General Meeting Reports – 118 to 121

A successful party general meeting

25-26 January 2014
[GM118]

The Party’s January meeting took place in Florence in our spacious local offices. As far as the logistical arrangements were concerned, everything went very well, with comrades sticking to agreed arrival and departure plans, etc, etc, as anticipated. A broad cross-section of almost all of our groups, from Italy and elsewhere, young and old, were thus able to actively participate in all the sessions, easily follow the numerous reports, and assist with on-the-spot summaries translated into Spanish and English.

But the reason our reduced forces can physically produce so much is due not so much to organizational efficiency but to our communist party way of working. Indeed, as we know, the purpose of the general meetings is to work together. There are no decisions to be taken; no lines to be established, since these were fixed over a century and a half ago; and no positionsto be affirmed, apart from those already contained in our texts and theses. We are therefore, happily, freed from the waste of time all that would necessarily entail and can focus on dispassionately rediscovering what we already know, formally defining it in an ever more rigorous way, and comparing the facts of the past with the latest events in this decaying bourgeois world beyond which we can catch a glimpse of the inevitable communist society, which the party is fighting for, and of which it is the living anticipation.

A very busy party meeting in Genoa

24-25 May 2014
[GM119]

Our regular party meeting took place in its usual, orderly way with great commitment shown by all of those who attended. Proceedings were conducted using our distinctive method of working, devoid of rivalry between individuals and groups and competing theses, which we are proud to say represents an entirely different approach to that of present day bourgeois society. We believe this is possible not just because our current team of militants is small, and its sphere of influence very restricted; on the contrary, we are certain that in the future it will also inform the global communist party, fighting its enemies in the civil wars to come.

But the best demonstration of the superiority of the party’s working methods lies in the work it has done. We therefore, for the benefit of absent members and readers, give a brief summary of that work here, full presentations of which can be found in our review Comunismo, and some of which have been translated into other languages.

General party meeting in Turin

20-21 September 2014
[GM120]

The party general meeting was held on this occasion in a Turin restaurant from the 19^th to the 21^st September, with a large turnout which included representatives from most of our groups.

Once again we were both proud and happy with the way work progressed, viewing it as further confirmation of the effectiveness of the communist model of internal party relations, which shuns both amorphous and individualist ’assemblyism’ and the dictatorship of majorities over minorities; which sets out to be a real working structure, observing discipline in a spontaneous and natural way, and in which its internal mechanisms, its general rhythms and the course it follows all form a united whole.

Certainly we do not proclaim ourselves to be the party of the working class on account of our present number of followers or the express approval of workers and proletarians, which is what a democrat would be looking for, but, first of all, because the party is firmly grounded in authentic Marxism, whose orthodoxy the Left defended against later degenerations; a Marxism which has demonstrated, over a long historical period of testing and experimentation, that it is the only doctrine and social science which can fully explain the facts of past class struggles, whose historic course it fully anticipated; and secondly, because we lay claim to a coherent approach to tactics, which derives from that theory, and which we are constantly presenting to the class during its struggles. These positions and indicators which the party sets before the class are today the only ones that actually correspond to the requirements of its battle, surrounded by its enemies on all sides, and to the necessary future course of its emancipation.

Proceedings of the party’s general meeting in Florence

24-25 January 2015
[GM121]

The long counter-revolutionary historical cycle, which commenced with the defeat of the revolution in Europe, Russia and China in the mid 1920s, and which took the interchangeable forms of Stalinism, fascism and democracy; and which then became firmly entrenched here during long decades of non-war, during a short-lived but virulent productive euphoria, followed by slow, relentless decline; these conditions, highly unfavourable to our small party, nevertheless gave it the possibility of maintaining an uninterrupted continuity in its positions, existence and work over a period of time unequalled in the history of revolutionary parties.

This difficult undertaking of many generations of communists, to prepare the embryonic party destined to lead the pending international revival, drew lessons from the defeats of the past and proceeded to restore Marxism to its uncorrupted state, recapitulating what had gone before and inserting into its unchanging doctrinal framework the latest events, which, over the course of the last century, have severely disrupted the persistently restless global capitalist system, bound by its own immutable laws.

