50 years of the ICC

 

Not the ICC, for the record 

Last year, the zany International Communist Current (ICC) celebrated its 50th anniversary. Yes, really! The ICC was founded in 1975. Imagine accomplishing *absolutely nothing at all* in half a century. Except publishing weird magazines with interminable articles nobody actually reads. OK, the book about the history of the Italian Left was somewhat interesting. So was the agent-baiting and Mason-bashing during the 1990´s.

Personally, I don´t think the ICC will be around in 2075, but I suppose it´s not *entirely* impossible. The Bordigists and their eternal Communist party will of course be around still in 3000 AD...

Never ending cycles

Credit: mckaysavage

First, a quote. 

>>>But it was above all once it ceased to be a revolutionary class, and even more when it entered its epoch of decadence, that the bourgeoisie more and more abandoned the materialist outlook of its youth and relapsed into irrational and semi-mystical world-views: the case of nazism is a concentrated example. And the final phase of capitalist decadence - the phase of decomposition - has exacerbated such tendencies still further, as witness phenomena such as the upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism and the proliferation of suicidal cults. These ideologies are increasingly all-pervasive and the proletariat can by no means escape them.>>>

Reading the above funny quip (yes, it´s from the ultraleft International Communist Current – who else?) a few things struck me. Yes, the bourgeoisie used to be “rational” et cetera. I assume all ascending classes during periods of “progress” are rational and enlightened, somehow. What the ICC is describing is presumably what Spengler would call “The Second Religiosity”. When society is no longer progressing, religion and “mysticism” does indeed increase – including in the previously rationalist ruling class. In the ancient world, I suppose we could relate this to the rational period of the early Roman Empire and then the ascendancy of Neoplatonism and, ahem, Christianity during the decline of classical civilization. Of course, parallels of this kind will never be exact, but they are certainly present. (Or in India: compare the scientific advances during the Guptas with the later period of collapse when magic, orgies and Tantrism became widespread.)

What the ICC fails to see, no doubt because their dogmatic Marxism, is that this cyclic pattern of rise, decline and fall is inevitable. It will never cease in favor of Utopia. For all we know, the ideologies of the ascent and descent are equally true: the rational ideology is needed to remake the Earth, the “irrational” or trans-rational ideology is needed to reach Heaven when Earth proves to be un-remakable. Or unite with Nature, as the case might be.

It also struck me that this analysis must be applicable to the PMC or professional-managerial class, which has shared power with the bourgeoisie since at least the 1930´s. It, too, started out as a “rational” class, often with a “socialist” ideology. But now? They too are collapsing into rank irrationality. Yes, that would be postmodernism, “identity politics”, veganism, trans-people, trans-humanism, oikophobia, whatever. The religion of these spiteful mutants is presumably some kind of bizarrely fragmented form of New Age. Or Satanism. This, however, isn´t the Second Religiosity, but the collapse preceding it. 

Somehow, I find it difficult to believe that the PMC will ever return to traditional religion (or survive at all), but who knows? Maybe Shia Islam could be something? Or, cough cough, Modern Orthodox Judaism. But many of the younger ones will probably just commit suicide rather than facing a long decline (with Russian domination) in castrated condition without the necessary medication. And oh, the trans-humanists will probably also jump into some lake, when the AI-UFO-cyborg singularity fails to show up on schedule circa 2040.

Will the masses ever learn, I wonder? Or even the ruling classes…  

Odyssey through revisionism

 

The first revisionists?

I admit that I never heard about the Communist Workers Group (Marxist-Leninist) before a frequent commentator on this blog pointed out their erstwhile existence. The CWG was a small Marxist-Leninist group in the United States, apparently led by a man named Tom Clark, which published a magazine named “Forward”. The group existed between 1975 and 1978. A similar group existed in Canada, the Organization of Communist Workers (Marxist-Leninist). I assume they dissolved at approximately the same time. A previously unpublished work by Clark, “The State and Counter-Revolution” (written during the 1980´s), can be accessed on the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA). Clark himself passed away in 2010.

While not Maoist in the strict sense, the CWG originally supported China and Albania, while regarding the post-Stalin Soviet Union as “revisionist”. Later, the CWG would condemn the Communist Parties of China and Albania as “revisionist”, too. At some point, the CWG realized that the roots of this revisionism goes all the way back to Stalin himself. After all, it was the Stalinists who launched the Popular Front strategy at the 1935 congress of the Communist International. Had the CWG stopped here, they would have developed in a direction similar to, say, the Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP), which tried to develop a kind of de-Stalinized version of Marxism-Leninism. Perhaps uniquely among anti-revisionist Communist groups, however, the CWG went further. 

Clark and his co-thinkers eventually reached the conclusion that Marx, Engels and Lenin had been “revisionists”! Except, of course, that no “revision” was involved at all, since Marxism had been petty-bourgeois and middle class from the start. Clark seems to have ended up as a kind of anarchist or Council Communist, although he never uses those terms. What makes the evolution of CWG intriguing is that they reached their conclusion by consistently applying the same logic which made them break with China and Albania. Discovering striking similarities between the ideas of Marx/Engels/Lenin and later Communists, they naturally drew the conclusion that the entire Marxist movement had been “revisionist” from its inception.

One clue to the mystery of the CWG could be that they strongly emphasized the class basis of revisionism, while also making a direct connection between the old revisionism (Bernstein and reformist Social Democracy) and the new (which was ostensibly Communist). The social basis for both seems to have been privileged middle class sectors. But Marx, Engels and Lenin also believed that “the socialist intelligentsia” could play a positive role in the revolutionary struggle, indeed Lenin gave them a central role by claiming that revolutionary socialist consciousness could only come to the working class *from without*, from middle class intellectuals. Since Lenin believed in a vanguard party, what does this tell us about the class basis of said party and its leadership? Indeed, what does it tell us about the class character of the Soviet state, including the early Soviet state? 

In contrast to other Marxist-Leninists, the CWG also stressed that the revolutionary workers´ state must consist of directly elected soviets, an armed workers´ militia, and so on. This clearly wasn´t the case with the “revisionist” regimes, but nor was it the case with early Soviet Russia. If Marx, Engels and Lenin (or pre-1935 Stalin, for that matter) are analyzed bearing these principles in mind, they all fall short. Marx, Engels and Lenin often took positions that could be seen as “popular frontism”, “democratism”, peaceful road to socialism, united fronts with the petty bourgeoisie or with parties dominated by the middle class, and so on. Even pure or classical Marxism is a bottomless pit of revisionist deviations. 

