Circolo Internazionalista “Coalizione Operaia”. Critique of two of its positions

Leninism breeds confusion and support for bourgeois factions

By Aníbal

From the text of the Circolo Internazionalista “Coalizione Operaia”, Palestina 2023: il falso internazionalismo e l’indifferentismo verso la questione di classe, [English: Palestine 2023: the false internationalism and the indifferentism for the class question], I extract two positions that are worth mentioning.

1. “The recognition of the national rights of the oppressed proletarians by the proletarians of the states that oppress others is a step towards internationalist class self-determination. It is a necessary step, whatever the real possibilities of the realization of separate state entities.”
2. “Separate socialist nation-states will constitute only a transitory stage on the road to the classless and stateless society of the future, since the construction of such a society is possible only on an international scale.” See also R. Rosdolsky, The Proletariat and the Fatherland).

The first is an expression of neo-Leninism. How does this “recognition of the national rights of the oppressed proletarians” become concrete in today’s capitalist society?  By embracing the right to Palestinian national self-determination as a “preliminary stage” to then move on to the question of social revolution? In both cases there is no revolutionary clarity and strength but a noticeable slanting towards the defense of the interests of a bourgeois side. What the proletariat needs in its struggle against capitalist exploitation and domination is to support with special capacity the needs of the proletarian sectors in worse conditions and all this in a general movement of struggle for common interests, on the class terrain, international and not compatible with capital, and not on the bourgeois citizen terrain, necessarily interclassist, popular and nationalist.  In these conditions in the Middle East the common struggle must include the struggle for the end of the oppression of the Arab proletarians and of other nationalities, exploited both by the capital of Israel and of other Arab and Islamic states.

But that struggle is something concrete different from the movement for a Palestinian state. It is something that must be part of class struggles. Moreover, workers under the PNA, a second-class state in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords, continue to have fewer rights and lower wages than workers in Israel, with a lot of bureaucratic and police control and a lot of looking the other way in the face of numerous abuses by Israeli business. Part of the income that Israel’s capital pockets, returns to the PNA by way of tax and revenue control exercised by the State of Israel, which collects taxes, keeps part of it and gives the PNA the rest, basically. https://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/la-estructura-de-ingresos-de-la-autoridad-palestina-y-la-estrategia-de-contencion-de-israel

Israel’s state pimp puts the PNA in a subordinate status and erodes its bourgeois capacity, weighing down capitalist accumulation in Palestine.  Hence, behind the PNA’s demands for a Palestinian state without Israeli control, what beats is the aspiration for a greater share of income, for a greater share of capitalist surplus value. At the same time there are disputes in the Israeli bourgeoisie: https://es.marketscreener.com/noticias/ultimas/La-disputa-sobre-la-transferencia-de-impuestos-palestinos-muestra-las-tensiones-en-la-coalici-n-gob-45228046/

The second position of the Circolo Internazionalista “Coalizione Operaia” contains national socialism, in a version of counterrevolutionary Bolshevism.

For true scientific communism there can be no socialist State, since socialism implies the disappearance and overcoming of the State.  Lenin’s Russia and the USSR were not socialist and by mystifying with the denomination socialist the only thing that is done is to veil that their social relations of production were capitalist. Lenin at first qualified it by saying that it was a denomination that represented an aspiration to be achieved, not a reality but then he spoke of a society that had “left the rails of capitalism” but was not yet housed in those of socialism, calling it a “transitional society”. This transition (supposed but not real) was later defined by Bolshevism as “socialist transition” and Lenin’s theses on Cooperation (his last edited text, speaking of the necessary “cultural revolution to definitively establish socialism in the USSR) and those of Stalinism were combined: it was possible to establish socialism in the USSR which according to Lenin in “The State and the Revolution” was the “first phase of communism” in which there was still a State. In short, the camouflage of capitalist development in the USSR, and particularly of its statist expressions.

We find, then, several and important fundamental problems, historical and social.

To think that the proletariat can achieve reforms that “go along the transitional road” to realize the “future” proletarian independence is outside the real material condition, in the realm of neo-Leninist dreams. The proletariat does not have mass reformist parties and trade unions and therefore cannot influence with them the bourgeois forces and states. The left and the unions are not reformist workers forces but deep down these people seem to like to assume so. Therefore the changes that could mean reforms come from the bourgeois milieu and they hate to admit it.

