different
geographic location. Rather it marks a tendency within the working class to
'take charge' of its own struggle, to impose its own solutions and in doing
this it reveals that the economic basis of capitalist society is a social
relationship between classes, that capital is social. How many times have
we said this without really comprehending its meaning ?
So even when the earliest expression of this 'shift' in the struggle
actually adopted a 'no politics' position - meaning no conventional or
party political contests ie. bourgeois politics - as in pre war
syndicalism, this was still a form of politics, and frequently that of
Anarchist leaders, who were able to make use of this ideological 'blind'.
In Europe, this was especially the case in pre-war France, where the
syndicalist CGT was dominated for a decade by the Anarchists Pouget,
Yvetot, Delesalle, Pelloutier and Grifuehlles. As we have already seen, the
war served to spotlight for the developing revolutionary tendencies within
the working class the inadequacy of pre-war syndicalism. By contrast the
Russian Revolution inspired the world's working class in the all too brief
moment of its triumph as a self conscious proletarian seizure of political
power, a social and political revolution. And lest there is any doubt on
this score, we assert that the Russian revolution was led by a working
class expressing itself politically in explicit opposition to international
nature of the war, an expression of global capitalist crisis. It was part
of an international working class movement unleashed by the misery brought
about by that war.
Russia - A Bourgeois Revolution ?
Ruhle and the 'Einheitlern' mistakenly described the Russian revolution as
a 'bourgeois' revolution, the last gasp of1789 or1688! A misconception
based on an understanding of the proletarian revolution as primarily
economic.
In turn this led them to allege that the class nature of the Russian
revolution or any proletarian revolution for that matter, can be seen from
the basis of the economy within Russia following the revolution.
In Ruhle's evaluation of class relations inside Russia in 1920 as we have
noted, he described the new society in Russia as 'state capitalist',
thereby showing more insight than the KAPD at this time. Today we take for
granted the notion of 'state capitalism' and the role of social democracy,
welfarism, Keyenesian demand management and so on, but all this was in the
future so it is a little harsh to hold this against the Left Communists.
Today's leftists are still hooked on this version of 'socialism'. The KAPD
was still under the illusion even in the late 1920s, that the re-emergence
of capitalist social relations meant the revival of private capital to a
dominant role in the economy, possibly in the form of kulaks or private
speculators.
By 1923 however Ruhle had abandoned this notion of state capitalism, and
was describing Russia as a country where a 'bourgeois' revolution, the last
bourgeois revolution, had taken place. The distinction he failed to make
between the class nature of the revolution and the economic basis of the
'national economy' is of great importance. By not doing this, he separates
the fate of the Russian working class [part of an international working
class] from that of their class brothers and sisters, Ruhle included, in
Germany and elsewhere.
Bolshevik Programme - Anti working Class
Despite the anti working class elements of the Bolshevik programme - the
alliance between workers and peasants, right of 'self-determination' of
small nations, distribution of land as private property - all of which
Ruhle quite correctly criticises in his discussion of the Russian
revolution, the fact remains that the Russian revolution of 1917 was
thought of throughout by the Bolsheviks, who played a leading role in it,
as merely one moment in an international proletarian revolution. And this
not only true of the Bolsheviks, this fact was recognised by all
revolutionaries both within the German working class and that of other
countries. [It was also recognised by our rulers as well - Lloyd George
took less than an hour to accept the 'Armistice' terms when he heard that
the November revolution had broken out in Germany. November 8th to 11th
1918, must have been very busy days in the Chancelleries and Foreign
Ministries of Europe and North America]
So when Ruhle confined the Russian Revolution within 'its' national
boundaries, he made it a bourgeois revolution. And moreover a
counter-revolution at the same time, because in so doing he obliges it to
take on the class character and development of its own 'national economy',
by isolating it. Just as the Western capitalist countries after the war
successfully 'isolated' Russia. Criticism for instance of the Peace Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk of May 1918 can make no sense unless the international
character of the revolution is recognised. It also signals the defeat of
the German revolution because this was widely acknowledged as the next
'link in the chain'. The Russian revolution depended on revolution in the
West [not 'aid' or 'trade' or 'friendly capitalist governments under
pressure from mass communist or socialist parties'] to strengthen and
develop its working class character.
Fatalism
This relationship between the 'Einheitlern's' and indeed a whole tendency wi
thin the German Left's, understanding of the link between the Russian and
German revolutions is admitted in a sentence full of desolation and
fatalism, a product of the defeated German revolutionary experience.
'Even if one admits that in doing so [attempting in Ruhle's formulation to
'jump a whole phase of development in Russia in one bold leap'] they [the
Bolsheviks] reckoned on the world revolution which was to come to their aid
and compensate' . . . . 'for the vacuum in development within, by support
from the great fund of culture from outside, this calculation was still
rashness, because it based itself solely on vague hope'.
