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Title: Socialism or Barbarism Author: Solidarity Date: 1962 Language: en Topics: Libertarian Communism, state socialism Source: https://libcom.org/library/%EF%BB%BFsocialism-or-barbarism-1962 Notes: 1969 reprint of a text published jointly by Socialism Reaffirmed (later Solidarity), Socialisme Ou Barbarie, Unita Proletaria and Pouvoir Ouvrier Belge following their May 1961 meeting which attempted to redefine socialist objectives and methods of struggle in the conditions of the early 1960s
In May 1961 a small gathering' of revolutionary socialists was held in
Paris. Present were comrades from 'Socialisme ou Barbarie' (France),
'Unita Proletaria' (Italy), 'Socialism Reaffirmed' (Great Britain) and
'Pouvoir Ouvrier Belge' (Belgium).
The text agreed upon (published in this pamphlet) attempts to redefine
socialist objectives and methods of struggle in the conditions of the
early sixties. Much had happened in the previous decades. Profound
changes had occurred in the structure of capitalism. The promise of the
October Revolution had not materialised. Instead a monstrous bureaucracy
had assumed power over large areas of the world. In the West the
traditional organisations of the working class had proved enormous
obstacles to struggle and to the fulfilment of the aspirations of
working people.
But there had been positive aspects too. The Hungarian Revolution of
1956 had demanded workers' management of production, the equalisation of
wages and the rule of the Workers Councils. In the West, the working
class — its strength and capacity to fight unbroken at job level — was
slowly emerging from a long and difficult experience: the experience of
'its own' organisations (whether parties or unions). Young people were
showing increasing disaffection towards traditional parliamentary
politics. There had been a steady growth in anti-authoritarian
consciousness and an increasing awareness of the need for direct action.
At the time the text appeared, the 'left' was floundering. It could not
even understand the changing world around it, let alone come to grips
with it and mould it in the image of socialism. The very notion of what
socialism was all about had become utterly bureaucratised, if not
assimilated with the long-term tendencies of capitalism itself
(nationalisation, planning, economic growth, etc.). Ideas and slogans
that may have had some meaning fifty years previously were being
repeated, parrot-wise. They evoked no echo, for they were largely
irrelevant to contemporary reality. It was hardly surprising that young
people saw in the traditional organisations the mirror-images of
everything they rejected.
The 1961 text was a first attempt at a reconstruction of revolutionary
theory from rock bottom up. Its authors felt that without a development
of revolutionary theory there could be no development of revolutionary
practice. The text embodied a number of specific statements relating to
the changing structure of modern capitalism, to the nature of its
present contradictions, to the class nature of Russian and Eastern
European societies, to the 'Third World', to the socialist programme, to
how and why the traditional working class organisations had degenerated,
to what a socialist programme should be and to what kind of
revolutionary organisation was needed. The main features of this
analysis — which is still valid today — were later embodied in our
statement 'As we see it'.
In the words of our introduction of 1961, the task of theoretical
reconstruction must 'find a solid basis in the everyday experience of
ordinary people. It presupposes a radical break with all present
organisations, their ideology, their mentality, their methods of work,
their actions. Everything which has existed and exists in the workers'
movement (ideology, parties, unions, etc.) is irrevocably and
irretrievably finished, rotten, integrated into exploiting society.
There can be no miraculous solution... Everything must be begun anew,
but starting from the immense experience of a century of workers'
struggles, and with a proletariat closer today to real solutions than it
has ever been before'. The French events of May '968 highlight both the
correctness of this analysis and the urgency of the tasks ahead.
Of the various groups participating in the Paris Conference, SOLIDARITY
(previously 'Socialism Reaffirmed') alone survives. Some of the original
groups were organisationally premature. Others, after a long pioneering
battle under the difficult conditions of a movement ahead of its time,
have handed on the torch. Others yet have reverted to a more traditional
type of political thinking. But the ideas have made their way. They are
argued about today wherever revolutionaries meet to discuss politics. In
one form or another they have now become part of contemporary
revolutionary thought. (It is difficult to realise that ten years ago
terms like 'privatisation', 'depolitisation', the 'consumer society' —
or that concepts like the 'traditional organisations', 'selfactivity'
and 'self-management' — were only used by infinitesimal minorities.)
On the scale of history the increasingly widespread acceptance of this
kind of thinking far transcends in significance the perpetuation of this
or that organisation. Today dozens of small groups base themselves on
these ideas; even larger organisations are being subverted by them. In
France, in May 1968, the validity of these conceptions emerged through
the real actions of men. (Daniel Cohn-Bendit, for instance, was
specifically to state how profoundly they had moulded his own political
thinking.)