So the contradictory clashes between their formulations and material reality they replace it with logorrhea about possibilities in which they wish the proletariat “should” do and say something. And, of course, the “picture of the future” is a copy of the present but with socialist nation states, supposedly socialist of course .

Besides, to think that a working class alone can make a revolution on a national level today is already a wish outside the conditions. They do not want to understand the real world which determines needs and possibilities.

Lenin’s practice, criticizable, very powerful and skillful in camouflaging the disasters of his decisions and his tactics (in the national and military question we have Finland, Ukraine, Persia, the failed offensive on Poland) is replaced by the Leninist theory which is a social democracy in an extremist tone. That is why they do not question his theorizing on imperialism and national liberation, the famous Congress of the Peoples of the East, etc. That is why Lenin’s book “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism” plays the role of unquestionable Bible, when it generates disorientation and fallacies as to the nature, mode of expression and evolutionary dynamics of imperialist capitalism besides holding positions on economics at odds and contrary to those of Marx and Engels (rupture with the law of value, prices created by the monopolies, tendency to economic stagnation, etc).

Those who cling to Lenin’s blunders and tacticisms in 1917 at the time of granting national independence to the Ukraine, and then go on to invade it, with great losses, when it cooperated with Germany against the Soviets. And likewise they continue with Finland, where Lenin did the same, which facilitated a bloody counterrevolution in Finland stimulated by Sweden and Germany. But it gave the Russian state a certain relief.  What they do is to reproduce a theory and a praxis contrary to clarity and to the revolutionary struggle against imperialist capitalism.

Rosa Luxemburg made it clear:

“the question of national currents and secessionist tendencies launched in the midst of the revolutionary struggle, yes, pushed to the fore by the peace of Brest-Litovsk and even stamped as a slogan of socialist and revolutionary politics, brought the greatest confusion to the ranks of socialism and undermined the position of the proletariat precisely in the marginal countries (p. 93) [… ] While Lenin and his party comrades evidently hoped to make the Ukraine, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, the Balkan countries, the Caucasus, etc., as defenders of national freedom, loyal allies of the Russian revolution, we saw just the opposite: one after another of these nations used their newly won freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism as the mortal enemy of the revolution and, under its protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia […] Real class conflicts led to the intervention of Germany in the Ukraine and Finland. But the Bolsheviks provided the ideology which masked this advance of the counter-revolution, strengthened the position of the bourgeoisie and weakened that of the proletariat […] Instead of warning the proletarians of the peripheral countries against any secession as a purely bourgeois trap, they confused the masses and handed them over to the demagogy of the bourgeois class. By this demand for nationalism, they themselves brought about the disintegration of Russia and placed in the hands of their own enemies the knife which would strike at the heart of the Russian revolution. … Instead of seeking, in the spirit of the new national class policy, to which they otherwise adhered, the most compact synthesis of all revolutionary forces in the whole sphere of the empire, defending tooth and nail the inviolability of the Russian empire as the sphere of the revolution, placing the solidarity and inseparability of the proletarians of all nations in the sphere of the Russian revolution as the supreme commandment of policy against all nationalist tendencies, the Bolsheviks, through the angry nationalist phrases of the right of self-determination to political secession, have provided the bourgeoisie of all the peripheral states with precisely the most desired, the most brilliant pretext, the very banner of their counter-revolutionary tendencies.” (The Russian Revolution)

Rosa Luxemburg continues:

“Thus, it was reserved for the Bolsheviks to use the phrase of the right of the peoples to self-determination as grist for the mill of counterrevolution and thus provide the ideology not only for the suppression of the Russian revolution, but also for the counterrevolutionary liquidation of the entire world class war […] It is evident that the phrase of the self-determination of the peoples and of the entire national movement constitutes the greatest danger for international socialism ” (id).

