[Internationalism is the U.S. branch of the International Communist Current (ICC), which is probably the largest of the Left Communist groups. Its journal-also called Internationalism-has been published for at least 25 years. Over the years the DB has occasionally reprinted articles from the journal, most of them polemics aimed usually at the DB itself or DeLeonism and other tendencies in our political sector whose shortcomings it finds worthy of note. Unfortunately the four-part polemic reviewed below is much too long for the DB. Readers can send for the four issues at $1 each from PO Box 288, New York, NY 10018.-fg]
Almost exactly a year ago, DB102 announced Internationalism's publication of "The Formation of De Leonist Ideology," the first installment of a planned four-part series, "The Legacy of De Leonism," promising a review when the series was completed. Since then the three succeeding installments have been published: "The Economic Confusions of Daniel De Leon," (#114, Sept-Oct, '00), "De Leon's Misconceptions on Class Struggle," (#115, Dec-Jan, '00). and "The Political Misconceptions of De Leonism," (#117, Apr-May, '00).
Part 1, "The Formation of De Leonist Ideology" (Internationalism #112, April-May 2000) begins: "There is no way to understand the history of the revolutionary working class movement in the U.S. without coming to grips with Daniel De Leon and De Leonism, the political tendency that continues to adhere to his programmatic outlook." And "come to grips" is exactly the intention of its author, Jerry Grevin, for despite his laudatory comments on De Leon's role in opposing the racist, nationalist, and reformist tendencies in the early U.S. socialist movement, his real purpose seems to be to denigrate De Leon, using the whole catalog of accusations voiced by three generations of labor historians influenced by the memoirs of such socialist and labor union careerists as Samuel Gompers, Morris Hillquit, W.Z. Foster and others for whom De Leon and The People were an ever-present thorn in the flesh.
De Leon's principal failure, according to Grevin and Internationalism, was his development of the idea of socialist industrial unions as the model for the society of the future instead of workers' councils which became the revolutionary organization of choice after the Russian Revolution. Internationalism's insistence on the superiority of workers' councils-the Russian Soviets-results, I think, from an unwillingness to consider the matter objectively.
While it is true that workers' councils soon became the prevailing form of revolutionary organization during the upsurge in worker combativity after 1917, they have a 100 percent record of failure. The history of the councils in Russia is one of unmitigated disaster. They were taken over by a Leninist elite, the Communist Party, and evolved into a dictatorship over the working class at least as repressive as anything private capitalism has to offer. The post-1917 acceptance of workers councils as a revolutionary form of organization resulted from the influence of the Third International. With few exceptions the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement worldwide had accepted the dictates of the new International, which took over the direction of what was widely regarded as the beginning of a world revolution. The Bolshevik revolutionary scenario of a party-directed urban insurrection plus worker's councils became the only allowable scheme. We find them usually as the mass organizational reflection of premature insurrections engineered by vanguard parties eager to seize power. As in Russia, such efforts elsewhere also failed. Consider Germany, Hungary, and Bavaria in 1919, Germany in 1923, and China in the late 1920s.
As for De Leon himself, after briefly mentioning his successes Internationalism faults him for a long list of "profound confusions" as a theoretician including "an inadequate grasp of Marxism that prevented him from understanding the class struggle," "embracing anarchist and syndicalist ideas," "rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat," failing to see the necessity of a transition period, and having a dogmatic and pedantic character that led to "the expulsion of the best elements from the SLP".
Part 2, "The Economic Confusions of Daniel De Leon"
The attack on De Leon as a Marxist theoretician begins in Part 2. The primary confusion according to Internationalism is his acceptance of Ferdinand Lassalle's "Iron Law of Wages." Lassalle held that under capitalism there was a long term tendency for wages to decline despite workers' struggles. Karl Marx too saw this tendency as a factor affecting the level of wages along with the business cycle, changes in technology, and the intensity of the class struggle. Upon careful consideration of the evidence it becomes clear that what Internationalism considers an 'economic confusion' of De Leon was shared by Karl Marx. How else to explain this passage by Marx from page 73 of the New York Labor News edition of Value, Price, and Profit: "...the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages or to push the value of labor more or less to its minimum limit." Marx goes on to say that in 99 cases out of a hundred, efforts to to increase their share of the wealth they produce or to resist efforts to decrease it will fail. Nevertheless the struggle itself is an evidence of the revolutionary potential of our class. In all this Marx is not saying anything that De Leon doesn't echo. In the concluding pages of VP and P Marx, after pointing out to workers the limitations and actually the futility of these daily struggles in the face of overwhelming power says, "They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, not with the causes of these effects...."
