COMMUNISM #4

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Communism against Democracy
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Introduction
Most of the time, within the communist movement itself, ready-made ideas
inherited from the dominant ideology prevent a full understanding of the
revolutionary program. On many essential questions, it is not the communist
position, confirmed by the experiences of countless working-class revolts that
is put forward but rather the social-democratic, lassallean "tradition" (whether
or not radicalized by the leninist terminology), that is, what the bourgeoisie
itself understands about the revolutionary movement. And so, on the fundamental
question of democracy, the great myths of the French Revolution - that archetype
all bourgeois revolutions, Freedom, Equality and Fraternity, are fully upheld by
pseudo-marxists: considering that the bourgeoisie has betrayed its own ideals,
they assign the task of realizing them to the proletariat! And of course the
leftists keep fighting for the total achievement of democratic rights, for
"perfect" democracy. For those idiots, democracy is but a form of government,
the very ideal, in fact, so far as government is concerned, which when
eventually applied in full, will usher in a new Golden Age. And so these
sycophants have to democratize the education system, the police and all State
apparatus -in short, they seek to democratize democracy. Democracy is always
presented as the ideal to be attained, and all our miseries and capitalist
oppression are seen as the result of a bad or incomplete application of this
sacrosanct democracy. For the pseudo-marxists (from trotskyists to councilists),
democracy is the pure form, the ideal that capital cannot realize, but which the
proletariat eventually could, in the mythical form of "workers' democracy". And
so, they simply oppose bourgeois democracy (restricted and betraying the ideal)
to the ideal to be realized: workers' democracy (trotskyist councilist version),
people's democracy (stalinist version) or again, direct democracy (libertarian
version). Here they are again, those eternal reformers of the world who, having
first defined the ideal to be attained as the positive pole of capital -Freedom,
Equality, Fraternity- can see in today's reality nothing but the result of wrong
application of this ideal by big bad capital, its negative pole. All those
people can not understand that there is no such thing as a "democratic ideal"
or, to be more exact, that the democratic ideal is just the ideal image of the
reality of capitalist dictatorship. And in the same way that the solution of the
celestial family lies in the terrestrial family, so the solution of celestial
democracy (the democratic ideal) lies in the terrestrial reality of its
application, that is, in the terrestrial reality of capital's worldwide
dictatorship.
Contrary to all those apologists of the system (even, and above all, in its
reformed form), marxists tackles democracy not as a form of government more or
less properly applied, but as a content, as the activity of management
-politics- of the capitalist mode of production. Therefore democracy (whatever
its form: parliamentary, bonapartist,...) is nothing but the management of
capitalism. As Marx put it, the bourgeoisie has really and definitively achieved
freedom (to sell one's labour power or else... to die), fraternity (between
atomized citizen) and equality (between purchasers and sellers of commodities).
The bourgeoisie has totally democratized the world, since in its own world (that
of circulation and exchange of commodities) pure democracy is realized. Chasing
the myth of a "good" democracy, as all democrats (even "workers'" democrats) do
actually serves to reinforce, as an idea and so in its realization, the best
"possible" management of capitalism what ever form it might take -parliamentary,
"working-class", fascist, monarchist,...- it reinforces the foundation of the
system: wage slavery. Indeed, as this text will show, democracy is not one (or
the "best") of the forms of management of capital, but is the foundation, the
substance of capitalist management, and this, because the content common to the
substance of the capitalist mode of production -twosided character of the
commodity labour power- and the substance of£ democracy -make the individuals,
and so their labour power appear as a commodity. The capitalist mode of
production is therefore the first and also the last mode of production that has
to present the individual as a citizen, totally isolated, atomized and alienated
in civil society -the community of atomized individuals (that is a
des-humanized, non-species community)- because the capitalist mode of
production, in order to develop, needs the proletarians (free from all ties to
the glebe) to own only their labour power, and so always be ready to sell
themselves for a wage (the value of which is determined, like any other
commodity's, by the average time socially necessary for its reproduction). This
whole process of atomization and subsumption of human beings produces one of the
most disgusting symptoms of capitalism: individualism.
The content of every bourgeois state (whatever its form) is therefore democracy,
for democracy is the capitalist organisation of atomized proletarians so as to
make them spew out more and more value. Marx had already guessed this essential
content of democracy when he criticized Hegel's ideas about the state:
"Hegel starts from the state and makes man the subjectified state; democracy
starts from man and makes the state objectified man. Just as it is not
religion which creates man but man who creates religion, so it is not the
constitution which creates the people but the people who creates the
constitution. In a certain respect the relation of democracy to all other
forms of the state is like the relation of Christianity to all other forms of
religion. Christianity is the religion par excellence, the essence of religion
- deified man as a particular religion. Similarly, democracy is the essence of
all state constitutions - socialised men as a particular state constitution.
(...) Man doesn't exist for the law but the law for man - it is a human
manifestation; whereas in the other forms of the state man is a legal
manifestation. That is the fundamental distinction of democracy."
Marx - Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law.
Through Marx, the whole filiation and invariance of communism asserts itself
more and more clearly, breaking with bourgeois socialism, breaking with
reformism, breaking with democracy. From time to time, however, communists under
the heavy weight of bourgeois ideology, did fall back to democratic ground. That
is what the Italian Abstentionist Communist Left criticized, when writing that:
"Though they were the destroyers of the whole democratic bourgeois ideology,
it cannot be denied that Marx and Engels still gave too much credit to
democracy and thought that universal sufferage could bring about advantages
which had not been discredited yet."
"Avanti" 1918, The Lessons from the New History.
Yet despite its mistakes the communist movement has always asserted its
anti-democratic character more and more strongly, be it with Babeuf, Dejacque
and Coeurderoy, be it with Blanqui (and his famous "London toast") and (at
certain times) Lenin, be it with the Communist Lefts (from Italy, of course,
with Bordiga and the Communist Left from Italy in exile; but also the KAPD -
Gorter/Schröder wing). The question is getting clearer and clearer: how to
remove from the communist program all bourgeois leftovers, all concessions to
bourgeois socialists, to democrats?
"What stumbling block is this that endangers tomorrows revolution? The
deplorable popularity of all those bourgeois disguised as tribunists... is the
stumbling block against which yesterdays revolution crashed. Curse be on us,
should the indulgence of the masses allow these men to rise to power on the
ever closer day of victory."
Blanqui - 1851
"Political freedom is a farce and the worst possible kind of slavery (...) So
is political equality: this is why democracy must be torn to pieces as well as
any other form of government."
Engels - Progress of Social Reform on the Continent.