We are reprinting this text after an interval of several years. During
this period the libertarian movement has grown in size but it is still
in a state of considerable confusion. We hope the ideas outlined in this
text will help equip it with a coherent and relevant guide to
revolutionary action in the period that lies ahead.
May 1969.
undergone in the course of the last century. The same struggle between
the classes dominates social life. The same alternatives confront the
working class: to submit to ever-increasing exploitation, alienation and
enslavement — or to eliminate the exploiting classes, to destroy their
social system, and to establish working class power. Only then will it
be possible to reorganize society on a new basis and to give a new
purpose to human life.
any society. In all countries of the world these relations are
capitalist relations because they are based on wage labour. The
wage-earners, both as individuals and as a social group, are
expropriated from the means of labour, from the products of labour, and
from the control of their own activity. They are concentrated in
enterprises of various sizes where they are subjected to the ruthless
will of capital, personified in the bureaucratic managerial apparatus.
of the means of production (either in law or in fact — either
individually or collectively). It manages both production and society in
its own interests. It determines the distribution, of the total social
product and enforces it through its control of the State machine. The
other class consists of wage earners whose means of life is the sale of
their labour power, and who in the course of work merely execute orders
imposed from above.
'proletarianised'. Capitalism has invaded all sectors of the economy.
Even in the offices the dominant social form has become the enterprise
based on wage labour and organised on an industrial pattern. Within
industry there has been an increase of 'non-productive' personnel, who
in their turn are becoming 'proletarianized'. Office staff, other 'white
collar' worker's in industry or commerce, and certain categories of
Government employees, are henceforth just as much proletarians as are
manual workers. They too are wage slaves. They too are submitted to a
ruthless division of labour and perform mere tasks of execution,
carefully measured and controlled from above. Because of the numerical
increase of jobs of this type, they too are deprived of any real
prospect of a change in their conditions of life. Despite the illusions
some may retain concerning the 'status' they once enjoyed, these strata
belong to the proletariat. This is shown quite clearly by the methods of
organization and struggle they are increasingly compelled to resort to,
in the defence of their most elementary interests.
working class status in modern society. In the field of production the
extraordinary increase in technical knowledge and the increased
productivity of machines have resulted in an increased subjugation of
the worker to capital. The utterly absurd nature of work under
capitalism is being shown up more and more. The struggle at the point of
production dominates the whole organization of work. It even affects the
evolution of technology. Because of working class resistance to the
bureaucratic organization of work the capitalists have to impose an over
increasing control in the factory, over every aspect of working class
activity, whether individual or collective. This takes the form of an
increasing division of labour, of time and motion study, and of a
perpetual tendency to speed-up.
degree. The purpose is to convert the yield of the individual worker
into something increasingly easy to measure, and therefore to control.
The purpose is also to assist the imposition upon workers of methods of
production against which they constantly rebel. The tempo of living
labour is increasingly subordinated to that of the machine. The
situation is only very superficially different in the automated sectors
of production. Here the sustained nervous tension, the loneliness and
the monotony of supervisory functions create the same sense of
destruction of the worker as a human being. The same process takes place
in office work and in other sectors of the economy. Capitalist
production is characterised by the total alienation of labour. The
worker is reduced to the role of a simple 'executant' of infinitely
divided tasks. He is robbed of the control of his own activities. These
have been rigidly drawn up, defined and organized in the offices. He is
converted into a mere instrument in the hands of those who manage
production, into a mere appendage of the machine.
workers as workers has not fundamentally altered. The working class
remains exploited. It remains robbed of roughly half the product of its
labour which goes to the parasitic consumption of the exploiting class,
to the expenditure of the exploiters' State, and into investments over
which the workers have no control. The nature and objective of these
investments are determined by the class nature of society, by the
interests of its ruling class. A given pattern of investment serves to
reinforce and reproduce a given type of social structure.
either. The workers remain a subordinated class. The whole orientation
of modern society (of its economy, of its State, of its housing, of its
education, of the objects it will consume and of the news it will get,
of the questions of war and peace themselves) remains decided by a
self-perpetuating minority. The mass of the population have no power
whatsoever over this minority, be the society 'democratic' or
'totalitarian'.
show themselves primarily in the increasing concentration of both
capital and managerial functions. In the countries of 'private
capitalism' this concentration has taken certain well-known forms
(monopolies, giant enterprises, trusts and holding companies, the
creation of 'satellite' companies around the big enterprises, cartels,
agreements, professional associations of capitalists, etc.). But it also
shows itself more specifically by the new role played by the State. The
State has become the main economic factor in contemporary society. The
modern capitalist state absorbs about 25 per cent. of the total social
product, handles (directly or indirectly) about 50 per cent. of this
product, owns a substantial proportion of the total capital (often
concentrated in key sectors such as coal and railways) and finally acts
as a central agency for the regulation of the economy as a whole, in the
interests of the capitalist class.
capitalist state have resulted in certain changes in the capitalist
economy itself. Some old problems have been solved, many new ones
created. The failure to recognize these changes accounts for the
sterility of much that passes as 'marxist analysis' today. The ruling
classes have succeeded in controlling the level of economic activity and
in preventing major crises or depressions. This is a result both of the
changing structure of the economy and of the conscious intervention of
the State to stabilise economic activity and to guarantee its expansion.