After the well-known statement, "Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work, they [workers] ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!" Marx concludes with this: Instead of the conservative motto, "'A fair day's wages for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!"
After this very long, and I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject-matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following, resolutions:-
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of - profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities,
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink, the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
Value, Price and Profit, p.74
[Note: The author, Jerry Grevin, faults De Leon for having misunderstood Marx's thinking on wages despite "...having translated into English the very works in which Marx argued his analysis." Three works that come to mind in which Marx argued his case: V, P, & P, which was written in English and required no translation; Capital, which was certainly not translated by De Leon; and Wage Labor and Capital, published by the SLP but translated by Harriet Lothrop -fg]
Part III. "De Leon's Misconceptions on Class Struggle"
Here Internationalism raises questions about the tactics advocated by De Leon. These misconceptions hinge largely on his failure to take into account an economic phenomenon, the "Decadence of Capitalism," discovered and named by Internationalism at least a half century after De Leon's death. According to 'decadence theory' as promulgated by Internationalism, capitalism reached the end of its progressive, ascendent phase in 1914 just before WWI.. Prior to WWI capitalism was capable of granting reforms and improvements in workers' standard of living. That being the case Internationalism sees De Leon's opposition to reforms as a mistaken policy since capital could and did improve the lot of workers.
But the SLP in the U.S., the SPGB in England, and the Left Communists elsewhere did not oppose reforms and reformism on the basis of whether capitalism had the capacity to grant reforms but rather because they recognized the motives of the capitalists and the reformers: to buy labor peace and a more stable work force. The question of cost isn't in it. No price is too high that will enable the capitalist class to continue their ownership of the means of production. In fact, the development of a left wing in nearly all parties of the Second International around the turn of the century reflected the need for revolutionaries to separate themselves from the reformist majorities and their willingness to deal with capital in the matter of concessions to its wage slaves designed maintain social stability.
It was this tendency which De Leon and his supporters in the SLP fought during the first ten years of his editorship of the People until the split in 1899/1900 and afterwards in the new Socialist Party of America. Strangely it is this tendency-reformist to the core-- which Internationalism by implication defends as rational because its reformism is in keeping with the reality of "pre-decadent" capitalism. In other words Internationalism regards the rightwing socialists, the reformers, against the revolutionary left in the splits around the turn of the century that created the opposing revolutionary parties worldwide. In the U.S. De Leon and the SLP vs. Hillquit and Victor Berger and the Socialist Party. In Britain the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the British SLP versus the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabians. In Russia, Lenin and the Bolsheviks vs. the Mensheviks. In Germany, Liebknecht and Luxemburg vs. Bebel, Kautsky, and the party establishment. The revolutionary positions taken by De Leon, Lenin, and others, which Internationalism regards as being at odds with the logic of capitalist decadence theory because they ignore the capacity of capital to grant reforms, suddenly become defensible beginning in 1914 because WWI activated the decadence switch of world capitalism rendering it incapable of granting reforms.
Most Marxists would agree that capitalism has outlived its usefulness as an economic system under which humanity can progress. We have only to look at the history of the last century. The title "The Century of Total War" given to a recent TV series speaks to its nationalist military nature. For humanity it deserves the term "Century of Total Human Misery" and environmentally "The Century of Total Environmental Devastation." Unfortunately this record doesn't stand as the principal idea of Internationalism's theory of capitalist decadence. Rather, Internationalism concentrates on a sort of corollary to its decadence theory, the exceptionally wrongheaded idea that since 1914, when capitalism supposedly went into decline, it is no longer capable of granting political and economic reforms to its working class-this in the face of a historical record that points to a contrary set of facts. One has only to name the economic reforms of the Thirties-Social Security and the other reforms of the Roosevelt and Truman era like welfare, WPA, expansion of the franchise to include women in 1920, as well as the social democratic "victories" in much of Western Europe.