['From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution' - Otto Ruhle p. 13
Socialist Reproduction 1974]
This 'phases of development' theory is used by Ruhle to explain from this
standpoint the inevitable bourgeois nature of the Russian revolution and is
very much a reminder of what this current was trying to get away from - and
that is the fatalistic Second International 'Marxism' of Plekhanov and
Kautsky. [It may also explain the subsequent political evolution of many
individuals, from the KAPD and both 'Unions'.]
>From this faulty internationalism and the misunderstanding that the workers
revolution is 'economic', arises the same kind of fatalism faced with the
domination of bourgeois politics. It is part of the same misunderstanding -
that the working class is only the working class, only free of the
domination of bourgeois ideas 'at the point of direct extraction of surplus
value', within the factory.
So we have here the roots of a 'workerism' and a 'factoryism' born out of
an abandonment of the working class as a revolutionary class, as an
international political class, part of a historical movement in its own
right. We have here the rejection of class organisation except at the point
of production, a retreat into the factories and the abandonment of the
arena of social relations to bourgeois domination. [This domination has
since come to be challenged in a partial way at least only since the
re-emergence of 'social' movements in the 1970s.] The outcome is a sort of
revolutionary syndicalism, a would be 'political syndicalism' in all but
name. In this respect the AAUD-E openly acknowledged the influence of the
American IWW.
[Reichenbach, historian of the KAPD, refers 'to the Einheitlern under the
leadership of Ruhle, an outspoken Anarcho-Syndicalist tendency shot through
with petty-bourgeois ideology and negating the party as an organ of the
proletariat altogether . . . . . they drew on the conception of the
American IWW and their ideas of 'One Big Union'.
- 'Zur Geschichte der KAPD,' Grunberg Archiv 1928 p. 127 -
While it is incorrect to describe the AAUD-E as Anarcho-Syndicalist in
origin, it was quite distinct in self conception from the FAUD, it is
nevertheless true that its attempt to work out a way forward for the
working class on the basis of factory organisation alone led it back
towards syndicalism, once the downturn in the struggle became obvious and
given its idea of permanent revolutionary factory organisation.
But it must be pointed out that the KAPD also, while not denying the role
of the party, held similar misconceptions as to the formal role of the
factory organisations as the AAUD-E. This somewhat undermines Reichenbach's
criticisms]
The ultimate end result of this understanding, born as we have said out of
a downturn in the international revolution, is that in so far as it gives a
formal answer to the revolutionary questions facing the German and
international working class - it is primarily an organisational answer. Its
very slogans - soviets or workers councils - have been easily picked up and
slotted into state capitalist programmes by for a start, all the tendencies
spawned by the Trotskyist Fourth International. Everybody is in favour of
workers councils [just as everybody is against sin !].
In addition however, in as much as a renewed social crisis has produced
autonomous working class activity since the 1970s, many of these groupings
although in no sense a direct organisational continuity, have sought a link
between themselves and a defeated German Left. There is a modern 'council
fetishism', a descendant of the council communist groupings of the 1930s
and 40s which it is necessary to beware of.
The Problem Today
To insist for example on the form of 'unitary' organisation by itself today
would seem to solve the problem of the division of the struggle into one of
'politics' or 'economics' from which the old movement suffered. But for
today's working class to achieve this unification, more than a simple form
of organisation is required. For the working class it is a practical
question of achieving this synthesis through struggle and with an
appropriate content to its form of organisation. If this does not happen,
we simply see one organ of bourgeois politics being replaced with another,
and one moreover better suited to play its role of maintaining that
domination - even to the point of getting rid of management, bosses etc.
and getting workers to run the entire productive process. All this is
perfectly possible, because capitalist social relations are preserved.
Much of modern 'flexible' working is based on doing away with the old
fashioned hierarchy of the old production process, and on trying to get
workers to 'police' themselves.
In this sense we can see that even a failed workers' movement is always a
factor in the capitalist's response. The counter-revolution assimilates the
old struggle to its own project, the fragments of a failed revolutionary
attempt cannot remain preserved or frozen in time. This is why it is
necessary to be wary of simply trying to make the conceptions, politics and
tactics on one period fit the new reality we face today.
In Germany on 4th February 1920, the Weimar Government of the Social
Democrats passed the Factory Council Law, which legalised Works Councils
and limited their activity to specified economic considerations within each
plant or combine. [See 'Works Councils in Germany' p. 18 M Berthelot
published by the International Labour Organisation in Geneva 1924 - for a
summary of the legislation where the principle of joint planning and so on
was enshrined in the constitution of the Weimar Republic. It is worth
consulting this publication, for it shows just how conscious the Social
Democrats were in suppressing the Revolution, see especially pp 9 - 14.