Unemployment has enormously diminished. The increase of wages is both
more rapid, and especially more regular, than previously. This is a
result both of working class struggle and of a new policy on the part of
the employers, aimed at buying discipline at the point of production in
exchange for certain wage concessions. Wage increases now approximately
follow increases in the productivity of labour. This means that the
proportion of the total social product going to workers and to
capitalists remains approximately constant. An increase in mass
consumption has become indispensable to the smooth functioning of the
modern capitalist economy. It has in fact become an irreversible aspect
of it. The old 'image' of capitalism as characterised by economic
slumps, increasing unemployment, and stagnation — if not lowering of
living standards, must be discarded. The reality of contemporary
capitalism is the expansion of both production and consumption,
interrupted by minor fluctuations. This expansion is obtained at the
cost of an ever increasing exploitation and alienation of the producers
in the course of their labour.
resulted in certain changes in the classical social structure. These
relate to the social composition of the ruling class and to the moans
whereby individuals may accede to this class. As the 'rationalization'
and organisation from outside of all human activities becomes the
dominant feature of capitalist society, bureaucratisation spreads to all
spheres of social life. In the process, inherited, individual wealth
becomes relatively less important as a moans of access to the commanding
positions of the economy and of the State.
shipping, banking, insurance, etc.) is being forced to share, on an
increasing scale, the functions of administration and management (both
of the economy and of society at large) with a growing bureaucratic
stratum. This stratum is becoming an integral part of modern capitalist
societies, indispensable to their 'efficient' functioning, and
reflecting deep and irreversible changes in the structure of their
economies.
of capital and the 'rationalization' of production from outside create
the necessity for a bureaucratic apparatus in the factory. The function
of this apparatus is to 'manage' the labour process and the labour force
and to coordinate the relations of the enterprise with the rest of the
economy. The bureaucracy also finds roots in the increasing number of
individuals involved in the higher reaches of state activity
(nationalised industries, government economic agencies, etc.). This is a
result of the profound changes that have taken place in the economic
role of the state. The bureaucracy finally finds its roots in the
political and trade union organisations of the working class itself. To
straight-jacket the workers, to integrate them more and more into the
existing social order, requires a specific apparatus. This apparatus
participates to an increasing degree in the day-to-day management of
capitalist society, of which it is an integral part. The bureaucracy is
not a homogeneous social formation. It has developed to varying degrees
in various countries. Its economic basis is the final stage in the
concentration of capital, namely the tendency of monopoly capitalism to
fuse completely with the state. In the countries of classical capitalism
the managerial bureaucracy is not based on any fundamentally new mode of
production or new pattern of circulation of commodities. It is based on
changes in the economic basis of capitalism itself.
structure of the ruling class. New elements have had to be incorporated
and the diffusion of privileges extended. New hierarchical relationships
emerge. The process has been a very uneven one, the resistance of the
old ruling classes to fusion with the new strata varying considerably
from place to place. It has varied according to the economic problems
confronting the capitalists, according to the pressures of the working
class for more radical solutions and according to the degree of
historical insight which the rulers have achieved.
contradictions of the system which lie in the field of production and of
work. These are the contradictions contained in the alienation of the
worker. Capitalism attempts by all possible means to transform the
workers into mere executors of tasks decided by others, into mere cogs
of its industrial machine. But if it succeeded in this attempt,
capitalism would cease to function. Capitalism constantly attempts to
exclude the workers from the management of their own activities — but is
at the same time constantly obliged to seek their participation. This
contradiction dominates every capitalist enterprise. It provides the
framework within which the class struggle is constantly regenerated,
whatever the level of wages.
'rationalization' of their enterprises, by Taylorism, by work study
methods, by the use of industrial sociologists and psychologists, by
talk of the 'importance of human relations' have all miserably failed.
They have done nothing to lessen the intensity of the class struggle
which today opposes workers and management, in every country in the
world, in disputes concerning conditions and tempo of work and the
control of human activity in the process of production.
every aspect of collective life. For instance political life is
organized in such a manner as to exclude the vast majority of the
population from any effective management of their own affairs. The
corollary is indifference and apathy. These in turn make it difficult
for capitalist political institutions even to function according to the
requirements of the capitalist class itself. A minimum of genuine
participation is required to prevent these organizations being shown up
for the complete sham that they are.
its irrationality and its fundamental anarchy. Both at the level of the
factory and at the level of society as a whole, the bureaucratic
capitalist management is a mixture of despotism and confusion which
produces a fantastic human and material wastage" The ruling classes and
their bureaucratic apparatus constitute a small minority of society.