Clark believed that Marx, Engels and Lenin supported the Paris Commune and the soviets for purely tactical reasons, and that their real perspective was either taking over the existing state through parliament, or a revolution for the benefit of the middle class. Lenin´s approach to the soviets struck Clark as parliamentarian, as if the soviets were a kind of workers´ parliaments in which the Bolsheviks peacefully competed for majority influence. Clark even questioned whether the Commune and the soviets were properly proletarian. Certain sections of the middle class might actually prefer a Commune-style state with radical democracy, cheap government, lower taxes, no standing army, and so on. The Paris Commune in Clark´s opinion had a leadership dominated by middle class elements, and so did the soviets in 1917 until shortly before the October revolution. Thus, not even a call for soviets is working class revolutionary in and of itself.

What non-Marxists would call “really existing socialism” is a third system discovered by the petty bourgeoisie or middle class, neither capitalist nor properly socialist. This third system places the middle class in command and hence enables it to survive. Marxism is simply the ideology of this particular middle class striving. Clark apparently predicted that the third system would eventually devolve into capitalism, and regarded the events of 1989-91 as confirmation of his view. Still, China seems to be a better confirmation of his theory, since the Chinese combine “capitalism” with a strong middle class-dominated state regulating it.

But what was the CWG´s or Clark´s alternative to Marxism-Revisionism, to coin a phrase? They “should” have become anarchists or Council Communists, but never actually adopted an alternative ideology to Marxism. However, I think it´s safe to say that Clark´s perspective has a family likeness to certain forms of anarchism and ultraleftism. The working class should struggle in the workplace and on the streets for its own material interests, independent of any middle class intellectuals, who will simply try and capture the movement and derail it. This is true even of proletarianized middle class elements, whose real goal is to create a system that will enable them to regain their privileges. The labor union apparatus is a case in point, but so is any revolution led by declassed strata of this type. 

However, it seems Clark coupled this crypto-anarchist perspective with a strong pessimism. The working class, due precisely to its material position in production, is a *weak* class. It´s easy pray to middle class demagogues. The CWG was a very “theory-heavy” group, and I get the impression that Clark never broke with this perspective. He wasn´t a pure spontaneist, rather he seems to believe that no true revolution is possible without the correct theory being adopted by the proletariat. But very few workers are capable of doing the research necessary to develop such a theory. Even the advanced workers therefore become dependent on theory already developed by others. And who are these others? Why, the Marxist middle class intellectuals, of course!

It´s almost as if the proletariat is doomed to be dominated by the “petty bourgeois” intelligentsia. But if so, Lenin was in a sense right: revolutionary consciousness can only come to the workers “from without”. And that means the working class is *materially incapable* of making a revolution in its own interest. The workers are doomed to forever be the fifth wheel under the middle class popular frontist bandwagon. They are not a revolutionary class. Clark never draws these conclusions, but they seem to be the logical next step. (Insert comment on George Orwell´s “1984” here.) 

What political conclusions follow from this? Ironically, the most obvious possible conclusion is that advanced workers should *support* the middle class reformers (or in extreme cases the middle class revolutionaries) as the lesser evil to unbridled capitalism. The radical rejection of revisionism leads straight to embracing it through a different route. The other conclusion is the one drawn by French Marxist Jacque Camatte when he lost faith in working class revolution (and modern civilization itself): take to the hills (the Cevennes in Camatte´s case) and form a survivalist commune. I admit that I´m vacillating between these two alternative options myself! 

Which helps to explain my interest in this rather obscure topic. The CWG´s political odyssey has a kind of family likeness to my own meandering perturbations…

A really existing leftist group?

 

Förbundet Arbetarmakt (FAM) was a small left-wing group in Sweden that existed between 1973 and 1979. (If their predecessors and successors are counted, this particular current existed from 1972 to 1985.) I´m too young (sic) to have met FAM, although I met some ex-members years ago. I also read back issues of their magazines "Arbetarmakt" and "Rådsmakt" at a local archive, and even have some of their pamphlets. During my sadly misspent youth as a leftist hang-around, FAM struck me as one of the more serious and less crazy far left outfits, an impression admittedly based solely on their printed material. I might have joined FAM had I been old enough during the 1970´s. Would I have liked it? Not sure, after reading "Vitboken", a draft document published in 1980 that tries to draw a balance sheet of the really existing FAM-ish experience. 

Among the positives is that FAM seems to have functioned in a relatively democratic manner, never experienced any major splits of the usual kind, and was (relatively speaking) non-sectarian (at least for a small far left group). The negatives seem to have been more or less the same as in many other leftist groups, so FAM doesn´t come across as particularly bizarre on that front either. Still, there seems to have been a rather strong "anti-authoritarian" and anarchistic-individualist streak among many of the members, of a kind I frankly don´t like, so perhaps not really my cup of tea anyway...

FAM called themselves "council socialists" and belonged broadly to the council communist or left communist current (think Gorter, Pannekoek and the KAPD). The group waged a kind of "two front war" against both anarchism and Leninism, criticizing the anarchists for being too disorganized, and the Leninists for being authoritarian in both theory and practice. Ironically, this created a strong tension within the group between people who had joined due to previous bad experiences with anarchists, and those who themselves had an anarchistic streak, primarily reacting to the dogmatism and perceived authoritarianism of the Leninist groups. 

It seems that FAM in practice functioned (or tried to function) as the "Leninist" groups it was criticizing (albeit with less abuses). There was a division of labor between, on the one hand, "theoreticians" and "experts", and ordinary rank-and-file members on the other. The former were disproportionately male, while most women in the group belonged to the latter category. The workload was enormous, with constant internal meetings and administration. There were many "committees" and "organizers" of this and that. Despite its small size, FAM published both a monthly "paper" (Arbetarmakt) and a theoretical magazine (Rådsmakt). It consciously attempted to mimic the somewhat larger leftist groups in terms of activities and style. This led to constant conflicts with members who had joined in the hope that FAM would be a *really* anti-authoritarian group (or anti-group) devoted to the "total revolution" mentioned in its platform. Many of these members seem to have been young women from the feminist milieu. 