Over many decades, the results of this ongoing work have accumulated in the columns of our press, and they now form a legacy – all intricately connected even if dispersed across countless yellowing volumes, in various critical studies and in various languages – which is the party, and without which the party does not exist.

And this is why the movement never forgets the connection between its past work and today’s, supporting today’s work on the solid foundation of yesterday’s. It is known that we like to engage in dialogue with our dead comrades. For this reason and at a timely moment the party came up with the means – the “Indices of the Party’s work”, initially stencilled and distributed to every section – so we could improve access to this vast mass of material, which, while it may appear to be jumbled and disconnected at first glance, is entirely coherent. This fundamental task is one to which the movement continues to dedicate its attention.

The party’s general meetings also serve that purpose, of reminding us of what has already been done, of connecting our present with our past. And that is precisely what we also aimed to do at this general meeting, with almost all of our groups represented.

On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning there was the general planning meeting, and on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning we listened to several reports, all of which were very interesting and extremely important; in fact all of them are really attacks on the fortress of capital; all from various different angles but all part of one unique plan to destroy it.
 

Course of the economic crisis in the realm of production and finance

[GM118-119-120]

We summed up the course of the economic crisis from the post-war period to the present basing it on the report published in Il Programma Comunista, 1957, which included the table ’Percentage distribution of world industrial production’. 18 years later, in 1975, we published an updated version of it in Il Partito Comunista with a commentary on its significance. Eventually in 1991, another16 years having passed, we republished it in our Course of the World Economy with figures updated to the year 1985. Finally now, 13 more years of grim social counter-revolution having elapsed, years which have nevertheless also been ones of irresistible and extremely revolutionary development, and envelopment, of the world by capitalism, we are analysing this latest stage, to see how the balance has shifted between the different powers. The world has certainly changed a lot in that time.

Our aim is to provide an overall view of the course of imperialism since the major crisis in 1974-5 and to explain the development of the crisis of over-production into which world capitalism plunged from the middle of 2008.

Two fundamental contradictions are strangling capitalism: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the impossibility of finding an equilibrium between production, which manifests as a massive accumulation of commodities, and the market. The intersecting of these two contradictions leads to periodic crises of over-production; crises which illustrate the paucity of the capitalist mode of production, which can no longer allow free development of the productive forces. The law of value, fundamental for the accumulation of capital, has become an obstacle to the development of the vital forces of humanity.

It is a contradiction that can only be resolved by the communist revolution, which will abolish the relations of production based on the law of value, capital and wage labour along with the law of value itself, and move on manage production on a social basis, the foundations of which have been laid by capitalism itself.

The fall in the rate of profit translates into a slowing down of accumulation and consequently production. That doesn’t mean to say that growth is arrested or that production diminishes, but that from one cycle to another its rate of growth in percentage terms, relative to its mass, falls, tending toward zero growth.

Every cycle has for its point of departure the maximum reached before the crisis, there is then a decline in production for a few years, the seriousness of which varies according to its depth and duration, its point of arrival is then the new maximum reached after production picks up again, immediately before the next recession. Thus capitalism is forever passing from one cycle to another and from one crisis of over-production to the next.

A table of average annual percentage increases in industrial production was displayed showing cycles of capital accumulation between1900 to 2007. The first cycle begins in 1900, marking the coming of age of the era of imperialism, and finishes in 1913, on the eve of war. The second cycle runs from 1913 to 1929, when a new maximum of industrial production is reached, just before the Great Depression. The third, short period, is from 1929 to 1937, marking the new maximum reached before the Second World War. The fourth cycle we calculate as running from 1937 to 1973, in which the year the cycle of strong and virtually recession-free accumulation comes to an end.

The average annual rate of industrial growth corresponds with the classification of the capitalisms by age. The rate in Great Britain, where industrial capitalism first appeared, is very low. Following it in chronological order are France, Germany, the United States, Italy, Russia, Japan, China and finally South Korea. The rhythm of growth in the older capitalist countries is slower.

By reading across the table, rather than vertically, the considerable slowing of the pace of growth from one cycle to the next can be clearly seen.

The levels of growth during the 1950-73 cycle show the rejuvenation of capital, or rather of its productive apparatus, due to the war.