Leninism and neo-Leninism on the “national question” are not only counterproductive and erroneous, but being out of epoch they call for direct or indirect support to bourgeois factions and gangs. In imperialist capitalism there are no good and bad nationalisms, all are bourgeois and all are inserted in one way or another in the dynamics of such capitalism, in its tremendous economic competition and its militarist, cultural imperialism, in the processes of readjustment between states and bourgeois interests, which generate coalitions and blocs to ensure competition, developing for this militarism and cunning in terms of attracting to their cause popular masses where the proletariat is diluted, alien to the defense of their demands and global emancipatory objectives. There is no longer a national bourgeois struggle against pre-capitalist relations and structures, to implant and develop capitalism, but with capitalist relations dominating the international market, national liberation movements can only be the attempt of bourgeois sectors to catch their breath and gain better positions in the face of the obstacles they find in other bourgeoisies. And when they win national liberation, they must necessarily inscribe themselves in the imperialist dynamics and in it, by it and for it, establish their domination and their exploitation of the proletariat, as evidenced by the numerous examples of national liberation movements, which have also shown that after the rise to power they start to improve their inter-imperialist relations and easily, if it is in their hands, to practice militarist and economic imperialism. Vietnam invading Campuchea is the clear example. And to try to alleviate the weight of the Chinese capitalist giant they have aligned themselves with their former military enemy, the USA. India, the “dream of Gandhi and Pandit Nehru” practicing its further capitalist and imperialist development. China, winner in the struggle against Japanese imperialism as the current central axis of one of the two imperialist blocs, etc.

The proletariat can only allow itself to be dragged along by bourgeois causes, in the service of capital, or confront them and fight independently to eradicate it. Leninist positions lead to being dragged into the defense of bourgeois forces, participating in the fight between imperialist sides. 

There cannot be national socialism, this is capitalism. The Circolo Internazionalista “Coalizione Operaia” still has Leninist aspects.  Making statements following Lenin leads to defend capital, but they hide it among internationalist phraseology, and analyzing assumptions that are out of the reality of the relation of forces between bourgeois states and between the two essential classes. Thus the recognition of national rights to the Palestinian working class by the Israeli proletariat is pure pissing out of the pot.  There is nothing to indicate that the Israeli working class is going to conquer political power, nor that it wants to do so, nor that it wants to put an end to decades of bad relations with the Palestinian and Arab proletariat. And there is nothing on this side to say that the Palestinian and Arab proletariat is beginning to shake off the slab of populist nationalism (interclassism) against Zionism, etc. It will still be a long time before there can be a change in behavior.

The Israeli proletariat earns on average more than the Palestinians and massively tolerates that Palestinian industrial, business, agricultural, commercial workers are super-exploited and discriminated against legally and practically. In such conditions to go around with Leninist legends is to live on Mars and make us believe that they know what happens on earth.

The proletariat needs truth and clarity, internationalism and militant anti-capitalist solidarity, and this is the essential.

To say that there are intermediate ways, with neo-Leninist tactical resources, to reach class independence, as Circolo Internazionalista “Coalizione Operaia” says, is to divert attention. They pretend to assert themselves as true understanders of what Lenin “really” supposes, and they do not even have reformist Bolshevik parties to put pressure on other bourgeois factions. Out of touch, in short, and with stomach-turning verbiage, to be sure.

Sometimes they seem to want to be halfway between Leninism and council communism, between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin on imperialism and the “national question” avoiding the important developments of Gorter, Pannekoek and company which lead to conclusions, tactics and strategies in sharp contrast with those of Bolshevism with a century of favorable attitude to numerous bourgeois nationalist movements.

The phrase: “The national question cannot be: neither arbitrarily ‘solved’, decreeing its definitive exit from the scene of history, with no possibility of return” is fallacious and confused.  When we say that there is no longer room for national bourgeois revolution against the old regime, against the pre-capitalist factions, we are not saying something arbitrary, arising from an ideological fickleness or a fashion. It is a historical materialist conclusion of the development of world capitalism.

And when we do not defend Lenin’s nonsense about imperialism, the basis of his alibis about national emancipation and the “Bolshevik tactical tasks”, we are not saying it because we are childish fools.

To conclude, let us remember Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Pannekoek:

Yes, “in all bourgeois nationalism of an oppressed nation,” Lenin states, “there is a general democratic content against oppression, to this content we lend unconditional support.” (“The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, 1914)

“Insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation is in struggle against the oppressor,” he writes, “we are in all cases, more decisively than any other, in favor of it, because we are the most unconditional and consistent enemies of all oppression.”(id)

Rosa Luxemburg, on the contrary , held something that has indeed been corroborated in the development of imperialist capitalism. In the “Junius Pamphlet” she maintains the following:

“… (today) national phraseology … serves no other purpose than to mask more or less imperialist aspirations, and that is if it is not used as a war cry in the imperialist conflicts, the only and last ideological means to capture the decision of the popular masses and make them play the role of cannon fodder in imperialist wars.”