But with the Italian Communist Left the very content of democracy (and not only
the parliamentary, elective form of government that is called democracy) is
tackled from a communist standpoint:
"The workers movement has sprung up as a negation of democracy (...) There
exists a fundamental opposition between the institutions of the democratic
state and the creation of working class organisms. Through the first, the
proletariat is tied to the democratic fiction; through the second, the workers
assert, in opposition to the bourgeois government, the opposite historical
course which leads them to their liberation."
Bilan - Organ of the Italian Fraction of the internationalist Communist Left
In the same way as Bilan brilliantly analyzed fascism not as the negation of
democracy (which means "justifying" the anti-fascism, interclassist front) but,
on the contrary, "as a purifying process of the democratic state", so October
-the monthly organ of the International Bureau of the Fractions of the Communist
Left- drew the essential, fundamental lessons:
"The idea of proletarian dictatorship gets spoilt whenever it is linked,
directly or indirectly, to the democratic principle."
Octobre No 5 - 1939
It is to continue this fundamental work of destroying democracy that we carry
out with our militant activity. With this text, with the whole of the material
we have already published, we wish to give revolutionary militants a global
analysis that can facilitate the communists' continuous critique of democracy,
including, above all, so-called "workers' democracy" (1).
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Genesis of Democracy
From the very origin, democracy expresses its two-sided character like the
two-sided nature of the commodity (use value and exchange value) which develops
alongside it (see below). Democracy is both the "power of the people", of the
majority, of the "plebs" and the dictatorial expression of the dominant class
over the dominated majority.
Once the natural community is dissolved through exchange, democracy appears as
the mythical expression of a "new community", thus re-creating artificially the
primitive community just destroyed: the people ('demos' in Greek) being the
whole of the citizen, a whole based upon the negation of class antagonisms for
the benefit of an a-classist mass called the people, the nation,... In this
sense, democracy really exists. Yet it also exists only ideally (in the realm of
ideas) as a myth/reality camouflaging, and so reinforcing materially, the
dictatorial power of the dominant class. Thus as soon as it emerges, democracy
develops its two-sided character: both unification of the people within a
restricted, non-human community (which we called fictitious community), and
destruction of any attempt to re-create a true community of interests, that is,
reconstitution of a class opposed the dominant one (which is organized into a
state). And, whereas all the exploited classes in the past organized their
struggle on the basis of limited, contingent, non-universal historical
interests, now with the proletariat (first class to be both exploited and
revolutionary) there appears the first and last class that has one universal,
non-contingent historical interest: the liberation of humanity.
If we consider the archetype of what is usually praised as democracy -Athenian
democracy- we see a society ddivided into antagonistic classes in which the most
exploited productive class -the slaves- is quite simply excluded from civil
society (the slaves not being regarded as human beings, but only as an animal
productive force), and in which only the members of the dominant class -the
citizens- can get at the famous Athenian democracy, since managing "public
affairs" (res publica) requires a lot of free time, or, in other words, requires
a lot of riches (i.e. slaves). In this sense, the specialisation and the
specialists of "public affairs" (division of labour, hence division into
classes) brings about politics: a popular sphere devoted to the management of
the city on behalf of the whole of the people, of the nation (hence the
necessity of mediation -see below). Politics and democracy therefore go hand in
hand. Politics, as a separated sphere, as the essential activity of the dominant
class, exists only because democracy exists, even if in a rudimentary form.
Politics exists only through democracy, since it in only in class societies
-societies in which people are separated from each other, from production, and
so from their lives- that there is a need to conciliate the classes (and so to
negate their antagonism) and at the same time to impose the dictatorship of the
dominant class. This kind of society thus requires a social mediation -politics-
to "unifying" the separated (more precisely, "adding" them to each other) to
"unifying" everything that society has separated, and this, for the sole benefit
of the dominant class. Democracy implies politics; politics is democratic in its
very essence.
"Where the political state has attained its full degree of development man
leads a double life, a life in heaven and a life on earth, not only in his
mind, in his consciousness, but in reality. He lives in the political
community where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society,
where he is active as a private individual, regards other men as means,
debases himself to a means and becomes a plaything of alien powers. The
relationship of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as
the relationship of heaven to earth. The state stands in the same opposition
to civil society and overcomes it in the same way as religion overcomes the
restrictions of the profane world, ie. it has to acknowledge it again,
reinstate it and allow itself to be dominated by it. Man in his immediate
reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he regards himself
and is regarded by others as a real individual, he is an illusory phenomenon.
In the state, on the other hand, where he is considered to be a species-being,
he is the imaginary member of a fictitious sovereignty, he is divested of his
real individual life and filled with an unreal universality." (...) "The
splitting of man into his public and private self and the displacement of
religion from the state to civil society is not just one step in the process
of political emancipation but its completion. Hence political emancipation
neither abolishes nor tries to abolish mans real religiosity." (...) "The
power of religion is the religion of power." (...) "The members of the
political state are religious because of the dualism between individual life
and species life, between the life of civil society and political life. They
are religious inasmuch as man considers political life, which is far removed
from his individuality, to be his true life and inasmuch as religion is here
the spirit of civil society and the expression of the separation and distance
of man from man." (...)
"Political democracy is Christian inasmuch as it regards man - not just one
man but all men - as a sovereign and supreme being; but man in his
uncultivated, unsocial aspect, man in his contingent existence, man just as he
is, man as he has been corrupted, lost to himself, sold, and exposed to the
rule of inhuman conditions and elements by the entire organisation of our
society - in a word, man who is not yet a true species being. The sovereignty
of man - but of man as an alien being distinct from actual man - is the
fantasy, the dream, the postulate of christianity, where as in democracy it is
a present and material reality, a secular maxim."
Marx - On The Jewish Question
As we see in this long quotation from Marx, the emergence of the separated
sphere -politics- really corresponds to the antagonism, the opposition between
the "uneducated, unsocial" bourgeois individual, organized into a non-human
community -addition of individuals, of atomized citizens- and the constitution
of a real community based upon common historical interests -the constitution of
the proletariat innto a class, hence into a party- negating the free thinking
individual (and individualist) in order to posit the species-being of humanity:
Gemeinwesen.
The bourgeois society, synthesis and product of all class societies of the past,
is above all the society of politics (and so of democracy) the one in which all
the citizens have, as buyers and sellers of commodities, the same right and duty
to manage the city and the society, that is, commonly speaking, "to politick".