1973 signals a break, the ending of the cycle of euphoric, almost uninterrupted, accumulation. This frenzied accumulation created the illusion that continual progress was possible on the scientific, technical and the social level, and the working class as well would fall for it as well, swallowing the various myths and superstitions put about by the petty bourgeoisie.

The 34 year-long cycle running from1973 to 2007 is characterized therefore by a clear slowing down in the rate of capitalist accumulation, with growth tending to zero.

Russia, after the disintegration of its state and its empire and the extremely deep recession in the 90s, is to be found at the bottom of the list with an average annual decline of 1.2%! The United States, on the other hand, did better than the other old imperialisms with a rate of growth of 2.4%. China, in first place, does much better at 11%, although less than its previous 12.7%.

To chart the course of capitalism as a whole we then calculated an index of world industrial production, with the aim of comparing the relative strength of the major industrial and imperialist centres. The index is based on the production of electricity.

The global figures clearly show a reduction in average growth, going down from 8.3% in the 1950-73 cycle, to 3.5% in the 1973-2007 one; and this despite the spectacular development of capitalism in Asia and in particular in China over the last 34 years. The slow-down is undeniable. What is directly evidenced here is a decrease in the rate of growth of production, which is a mathematical indicator of the decrease in the average rate of profit, it being the profit, from each capitalist cycle, which is reinvested in order to render possible the growth of production.

The old global imperialist centres, namely the United States, Europe and Japan have been losing ground in relative terms. China meanwhile has been gaining ground, in particular between the years 2000 and 2007 and at a pace comparable with the old industrialized countries in the early years of their growth.

There is no doubt about the growing significance, within the 2000-2007 cycle, of many other large countries which have now fully entered the capitalist maelstrom, like Brazil, India and a number of countries in south and east Asia such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, etc, etc.

The world’s economic centre of gravity has shifted, as Engels predicted, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In 1973 there was a significant hiatus.

The more the productive forces are developed the quicker capitalism spreads into new regions. The rapid accumulation of capital results in the proletarianization of peasant farmers and artisans, something happening now at a much faster rate than in the past. As a consequence the global society of the bourgeoisie is aging very rapidly and we are fast approaching its demise and the necessary transition to communist society.

Still using the production of electricity as our point of reference we produced another table showing the industrial strength of the main countries set against their respective populations, in percentages. Dividing the former by the latter we have the “relative industrial intensity”, which indicates how far the capitalist form has developed in a country compared to the global average.

Reading across horizontally we note the inexorable decline of the old capitalisms, whereas consistent growth is to be noted in the countries with young capitalisms, above all in China.

Great Britain, still weighing in at 7% in the ’60s, had fallen to 2% by 2007. France, at 3.8%, is down to 2.8%. And Germany, with its 6.1% in 1973, is only 3.2%. Russia at 9.2% in 1989 is down to 5.1% and the decline continues. The great American power, responsible for 40% of global electricity production in 1960, sees its portion reduced by around half, to 21.7%, which is nevertheless an enormous figure which no other country has reached. China is the only one which comes near, having gone from 2.7% in 1973 to 8.9% in 2000, and then in only 7 years it almost doubled its load!

The Chinese bourgeoisie knows full well that the time will come when Chinese industry has the capacity to produce more arms than the United States.

What it forgets, like every other bourgeoisie in the world, is the crisis! For Chinese capitalism is now on the brink of a terrible crisis of over-production, the scale of which will dwarf anything China, or anywhere else, has experienced before. It is possible that the regime could even collapse in the face of this overwhelming crisis, as did the Union falsely dubbed as ’Soviet’ back in 1991. Or the crisis may pave the way for a third world war.

The two most powerful countries today are, therefore, the United States, and China. Europe is next in the ranking at 12.2%, but it isn’t politically or militarily united, divided as it is into a multitude of states with diverging interests. In fourth position is Japan (5.7%), then Russia (5.1%), followed by India (4.0%).

We know that a large part of the world’s population is concentrated in China (20.8%) and India (17.8%). The population of Europe and the United States is about the same with respectively 5.4% and 4.8%. Russia and Japan are on a par at 2.2% and 2.0%.