Anton Pannekoek adequately explained what imperialist capitalism is. In “The Economic Necessity of Imperialism“, (1916) he argues:

“In capitalism, the prosperity of each industrial group is closely related to the prosperity of the others: that follows, theoretically, from their cohesion in the production diagrams, which also shows their joint rise and fall between crisis and prosperity. When heavy industry is booming, consumer industries are booming, and vice versa. Any policy which increases the export possibilities of the former will therefore have an advantageous side for the latter, which is all the more striking because the disadvantages – in which the interests of both types of capitalists conflict – are, however, unavoidable due to the great political power of the iron magnates. To this far-reaching solidarity of interests is added the personal connection through the banks. Steel politics would not be so predominantly powerful if it were not also the politics of banking capital. The managers of the steel industry are, for the most part, also the managers of large banks; their interests are intertwined in many ways. These banks are the carriers of capital export policy, financing productive enterprises, railroads, ports, plantations, placing state loans and applying for concessions” … the real modern development in which all these different capitalists – in spite of mutual struggles – are becoming more and more a single omnipresent and dependent class. Only by taking this into account can it be understood why the will of the big concentrated capital of banking and steel is also the will of the bourgeois masses “This policy is nothing but the other side of the policy of heavy industry; for capital is exported mainly in the form of steel products. The banks have invested their money and their management in innumerable industrial enterprises of the most diverse kinds, which they bind together in a community of interests; all capitalists who are interested in these enterprises are therefore also indirectly interested in how the other affairs of this community develop; almost all small businessmen feel dependent in their affairs on the great banking capital which controls all economic life. Moreover, the role of the money-owning bourgeoisie – as the banks become more and more their entrepreneurs and the factory owners their wage earners – is more and more reduced to that of rentiers and stock speculators. The shares of all domestic and foreign enterprises, which the banks create and finance, are placed on the market; thus the large money-owning public takes a direct interest in imperialist policy. The opposition of interests which some theoreticians construct between the industry of the means of production and the other industries, as if they were independent of each other, looks very clever on paper, but it is based on a completely outdated conception of the structure of capitalism. It takes absolutely no account of the actual modern development in which all these different capitalists – in spite of mutual struggles – are becoming more and more a global and totally dependent class. Only if this is taken into account, it becomes clear why the will of the big concentrated capital of banking and steel is also the will of the bourgeois masses; why against the power of this big capital, which wants and must want imperialism, there is no other power of importance in the bourgeois world; therefore, why imperialism is necessary. But it is also clear – what the social-imperialists do not see – that imperialism is only necessary, that is to say, inevitable, as long as the power of the proletariat is not great enough to overcome the power of capital. As soon as the will and power of the proletariat rise above the power of the bourgeoisie, imperialism is finished, it is no longer necessary.” https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/t9798-la-necesidad-economica-del-imperialismo-por-anton-pannekoek-1916?highlight=pannekoek

Aníbal, 14-11-2023

Source

Circolo Internazionalista “Coalizione Operaia”.Crítica a dos de sus posicionamientos. El leninismo engendra confusión y apoyo a bandos burgueses. Translated with help of  Deepl.com Pro. Quotes have been automatically translated for spanish as well. For english sources of quotes, see the following sources recommanded by the author.

For development and expansion, see:

• The inter-imperialist war in Ukraine – From Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Gorter and Lenin to “Council Communism.” (Fredo Corvo)
  
  https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/t11017-la-guerra-interimperialista-en-ucrania-de-luxemburgo-pannekoek-gorter-y-lenin-al-comunismo-de-consejos-fredo-corvo?highlight=pannekoek
• Anton Pannekoek. Class Struggle and Nation, 1912
  
  https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/t6126-anton-pannekoek-lucha-de-clase-y-nacion-1912?highlight=pannekoek
• Herman Gorter. “Imperialism, World War and Social Democracy.” 1914: Chapter I. Imperialism and Chapter X. The Future.
  
  https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/t10873-herman-gorter-el-imperialismo-la-guerra-mundial-y-la-socialdemocracia-1914-capitulo-i-el-imperialismo-y-capitulo-x-el-futuro?highlight=gorter
• Against nationalism, against imperialism and war: world proletarian revolution! Herman Gorter and Anton Pannekoek. Various texts
• Rosa Luxemburg and nationalism. The Bolsheviks and national self-determination. The ideology of nationalism. Article of the GIC (1939)
• The GIC quotes Rosa Luxemburg on the policy of national self-determination of the Bolsheviks.