They are separated both from the immense majority of mankind and from
social reality itself. Because of this they are incapable of effectively
managing even their own system, in their own interests. They are even
less capable of solving the immense problems confronting humanity today.
Because of this, and despite the elimination of economic crises of
classical type, capitalism cannot and will never be able to avoid crises
of another kind: moments when the irrationality of the whole system
explodes in one way or another, bringing with it periodic breakdowns of
the 'normal' functioning of society.
after day capitalism demonstrates its incapacity to solve the problem of
relations between men in the process of production. It also demonstrates
its inability to solve any of the other major problems of social life in
the 20th century. Its political institutions are an object of contempt
for the general population, which is increasingly losing interest in
'traditional' politics. There is a general decay of all its values:
moral, political, social and cultural. The crisis in the traditional
conception of the family and the increasingly bureaucratic, artificial
and absurd nature of 'education' in modern society have provoked, in all
industrial countries, an immense revolt of youth. Youth today tries to
live its life both outside and against established society. This has
immense revolutionary implications.
proposing to humanity is the carrot of 'a rising standard of living'.
All that they mean by this is an increase in the consumption of material
goods. But this increase is constantly outpaced by the increase in
'needs' which capitalist society automatically generates or quite
artificially creates. The struggle for status and the acquisition of
wealth is far more intense in an advanced industrial community than in a
primitive African village. The slow but regular increase in living
standards, which is a feature of contemporary capitalism, is
counteracted by the increasing fatigue and alienation at work. It does
not lessen the smouldering dissatisfaction of millions of individuals
with their conditions of life, nor does it lessen the underlying social
tensions. We have only to look for confirmation of this assertion, at
the sustained nature of the class struggle in precisely those countries
where working class wages are highest.
these countries a bureaucracy has taken over the functions of management
of the economy and of the State previously performed by private
capitalists. This bureaucracy manages production and decides in a
sovereign manner, through its control of the State machine, on the
distribution of the social product. This bureaucracy was either born of
the degeneration of the proletarian revolution (as in Russia) or through
the incorporation of various countries into the sphere of Russian
domination (as in Eastern Europe). In certain 'backward' countries the
bureaucracy stepped into the political vacuum created by the complete
disintegration of all established social relations. In countries such as
China, for instance, it assumed its dominant position through the
'leadership' it provided to the masses in revolt. The rise to power of
the bureaucracy in these countries is assisted by the absence or
relative weakness of a class-conscious proletariat capable of imposing
its own solutions to the crisis of modern society.
property relations, either expropriating or fusing with the traditional
ruling classes. Nowhere however has it altered the relations of
production, the contradiction between rulers and ruled in the productive
process. These societies remain class societies. The class struggle
continues within them. Its objectives are not merely a redistribution of
the surplus value. It is also to determine which class (bureaucracy or
proletariat) shall dominate production and society.
allowed the bureaucracy in these countries to proceed with an extremely
rapid accumulation of capital, based on an intense exploitation of
labour. The bureaucracy has been able to industrialise the countries it
dominates far more rapidly than private capitalism was ever able to do.
But industrialisation is not socialism. Neither 'nationalisation' nor
'planning' eliminate classes and the struggle between them. Whether they
be in private hands or 'nationalised' the means of production will never
be genuinely collective property as long as the workers do not, in fact,
dispose of them, in other words as long as the workers do not directly
and totally manage production, determining both its methods and its
objectives,
manner. It does so both at the level of the individual enterprise (where
organisation, methods of work and patterns of remuneration do not differ
in any respect from what pertains in a capitalist factory) and at the
level of the economy as a whole. 'Planning' is not subject to any kind
of control by the masses. It is the instrument whereby the bureaucracy
guides the whole of production in its own interests and fulfils its
long-term objectives. The political dictatorship of the 'Communist'
Parties and their absolute control over all aspects of life are the
indispensable means whereby the bureaucracy ensures its privileges and
maintains its total domination over society.
of the worker in capitalist society or solve the crisis confronting
society. The programme of yesterday's reformists has been realised today
in a whole series of countries. In the process it has proved its own
futility! Historical experience has also shown that no stratum,
category, or organisation can achieve socialism 'on behalf of' the
proletariat and in its place. Socialism will only be built through the
radical destruction of the present social system. To the extent that
present society is more and more dominated by the bureaucracy this means
that socialism will only be built through the destruction of all
bureaucracies (including those presenting themselves as the 'leadership
of the proletariat'). This means that socialism will only be achieved
through the autonomous and self-conscious activity of the working
masses. 'The emancipation of the working class is the task of the
working class itself.
means the abolition of all dominating and privileged strata in society.