I was surprised to learn that FAM only had about 40 members at most, and that the total number of people who had been members was about 70. There were only three real branches, although members and sympathizers could be found all across Sweden. I assumed FAM had been larger. Indeed, this seems to have been a common assumption, and many new members felt cheated when they realized how small the organization actually was! One problem for FAM was the existence of a somewhat larger and broadly similar group, Förbundet Kommunist (FK). While FK was ideologically a peculiar Maoist organization, much of their early practice looked "left communist": independent workplace organization outside the Social Democratic labor unions, and calls for boycotting parliamentary elections. I think FK also had an "anti-authoritarian" streak of sorts. Just like FAM, they were interested in alternative forms of Marxist theory (Western Marxism). So why not simply join FK? FAM did cooperate with FK and the Trotskyist KAF in a kind of "anti-Stalinist bloc". 

One irony that struck me when reading "Vitboken" is that FAM´s uniqueness created problems for the group. I assumed this would rather be a strong selling point! FAM´s homebrewn version of left communism was apparently too exotic for the Swedish left. It also necessitated a high level of theoretical understanding among FAM´s members - something many couldn´t live up to. The most distinctive FAM-ite idea was the notion that the Soviet Union and similar societies represented a new, bureaucratic mode of production. Many FAM members doubted this theory, however, and others didn´t understand it. Nor was the theory ever fully worked out. 

FAM´s concrete activities weren´t much different from those of their temporary allies or competitors on the left: strike support work, solidarity work with Portuguese and Chilean leftists, May Day marches, anti-nuclear activism, and attempts at "proletarianization". FAM participated in or supported attemps to organize radical workers outside the official union structures. Judging by "Vitboken", however, FAM members also run for local union office! I think they did quite a lot for just 40 members...

So why did FAM fail? Obviously, all kinds of reasons could be pointed to, but I think the authors of "Vitboken" are right that ultimately the objective conditions in Sweden weren´t ripe for the growth of a "ultraleft" tendency (this is frankly a no-brainer). The ex-FAMites point to the fact that the middle class layers from which the left gains most of its support had - at least relatively speaking - gone "to the right" compared to the red year 1968. At the end of the 1970´s, the average left-wing sympathizer wasn´t interested in "revolutionary theory", let alone revolution, instead demandig "concrete" (realistic) policies, leading most leftists to join or adapt to VPK, the major leftist party in Sweden, which is represented in Parliament and many regional and local councils. (Today VPK is known as Vänsterpartiet.) FAM´s anti-Stalinist allies FK and KAF decided to "relate to VPK" and change their politics accordingly, while FAM steadfastly refused. 

Ultimately, the real limiting factor for any leftist group in Sweden during the period in question was the almost complete domination of the labor movement by the Social Democratic Party. It rested both on tight bureaucratic control and internal party discipline, but also on the honest convictions of many workers that Social Democracy really does work (after all, it *did* work in Sweden). The leftists who de facto gave up on the working class and instead joined various middle class protest movements were "tactically correct", since this enabled them to make an end run around Social Democracy. Of course, this eventually led to the famed "long march through the institutions" and the current pro-establishment leftoids, who defend corporate censorship, EU membership, "identity politics" and green capitalism (ironically often in alliance with restyled Social Democracy), but that´s another story... 

As usual, I have no good close, so I just sort of close! 

Marxism and Nirvana

Some hilarious quotes from the press of the International Communist Current. I´m beginning to suspect that there is something very, very strange with the ICC, ha ha!  

>>>In his comments on the EPM, Bordiga was particularly insistent on this point: the resolution of the enigmas of history was only possible "once we have left behind the millennia-old deception of the lone individual facing the natural world, stupidly called 'external' by the philosophers. External to what? External to the 'I', this supreme deficiency,' but we can no longer say external to the human species, because the species man is internal to nature, part of the physical world." And he goes on to say that "in this powerful text, object and subject becomes, like man and nature, one and the same thing. We can even say that everything becomes object: man as a subject 'against nature' disappears, along with the illusion of a separate ego." ('Tables immuables de la theorie communiste de parti', in Bordiga et Ie passion du communisme. edited by J Camatte, 1972).

>>>Hitherto, the intentional cultivation of states (or rather stages, since we are not talking about anything final here) of consciousness which go beyond the perception of the isolated ego has been largely restricted to the mystical traditions. For example, in Zen Buddhism, accounts of the experience of Satori, which expresses an attempt to go beyond the split between subject and object into a vaster unity, bear a certain resemblance to the mode of being that Bordiga, following Marx, is attempting to describe. But while communist humanity will perhaps find elements that can be reappropriated from these traditions, it is not correct to deduce from these passages in Marx and Bordiga that communism should be described as the "mystical society" or to posit a "communist mysticism", as in certain texts on the question of nature that have been published recently by the Bordigist group II Partito Comunista. 

>>>Inevitably, the teachings of all the mystical traditions were more or less - bound up with various religious and ideological misconceptions resulting from - immature historical conditions, whereas communism will be able to take the 'rational kernel' from these traditions and incorporate them into a real science of man. With equal inevitability, the insights and techniques of the mystical traditions were almost by definition limited to an elite of privileged individuals, whereas in communism there will be no secrets to be hidden from the vulgar masses. And as a result, the expansion of awareness that will be achieved by the collective humanity of the future will be incomparably greater than the individual flashes of illumination attained within the horizons of class society.

XXXXXXXX

>>>At first sight this might seem to be a strange subject for a polemic between revolutionary groups, but it would be a mistake to think that the most advanced fractions of the proletarian movement are immune from the influence of religious and mystical ideologies. This was certainly the case in the struggle to found the Communist League, when Marx and Engels had to combat the sectarian, semi-religious visions of communism professed by Weitling and other; it was no less true during the period of the First International, when the marxist fraction had to confront the masonic ideologies of sects like the Philadelphians, and above all of Bakunin's "International Brotherhood".

 >>>But it was above all once it ceased to be a revolutionary class, and even more when it entered its epoch of decadence, that the bourgeoisie more and more abandoned the materialist outlook of its youth and relapsed into irrational and semi-mystical world-views: the case of nazism is a concentrated example. And the final phase of capitalist decadence - the phase of decomposition - has exacerbated such tendencies still further, as witness phenomena such as the upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism and the proliferation of suicidal cults. These ideologies are increasingly all-pervasive and the proletariat can by no means escape them.

 

>>>The fact that the proletarian political milieu itself has to be on guard against such ideologies has been demonstrated clearly in the recent period. We can cite the case of the London Psychogeographical Association and similar "groups", which have concocted a snake-oil mixture of communism and occultism and have been busily trying to sell it in the milieu. Within the ICC itself, we have seen the activities of the adventurer JJ, expelled for seeking to create a clandestine network of "interest" in the ideas of freemasonry.