And whereas in the Athenian democracy, politics was a privilege for the dominant
class (since democracy had not extended yet to the whole of society) at the
expense of slaves, under capitalism, the realm of complete democracy, each
proletarian must "politick", that is, must be mediated/objectified through
politics. The wage slaves are even deprived of any communal life (even as
excluded slaves), in contrast to their Roman and Greek ancestors who where
collectively excluded from the political sphere, from democracy. The wage slaves
are totally atomized and subsumed through democracy. The ancient slaves, as well
as the serfs could at least share a common feeling of exclusion (and thus rebel
-see Spartacus and the numerous peasantts' revolts), the wage slaves, as
citizens -violent negation by democracy of any attempt to reconstitute a class
force- have no feeling anymore, except of being mere commodities in the sphere
of circulation -political commodities- and as such, of being free and equal. The
ancient slaves were still -though negatively, since they were slaves- tied to a
community, the degenerated remains of primitive communism (see Spartacus' City
of Sun: the "realization" of the myth of the return to the primitive communism),
whereas the modern proletarians, subjected to democracy, have nothing anymore.
Against this process of subjection of human beings into, and through, democracy
and its hireling called politics, the communist revolution is no political
revolution (as the bourgeois revolution was), but a social revolution through
which the proletariat accomplishes the ultimate political deed: dissolution of
the separate sphere that politics is. This way already Marx's prospect in 1843:
"The bourgeois society is the end of politics; it derives from this that the
proletariat, if it doesn't want to operate within the existing state, upon the
enemy ground, must not "politick". More precisely, it must claim only one
political act, that of destroying the bourgeois political society, at the same
time a military act."
Marx - Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of the State
Since the communist program is in its essence anti-democratic it is therefore
anti-political. It rejects the bourgeois, politicist view of a "revolution"
which would be a change in the state apparatus (lassallean, social-democrat,
leninist tradition) for the benefit of the necessary destruction of the State
that is, the destruction of politics.
In his controversy against A.Ruge Marx developed this point of view:
"... a social revolution possesses a total point of view because - even if it
is confined to only one factory district - it represents a protest by man
against a dehumanised life, because it proceeds from the point of view of the
particular, real individual, because the community against whose separation
from himself the individual is reacting, is the true community of man, human
nature. In contrast, the political soul of a revolution consists in the
tendency of the classes with no political power to put an end to their
isolation from the state and from power. Its point of view is that of the
state, of an abstract totality which exists only through its separation from
real life and which is unthinkable in the absence of an organised antithesis
between the universal idea and the individual existence of man. In accordance
with the limited and contradictory nature of the political soul a revolution
inspired by it organises a dominant group within society at the cost of
society."
Marx - Critical Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform.
By a Prussian".
Through this refusal of a revolution "with a political soul", refusal of a mere
change in the form of the state, as the bourgeois revolution was, the communist
revolution "with a social soul" can be characterized as a revolution which, as
the ultimate political act totally destroying the whole state apparatus and its
foundation -the law of value- is the radical, social transformation of the whole
society, the dictatorship of the proletariat for the abolition of wage labour.
"But whether the idea of a social revolution with a political soul is a
paraphrase or nonsense there is no doubt about the rationality of a political
revolution with a social soul. All revolution -the overthrow of the existing
ruling power and the dissolution of the old order- is a political act. But
without revolution socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of
this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution.
But as soon as its organising functions begin and its goal, its soul emerges,
socialism throws its political mask aside."
Marx - Ibid
Marx had also perfectly understood the essential connection between the
commodity and democracy, even as early as the ancient societies:
"Aristotle himself was unable to extract this fact, that, in the form of
commodity-values, all labour is expressed as equal human labour and therefore
as labour of equal quality, by inspection from the form of value, because
Greek society was founded on the labour of salves, hence had as its natural
basis the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the
expression of value, namely the equality and equivalence of all kinds of
labour because and in so far as they are human labour in general, could not be
deciphered until the concept of human equality had already acquired the
permanence of a fixed popular opinion. This however becomes possible only in a
society where the commodity-form is the universal form of the product of
labour, hence the dominant social relation is between men as possessors of
commodities."
Marx - Capital Vol 1
It is therefore only the capitalist mode of production, which is above all the
mode of commodity production (where the universal commodity is money as
universal equivalent), that democracy, already present once the class societies
emerged, can develop fully as the content -the substance- of capitalist
dictatorship. Capitalism is the system that concludes and synthesizes the cycle
of value, which goes from the dissolution of natural community to capitalism
ruling the whole planet; the system that produces and requires the
proletarian/citizen, the singular individual as mere purchaser/seller of
commodities (and as such, free equal and free). It also produces and requires
proletarians as a mere commodity, among others, this occurs through the sale of
their labour power. The capitalist mode of production is therefore the mode of
production where the proletarian individual is deeply atomized and, at the same
time, "unified" within a fictitious unity: the people, the nation,... It is,
above all, the mode of production of commodities, and so, of democracy. This
mode of production, and only this one, universalizes and fully achieves
democracy. So the proletariat has no democratic task whatsoever to realize. The
whole of its movement is that of the destruction of democracy. That is what Marx
used to reply to the bourgeois socialists of his time -today's lefties- who
wanted to "depict socialism as the realization of the ideals of bourgeois
society articulated by the French Revolution":
"With that, then, the complete freedom of the individual is posited: voluntary
transaction; no force on either side; positing itself as means or as serving,
only as means, in order to posit the self as end in itself, as dominant and
primary; finally, the self-seeking interest which brings nothing of a higher
order to realization; the other is also recognised and acknowledged as one who
likewise realizes his self-seeking interest, so that both know that the common
interest exists only in the duality, many sidedness, and autonomous
development of the exchanges between self-seeking interests. The general
interest is precisely the generality of self-seeking interests. Therefore,
when the economic form, exchange, posits the all-sided equality of its
subjects, then the content, the individual as well as the objective material
which drives towards the exchange, is freedom: Equality and Freedom are thus
not only respected in exchange based on exchange values but, also, the
exchange of exchange values is the productive, real, basis of all equality and
freedom."
"... exchange value or, more precisely, the money system is in fact the system
of equality and freedom, and that the disturbances which they encounter in the
further development of the system are disturbances inherent in it, are merely
the realization of equality and freedom, which prove to be inequality and
unfreedom."
Marx's - Grundrisse
"In the sphere of circulation of commodities, there are no classes, everybody
is a citizen, everybody appears as a buyer and seller of goods, equal, free
and owner. Even when we buy or sell our labour power, we are in the paradise
of human rights and liberties. Each one is aiming at his own private interests
in the reign of equality, liberty and private property.
Liberty: because the buyer and the seller of commodities (inc. labour power)
do not obey any other rule than their own free will.