It therefore implies the abolition of any social group claiming to
manage production or the State 'on behalf of the proletariat'.
of the capitalists and the suppression of the bureaucracy in the
workshops, in the state, and in society at large. It must give the
management of production in the factories to the workers (manual
workers, employees and technicians) who operate them. The organs of this
management will be assemblies of workers, shop assemblies, departmental
assemblies, factory assemblies and factory councils composed of elected
representatives, revocable at all times. Production will be planned
according to human needs. A variety of alternative plans will be drawn
up, electronic equipment being used to an increasing degree to work out
the inter-related needs of various sectors of the economy. This is the
purely technical aspect of planning. The implications of the various
plans (in relation to such basic human questions as hours of work, level
of consumption, level of investment) will then be presented to the
people. A meaningful and genuine choice will become possible. This is
the political aspect of planning. All revenue derived from the
exploitation of labour will be abolished. There will be equality of
wages and pensions until it proves feasible to abolish money.
in contemporary society. The socialist revolution will have to destroy
the state as an instrument of coercion, independent and separate from
the bulk of the population. The administration of production and the
forms of social organisation will be radically different from the
present one. The new institutions will be managed by those who work in
them. The standing army and the police force will be abolished. The
'armed people' themselves will defend the revolutionary power, against
attempts at counter-revolution. The main threats to the new society will
come not only from the deposed ruling class. It will also come from
bureaucratic tendencies within the working class itself, particularly
those advocating the delegation of industrial management or political
power to 'specialised' minorities, The functions of government will be
in the hands of assemblies of elected and permanently revocable
representatives of the factory committees and of other sections of the
working population.
elimination of bureaucratic anarchy and waste, combined with the changed
attitude of workers towards the productive machine over which they have
real mastery, will permit society to develop production and consumption
to unsuspected degrees. But this development will not be the fundamental
preoccupation of the socialist revolution. From the very onset the
revolution will have consciously to turn towards the transformation of
man. It will devote great efforts to changing the very nature of work
(from subjection to the machine, which it is today, into an endeavour
where creative faculties will be allowed to flourish to the full). It
will have to create a universal education of a totally new kind. It will
have to abolish the barriers between education and work, between
intellectual and manual training, between the school and real life. It
will have to abolish the division between town and country and seek to
create integrated human communities.
future.. If they are, people will feel that things have not really
changed in the areas that concern them most, The activity of the masses
will wane. For the sake of 'efficiency', 'specialists' will step in and
start taking the decisions themselves. They may do so at first with the
best of revolutionary intentions, but the revolution will soon begin to
degenerate. The socialist revolution only stands a chance of being
victorious (as a socialist revolution) if from the very first day it is
capable of showing mankind a new way forward and a new pattern of life
in all fields of human activity.
contradictory aspects. In production the struggle shows an intensity
never witnessed hitherto. It takes place both in the field of purely
economic demands but also, and on an increasing scale, on questions
concerning conditions of work and life in the factory. The 'wildcat'
strikes in the USA and the 'unofficial' strikes in Britain provide
repeated examples of this tendency. But outside the factory the class
struggle does not manifest itself as it used to. Or it only manifests
itself in an abortive way, deformed by the bureaucratic working class
organisations. Occasionally these mobilize particular categories of
workers and bring them out in 'disciplined' and bureaucratically managed
strikes. Or else the 'struggle' finds expression in purely electoral
support for the so-called workers' parties, In the field of politics the
present period is characterised by an almost total absence of
proletarian participation. This phenomenon (which has been called apathy
or depolitisation) goes much deeper than any previous or temporary
fluctuation in the level of working-class political activity.
of its own. It does not mobilize itself — except in an electoral sense —
to support the parties which claim to represent it. The active members
of these parties are rarely workers. Looked at from the outside the
proletariat appears utterly dominated by its political and trade union
machines. But this domination is an increasingly hollow one. It masks a
total absence of working class participation. The support is purely
passive. The roots of this situation are to be found in two intimately
interrelated processes; the evolution of modern capitalism and the
bureaucratisation of working class organisations.
leaders' who 'betray'. The problem has much deeper roots. It is due
primarily to the pressures and influences of capitalist society on the
proletarian movement. Originally created to overthrow bourgeois society,
the political and trade union organisations of the working class have
increasingly adopted the objectives, methods, philosophy and patterns of
organisation of the very society they were striving to supersede. There
has developed within their ranks an increasing division between leaders
and led, order-givers and order-takers. This has culminated in the
development of a working class bureaucracy which can be neither removed
nor controlled. This bureaucracy pursues objectives of its own.
