A comment on C. Mcl. ‘Has Capitalism entered its Decadence since 1914?’
The author of this (and other) works in progress, has set himself the task to confront the positions of the ICC with reality. In doing so, he is contributing to a necessary revision of the heroic effort of the ICC to synthesize the historical contributions of the Italian, German-Dutch, and other Communist Lefts. I can only confirm the urgent need for this work.
Unfortunately, he does so in partly self-chosen isolation from other comrades and from the work of analyzing present reality, taking a position, and contributing to the actual class struggle, even with the present limited possibilities. He has defended this double isolation with reference to Lenin that withdrew from the life of his party to write Materialism and Empiriocriticism; an exceptionally bad example, and in no way justifying C.Mcl.’s retreat, that has reached now about five years. Unfortunately, the dangers of this isolation from class struggle are starting to become evident when his latest publications ignore the specter of generalizing inter-imperialist wars that are haunting the proletariat, from the Middle East to Indochina, and from the Caucasus to Libya.
When the Communist International, following the efforts of mainly Lenin and Luxemburg to understand the causes of World Ware One, declared “The contradictions of the capitalist world system which were hidden deep within it have burst forth with tremendous force in a single huge explosion – the great imperialist world war” (Manifesto of the CI),this was understood by many in a mechanistic way as the end of the capitalist mode of production, because capitalism would not be able to restore itself. Indeed the national capitals that had suffered most from the war – Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Russia – completely collapsed, and so did their state power, followed by revolts and revolutions by the workers and bigger parts of a hungry and war-tired population. In Germany, this led the KAPD to theorize a ‘death crisis capitalism’ on the basis of Luxemburg’s theory of extra-capitalist markets. This theory found some evidence in the disastrous situation of the German economy but was contradicted by the post-war boom of the capitals that had won the war. In his American exile, Paul Mattick in full Depression elaborated a theory based on the tendential fall of the profit rate. Both theories could argue more or less correct that World War was the consequence of certain economic contradictions of capitalism.
It is an incontestable merit to have shown that both the theory of Luxemburg and that of Mattick/Grossman were one-factor explanations when Marx in each of his analyses of several recessions underlined another factor as the main cause and that all factors are related to each other (La crise qui vient). Linked to this C.Mcl. showed the reality of productive orders of capitalism as determining the continued survival of capitalism. However, in his aim to refute the ICC-version of the theory of decadence of capitalism, he had to follow its long-term view point of ‘before’ and ‘after 1914’. In doing so, the question of war, which is essential to the several theories of decadence, seems to have been lost.
First, let’s have a look at the theory of decadence as the ICC sees it. Is it true that capitalism, like all productive orders before it, develops according to a curve with rise, summit, and downfall? As far as I know, Marx and Engels never said anything like that. What they did say was that communism contrary to productive relations in the past will have no exploitation and repression and that the proletariat as an exploited class will have no economic power to base its political struggle, as the bourgeoisie could do. Therefore in his First draft of Civil War in France, Marx underlines that the Commune – this finally discovered form of proletarian dictatorship – is only a form in which the liberation of labor will take place by the implementation of a proletarian economy. This is of course totally unacceptable for the ‘Leninists/Trotskyists’ in the ICC, and those kicked out, for they would have to accuse Marx of Stalinism.
When capitalism is not overcome by the proletarian revolution, it will continue, finding new ways (‘productive orders’ in the words of C.Mcl.) and by a re-division of the world between imperialist powers (inter-imperialist wars) and the following redistribution of surplus-value extorted form the proletariat. Therefore it is important to analyze economic and demographic figures not as before and after 1914, but as well according to the ‘the real development’ of capital and labor: crisis, war, reconstruction, crisis. Finally, for any analysis that can explain for each generation of proletarians in each region of the world what they are living and what are the class forces of their situation, more details are needed than an overview of 250 years of world industrial capitalism or that of GB/UK. Latter can be symptomatic for the developments on the Continent, or even North-America. In this respect a good job has been done. But the world proletariat understood as the enormous masses that have lost their means of subsistence without all finding work in capitalism, from Iraq to Chile and from Pennsylvania to South Africa, cannot be satisfied with an analysis that centers around the old industrial centers of world capitalism. And neither the unemployed coal miners and steelworkers in the USA will be satisfied with the statement that there has been no net loss of jobs by the transfer of their industries to Asia.
F.C. 13-11-2020
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