Look who´s straddling the class line

Henri Tolain wondering about Karl Marx

Was Marx a "moderate" concerning the Paris Commune? 

Did Marx change his opinions on the Paris Commune?

Martinists in the workers´ movement?

I always laughed at these statements by the Freemason-phobic "International Communist Current" (ICC), one of the more exotic species of weed in the far left political bouqet. 

>>>>>>

"This "greeting" was lip-service. In France, already after 1968, the bourgeoisie was using its "neo-Templar", "Rosicrucian" and "Martinist" sects in order to infiltrate leftist and other groups, in collaboration with the SAC services. For example, Luc Jeuret, the guru of the "Sun Temple" began his career by infiltrating Maoist groups."

"Left-wing versions of such counter-revolutionary organisations are no less active. In France, for instance, new sects have been established in the tradition of "Martinism", a variant of freemasonry historically specialised in the infiltration and subversion of workers' organisations. Such groups put forward the idea that communism can best be achieved by the manipulations of an enlightened minority. Like other sects, they are specialised in the art of manipulating people."

>>>>>>

Yes, Martinists. The ICC is suggesting that Martinists (of all people) are infiltrating "workers´ organisations" or "leftist and other groups". Yeah, rightie!

Look what synchronistically showed up just two hours ago on Reddit: 

<<<<<<

"Martinism is about politics, yes, because many of our past masters were ardent supporters of Utopian socialism or persecuted by totalitarian governments. The magnetist and spiritualist circles of France, where martinism developed, such as that of Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon, Esquiros, and Eliphas, were all Utopian socialists. if you read the speech of Guaita to the degree of SI, you will see that it clearly says about us "- you can call us socialists, communists...". The Rosicrucian & Martinist tradition has several works that deal with the reform of society and the establishment of Utopia, such as Francis Bacon's new atlantis, Andreae's christianopolis and Yves d'Alveydre's synarchy. Chevillon, Grand Master of Lyon's Martinezist Order, was an ardent supporter of utopian socialism and was assassinated by the Nazis for his initiatory activity.

Read Chevillon's social temple, or Eliphas' bible of freedom, or Stanislas' initiatic discourse, or Leon Denis' socialism and spiritualism. Now, it is important to emphasize that we are referring to idealistic, French, Christian Utopian socialism, and not the cruel and bloodthirsty materialism of Germany and Russia. The reform of humanity has always been present in the works of the Rosicrucians, from Thomas Morus to Francis Bacon. But this social reform can only come from a change of Consciousness and Spiritual evolution - it cannot be outwardly forced. Anyway, fascism exterminated many of our brothers, most even sent to concentration chambers in Nazi Germany. Martinism is Utopist. The ideal of Utopia comes all the way through the synarchy of d'Alveydre, the christianopolis of the Rose+Croix, the new atlantis of Francis Bacon, the civitas solis of Campanella, the utopia of Thomas Morus, the republic of Plato, the assassination of C.Chevillon at the hands of the fascists, from the critique of Papus to liberal-bourgeois Freemasonry, from the speech of Guaita "call us socialists or communists, the words do not matter", through all the brothers who were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and killed by totalitarian regimes.

French Utopian socialism, which was born idealist and spiritualist, has nothing to do with the degenerate atheist and materialist communism of Germany, or with postmodern deconstruction.

We are closer to Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and Saint-Simon.

"economist or philosopher, call it the tendency towards socialism, if you wish... to collectivism, to communism... words don't matter!" - initiatic Discourse to the degree of Superior Incognitoby Stanislas de Guaita (founder of the OKRC, before the Ordre Martiniste was established)

In short:

We are not adherents of the atheistic and materialistic communism that brought so much death and destruction to the world. But it i important to recognize that if someone is on the side of fascism, he would be along with those who persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and murdered our Past Masters. from Andrea's christianopolis, Campanella's civitas solis, Francis Bacon's new atlantis, Thomas Morus' utopia to d'Alveydre's synarchy, there has always been a link between initiation and the struggle for the Repair of the World so desired by the Rosicrucians. A world that has the Earth as its homeland, the Universe as its temple, and Conscience as its guide, without divisions of class, nation and race. that is why the lords of the world (authoritarian governments, ecclesiastical power, etc.) crushed our past brothers. Remember chevillon, murdered by the Nazis. remember Stanislas Guaita, who made it very clear in his initiation speech to the 3rd degree - "call us collectivists, socialists or communists, it doesn't matter what the words are!"; remember Eliphas, sent to jail for his socialist ideal! remember the synarchy! and, remembering all this, we cannot be on the side of those who would stain their hands with blood against your own brothers."

<<<<<<

Wtf?! 

Workers´ movement: Marxism against Freemasonry

Martinism and social justice/leftist politics

Bordigist program

”Communist Program” is, or was, the English-language publication of the Partito Comunista Internazionale, or perhaps one of its splits (they often used the same name as the parent party and had politics which looked identical to outsiders). In other words, we are dealing with the Bordigist current, the ultra-dogmatic fringe of the fringe of Leninism. The Bordigists are named after Amadeo Bordiga, the first leader of the Communist Party of Italy, later defrocked by Stalin and Bukharin in favor of the more famous Antonio Gramsci. The Bordigists re-emerged after World War II in the form of the International Communist Party (sometimes called Programma Comunista). Found mostly in Italy and France, little material of this current exists in English (or Swedish).

This issue of ”Communist Program” is marked “No. 6” and was published in 1980. The articles give a slightly curious impression. They are dogmatic rather than theoretical, restating various old ”Marxist” positions (complete with the proof texts) rather than analyzing the world situation at depth or develop new theories. Indeed, the platform of this small party explicitly says that members are forbidden to develop new theories – the Marxist program as it looked like circa 1921 is apparently set in stone, period. The Bordigists are known among left-watchers for their strong sectarianism, amply confirmed in this magazine: both united fronts and people´s fronts are rejected, so is the Workers Government slogan, any support for any side in World War II, any participation in ”bourgeois” elections, and any regroupments with ”opportunist” forces to build the party. Even democratic centralism is rejected in favor of organic centralism. The revolution must be extended internationally, and Soviet Russia should have been governed by the Communist International as a whole, rather than by the Russian party alone (a peculiar proposal). What distinguishes the Bordigistas from other ultra-lefts is that they don´t reject work in the labor unions, nor do they oppose national liberation struggles. The latter are seen as bourgeois revolutions against feudalism and are still objectively necessary in the Third World. However, I get the impression that ”Communist Program” regards post-World War II national liberation struggles as fake, really being moments in the inter-imperialist competition between the United States and Stalinist Russia. Or perhaps something deeper has happened, since the article on the Sandinistas declare that even the petty-bourgeois democrats and radicals in the underdeveloped countries are a spent force for revolution, being incapable even of carrying out a genuine 19^th century “bourgeois” revolution. It´s never explained why, but it seems to have happened quite recently (i.e. recently from the vantage point of 1980).