Equality: because in the world of commodities everybody is a buyer and a
seller, and everybody gets a value equal to the value contained in the goods
they are selling, exchanging equivalent for equivalent.
Property: because each one appears, in the world of exchange, as an owner of
their commodity and they can only dispose of what belongs to them."
Communism No 1
That is exactly what Marx explains in Capital:
"The sphere of circulation or commodity exchange, within whose boundaries the
sale and purchase of labour power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the
innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality,
Property..."
Marx - Capital 1, The Transformation of Money into Capital
Circulation is therefore the paradise of bourgeois rights, the sphere where
democracy rules most perfectly through money. In circulation, money is the
community of capital; money is the mediation which unites all individuals as
buyers and sellers, and dissolves any other community. Money, like politics, is
an essential mediation of democracy. No money, no democracy; no democracy, no
money.
* * *
Money as the Community of Capital
It was Marx who defined the most clearly the bases to understand the radical
opposition between the human community (which primitive communism was already
pregnant with, though limited by and subjected to the dictatorship of nature and
scarcity) and the expression, getting stronger and stronger alongside the cycle
of value, of the constitution of another community involving all human kind for
the benefit of value, and not of human beings.
After he has developed the several attributes of money -money as measure of
values, money as medium of circulation, money as material of wealth (see
Capital, chap.III)- Marx goes on to the third attribute which "presupposes the
first two and constitutes their unity", how is "the God among commodities" how
"from its servile role, in which it appears as mere medium of circulation, it
suddenly changes into the lord and god of the world of commodities. It
represents the divine existence of commodities, while they represent its earthly
form." (...) "Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead
of greed." Once it reaches this stage of autonomy, money -"not only the object,
but also the fouuntainhead of wealth"- posits itself bath as the most dissolving
element of the ancient communities (it is the new God winning over those
preceding it) and as the one and 45 only community. Money is therefore the
dissolving element which makes everything democratic, which enables democracy to
grow freely.
"Money is itself the community, and can tolerate none other standing above it.
But this presupposes the full development of exchange values, hence a
corresponding organisation of society."
Marx - Grundrisse
Under capital, money is the new community, it is the mediation which unites
things and people. Marx speaks of "nexus rerum": what unites things:
"As material representative of general wealth, as individualised exchange
value, money must be the direct object, aim and product of general labour, the
labour of all individuals. Labour must directly produce exchange value, ie.
money. It must therefore be wage labour."
Marx - Grundrisse
Money as community of capital is therefore the unity of those singular
individuals, those citizens, negation of classes, as wage slaves. Where the wage
system exists, the non-human community of money exists; where the wage system
did not exist, money dissolved the ancient community in order to impose itself
and impose wage labour.
"Where money itself is not the community it must dissolve the community."
Marx - Grundrisse
Under capitalism, each individual exists only as a producer of exchange value,
of money, and money itself is both the social mediation -addition of singular
individuals monetarily worthy of being part of civil society- and the very
substance of alienated human beings, since they only exist as money as exploited
human.
"It is the elementary precondition of bourgeois society that labour should
directly produce exchange value, ie. money; and similarly that money should
directly purchase labour, and therefore the labourer, but only in so far as he
alienates (veraussert) his activity in the exchange. Wage labour on one side,
capital on the other, are therefore only other forms of developed exchange
value and of money (as the incarnation of exchange value). Money thereby
directly and simultaneously becomes the real community, since it is the
general substance of survival for all, and at the same time the social product
of all."
"But as we have seen in money the community (gemeinwesen) is at the same time
a mere abstraction, a mere external, accidental thing for the individual, and
at the same time merely a means for his satisfaction as an isolated
individual. The community of antiquity presupposes a quite different relation
to, and on the part of the individual. The development of money in its third
role therefore smashes this community. All production is an objectification
(Vergegenstandlich-ung) of the individual. In money (exchange value), however,
the individual is not objectified in his natural quality, but in a social
quality (relation) which is, at the same time, external to him."
Marx - Grundrisse
Thus money is both the universal commodity (as material representative of
wealth) and the "non-commodity" (as mere medium of circulation). In the
capitalist mode of production -which is the mode of production for exchange
value, and so for money (M-C-M'), the latter being community of capital, the
inhuman community of alienated individuals- people are subsumed by money (and
the same is true of politics), and in so far as they are members of this
fictitious community, that is, as circulating commodities, they are free and
equal, they are citizens, they are among the atoms of a realized democracy. The
capitalist mode of production is the mode of production of democracy of
politics, of politics, of money. Complete democracy requires the development of
money (and so of value). And the communist movement, since it destroys the mode
of production of, and for, money (M-C-M', M'= M + delta M), also destroys
democracy as the community of capital, as the community of money. Democracy is
therefore the community of capital, the very foundation/ substance of capitalist
dictatorship -the dictatorship of money, of the law of value. And this
fictitious community (fictitious in opposition to the truly human community to
be create: the proletariat organized and directed into communist party) is
materialized through a serie of a-classist groupings (which negate the classes
and their antagonism) having all democracy as their substance. Be it the people,
the nation religion, politics or money... all these "communities of capital"
through which, and in which, the citizens are organized and the proletariat
disorganized, are in the last instance, nothing but forms of the fictitious
community, of democracy, of dictatorship of the law of value, of money and of
capital.
* * *
Dictatorship of the Proletariat against Workers Democracy
In the preceding chapters of this study, we have seen that democracy is
fundamentally linked to all the essential categories of capitalism: commodity
production, money, capital, etc. Continuing on from this it only remains to deal
with the all too famous "workers"' democracy which essentially comes down to
considering the proletariat, its movement and thus its dictatorship, as having
the same content and criteria as those of capital... or more precisely, as
having the characteristics of capitalism purged of its most "unacceptable"
features. And pretending that "workers"' democracy is the only true democracy,
democracy realized at last. For all these democretins the bourgeoisie (because
it is the incarnation of evil) is incapable of fully realizing ideal democracy
(which is false because as we have seen this pure democracy is achieved in its
"garden of Eden" -the circulation of commodities). For these democrats, it thus
falls on the proletariat to fully realize this sacrosanct democracy and its
cortege of rights... its majoritarian and humanitarian fetishes. These "fine
talkers" inject the democratic poison into workers' struggles in the following
ways: the need to vote before struggling, the need to bend before the will of
the majority, to submit to democratic discipline... that is to say, bourgeois
discipline.