This legislation is the basis for their modern equivalents in Germany,
France, Spain and so on and has become enshrined in modern European law by
the 'Social Chapter' of the Treaty of Maastricht, Britain of course has
'opted out']
'Participation' - A Trap for Revolutionaries
Both the KAPD and the AAUD-E drew a clear distinction between these 'legal'
councils, and their own call for the creation of revolutionary workers
councils. They described these 'legal' councils as new organs of capitalist
control within the factory. In contrast the KPD encouraged its members to
stand for election to these new councils. But alternative revolutionary
councils could only be a reality if an effective revolutionary movement was
developing in society, with a strong presence inside the factories, giving
a real content to such councils and finding organisational expression in
their creation.
Neither the KAPD, AAUD nor AAUD-E clearly grasped this basic principle, and
instead they talked of building up revolutionary councils in the factories,
which would prepare the workers for the economic management of future
communist society, by creating the skeleton of this society in the form of
a network of council organisations within capitalism. [ The organisation
which regrouped militants from all three organisations, the KAUD in the
late 1920s, did finally arrive at this understanding and also attempted to
work out the economic basis of a communist society in a work called
'Grundprinzipien Kommunistischer Produktion und Verteilung' published in
1930 by the GIK in Holland]
Permanent Organisation ?
Whilst we can criticise the failure of the German Left Communists to
recognise the counter-revolutionary consequences for the working class of
any model of permanent organisation of the struggle in the period of
capitalist degeneration, it is important to recognise their method of
locating and discussing the question of working class organisation in a
historical context. The depth of this perspective is revealed so clearly in
the following extract from Ruhle's 1921 article, 'The Basic Issues of
Organisation'. This outlines a fundamental class historical perspective
which was the subject of his major work 'From the Bourgeois to the
Proletarian Revolution' [op. cit.]
'Today's developing generation of workers has, as regards the class
struggle grown up in both the organisations of party and trade unions. It
saw, and still sees, in membership of these organisations the duty of the
class conscious proletariat. The proof of its political maturity and
expression of its willingness to struggle. To be organised politically and
industrially seemed and still seems, something so obvious, serious, almost
holy, that every attempt to bring them out of these organisations seems to
them to be an enemy act, counter-revolutionary and against the interests of
the working class. Those who have grown old in a tradition, think good that
which was so in their time. But in our epoch good becomes bad, and true,
false: Reason becomes unreason, advantage becomes drawback. The revolution,
an epoch shattering transformation which will leave no stone of this
society standing on another, does not pass over the old organisations. It
breaks up everything old, to build life anew from the ruins.'
Conclusions - Communism or Capitalism
For all its weaknesses and inconsistencies, Left Communism, the 'politics
of the revolutionary working class in its infancy,' remains an essential
historical reference point for the development of a communist movement in
our period. It is only by beginning to work out the outline of a communist
project in the period of decay of capitalist society that we can see the
degeneracy and counter-revolutionary nature of the politics of all the
inheritors of both the Third and Fourth Internationals.
We can now see the counter-revolutionary origins of their version of a
socialist programme. This programme being in reality the process through
which ownership and management of capital can be transferred from one
capitalist fraction to another. This happens through the attempted
regulation and subversion of revolutionary communist tendencies within the
working class, by means of campaigns for the 'democratisation' of the trade
unions, institutions for the control and management of the wage relation -
the fundamental basis of capitalist society. Equally reactionary and now
discredited are campaigns for the 'nationalisation' of industry under
'workers control' and support for national liberation struggles which only
serve to transfer power from one capitalist gang of robbers to another.
Similarly, by seeing how the Left Communists worked out their tasks,
tactics and perspectives - through an analysis of the fundamental nature of
the historical period, we can see and recognise the bankruptcy and class
demobilising influence of 'leader politics'.
This description characterises those tendencies which still hold on to the
by now totally superstitious belief that struggles are 'won' or 'lost'
because of the 'betrayal' of a particular individual leader, union
executive or party committee. Or worse that all will be well if only the
existing leaders or executive is removed or replaced.
In the sharpest possible distinction from tendencies, groupings and
individuals who still cling on to such pathetic and dangerous articles of
faith that turns would-be revolutionaries into mortal enemies of the class
whom they claim to 'serve', we find in this Left Communist current, the
terms, concepts, outlook and understanding for a principled and necessary
critique of Bolshevism as it actually existed - and from the point of view
of a revolutionary working class.
Above all we find the beginning of a perspective needed for the further
development, through our own struggle, of a truly communist project.
DG
Liverpool
July 1994
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