Events since 1914 certainly confirm the idea that capitalism has outlived its usefulness. By 1924 the U.S. was experiencing an agricultural depression, and the stock market crash of 1929 signaled the onset of the Great Depression. Both of these would seem to bear out Internationalism's appraisal of decadence. On the other hand the capitalist handling of working class dissatisfaction by the New Deal in the 1930s and Keynes-influenced reforms for the next four decades demonstrate the absurdly flawed analysis of Internationalism: that decadent capitalism is no longer capable of granting reforms to its wage slaves.
But let's leave Internationalism's mechanical theorizing about decadence and consider a Marxist interpretation of the events in the latter part of the 19th century and the 20th Century: The rapid development of the means of production continued in both industry and agriculture. It engendered a glut in both manufactured and agricultural products and created the unemployment that left workers without the means to satisfy their needs. Clearly our class under capitalism had built a productive giant with the potential to satisfy the material needs of everyone. What stood in the way? The capitalist economic system - the market. The evidence of this contradiction between the productive capacity of society and its inability to satisfy human needs was the ongoing depressions of the last quarter of the 19th century. In the U.S. this was signaled by the Panic of '73 and the five-year depression that followed it and the equally horrendous depression of 1890-1900, the latter coinciding with the first decade of De Leon's tenure as editor of the People. In both depressions capital exerted downward pressure on wages. Far from being a period of economic ascendence with capital willing and able to grant improvements in workers' standard of living, as Internationalism asserts, our masters successfully fought the desperation strikes of a starving workforce time after time. Consider the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Homestead Strike, the Pullman Strike. The union movement was even more useless than it is today. The leadership of the Knights of Labor was opposed to strikes on principle, while the AF of L , headed by Samuel Gompers was rapidly developing the class collaboration strategy that marks its contemporary policy.
To suggest, as does Internationalism, that capitalism in its ascendant phase in the last quarter if the 19th century found it possible and profitable to grant reforms and wage raises ignores the realities of the human misery behind the class struggle and most especially the labor glut that resulted from improvements in technology. Far from capital having entered a decadent phase since 1914 that has made reforms impossible, the evidence shows the contrary. During the darkest days of the Great Depression of the thirties capital saved itself by the long list of New Deal reforms in terms of hours and wages as well as Social Security, welfare, and other measures designed to quiet worker dissatisfaction. The standard of living of our class continued to rise right up to around 1970.
Part IV. "The Political Misconceptions of DeLeonism"
Nothing demonstrates more clearly the difference between De Leonists and the heirs of Lenin than Internationalism's insistence that socialist revolution must be violent. The difference, I believe, arises from environmental causes. In the cases of both Tsarist Russia and the U.S., Marxism was imported into a new political and economic arena. Tsarist repression forced Marxism's adherents underground. The new revolutionary movement had to operate as a conspiracy. Like its predecessor social movements, its militants could expect either deportation to Siberia or exile abroad. Its only hope of success lay in an insurrection that would overthrow the Tsarist government. The movement was forced underground and became a conspiracy.
In the U.S. Marxism found a capitalism so secure that it could afford the luxury of electoral democracy, by which it could settle its internal disputes while at the same time maintaining the social peace it requires. Given the constitutional basis of democracy rooted in a guarantee of what amounted to the right of revolution, workers could organize unions, organize politically to contest elections, and agitate openly to advance labor's interests. Marxists were in the forefront of the labor movement. Unfortunately one effect of this "bourgeois democracy," as Internationalism calls it, was the rapid development of the revisionist tendency in Marxism: the effort to seek pro-labor reforms through parliamentary action. At the same time leadership of the labor unions fell into the hands of careerists who functioned as capitalism's "labor lieutenants," as a prominent 19th century capitalist called them.
This was the labor and socialist movement when De Leon arrived on the scene in 1890. He immediately joined forces with other revolutionaries in the SLP. In 1892 the party began running candidates in presidential elections instead of fusing with reformist labor parties. Its members also sought to influence the labor movement. In 1895 when this "boring from within" had obviously failed, the SLP set on foot a socialist union movement, the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, to compete with the AFL, rather like the socialist unions in Germany.