While being extremely doctrinaire and frankly somewhat boring, the articles nevertheless also have an undertone of violence and a slight whiff of adventurism. The anonymous writers never tire of emphasizing the violent nature of the revolution, the need for mass terror after the conquest of power (”more than 1793”) and even the need for terrorism (and bank robberies) before the revolution, albeit a terrorism which is connected to mass revolutionary struggles and strictly under the control of the Party. The capitalist system in all its forms is viewed as necessarily violent and intrusive-expansive, making proletarian violence the only possible answer. Fascism is seen as the inevitable end-point of capitalism. Since the International Communist Party rejects all anti-fascist united fronts, it doesn´t really have any strategy to fight the fascist menace, except to go it alone in preparation of the final confrontation. Bizarrely, these brave sectarians then declare: ”It [the party] must do everything in its power to unleash the final attack, and when it cannot do this, it must face defeat: but it must never in a cowardly and defeatist manner beseech the devil of fascism to go away, which would amount to begging stupidly for tolerance or forgiveness from the class enemy” (p. 52) This is simply grandstanding from a bunch of intellectuals who will *never* see military or militant action.

The magazine predicts that the world will soon see a resurgence of proletarian struggles on a massive scale, something which (of course) is yet to happen, 40 years later and counting. A curious trait of Programma is that they don´t believe capitalism can ever collapse – if the working class doesn´t put an end to the system, it will simply continue on its cyclical course of boom, bust, world war and reconstruction. Somebody forgot to pass Programma the memo about environmental destruction, or perhaps they simply didn´t enjoy reading Camatte! Otherwise, I was struck by the strong contrast between the Bordigists´ super-materialist or near-determinist perspective, and the fact that *no* successful proletarian revolution ever happened anywhere in the world since 1871 (the year when capitalism ceased being progressive in the First World, according to Programma). The Russian revolution is only a partial exception to the rule, since Programma considers it a “dual” revolution (presumably proletarian and bourgeois) which later degenerated under Stalin. If conditions are so ripe for socialism, why is the Bordigist current forced to vegetate at the margins of politics in the form of small propaganda groups?

With that observation, I close this review.

Bourgeois October

“Thesis on Bolshevism” was first published in 1934 by the Dutch GIK, a Council Communist group. Council Communism represents the more “libertarian socialist” or “anarchist” part of the Left Communist spectrum (with Bordigism being the more authoritarian and “Leninist” pole). GIK and the US-based international network International Council Correspondence regrouped well-known personages such as Anton Pannekoek, Karl Korsch, Otto Rühle and Paul Mattick. My edition of “Thesis on Bolshevism” was published in 1975 by Svarta Häften, probably a proto-ICC group in Sweden (ICC as in International Communist Current).

GIK had pretty much given up on the Russian revolution, and hence didn´t see it as a “proletarian” or “socialist” revolution in any sense. Rather, the October revolution was a bourgeois revolution, but a bourgeois revolution of a very special type. The bourgeoisie in Russia was too weak to carry out “its” revolution, and this task therefore fell to the petty bourgeois intelligentsia regrouped in the Bolshevik Party, which under this scenario was “Jacobin” and didn´t represent the true interests of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks used workers and peasants as battering rams to smash Czarism and feudalism, thereby paving the way to industrial development and modernization. In the peculiar conditions prevailing in Russia, only a centralized state dominated by a new bureaucracy could modernize society. Thus, GIK´s analysis of the Russian revolution is strikingly similar to how other leftist groups analyze the post-World War II revolutions in China, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. Or, if you like these regimes, then you analyze Iraq, Libya or Syria in this way. The “deflected permanent revolution” also comes to mind, since the GIK argues that the Soviet social formation is state capitalist, indeed that it represents a particularly pure form of capitalism.

There is however a serious problem with GIK´s analysis: if the October revolution led to a particularly pure form of capitalism, and solved the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, shouldn´t the GIK logically *support* Bolshevism and even Stalinism? This is doubly true since the GIK claims that only the bourgeois revolution was possible in Russia in the first place, a workers´ revolution being utopian! However, GIK doesn´t seem to draw this conclusion, instead opposing Soviet Communism and its “state capitalism”. Perhaps they view the Soviet Union as a deadly enemy of the proletariat in the advanced Western nations? But what if state capitalism works there, too…

Somehow, it feels as if the GIK was trying to force its analysis of the Russian tragedy into the procrustean bed of Marxist dogmatics.

Surrealist International in danger?

Grandizo Munis was a Spanish Trotskyist militant who broke with the Fourth International in 1948 and formed his own little group, known as FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario). From what I heard, FOR was Left Communist, but with certain tendencies towards anarchism. There is very little material on Munis available in English, at least I haven´t seen much. “Socialism on Trial” includes a criticism by Munis of the SWP´s conduct during the Minneapolis trials, penned during his Trotskyist period. Then there is the material under review here, the pamphlet “The Fourth International in Danger” published by the otherwise unknown Greenleaf Press. It contains documents from 1944-48 written by Munis and his co-worker Benjamin Péret alias Peralta, apparently one of the founders of the Surrealist movement in France. What makes the documents sensational is that Trotsky´s widow, Natalia Sedova-Trotsky, decided to support the small dissident faction, at the time based in Mexico among Spanish exiles. Two of the documents reprinted in this pamphlet were written by Natalia Sedova, and one other is co-signed by her. The pamphlet does not include her letter of resignation from the Fourth International, since she apparently resigned later than the Munis-Peralta group. Nor is it stated when the pamphlet was published. A small group of FOR supporters apparently existed in the United States around 1980.