Per capita production of electricity, that is, kilowatt-hours divided by population, is an absolute rather than a relative “industrial intensity index”, and it shows that in no country does the figure ever go down: history may move forwards quickly or slowly, but it is only ever in one direction and, temporary catastrophes aside, the cultural-social-material-technical apparatus is a permanent acquisition. In short, the old, decaying capitalisms are not, and never will be, less virulently capitalistic that they were before: the horrible capitalist civilization may be slowing down, but it is not going into reverse gear. And this gives revolutionaries an advantage.

The old metropolises are going into decline relatively speaking, even though they are still global leaders in terms of industrial intensity. The United States, whose intensity in 1960 was three times that of the Europeans, is now only double it; thus although it is still way ahead of the others, its relative decline is confirmed. Each of the capitalisms, after having reached a maximum, after having accumulated at a faster rate than the global average, then drops below the average, and, in relative terms, regresses. This regression of the old capitalisms expresses the useful spread of capitalism to the entire planet, which is certainly the necessary premise for the communist revolution.

At the other extreme we have China and India, presenting a qualitative intensity that is very weak, indicating that broad sectors of society in these countries are still at the pre-capitalist stage. It is nevertheless important to take note of the difference between China at 77 and India at 23. Despite their weak industrial intensity, this doesn’t detract from the fact that these states have huge resources, both actual and potential, at their disposal, along with the capacity to mobilize much more energy than France, Germany or even Russia can ever hope to do.

Over the pasOver the past 34 years, following the international crisis in 1974, the global situation has therefore changed enormously. Up to the end of the 1980s the world was divided between the Western Bloc – Japan and Europe behind the United States – and the Russian bloc. In the 1970s China didn’t carry much weight and only overtook Italy in 1973. Then the Russian bloc fell apart. China represents 16% of global industrial production whereas Russia only 5.1%. All of the states will end up siding with either the United States or China.

Succession of the forms of production in the Marxist theory

[GM118-119-120-121]

The reports on the Marxist doctrine of the modes of production are not a history course, understood as a cold analysis of events whose underlying connectedness is deemed unknowable, but a death knell for capitalism – insofar as it is merely a transitory system of social relations – and at the same time an announcement of the historical necessity of communism, which will reconnect the species to the natural organic unity of its origins.

The comrade commenced by describing the way in which the powerful doctrine of communism approaches things. Any social relation presents particular characteristics which stem from it being part of one production rather than of another. One form of production is therefore defined with respect to the others; and with this approach alone is it possible to grasp the aspect that is of interest to Marxism: the dynamic behind the transitions, in which one can trace both the road that leads from primitive communism to higher communism, and the persistence of communistic elements within the various class societies which constitute a historic memory of mankind’s original state of being and an announcement of the reign of liberty to come.

This classification allows us to get to the point where we can trace a schema of the successive forms of production, applicable throughout the world and throughout history, from which it emerges that the march of humanity as a whole has had a historical trajectory determined by precise conditions, which some people have traversed from beginning to end only to arrive at the most monstrous stage of all, capitalism, which, with its tendency to create a world market, already implies in itself that the mode of production that comes after it must necessarily be one which embraces humanity as a whole.

In order to represent this grand design to a generation of workers who are used to hearing non-stop praise for the present society, the speaker went on to provide some references to past work by the party on the subject.

As mentioned in the previous report, in this journey across the millennia we will be guided by Marx’s Grundrisse, and in particular by the chapter ‘Forms which Precede Capitalist Production’. This great historical course we do not read as a “natural” tendency for the idea for the idea of individual liberty to progressively unfold; on the contrary we witness a violent separation of the conditions of work from the worker, culminating in today’s society, which will remain until – under communism – the two poles are reconnected.

When the human species separated itself from the rest of the animal kingdom, production and exchange no longer took place between isolated individuals, because the first communities were characterized by a general commonality. Engels in his the Family, Private Property and the State perfectly describes the passage from the state of savagery through to civilization, via barbarism.

The development of the forces of production is accompanied by an ever greater division of labour, bringing with it the first division into social classes. There now arises the need for an instrument to sanction the rule of the exploiters, the State, whose class nature was confirmed by Lenin in State and Revolution.