The entire history of the workers' movement testifies to precisely the opposite
of these policies of sabotage. If one takes the example of the Russian
Revolution, it is clear that all the class positions, the real break (to be sure
insufficient) with the bourgeois Social Democratic tradition were always the
work of minorities and each time needed to be asserted by force against the
majorities, against the dominant ideas (2).
For example: the taking up of internationalist positions by Lenin and Zinoviev
in 1915 ('Against the stream'), by breaking with the numerous majority of
Social Democracy in Russia and worldwide, since it had once again shown its
counter-revolutionary character.
For example: The April Thesis imposed dictatorially on the Bolshevik parti,
the majority of which followed a reformist and defensist viewpoint.
For example: The fundamental question of necessary military preparation (the
'plot') organised secretly and against the great majority of the Bolshevik
party which was already widely gangrenated by social pacifists and partisans
of the constituent democracy (old Bolsheviks: Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev,
Kalinin,...) and it was Trotsky who explained that at the heart of the
Bolshevik party existed two principle tendencies:
"One of them was proletarian and led to the path of world revolution; the
other was democratic, which is to say petit bourgeois, and led in the final
analysis to the subordination of proletarian politics to the needs of the
reforming of bourgeois society."
Trotsky - The Lessons of October
For example: The dissolution imposed by force of bayonets, of the first and
last sitting of the famous Constituent Assembly, democratically elected and
bailed out once again by the majority of the Bolsheviks:
"The theoretical critique of democracy and bourgeois liberalism reaches the
height of intensity, by the expulsion of this pack of democratically elected
scoundrels who make up the Constituent Assembly as carried out by armed
workers."
Bordiga - Lenin on the Path to Revolution
All these acts, which materialized more and more as the revolution -the defense
of the historic interests of the proletariat- went on. They had to be imposed by
force (as much military as exemplary), they had to be practically taken on by
minorities which to all intents and purposes, never corresponded to existing
formal parties. On the contrary, it is always very democratically and by very
large majorities that counter-revolutionary positions and the rapid slide into
the bourgeois swamp are imposed. To become convinced of this, it is enough to
see that it is always more democratically that the bourgeois positions took
precedence, throughout the congresses of the Communist International, so as to
arrive at the very democratic and systematic unanimous vote inaugurated during
the Stalin period itself, and especially when it was a matter of condemning with
the right hand what the left hand had done.
"Stalin was able (...) to carry out his triumph by making democracy at the
heart of the party function in full at the time of the struggles against the
opposition in 1926/28."
Verceci - "October"
And if the example is also taken of the "lost revolutions" in Germany during the
period 1917-1923, on the essential role played by the antiquated democratic
notions at the heart of the proletariat, the acts multiply. Those things which
were presented as revolutionary positions as vanguard communist positions,
principally born by R. Luxembourg and the Spartacus League, were nothing but a
"bowing down" before the fetishism of the masses (and therefore of democracy),
nothing but a pale substitute for social democratism, lightly radicalised to
suit the circumstances.
It was to follow the masses and their ideas that the Spartacus League refuse to
break with social-democracy. They entered and stood surety for the foundation of
the USPD on the same positions as those of the SPD and with men such as Kautsky,
Bernstein and Hilferding (3). Meanwhile, the real communist force organised in
the heart of the ISD (Radical Internationalists of Germany) refused this
entryism and accused even Luxembourg and Liebknecht of reiterating the "betrayal
of 1914". To the necessary class split, the demarcation between the forces of
revolution and those of counter-revolution, the centrist swamp replied: "The
slogan isn't scission or unity, new party or old party, but reconquest of the
party from below, by the revolt of the masses who must take into their hands the
organisations and their instruments." (Quoted by Broué in "Revolution in
Germany"). Faced to this return to social-democracy (had it ever been left!) by
the Luxembourg group, the communists proclaimed: "The 'International' group is
dead" (Arbeiterpolitik), and founded the IKD (International Communists of
Germany) as the kernel of the future communist party.
In the same way, in each revolutionary phase, under the pretext of the
"immaturity of the masses", Luxembourg and her successors Levi and Zetkin etc.
were to oppose insurrection (the basis of the marxist conception of the
destruction of the state) by the progressive conquest of the masses and of the
state, dear to all social-democrats.
"It is from below that we must undermine the bourgeois state, in acting so
that the public, legislative and administrative powers are no longer
separated, but merged, and by placing then into the hands of the workers and
soldiers councils."
Luxemburg - Speech to the founding Convention of the KPD
All the gradualism, administrationism, educationism,... "workers" derivations of
reformist democracy, are contained in what was to become the Luxembourgist
ideology: the conception of the conquest of the consciousness of the majority of
the workers, of the workers' councils conceived as "the parliamentary of the
proletarians of the towns and country" (Luxembourg, -Die Rote Fahne- 1918), of
the "boss-less" factories,... basically of a new bourgeois soup dragging the
proletariat towards massacres reiterated many times, refusing organisation for
fear of the riposte that they would be cutting themselves off from the mythical
masses.
From the occupation of the "Berliner Lokalanzeiger" by armed militants,
condemned by Luxembourg, to the denunciation of the "March Action" by Levi,
there is one same conciliatory line, that of the refusal of confrontation
(always under the pretext that it would be tantamount to putshism), of the
refusal of armed insurrection, of the refusal of communist revolution.
In the same way, in the most famous polemic between "mass and leaders",
Luxembourg made herself one of the most ardent defenders of the masses against
the leaders of the freedom of critique (cf. "Marxism against dictatorship"!!!).
This pseudo contradiction between masses and leaders betraying the masses is a
pure product of democracy and of its pathogenic functioning. It is, in effect,
in democratic organisms (elective or not, federalist or centralist,...) that
this type of problem can arise, for it presupposes both a mass of untutored,
amorphous and atomized individuals ready to be betrayed, and the exceptional
individual, the leader who, at the end of a certain time, may betray or may not
(for libertarians they betray by definition).