The Munis-Peralta group, at least in their 1944-48 incarnation, still claimed to be Trotskyist and Leninist. Their criticism of the Fourth International leadership is eclectic. It blends “sectarian”, anti-Stalinist and vaguely libertarian socialist positions. The FI leadership is sharply attacked for its alleged attempts to suppress dissent within the International, the Munis group instead calling for extensive rights to form tendencies and factions. The Soviet Union should not be defended, Stalinism and its Red Army being counter-revolutionary through and through, and no different from the Western alliance. Nationalizations have become anti-proletarian, in effect expropriating the working class, and cannot therefore be supported either (presumably this refer to nationalizations carried out by capitalist or Stalinist-dominated states). A united front with Stalinists and Social Democrats is out of the question, Munis and his collaborators rejecting the slogan of the French Trotskyists for a CP-SP government. All forms of entryism into reformist or Stalinist parties is also rejected, and the Munis group actually claims at one point that the European proletariat is highly conscious and revolutionary, simply looking for a chance to support an unsullied revolutionary leadership! Eh, come again? On the “opportunist” side of things, the Munisites actually call for an alliance of all left-socialist groups which are opposed to Stalinism and Social Democracy! The group´s position on Surrealist art is never stated, though…

I think Munis and Péret must have realized at some point that their criticism of the Fourth International made little sense from within a fundamentally Trotskyist worldview. Their anti-Stalinism was of a more “democratic” nature than that of the FI, while other positions sound more ultraleftist. Also, Munis clearly had no respect for the leaders and militants of the FI majority (including the SWP), his polemic frequently being sarcastic or over-the-top. At one point, he says that the SWP might just as well support the Western side in a coming conflict with the Soviet Union, such is their political confusion! I get the impression that Munis-Peralta were already on their way out when they wrote these documents. Nor is it surprising that they eventually ended up on the anarchist-Left Communist side of the political spectrum.

Nobody gives a damn

This is an extremely tedious Marxist booklet, published by the impressively named International Communist Current (ICC). It really does exist in about a dozen different nations, but the total worldwide membership must nevertheless be minuscule. In the United States, ICC material is distributed by a group called Internationalism. The ICC belongs to the Left Communist or “ultraleftist” tradition within revolutionary Marxism, associated with Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter and Amadeo Bordiga. “Communist Organisations & Class Consciousness” is dubbed “Pamphlet No 3” and contains the ICC's views on revolutionary organizing. It's undated, but was probably published circa 1980.

I won't go into the details here, except to note that it's a theoretical text. A large part of it is Marxism 101. Another section criticizes Lenin along the same lines as Rosa Luxemburg and the German KAPD, while nevertheless defending the October revolution and arguing that the Bolshevik party didn't degenerate until somewhat later (presumably around 1921-23, judging by other texts). The booklet ends with a criticism of the ICC's ultraleftist competitors, the Bordigists and the “councilists”. It calls on revolutionaries to intervene in the struggles of the working class in order to develop class consciousness, struggles which are said to be decisive for the world revolution.

Of course, since the ICC really rejected most forms of political activity (unions, labor parties, anti-racist campaigns, feminism, Third World solidarity etc), their “interventions” were limited to leafleting and discussing with workers on wildcat strike. Since ICC never raised any concrete demands, except “spread the strike” (outside the unions), they had zero influence. Most of the time, they simply chewed dogma. During the 1990's, they gave up even these somewhat narrow activities in favor of internal purges of “clans” and “Freemasons” (sic), but I'm digressing…

Lip service

“Lip and the Self-Managed Counter-Revolution” is a rare pamphlet published in 1975 by Black & Red in Detroit, an anarchist press associated with Fredy Perlman, who later became a contributor to the radical magazine Fifth Estate. Black & Red supported the IWW and this publication therefore comes with an IWW union bug! “Lip and the Self-Managed Counter-Revolution” is a translation of an article from an obscure French journal, Négation. The original article probably appeared in 1974. The political philosophy of Négation isn't entirely clear, but they were some kind of ultraleftists. By “ultraleftists”, I mean the political tendencies that came out of the Left Communist tradition (Council Communism, Bordigism, Battaglia Communista, etc). The Left Communists were politically “to the left” of the Russian Bolsheviks (i.e. even more sectarian). Négation's article often quotes Amadeo Bordiga, but otherwise sound more Council Communist in orientation. We are probably dealing with some kind of eclectic hybrid.

Lip (also spelled LIP) was a watch-making company in the French town of Besancon. In 1973, the Lip workers occupied their plant to stop the owner, Fred Lip, from closing it down. The occupation became famous after the workers (supported by the ex-Catholic labor union CFDT) tried to run the plant by themselves, selling watches at solidarity meetings all across France. The high tide of the struggle took place in 1973-74 and included several confrontations with the notorious French riot police, the CRS. Most left-wing radicals, naturally, supported the Lip workers (called “Lips” in the pamphlet). The small Négation group didn't. True to ultraleftist form, they condemned the struggle at Lip as “counter-revolution”. This makes their article an exasperating read, doubly so since it's liberally sprinkled with heavy “Marxist” theoretical jargon. This can't have been easy to translate! Even so, Négation's article might perhaps be of some use if you're interested in Situationism, the neo-Bordigism of Jacques Camatte or indeed Fredy Perlman. It *is* easier to read than Camatte's oeuvres.

Négation divides the evolution of capitalism into three distinct phases. Very briefly and using my own terminology, these are the eras of free market capitalism (which came to an end during the Great Depression), state capitalism and “self-management”. The state capitalist period is characterized by a bloated public sector, constant government interference in the economy, a division between managers and owners of a corporation, and the economic dominance of the credit-giving finance sector. In other words, capitalism as it looked like from the end of World War II until the 1980's. Négation doesn't regard nationalizations or state interventionism as bourgeois concessions to the working class. Quite the contrary, state capitalism is a more pure or advanced form of capitalism than the free market version, and represents “the real domination of Capital”. In the future, capitalism will be transformed one more time. Today, we know that the transformation was towards neo-liberalism and globalism. Négation's prediction was that capitalism would use “self-management” as a universal tool to make workers administer their own exploitation. Making employees and users take over public hospitals or schools is part of this ploy. They also predicted a more aggressive, nationalist and “anti-imperialist” French capitalism. In my opinion, Négation's predictions may come true, but they are still in the future as we speak.