In the transition phase from one form to another violence always performs the very important role of “history’s midwife”. But violence per se is not sufficient to explain the dialectical leaps that literally force the species to bring about such changes in social relations.

The monogamous family, the most recent of a number of relational forms that have existed between men and women, corresponds to capitalism. Characterized for millennia by a natural organic unity, these relations change with the changes in the mode of production: they are themselves transitory. And just as the monogamous proprietorial family will perish along with capitalism, so will the exploitation of women by men also disappear.

The Forces of production are “the physical labour power of man, the tools and instruments he makes use of in order to apply it, the fertility of cultivated land, the machines that add mechanical and physical energy to the physical power of man (…) The Relations of Production (…) are the necessary reciprocal relations into which men enter in the social production of their existence. The freedom to, or prohibition from, occupying land to cultivate it, using tools, machines or manufactured goods, or to have the products of labour for consumption, (…) are relations of production. If we put the accent on the legal aspect rather than the economic, we can equally refer to relations of production as property relations” (from Factors of Nation and Race in Marxist Theory).

On these foundations there arise gigantic Superstructures which, in class societies, place the mechanism of immediate reproduction of the species at the service of the ruling class, transfiguring it in order to prevent the class that is ruled from comprehending that fact. And among these superstructures a role of primary importance is held by the class State. The structure, superstructure and the relations between have their own reflection in thought, such that “the ideas of the dominant class in every epoch are the dominant ideas”.

Marxism is a doctrine of revolutions and counter-revolutions, a theory which analyses, as regards what interests us here, the complex dynamics of the passage from one mode of production to another. “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production (…) with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundations the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed” (Marx, Preface to A Critique of Political Economy).

The development of wealth is transformed into its opposite. This inversion turns the oppressed class, bearer of the new way of regulating the reproduction of the species, into the gravedigger charged with burying the old society. The modern proletariat is the only class that can give birth to communism from the womb of capitalism, and end the reign of necessity.

The speaker went on to describe the main features of primitive communism, characterized by an absence of class antagonisms and coercive superstructures, and in which there is an immediate unity of production and distribution.

In the Neolithic age, the development of agriculture and the introduction of new techniques of manufacture such as weaving and the production of pottery and copperware, alongside an intensification of animal husbandry, allow a food surplus to be set aside. This brings about the growth of permanent dwellings, their concentration in villages and towns, and the establishment of connections between them.

Marxist theory subdivides primitive communism into two great epochs, savagery and barbarism, each divided into three more stages. The Primary Form of production ceases with the middle stage of barbarism when, at the cost of much spilt blood, the division of society into classes is gradually established, thus giving rise to the Secondary Form.

In the early stages of communism there is no property, only the po, only the possession on the part of the community – not of the single individual or the family – of the natural conditions of its own reproduction. Given the low level of the productive forces the natural ties of blood are the determining factors within this society. We must therefore turn out attention to the evolution of the family from matriarchal to patriarchal, and from group marriage to monogamy; a process which played a major part in the dissolution of the primary form. The family must be treated like a relation of production determined by the sub-structure.

The more the productive forces develop the more blood ties become reduced in importance. The ending of the matriarchy sanctioned the submission of women, who are now bound to the organic conditions of production on a par with slaves. The first division of labour is born, even if this doesn’t mean there was no division of tasks or hierarchy under communism. itive communities know no antagonisms or conflicts of interest. They are however subjected to antagonistic relations with other communities which break out into violent conflict whenever the multiplication of human beings puts the organic exchange with nature under strain: the triumph of one community entails the destruction of the other.

It is precisely war, which becomes an endemic scourge during the period of humankind’s infancy, which will destroy the primary form. In the era of the dissolution of primitive communism, defeated tribes are more often than not enslaved, their organic conditions of reproduction becoming little better than those of animals.

The final phase of natural communism will see a huge increase in the productive forces and social upheavals capable of imposing the extension, and then the destruction, of the natural community. When property relations start to create divisions between the members of the community we have arrived at the phase of the violent destruction of lower communism.