Ruling classes secure in a stable economic and political system could risk granting socialists the right to the ballot. But the ballot was a mixed blessing. It was during this period-the last quarter of the 19th Century-that we see growth of the revisionism we associate with the Second International. In the U.S. the ensuing split resulted in the organization of the Socialist Party of America, largely reformist, which grew by leaps and bounds and the much smaller SLP advocating a revolutionary union movement and political program.
Dropping the immediate demands that characterized its pre-split election platform, the SLP, beginning in 1902, entered elections with single revolutionary demand, "Abolition of Capitalism." Clearly it is possible for revolutionaries to use capitalism's "bourgeois democracy" to call for revolution, and the ballot can be used to campaign for a peaceful revolution as the SLP did for over 80 years.
Now consider the alternative. The U.S. Communist Party at the behest of the Leninist Third International organized an underground party and deliberately embrace illegality. As a result the CP in the U.S. was a target for the FBI and eventually for the McCarthy hearings and the Smith Act prosecutions.
De Leon's idea featured a peaceful revolution through the ballot preceded by a period of economic and political education by a revolutionary party and a revolutionary union movement. The combination of an educated working class and foundering capitalism would result in an overwhelming victory at the polls. The socialist majority in Congress would abolish capitalism and disband the state apparatus, the SIUs would provide the social organization necessary to organize production.
With minor differences in the details DeLeonists see this model of revolution as containing the features that insure success in advanced industrial nations.
1. It is the best our class can do to assure a peaceful revolution. The ruling class is unlikely to resort to violence since the battlefield would the industries and workplaces where our strength lies, not with weapons on the streets where they have the advantage.
2. It places the revolution on a legal, civilized plane that will not alienate potential supporters.
3. It puts the task of educating our class in the hands of a revolutionary party or parties. The revolution will be carried out by the mass organization of the working class-the socialist industrial unions, which will enforce the victory at the polls by the real revolution, the occupation of the workplaces and their conversion into social property, thus depriving our masters of the basis of their power: ownership of the means of production.
4. The SIUs provide the framework for organizing production for use. They are the industrial "government" of future society-the government over things rather than people that Engels spoke of. Political government over people, the government that enforces capitalism's dictates will be dissolved along with its military and police powers of coercion and its armies of administrators, managers, union labor skates, politicians, and the rest of their control personnel.
The beauty of this plan is that the working class will use the facade of democracy, which capital needs for its smooth functioning, in the pre-revolutionary education phase during capitalism's disintegration. At the same time-and under the same legal rights-our class will be organizing the SIUs that will replace capital's governmental machinery.
As the IWW puts it, "We will build the new society in the shell of the old." And as the SLP slogan of the 1930s and 40s put it, All Power to the Socialist Industrial Union!"
Now a few more points not covered above:
1. Internationalism criticizes De Leon for his failure to recognize the importance of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It strikes me that such a dictatorship would be necessary only if the proletariat were a minority, as in Russia in 1917. In advanced capitalist countries today the great majority of the population consists of wage workers. Our task as revolutionaries is to win them over to socialism. No revolution can take place until that is done. Some of the greatest tragedies of a tragic century, where the slaughter of members of our class was greatest, took place where a revolutionary elite decided to set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. Consider the USSR, China, Cambodia.
2. Internationalism states that Marx insisted that revolutions must be violent. This was true in his earlier days, but by 1872 at least, he expressed a different view in a speech on the Hague Congress of the First International, given in Amsterdam after the Congress: One day the worker will have to seize political supremacy to establish the new organisation of labour; he will have to overthrow the old policy which supports the old institutions if he wants to escape the fate of the early Christians who, neglecting and despising politics, never saw their kingdom on earth. But we by no means claimed that the means for achieving this goal were identical everywhere. We know that the institutions, customs and traditions in the different countries must be taken into account; and we do not deny the existence of countries like America, England, and if I knew your institutions better I might add Holland, where the workers may achieve their aims by peaceful means. That being true we must also admit that in most countries on the Continent it is force which must be the lever of our revolution; it is force which will have to be resorted to for a time in order to establish the rule of the workers.
(Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol.23, "On the Hague Congress" p.255)