Due to the above analysis, Négation (some members of which had bad experiences with cooperative businesses or hippy communes) condemned the Lip workers for taking over the watch-making plant in an attempt to “self-manage” it. This, Négation argues, is precisely the next wave of counter-revolution from Capital. But what should the Lips have done instead? What concrete advice can the disenchanted hippy Bordigists give them? Négation argues that during the period of “real domination”, the most important forms of anti-capitalist struggle are sabotage and absenteeism. It's not clear what this means in a Lip context. Should the workers have destroyed the machines and then gone home? Négation then writes that a world-wide socialist revolution is necessary to completely transform the human community. Indeed! So the Lips should have rioted inside the plant, absconded and waited for the apocalypse… (How this is different from, say, stoned hippies isn't entirely clear.)

In the end, I would say that “Lip and the Self-Managed Revolution” is a theoretically intriguing but practically worthless pamphlet. Still, I do think this footnote to history deserves at least the OK rating, so I give it three stars.

Just give us a job, dammit

“Trade Unionism or Socialism” is a pamphlet published by the British leftist group Solidarity. Indeed, it's subtitled “Solidarity Pamphlet no 47”. It's undated but the probable publication year is 1975. Solidarity (not to be confused with the American leftist organization of the same name) was a libertarian socialist group. Solidarity's ideas have a family likeness to Council Communism and anarchism (the “constructive” rather than the stone-throwing variety). They were inspired by “Socialisme ou Barbarie” in France, a group headed by Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. A similar group also existed in Sweden, Förbundet Arbetarmakt (FAM). After the FAM's dissolution, many of its activists joined the libertarian socialist SAC. At one of their obscure bookshops, a certain Ashtar Command picked up a representative selection of Solidarity pamphlets already 30 years ago. Time does fly…

“Solidarity Pamphlet no 47” contains two pieces by John Zerzan, an American radical who later developed in an anarcho-primitivist direction and was accused of being too friendly with the Unabomber. One of Zerzan's articles had been published previously by Telos and Black & Red. The other may have been written especially for Solidarity.

Zerzan argues that labor unions collude with management and the government to such a great extent, that they have become the fifth wheel of capitalism. Even strikes are called with the tacit approval of the management, so the workers can “blow off steam” and the union leaders keep control. The unions are so integrated into the system and so bureaucratized that workers should reject them entirely. Indeed, workers already are rejecting them. Zerzan points to the widespread and often large unofficial strikes in the United States, some with national scope. Both Solidarity and Zerzan feel that radicals in the workplace may have to be explicitly anti-union (like the KAPD and the Council Communists). It's not clear, however, what should replace the unions. It's quite common for “alternative” structures outside the traditional unions to develop into dual unions!

Perhaps foreshadowing his later anarcho-primitivist turn, Zerzan talks about a “revolt against work”. Despite pay rises and fringe benefits, workers nevertheless can't stand conditions in a modern industrial plant. From speed-ups at the assembly line to authoritarian bosses, the factory is hell. Workers respond with sabotage, absenteeism, riots or informal attempts to “plan” the production themselves. This is, at least potentially, a revolt against “work” itself, not simply a protest against this or that lousy condition. Zerzan warns that management may try to buy off the discontented workers by fake “worker participation” schemes, “job enrichment” and the like. There probably was some truth to this when the pamphlet was written.

Today, of course, with “permanent temp workers”, union busting and a global economy in which everyone is a replaceable and disposable part, the old economy with its partnership of Capital and Labor suddenly doesn't look so bad anymore – certainly not if you can get “job enrichment”, too! Ironically, even Zerzan's primitivism doesn't sound as farfetched as it did during the Reagan years, when he first seems to have adopted it. While I prefer a clinically clean factory floor to a malaria-infested jungle, the inability of “modern civilization” to become sustainable is rapidly creating the preconditions for the latter…

Oh, are we gonna love GM, Chrysler and George Meany when this is over!

Those are my reflections after reading “Trade Unionism or Socialism: The Revolt against Work” by John Zerzan, published as Solidarity Pamphlet no 47.

The end.

Supplement to world revolution

This is the third issue of International Review, the theoretical journal of a small and exotic Left Communist group, the ICC (International Communist Current). The issue is dated October 1975 and subtitled “Supplement to World Revolution and Internationalism” (two other ICC publications). Most issues of the IR should be given some kind of award for chloroform in print. Only a sense of duty could carry a non-member of the ICC through the International Review!

This early issue, by contrast, is much better written than the later issues (although its print quality, ironically, is far worse) and could even be of some interest to left-watchers, or at least ultraleft-watchers. The most interesting piece is the article “The lessons of Kronstadt”. The ICC expresses support for the 1921 Kronstadt mutiny, but with a few unusual twists. The accompanying article “The degeneration of the Russian Revolution” is a more tedious polemic against an ex-Trotskyist outfit, the Revolutionary Workers Group (any relation to the “Kollontaist” Revolutionary Workers Faction?). This issue further contains the second part of an analysis of the fascist victory in Italy, arguing that fascism and liberal democracy are twins rather than antipodes, and a reprint of a Left Communist article from 1933 discussing the character of fascism.

Not for the general reader, but perhaps of some use if ultraleftism, anarchism or Kronstadt is something you take seriously.

ICC on Poland

International Review is the publication of the International Communist Current (ICC), an organization in the Left Communist tradition. Despite being represented in at least a dozen countries, the ICC is a very small tendency. They are also extremely sectarian, rejecting virtually all forms of political activity apart from unofficial strikes and abstract propaganda for a purist socialist revolution.

This issue of International Review, dated “4th quarter 1981”, deals extensively with Poland, where massive working class struggles against the Communist regime erupted in 1980-81. The ICC, which regarded the Polish regime as “state capitalist” and “counter-revolutionary”, sided with the workers and their strike committees. The main article in this issue is titled “One year of workers' struggles in Poland” and argues in some detail that the Polish crisis confirms the ICC's worldview and political tactics. Another lengthy article, “Class struggle in Eastern Europe 1920-70”, also discusses the 1956 revolt in Hungary. “Notes on the mass strike” discusses Rosa Luxemburg's views on strike struggles and their relevance for the Polish situation.

It should be noted that the ICC didn't support the independent union Solidarnosc headed by Lech Walesa. Quite the contrary, they regarded it as an obstacle to the struggle, since Solidarnosc wanted a negotiated settlement with the regime (or at least claimed that's what they wanted). The ICC is “anti-union” and believed that the union form of organization played the same counter-revolutionary role under Stalinism as it does in Western nations. The alternative to Solidarnosc is to hold on to the independent strike committees and continue the offensive.