working class. In reality they see the class as a mass to be manoeuvred,
according to the pre-conceived ideas of those who dominate the
particular Party machine. They all see the objective of working class
emancipation as an increased degree of working class participation in
general 'prosperity'. The reformists claim that this can be achieved by
a better organisation of traditional capitalism. The Stalinists and
Trotskyists claim that what is needed is a change in the formal
ownership of the means of production and planning from above. Their
common philosophy boils down to an increase in production and
consumption guaranteed by the rule of an elite of managers, seated at
the summit of a new hierarchy based on 'ability', 'experience',
'devotion to the cause', etc... This objective is no different from the
essential objectives of contemporary capitalism itself.
some anarchists would claim). Nor is it due to the fact that reformists
and Stalinists have 'wrong ideas' and provide 'bad leadership' (as
sundry Trotskyists and Leninists still maintain). Still less is it due
to the bad influence of particular individuals (Gaitskell, Stalin,
etc...). What it really reflects is the fact that even when struggling
to overthrow the capitalist system the working class remains a partial
prisoner of the system, and this in a much more subtle way than is
usually understood. It remains a prisoner because it continues to
conceive of its liberation as a task to be entrusted to the leaders of
certain organisations to whom the class can confidently delegate its
historical role.
have long ceased to express the historical interests of the workers. The
reformist bureaucracy aims at securing a place for itself in the
management of the capitalist system as it is. The Stalinist bureaucracy
aims at instituting in various countries a regime of the Russian type
where it would itself become the dominant social group. In the meantime
the Stalinist bureaucracy aims at using the working class in the West as
pawns for the foreign policy of the Russian bloc.
and Stalinist parties and unions have as their ultimate objective the
integration of the proletariat into class society. They are the vehicles
through which capitalist ideas, attitudes and mentality seep into the
proletariat. They seek to canalise and control all manifestations of
working class revolt against the existing social order. They seek to
limit the more extreme excesses of the system, the better to maintain
exploitation within 'tolerable' limits. They give the workers the idea
that they are genuinely represented and that they 'participate' in the
management of society. Finally, and above all, they repeatedly negotiate
wage concessions in exchange for an increased subjugation of the working
class in the process of production itself.
confronted with an insoluble dilemma. On the one hand they are
institutions belonging to established society. On the other hand they
aim at maintaining within their framework a class whose conditions of
life and work drive it to destroy that very society. The individual
participation of revolutionaries in these organisations should be
determined by prevailing conditions (degree of working class composition
and participation, national traditions, nature of the organisations,
etc.). But it is out of the question for revolutionaries to take over
important posts in these parties or unions, or for the revolutionary
organisations to set themselves the target of 'reforming' or 'capturing'
them. Working class illusions about the possibility of 'democratizing'
or changing these outfits must not be encouraged, and must in fact be
exposed. The organisations which the working class needs must base
themselves on a totally different ideology and structure and use
entirely different methods of struggle.
The working class organisations have become indistinguishable from
bourgeois political institutions. They bemoan the lack of working class
participation but each time the workers attempt massively to
participate, they shout that the struggle is 'unofficial' or against the
'best interests' of the union or of the Party. The bureaucratic
organisations prevent the active intervention of workers. They
prostitute the very idea of socialism which they see as a mere external
modification of existing society, not requiring the active participation
of the masses.
undergone by capitalist society. Economic expansion, full employment,
the gradual increase in wage rates, mean that for a whole period (which
has not yet come to an end) the illusion of progress still affects the
working class. A higher standard of living appears possible and becomes
one of the main preoccupations. This attitude is deliberately and very
skilfully fostered and manipulated by capitalism, for its own ends.
capitalist society. Possibilities are steadily increasing for workers to
achieve the deepest possible insight into their real condition and to
understand the real problems they will have to face in order to free
themselves in production. The steady increase of consumption of a
capitalist type creates its own problems. Goods in increasing quantity
are bought at the cost of increasing exhaustion at work (this often
makes the enjoyment of the goods quite impossible!). 'Needs' appear to
be never ending. The absurd rat-race after a ceaselessly increasing
standard of living generates its own resistances. These help loosen the
grip the ruling class exerts on this method of manipulating the masses.