For we authoritarian marxists, the masses have only the leaders they deserve. It
wasn't the Noskes, the Scheidemanns, the Kautskys,... who betrayed the "good"
social-democratic masses. It was precisely because these masses were
social-democratic, impregned by more than 20 years of class collaboration,
pacifism, nationalism, democratism,... that Noske, Scheidemann and Kautsky were
able to express clearly the original content, the substance of social
democracy... i.e. bourgeois socialism. The 'betrayal' of the revolutionary
program doesn't suddenly date from 1914, but goes back to the years around 1875
when there came together the Lassalians and the already barely revolutionary
marxists (Bebel, Liebknecht,...) at Gotha to round the social democratic party
of sinister reputation. At this stage the Lassalians were already well
integrated into the Bismarckian state. The autonomisation of leaders (and
therefore of bureaucracy) can only exist at the heart of organisations, parties,
etc. where the only things which link individuals are some general humanist and
well meaning ideas. This allows the democratically elected leaders (with all the
cult of personality, careerism and the struggles between different sects or
cliques which this implies) to carry on with bourgeois politics in the name of
immediate or mythical good of 'their' poor masses. Whether this means of
functioning is called federalism or democratic centralism, it is a matter each
time of conferring powers of attorney on leaders who worshipped as much today as
they will be denounced as traitors tomorrow (for example Kautsky, who defended
essentially the same positions both before and after 1914!). These leaders are
thereby empowered to say loudly what the masses are thinking at that immediate
moment. Now the 'immediacy' of the masses, of the majority, can only be the
immediate reality of their submission to capital, which is why the dominant
ideas at the heart of the masses are the ideas of the dominant class, ideas
which the "leaders" can only repeat. Bernstein didn't betray social democracy
when he said that "the movement is all and the goal is nothing" he was only
theorising the real practise of the German social democrats. Luxembourg in
opposing Bernstein didn't struggle against the counter-revolutionary practice of
social-democracy, she only struggled to maintain this practice in liaison with
revolutionary ideas, with the "goal". This was in order to maintain a completely
formal coherence between "reform and revolution", that is to say, in order to
liquidate revolutionary preparation to the profit of immediate reforms.
For Luxembourg, the only preparation, the only domain where one could speak of
revolution is that of pure ideas, of consciousness, of the "education of the
masses":
"I think, on the contrary, that the only violence that will lead us to victory
is the socialist education of the working class in the daily struggle."
Luxemburg - Discourse on Tactics, 1898
"Educationalism", the act of wanting to win over each proletarian individual
intellectually to socialism, led Luxembourg into never understanding the
revolutionary situation and the tasks it throws up, into always trying to
procrastinate, to put a brake on the movement under the pretext that it wasn't
yet massive enough, not "conscious" enough. And Luxembourg "educationalism" only
served to disarmed the real proletarian fighters, in order to make of them
parliamentary puppets and pacifists:
"Socialism, instead of making indomitable rebels from out of present
conditions, would end up making docile sheep; domesticated and "cultivated" to
be ready to be sheared, (...) We cannot therefore link the revolution to the
education of the proletariat, because then the revolution would never come."
Avanti - The Problem of Culture. (Polemic at the heart of the PSI where the
abstentionist left regrouped around Bordiga clearly defended anti-cultural and
anti-educationalist positions.)
Contrary to the legend upheld as much by trostyists as by councilists
R.Luxembourg does not represent communism but on the contrary the multiple and
despairing attempts to push back its preparation and its realization. It
particularly cruelly represents the disintegration of the workers' movement by
democratic poison, all the more so when the latter is classified as "workers'".
There is a class divide between the German communist left (whose real direct
line is IKD-KAPD) and luxembourgism, the base on which the Levis, Radeks,
Zetkins, Brandlers,... constructed the KPD, single issue fronts, and other
politics of fatal remembrance (4).
For Luxembourg:
"It is not a question today of a choice between democracy and dictatorship.
The question placed by history on us today is: bourgeois democracy or
socialist democracy. For the dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy in
the socialist sense of the term. The dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't
mean bombs, putsches, riot, "anarchy", as the agents of capitalism dare to
pretend, but for the edification of socialism, for the expropriation of the
capitalist class conforming to the feelings and by the will of the
revolutionary majority of the proletariat, and therefore in the spirit of
socialist democracy. Without conscious will and without the conscious action
of the proletariat, there is no socialism."
Rosa Luxemburg - Die Rote Fahne
For the revolutionary communists, there is a class divide between "worker'"
democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat and:
"We could reply that provided that the revolution sweeps away the heap of
infamies accumulated by the bourgeois regime and provided that the formidable
circle of institutions which oppress and mutilate the life of the productive
masses is broken, it would not trouble us at all that blows would be struck
home by men not yet conscious of the outcome of the struggle."
Bordiga - Force, Violence and Dictatorship in the Class Struggle 1946-48
Luxembourgism is just the liberal version of leninism (and later of stalinism)
and it is not for nothing that it served as a caution to all humanist
"anti-stalinist" democretins, from M.Pivert to Cohn-Bendit, from R.Lefevre to
D.Guerin, from Sabatier to Mandel, without forgetting the "new" apologists, the
ICC. More still than its leninist cousin, luxembourgism ideology inscribes
itself in perfect continuation with the social democratic tradition which, under
cover of the name of Marx, is nothing but a vulgar mixture of Proudhon and
Lassalle. Lenin and above all Trotsky, despite a similar assimilation of the
dictatorship of the proletariat to "workers'" democracy, had at least tried to
break with democratic conceptions on trusting solely in the "saving virtue" of
violence, terrorism and terror (5).
Luxembourgism is thus one of the most representative ideologies of the myth of
"workers'" democracy, and of its fatal practice of complete abasement, of
pacifist defeatism before the forces of the bourgeoisie. But it is not the only
one. Let us cite too the austro-marxists who, with Max Adler and his
theorisation of the system of workers' councils as the realization of "workers'"
democracy, find themselves very close to Luxembourg and Gramsci, but equally the
whole of the currents demanding "workers' control", "self-management" which is
in fact only the application of "workers'" democracy to the economic sphere,
that is to say the perpetuation of capitalist exploitation in the name of the
proletariat (cf. Socialisme ou Barbarie, the IS,...). And here we are touching
on a fundamental point: the liaison between "workers'" democracy signifying
"politically" the application of democratic parliamentarian rules at the heart
of the proletarian "mass" organs (assemblies, unions, councils,...) that is to
say the submission of the proletarian tasks to the application of a majority,
and therefore, most often, to bourgeois ideology; and "workers'" democracy
signifying "economically", the management by (atomized) proletarians of their
own exploitation. In effect, "workers'" (or "direct", for libertarians)
democracy signifies in the first place the application of democratic rules
(submission of the minority to the majority; one individual, one voice) at the
heart of the proletarian organisms (as much those regrouping workers' masses as
those distinctly revolutionary in membership). These organisms (especially the
more passive one) are not, for the demo-cretins, based on a political content,
on a program and a will to struggle, but, on the contrary, on vulgar
sociological criteria, on the "economic" adherence of the individuals. ("A
worker is someone who does such and such jobs or still more vulgarly, someone
who earns..."). It is therefore a matter of an addition of "atomized worker"
individuals, that is to say, of atoms of capital. At the heart of these
assemblies thus constituted the democratic vote sanctions the addition of
individual opinions and therefore sanctions the fact that ideology and dominant
opinions, at the heart of these assemblies remain those of the ruling class i.e.
of the bourgeoisie. To start from the isolated individual, sociologically a
worker, from the addition of his particular opinions, is necessarily to arrive,
not at a position of our class (denying the individual for the benefit of the
collectivity in struggle) but to a sum of bourgeois positions.
