http://www.ibrp.org/english/platform Preface The present period The collapse of the USSR brought an end to the Cold War. It did not bring an end to capitalist exploitation nor to imperialism and the threat of global war. On the contrary, the demise of the USSR was due to factors fundamental to the operation of the capitalist system itself. First, the global crisis of the world economy. Since the early 1970s all capitalisms, whether state (posing as “socialist” or “command” economies) or the so-called “mixed” economies in the self-styled “free world”, have faced an increasing crisis of stagnation. This is due to the fact that capitalism has reached the downward trough in another cycle of accumulation. One of the first signs of this was the US devaluation of the dollar in 1971and the accompanying collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement which had shaped imperialism’s post-war economic order. This was an attempt to make the rest of the world pay for the slowdown in US growth. Second, the stagnation of the USSR economy itself. This was not “really existing socialism” as its supporters maintained but a particular form of capitalism where the state had taken on the role of the classical bourgeoisie. By virtue of its monopoly hold on state power the CPSU had become the vehicle of the new ruling class, passing on their privileges from one generation to another. In addition there was the relative weakness of the USSR. Economic stagnation coupled with increasing technological backwardness vis-a-vis the US and the West meant that the economic basis for supporting militarism was weaker. In the unprecedented arms race of the 1970s and 1980s the USSR’s economy was in no position to match the spending of the US state. Gorbachev’s attempts to end the arms race and restructure the economy came up against sabotage from inside the ruling class and the limited room for manoeuvre imposed by the very economic crisis he was trying to resolve. Together, all these factors contributed to the USSR’s eventual collapse in 1991. The history of the present period therefore confirms two things:Full state control of the economy (i.e. the so-called command economy) is not socialism. In a genuine socialist economy the producers themselves would collectively decide what to produce on the basis of human need. Economic planning would be a question of rational administration, involving the allocation of labour power according to society’s own priorities. There would be no economic crisis of the kind experienced in the old USSR.Neither attempts by the capitalist state to suppress or regulate its own law of value, much less the unattainable fantasy of giving it free expression (the so-called law of the market), can do away with the world crisis of the capitalist economy.Despite all the attempts to manage the economic crisis; despite agreements by the leading Group of 7 economic powers and international debt postponements; despite the micro-chip revolution and despite capitalist restructuring cushioned by welfare benefits and redundancy payments, the fundamental problem of capitalist accumulation remains. This is the chronic shortage of surplus value, a shortage which is driving capital to find ever more means of increasing the exploitation of the working class both relatively and absolutely.
I know you haven't gotten to the part, Devrim. But the third part of their platfrom shows the differences with the ICC. I'll wait to we get there to discuss.
Part 2: The general situation and perspectives for the working class Let us examine class relations today. There is an enormous disproportion between the severity of the economic crisis and the consequent threat of imperialist war on the one hand, and the low level of the proletariat’s response to this crisis on the other. Capital’s real domination over production and distribution has become more and more a total domination over social and political relations as a whole. Bourgeois ideology has deeply penetrated the working class via the social democratic parties and trades unions. As such they suffocate at birth working class attempts to resist the effects of the crisis. Strikes which have occurred, sometimes even in an entire branch of the national production, have not been extended because any sense of solidarity and class unity has been strangled by nationalism, by the idea of changing things in one firm at a time, by individualism: in fact, by those forms of capitalist ideology that the left of the bourgeoisie has instilled amongst workers. The domination of capitalism over the working class by means of the unions and left capitalist parties is the concrete manifestation of what Marx called the “reification of social relations”. Whatever their historical origins, today they are the material instruments of capital’s totalitarianism. They must be faced as such, both politically and organisationally and not by mere denunciation. Despite capitalism’s undoubted success at containing the class struggle its contradictions persist. As Marxists we know they cannot be contained for eternity. The explosion of these contradictions will not necessarily result in victorious revolution. In the imperialist era global war is capital’s way of “controlling”, of temporarily resolving, its contradictions. However, before this happens the possibility remains that the bourgeoisie’s political and ideological grip on the working class may be broken. In other words, sudden waves of mass class struggle may occur and revolutionaries have to be prepared for these. When the class once again takes the initiative and begins to use its collective strength against capital’s attacks, revolutionary political organisations need to be in a position to lead the necessary political and organisational battles against the forces of the left bourgeoisie. Each successive wave of struggle will be a preparation for the revolution only if the programme and organisation of revolutionaries emerge strengthened from them; only when the revolutionary programme (and the organisation upholding it) is able, through the struggle itself, to sink deeper roots into the working class. This is demonstrated by the historical experience of the working class. The 1905 Russian Revolution was a preparation for 1917, in the sense that the revolutionary programme which led to 1917 emerged strengthened from the earlier battles. There is no guarantee today that there will be such an episode of generalised, insurrectionary conflict which, although resulting in the immediate defeat of the class, also strengthens revolutionary forces. One thing is certain though: should such a mass movement occur without revolutionary ideas taking on substantial political and organisational form inside the working class as a whole then any defeat would assume general historical proportions. It is the task of the proletarian political organisation to return to the working class the lessons of its own historical experience so that they become a material force in the emancipation of our class. Devrim