Workers will increasingly see the key problem confronting them as that
of their condition, as human beings, within production and at work. This
problem is quite insoluble within capitalist society, whatever the level
of wages . The problem confronting workers will become more and more
explicitly that of transforming production itself: in other words that
of workers' management.
experience of its own bureaucratic organisations. This will help it
understand that the only valid solution to its problems is through
autonomous action, through taking its fate into its own hands.
precisely such an experience. Increasing numbers of strikes in Britain
and in the USA relate to conditions in the factory. This problem is
gradually becoming the central one confronting the working class. Even
if only implicitly and to a small degree, it is the question of
management of the enterprise and of production which is raised every
time the workers challenge managerial rights. The increasing number of
'wildcat' strikes in the USA and of 'unofficial' strikes in Britain show
clearly that many sections of the working class are beginning to
understand the real nature of the trade union bureaucracy . The same
problems, in all their breadth, were at the centre of the Hungarian
Revolution of 1956. During this great uprising the workers sought both
to destroy the bureaucracy as such and to impose their own rule over
production, through their workers' councils, the organs of their own
power.
revolutionary organisations. It is more than ever obvious that such
organisations are needed to assist workers in the class struggle today.
This was shown very clearly by the recent experience of the Belgian
General Strike.
(and indeed impossible) unless it bases its ideas, its programme, its
structure and its methods of action on the historical experience of the
working class, particularly that of the last 40 years. This means it
must draw the full lessons of the period of bureaucratisation and that
it must break with all that is mere ritual or hangover from the past.
Only in this way will it be able to provide answers to the real and
often new problems which will be posed to the working class in the
period to come.
of capitalism must be radically changed. The critique of production and
work under capitalism must be at the centre of the preoccupations of the
revolutionary organisation. We must give up the idea that capitalism
creates rational factories and rational machines and that it organizes
work 'efficiently' although somewhat brutally and for the wrong ends.
Instead we must express what every worker in every country sees very
clearly that work has become absurd, that it means the constant
oppression and mutilation of workers and that the bureaucratic
organisation of work means endless confusion and waste. Material poverty
must of course be exposed, where it exists. But the content of
consumption under capitalism must also be exposed. It is not enough to
criticize the smallness of the education budgets we must denounce the
content of capitalist education. We must denounce the concept of the
school as an activity apart from life and society. It is not enough to
demand more subsidies for housing: we must denounce the idea of
barrack-towns and the way of life they entail. It is not enough to
denounce the present government as representing the interests of a
privileged class. We must also denounce the whole form and content of
contemporary politics as a business for 'specialists', concerned merely
with a small number of circumscribed questions. A revolutionary
organisation must break with traditional politics. It must show that
revolutionary politics are not confined to talk of wages, government and
international affairs, but that they deal with everything that concerns
man and his social life.
organisations (whether reformist, Stalinist or Trotskyist) must be
radically exposed. The idea that socialism only means the
nationalisation of the means of production and planning — and that its
essential aim is an increase in production and consumption — must be
pitilessly denounced. The identity of these views with the profound
orientation of capitalism itself must constantly be shown. Socialism is
workers' management of production and of society and the power of the
workers' councils. This must be boldly proclaimed and illustrated from
historical experience. The essential content of socialism is the
restitution to men of the domination over their own life, the
transformation of labour from an absurd means of breadwinning into the
free and creative action of individuals and groups, the constitution of
integrated human communities and the union of the culture and the life
of men. This content of socialism should not be shamefully hidden as
some kind of abstract speculation concerning an indeterminate future. It
should be put forward as the only answer to the problems which torture
and stifle society today. The socialist programme should be presented
for what it is: a programme for the humanisation of labour and of
society. Socialism is not a back-yard of leisure attached to the
industrial prison. It is not transistors for the prisoners, It is the
destruction of the industrial prison itself.
economic demands are the central problem for the workers and that
capitalism is incapable of satisfying them. This idea must be
repudiated, for it no longer accurately corresponds to reality. The
activity of the revolutionary organisation in the unions should not be
based on out-bidding other tendencies on economic demands. These are
often supported by the unions and are eventually realisable by the
capitalist system without major difficulty. The ability of the system to
grant such wage increases is in fact the basis of the permanent
reformism of the unions. Contemporary capitalism can only live by
granting increases in wages and for that the bureaucratised and
reformist unions are indispensable to it. This does not mean that
revolutionaries should quit the unions or cease to fight for economic
demands. It means however that neither of these points has the central
importance that was formerly given to it.
of a hierarchical relationship. The 'need' for such a hierarchical
organisation is defended by both the capitalists and by the workers'
organisations. It has in fact become the last ideological support for
the whole system. The revolutionary movement must organise a systematic
struggle against the ideology of hierarchy in all its manifestations,
including the hierarchy of salaries and jobs in the factory and in the
workers' own organisations.
as important as what is obtained. Even from the point of view of
efficiency, actions organised and led by the workers themselves are
superior to actions decided and led bureaucratically. They alone create
the conditions of progress, for they alone teach the workers to run
their own affairs. The first rule guiding the activity of the
revolutionary movement should be that its interventions aim not at
replacing but at developing the initiative and the autonomy of the
workers.