"To start from individual unity (?) in order to draw social deductions and to
construct the plans of society, or even in order to deny society, is to start
from an unreal presupposition which, even in its most modern formulations, is
basically only a modified reproduction of concepts of religious revelation, of
creation, and of the spiritual life independent of the facts of natural and
organic life."
Bordiga - The Democratic Principle, 1921
Workers' experience shows us that it is at the heart of these organisms
(councils in Germany, Soviets in Russia, "unions" in the USA and
Latin-America,...) that existing positions, confused or openly bourgeois, impose
themselves most easily and often even maintain themselves after the victorious
workers' insurrection. Let us rapidly give the example that it was the "bloody
dog", but nevertheless "worker", Noske who was democratically elected to the
head of the councils in Germany and that, in almost all proletarian centres, his
SPD colleagues controlled the majority of the councils. In the same way, in
Russia, it was necessary to organize the insurrection on the eve of the congress
of the Soviets so as to put the latter before the fait accompli! (cf. the
polemic between Lenin and Trotsky).
The democratic principle opposes itself to (and never takes account of) workers'
needs, to the necessities of the struggle, i.e. to the proletarian content which
these assemblies could have if their constitution did not depend on the
sociological and individual adherence of the proletarians but, on the contrary,
on their will to struggle... The delimitation occurs through the struggle and
the very reality of the classes' antagonisms demonstrates that it is most often
minorities (an eminently relative term since these minorities become, in
revolutionary period, millions of proletarians in struggle) who practically
assume the revolutionary tasks and "make the revolution".
"Revolution is not a problem of organisational forms. Revolution is on the
contrary a problem of content, a problem of movement and action of
revolutionary forces in an unceasing process, which cannot be theorised by
fixing it in various tentatives of unchangeable 'constitutional doctrine'."
Bordiga - The Democratic Principle, 1921
"Workers" democracy thus affirms itself as the last rampart of capital, the
ultimate bourgeois solution to the crisis of capital, for it tends at each
moment to make counter-revolutionary ideas at the heart of the proletariat come
to the fore, and not the communist aspects; it takes on the task of making the
vanguard sectors wait and therefore draw back under the pretext that other, more
massive sectors are lagging behind. At each moment, "workers'" democracy thus
brings to the fore the heterogeneity of the proletariat produced by capital, to
the detriment of the aspects of communist unification and homogenisation.
Democracy thus directly opposes itself to the worldwide centralization of the
proletariat, to its organic unity, to its constitution into a world party.
Complementarily to "workers'" democracy applied in the political sphere, the
workers having to decide what are their tasks, when they are historically
determined, there is the "workers'" democracy applied to the economical sphere
in the shape of "workers' control", or more fashionably, of "self-management".
And if the communists have always struggled against self-management, against
apprenticeship by workers of capitalist management (dear to Proudhon, Sorel,
Adler, Gramsci,...) at the heart of capitalism, remains for us to destroy their
myth even after the victorious insurrection.
"We don't want the conviction to spread among the mass of workers that in
developing the institution of councils it is possible to take possession of
the enterprises and to eliminate the capitalists. That would be the most
dangerous of illusions. The enterprise will be conquered by the working class
- and not merely by its personnel, which would be a very small matter, and not
very communist - only after the whole of the working class seizes political
power. Without this conquest, illusions will be dispelled by royal guards,
carabinaries (ltalian Secret Police) etc..., i.e. by the mechanisms of
oppression and force which the bourgeoisie has at its disposal, through its
state apparatus."
Bordiga - The Lessons of Recent History
And as Bordiga perceived it, if before the insurrection the conquest of the
factories by the workers can only be used to turn the latter from their
destructive tasks to the profit of the "worker's" reform of the system, even
after the victorious insurrection, the conquest of the factories by the workers,
"workers' control", self-management are not "very communist" measures which only
reinforce ever-present bourgeois tendencies.
This politics comes in a direct line from two fundamental and complementary
social democratic deviations: politicism and economism -managementism- which are
in fact only the application of democracy in the revolutionary process. It would
be a question of seeing the insurrection, the revolution as being primarily and
uniquely a political act (Marx spoke of a revolution "with a political soul"):
the taking by even a violent conquest of the political power, of the state
apparatus, in fact "occupation" of the bourgeois state, then, as a function of
the circumstances (else where always unfavourable!), the taking of such or such
economical measures in the interest or not of the proletariat, with or without
its consent (cf. the introduction of the Taylor system and of the 8 hour day
since the beginning of the Bolshevik dictatorship). According to this
conception, which is as much that of political mediation as is "workers'"
democracy, the communist revolution is no longer a social revolution having to
completely destroy the bourgeois state and capitalist relations of production,
having in the same process to destroy wage labour and transform production into
the reproduction of human life; the "communist" revolution is nothing more than
a change of political staff (same as in the bourgeois revolution), who get
together to make some economic measures reforming the mode of production. Such
is the real basis of the conception of "socialism in one country" which allows
people to believe that "workers political power" can maintain itself thus (and
for the USSR today we are talking of more than 60 years) on the basis of the
capitalist system itself, and especially when reformed. From this, of course,
the period of transition from capitalism to communism is no longer anything more
than "the transitory mode of production", "workers democracy" in politics and
"workers' management" in economy, the socialist mode of production (the soviets
plus electrification) which would be a wise mixture of capitalism and...
"workers'" democracy whilst waiting for the final redemption. And of finding
here all the "marxologist theoreticians" of the "socialist stage", of "state
capitalism necessarily serving as a prelude to communism",... in fact, of vulgar
apologists of the capitalist system in its soviet form, Russian or Chinese...
For us as for Marx, on the contrary, the period of transition is, and cannot be
other than, the dictatorship of the proletariat for the abolition of wage
labour, i.e. a whole process destroying the fundamental bases of the capitalist
system (value, money, capital, wage labour) to immediately, in and by this same
process, affirm more and more massively and consciously, human community, the
human collective being. The period of transition can only be understood as a
unitary process, a totalitarian movement of positive destruction/affirmation,
destruction -negation- in so far as it dictatorially undermines the foundations
of capitalism (extraction of surplus value based on the difference between
necessary labour and surplus labour), affirmation -negation of the negation- for
the moree the process of destruction is generalised and therefore ceases to
exist, the more fully will appear a new communal way of life, a communist way of
life. Each endeavour which aims at separating in time or space the two terms
-destruction and affirmation- of the process, of the transitory movement,
inevitably ends up breaking it, returning in one way or another to wage slavery.