International Review (no 27) also contain two shorter pieces, the second part of a long criticism of Anton Pannekoek's “Lenin as Philosopher” and a leaflet against the 1981 border clashes between Ecuador and Peru, plus some comments from the editors. (Curiously, the Ecuadorean leaflet seems to have been signed “ICC” despite being printed by another group.)

This material is definitely not for the general reader, but could perhaps be useful to people who absolutely want to know how various leftist groups (including obscure ones) reacted to the Polish events in 1980-81. It should be noted that the issue was published before the suppression of Solidarnosc by General Jaruzelski.

The peaceful road to self-management

Supposed photo of Marc Chirik, ICC´s founder 

International Review is the journal of the International Communist Current (ICC). The ICC is a small group within the Left Communist tradition. Their ideas are similar in some ways to those of the Italian Left Faction, a group which existed during the 1930's and 1940's. The ICC was formed in 1975, but their elderly leader Marc Chirik had been a supporter of the Left Faction 40 years earlier. I admit that I don't really like the ICC politically, and most of their material is useless for outsiders. The sole exception seems to be the book “The Italian Communist Left 1926-1945”, reviewed by me elsewhere.

This issue of International Review (no 7, November 1976) contains translations of articles on the Spanish Civil War from Bilan, the publication of the Italian Left Faction mentioned above. The Faction opposed both the Republic and Franco (an absurd position). The other articles are much less interesting, unless you absolutely want to read the first installment in the ICC-Combate saga, which ended with Combate refusing to sell ICC's journal in their self-managed bookshop in Portugal…

I don't think they lost much money on that decision.

Brilliant but utopian

This is an undated pamphlet published by Solidarity, a small British group of libertarian socialists (the group is now defunct). The pamphlet is undated but probably printed around 1970. It contains an English translation of a text by Cornelius Castoriadis, a French left-wing intellectual of a libertarian socialist bent. Castoriadis, who often wrote under the pen name Paul Cardan, was the leading light of a small group with the dramatic name Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism). Solidarity seems to have been the main conduit of Cardan's ideas in Britain.

“From Bolshevism to the Bureaucracy” was originally Cardan's preface to a French edition of Alexandra Kollontai's famous pamphlet “The Workers Opposition”. The so-called Workers' Opposition was a dissident group within the Bolshevik Party, mostly known for its intervention at the tenth party congress in 1921. The opposition argued that the working class was in danger of losing power due to excessive bureaucratization, and that the management of Soviet industry and trade should be handed over to the trade unions rather than being the exclusive preserve of the Party. V I Lenin and Leon Trotsky weren't convinced (nor amused), and the infamous ban on “factions” was to a large extent aimed at silencing Kollontai and her supporters. This episode is important, since it shows that the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian revolution started already under Lenin and Trotsky as a result of conscious Party decisions. Trotskyists, by contrast, still argue that all bureaucratization under Lenin was the result of strictly “objective” factors (such as the Civil War), that Lenin and Trotsky opposed it, and that it wasn't until Lenin's death and Trotsky's ouster that the bureaucracy finally took power (headed by a certain Joseph Stalin). The irony of Trotsky being hit in the head by the same “ban on factions” used by himself to silence Kollontai is usually lost on these people.

Cardan's text is obviously a polemic against Trotskyism, and is liberally sprinkled with quotations from Trotsky's notorious work “Terrorism and Communism”. Cardan rejects purely “objective” explanations for the bureaucratization of Soviet Russia. The Civil War, the international isolation of the revolution and the economic dislocation were real, to be sure, but they might just as well have led to the fall of Bolshevism and the victory of the White Guards. (I would add other possibilities to the list: a populist regime, a Menshevik government, the division of Russia into a dozen nationalist-controlled republics, foreign occupation or complete chaos.) Instead, the revolution defeated its enemies, only to succumb to bureaucratic degeneration from within. Why did the defeat of the working class take *this specific form* rather than some other? Objective factors alone cannot explain it. There is an additional X factor somewhere. What is it?

The X factor is, Cardan argues, the entire prior practice of Bolshevism. This is really a no-brainer, but trust me, Trotskyists really don't get it! Bolshevism was always an authoritarian movement with the ultimate goal of creating a one-party state, a movement which converged with the revolutionary workers only temporarily. During the revolutionary year 1917, workers and peasants often took radical action without the prior consent of the Party, indeed, sometimes against its wishes. As a libertarian socialist, Cardan puts his emphasis on the Bolsheviks' top-down view of the economy and attendant exclusion of workers' self-management. Somewhat idiosyncratically, he regards Bolshevik practice as “capitalist” since it included the Taylor system and piece work at factory level, appointments rather than elections of plant managers, etc. Why should authoritarian party leadership of this type lead to any other results than the bureaucratization of the revolution? Why expect a party completely beholden to “capitalist” methods to reproduce anything else than “capitalist” social relations? Note also that other civil wars in history didn't lead to one-party states and centralized planning. Perhaps because, ahem, they weren't fought and won by Bolsheviks…

There is much truth in this, and some paragraphs in this pamphlet are simply brilliant. It's simply amazing how much Leninists, including Trotskyists, have managed to mystify these issues. However, there are also some problems with Cardan's analysis. On the one hand, he tends towards a kind of idealism: “In so far as ideas play a role in historical development, and, *in the final analysis*, their role is enormous, Bolshevik ideology (and some aspects of the Marxist ideology underlying it) were decisive factors in the development of the Russian bureaucracy”. On the other hand, when discussing the bureaucracy as such, Cardan treats it as a product of objective material factors, not “ideas”. Thus, he believes that there are two types of bureaucracy in the modern world. The first type is the managerial-administrative stratum made necessary by large scale capitalist production and societal complexity. The other is the type of bureaucracy found in the Third World, which takes political power in place of a weak bourgeoisie, and attempts to modernize society through centralized planning. He mentions China as an example of this. (The Russian bureaucracy is closest to the second type, but is unique since it took power during the degeneration of a working class revolution.) Here, Cardan is clearly talking about objective conditions. So why does he emphasize “ideas” in the Bolshevik case? How “final” is the “final analysis” in which ideas are “decisive”?

I think the problem is Cardan's utopianism. On some level, he probably does believe that Kollontai and the Workers Opposition could have saved the Russian revolution and create some kind of self-managed proletarian utopia. Hence, if the leadership (or non-leadership) of the revolution just had the right ideas, they could presumably have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. In reality, workers' self-management and libertarian socialism were the least likely outcomes of Red October, but you probably need to break more decisively with leftist dogma to realize that…