difficult for workers to pass from their own experience to an
understanding of the problems of society as a whole. In this field the
revolutionary organisation has a most important task to fulfil. This
task must not be confused with sterile agitation or speculation
concerning incidents in the political life of the capitalist or
degenerated workers' parties. It means showing that the system always
functions against the workers and that they cannot solve their problems
without abolishing both capitalism and bureaucracy and without
completely reconstructing society. It means pointing out to workers that
there is a profound and intimate analogy between their fate as producers
and their fate as men in society. Neither the one nor the other can be
modified without abolishing the division of society into a class which
takes the decisions and a class which merely executes orders. Only
through long and patient work in this direction will it be possible to
pose anew — and in correct terms — the problem of mobilising the workers
on general questions.
generations are without common measure with the previous conflicts of
generations . Youth today no longer opposes adults with a view to taking
their place in an established and accepted system. They refuse this
system. They no longer recognize its values. Contemporary society is
losing its hold on the generations it produces. The rupture is
particularly brutal in politics. The vast majority of politically active
workers and supporters of traditional 'left' organisations, whatever
their good faith and goodwill, cannot make their reconversion. They
remain trapped in the ideology of a previous period. They repeat
mechanically the lessons and phrases learnt long ago, phrases which are
now empty of all revolutionary content. They remain attached to forms of
action and organisation which have collapsed. The traditional
organisations of the left succeed less and less in recruiting the youth.
In the eyes of young people nothing separates these organisations from
the moth-eaten and rotten parties of privilege they meet on coming into
the political world. The revolutionary movement will be able to give a
positive meaning to the immense revolt of contemporary youth and make of
it the ferment of social revolution if it can express what youth is
looking for and if it can show youth effective methods of struggle
against the world it is rejecting.
revolutionary organisation. The organisation is not, and cannot be, the
'leadership' of the proletariat. It should be seen as an instrument of
the proletarian struggle. The role of the organisation is to help
workers in struggle and to contribute towards clarifying and
generalising their experiences. The organisation pursues these aims by
the use of all methods consistent with its final objectives: the
development by the proletariat of a lasting consciousness and ability to
manage its own affairs.
towards bureaucracy (constantly engendered under capitalist conditions)
unless it functions itself according to the principles of proletarian
democracy and in a consciously anti-bureaucratic manner. This implies a
total rejection of 'democratic centralism' and all other forms of
organisation that encourage bureaucratisation. Genuinely revolutionary
organisation implies a) the widest autonomy of all the local groups, b)
direct democracy rather than delegation of decision-taking to be applied
wherever possible, and c) centralisation, where necessary, to be
achieved through delegates elected and revocable at any time by their
local groups. More than constitutional guarantees are required however
to defeat the tendency towards bureaucracy. This will only be overcome
to the extent that a genuinely collective participation of all members
can be achieved, both in relation to activities and in relation to the
formulation of policy.
The revolutionary organisation must participate in the struggles of
workers and other sections of the population, both assisting them and
learning from them. While unconditionally defending the struggles of
workers for their immediate interests, the organisation should put
forward suggestions for linking these immediate struggles with the
historical objectives of the proletarian movement (demands against wage
differentials, demands opposing the alienation of workers in
production). The organisation should support all methods that make
possible collective action and control by the workers of their own
struggles (elected and revocable strike committees, mass meetings of
workers before important decisions are taken, etc.). It should denounce
bureaucratic forms of organisation and propagate the idea of more
representative institutions (such, as the shop stewards' movement). It
should finally seek to achieve the widest possible solidarity with
workers engaged in struggle, seek to disseminate accurate information
about these struggles and point out the lessons to be drawn from them.
together the proletarian struggle and the struggle of other sections of
the population, equally deprived of any effective say in the management
of the affairs that concern them most. The anti-war movement is
particularly important in this respect. Both provide radical challenges
to established society. Both necessitate a type of action only possible
outside of the traditional organisations. Both command the enthusiasm of
youth. Both are capable of generating new forms of struggle and of
organisation profoundly relevant to the socialist future. Part of the
propaganda and of the activities of the revolutionary organisation
should be directed towards new layers of wage earners (white collar
workers, office workers, students and intellectuals). The similarity
between their objectives and those of the working class should
repeatedly be pointed out, as should the only possible solution to both:
the complete democratisation of society through the socialist
revolution.
generalise the experiences of the working class in order to raise its
struggle from the level of the factory to that of society as a whole.
This implies a critique of capitalist society in all its aspects, along
the general lines we have here outlined. It also means bringing back to
the working class the real programme of socialism: collective management
of a genuinely human society.