That is evidently where politicism and economism end up, like all conception of
a "transitory means of production", i.e. a phase of "workers'" democracy
intermediate between capitalism and communism.
To replace or identify dictatorship of the proletariat with "workers" democracy,
beyond the alteration of the terrorist character of the workers' dictatorship,
signifies the perpetuation of political mediation, the perpetuation of
capitalist social relationships -wage labour- self managed, democratically
controlled by proletarians themselves. This is through denying the "semi-state"
(Marx) character of the proletarian state, that is to say the process of
extinction of the political sphere and the extension of human community. Such a
self managed society is the realized utopia of capitalism, a world whose motor
remains that of value valorizing itself -capitalism- but having evacuated from
it the revolutionary, destroying side -the proletariat- in order to only
maintain the reproductive pole of capital. "Workers'" democracy thus expresses
most fully the dream of all reformers of the world: capital without its
contradictions, "present society purged of the element which revolutionize and
dissolve it" (Marx - Bourgeois Socialism - The Communist Manifesto). As Barrot
rightly said:
"Democracy served to harmonise the divergent interests in the framework of the
bourgeois state. Now, communism knows no state, it destroys it; and nor does
it know opposing social groups. It thus automatically dispenses with every
mechanism of mediation which would decide what it would be fitting to do. To
want communism and democracy is a contradiction. Since it is the end of
politics and the unification of humanity it installs no power above society in
order to make it stable and harmonious."
Barrot - Le Mouvement Communiste (Editions Champ Libre)
The paradox between communism and democracy is only the expression of that
between the revolutionary proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The immense weight
that social democratic and libertarian tradition weighs on the communist
movement has for a long time induced the proletariat to conquer the bourgeois
state, pacifically or not, to occupy it, to reform it; that to the rot of the
bourgeois democracy, it was necessary to oppose the purity of "workers'"
democracy, briefly, that to all the bad capitalists, it was necessary to oppose
and realize its benefits, the benefits of democracy -democracy as the positive
pole of capital.
Against all these returns to bourgeois socialism, revolutionary marxism is
always demarcated by the need to destroy capital social relations, the totality
of the system.
It is not a question of defending the labour pole against that of capital.
It is not a question of liquidating the "wicked" capitalists in order to use
the "good" productive forces.
It is not a question of criticizing the barbaric bourgeois democracy to the
benefit of civilizing "workers'" democracy.
What interests us is the destruction of the entire system whose positive poles
-democracy, progress, civilisation, sciences,...- only exist as function of and
thanks to the negative poles -white terror, war, famine, pollution,...
"We marxists have our theoretical papers perfectly in order on this point: To
the devil with freedom! To the devil with the State!"
Bordiga - Communism and Human Knowledge, 1952
* * *
Notes :
1. We refer the reader interested by this question to Marx's classics (above
all: "On the Jewish Question") as well as to Bordiga's work (especially: "The
democratic Principle") -of which we can send you an english copy- continued by
the Communist Left from Italy in exile, i.e. Bilan, Octobre, Prometheo and more
recently by Camatte and the review Invariance (first series). As for ourselves,
we have written and republished a serie of texts on this question:
"Fasciste ou anti-fasciste, la dictature du capital c'est la démocratie" - in
Le Communiste No.9.
"Against the myth of democratic rights and liberties" - in Communism No.8.
"L'Etat démocratique" (Bilan No.12) - Le Communiste No.12.
"La dictature du prolétariat et la question de la violence" (Octobre No.5) -
in Le Communiste No.17.
2. The reader is referred to the text "Quelques leçons d'octobre" in Le
Communiste No.10/11 (in french).
3. The USPD or "Independent Social Democratic Party" so called "majoritary",
which on the basis of the same program -the old Gotha Program- wanted to give
back to social-democracy a virginity, which the 3 and 1/2 years of imperialist
war relentlessly defended by the SPD, had disintegrated, to say the least. The
entry of the spartacists into the heart of the USPD entailed the impossibility
of the constitution of a force on communist base. A good many spartacists were
rejoining the positions of the ISD (which materialised later, in 1918) and by
the time of the founding of the KPD (S) it was anti-democratic, anti-union and
anti-parliamentary tendencies which dominated the formal centrist leadership
(Luxembourg, Levi, Jogishes, Dunker,...).
On this question we refer the reader to Authier and Barrot's book: "The
Communist Left in Germany", as well as to our text "The KAPD in revolutionary
action", in Le Communiste No.7.
4. as the text said, the IKD's were founded to oppose the Spartacus Leagues'
social democratism, indicating by the name "communist" the class split with the
social democrats of every shade. The VKPD -Unified Communist Party of Germany-
was constituted in 1920, after the exclusion of the majority of the KPD(S) -a
merger against the nature of the IKD's and Spartacus League- thanks to the
manoeuvrings of Levi and Zetkin, thus excluding the "leftists", that is to say
all truely revolutionary tendencies. It was in the wake of this exclusion that
the KAPD -German Communist Workers Party- was to constitute itself in 1920 which
was to prolong the inheritance of the ISD's and IKD's. The remnants of the
KPD(S), in fact essentially the staff and the leadership, were to fuse with the
"masses" of the USPD so as to form the VKPD, a mass centrist party, if not
squarely bourgeois.
5. We have already on different occasions, indicated that if for us the use of
violence, terrorism and terror are class methods, and as such, part of the
communist program, violence and terror never in themselves constitute a class
demarcation. Terror and terrorism are indispensable but insufficient. Contrary
to Lenin and Trotsky who, in believing that terror was the essential
delimitation, ended up massacring and putting down the revolutionary proletariat
(strikes of 1921-23, Krondstat,...) we defend these methods of workers' struggle
when they are put into action in the historic interests of the proletariat. In
this sense, they are "subsidiary", that is to say determined by the class that
uses them. On this question we refer the reader to our text "Critique du
réformisme armé" in Le Communiste No.17 and No.19.
* * *
"(The communists) propose to unmask in advance the insidious game of
democracy, and to begin their attack against social democracy without
waiting for its counter-revolutionary function to be revealed with a flash
in actual fact."
Il Communista - 1921
* * *
Communism No.4
Read also: "Against the myth of democratic rights and liberties"
* * *