The study then proceeded to an analysis the Asiatic variant, the first of the modes of production characterized by the division into opposed classes. The practice of agriculture and the domestication and rearing of animals, the urban revolution and the formation of the first city-states, etc., pave the way for an impetuous advance in the forces of production, at the same time destroying the old relations within which they had peacefully grown. Thus the ancient unity of productive forces and relations of production would be broken up, inaugurating the fetishism in which social relations are hidden behind things. Of mankind’s infancy there still remains in the memory the myth of a golden age, as well as certain marginal survivals in social relations.

Every society of a certain spatial and demographic consistency must have gone through an Asiatic phase: the ties of consanguinity and community, collective property as the means of production (the land), the institutions for taking decisions based on tribal assemblies, etc; these do not disappear over night. Especially in the eastern Mediterranean private property soon replaces community ties and the class of proprietors constructs a political power, a State; elsewhere, in Asia and America, the Asiatic variant on the contrary survives for millennia, and comes crashing down only under the blows of European colonialism.

Agriculture and the raising of livestock, which is collective to begin with, becomes progressively based on, and gives rise to, property in land and herds. Society loses the possibility of developing harmoniously and takes on the features of a war to defend the particular privileges of the classes into which it is divided. At the same time the contrast between town and country, so typical of class society, is born.

The surplus product, which increases due to improved agricultural techniques, allows the division of labour to develop further, making it possible for a part of society to dedicate itself to activities not directly linked to material production. Whilst, on the one hand, this process represents a major advance, on the other hand it becomes the economic basis of class domination and submission, destroying the ancient human harmony that will arise again only under higher communism.

Commercial activity arises from the requirement for exchange within a productive structure that has become separated into different branches and to allow these to expand. As the separation between the various spheres of production increases pure quality, use value, is transformed into pure quantity, exchange value. We have arrived at the stage where products are produced with a view to exchanging them. The developing mercantile sector was what prompted the invention of money, and, later on, the lending of it.

What distinguishes the Asian variant of the second form of production is the presence of a strong central authority, which has general responsibility for overseeing public works (organization of the water supply, defence, collection of tributes, etc.) and the small self-sufficient villages in the countryside. The State ensures the protection of the farmers from the invasions of nomadic peoples, who tend to convert farmland back into pasture.

The village is founded on the combination of agriculture with domestic industry and the individual either works independently on the parcel of land periodically assigned to him by the community, or as part of a collective organization to cultivate the soil.

As society moves towards mercantile production, relations between the centre and the periphery increasingly come to be mediated by money and less and less by the direct administration of land and livestock or the direct control of labour and the central administration ends up merely as a collector of taxes and customs duties.

The Asian variant is static and “historyless” because it is so resistant to change; the elements required to break it up are simply not there; being the closest to primitive communism it has retained much of its organic nature.

The evolutionThe evolution of society is reflected in familial type relations. As relations of private property in land and livestock come to supplant primitive blood ties, so the owner of the means of labour comes to own the producers; in the patriarchate, a form of the property-owning family community, its members become domestic slaves. The condition of women becomes the mirror of the condition of the producers.

The military question

[GM118-119-120-121]

Following German unification, brought about by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the national question was still unresolved in Italy and many other European countries within the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires.

According to our theory, the function that crises, and especially wars, perform is accelerating the process of capitalist centralization by forming ever larger economic, productive and financial entities. o-Turkish War of 1877-78 was a part of this process, by taking up the two most important questions left unresolved by the Crimean War of 1854-55: Russian expansion towards the Mediterranean and Asia, and the carving up of the European territories of the decadent Ottoman Empire.

Revolts in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Bulgaria, which were seeking independence from the Ottoman Empire, were harshly repressed, while Russia tried to take back territory lost in the preceding war. England, via Constantinople and the Black Sea, funnelled the enormous quantity of commodities produced by its powerful industrial base through to Persia, India and Asia. Russia entered into alliances with the Balkan states, all subjected in one way or another to the Ottoman Empire.

On 27 April 1877 Russian troops crossed Rumania, getting to within 2 kilometres of Constantinople. The English fleet protected the city. The peace treaty entailed a major redrawing of borders in the Balkans. Russia, in the face of England’s opposition, did not manage to get to the Mediterranean but obtained Bessarabia, part of Armenia, and important fortresses in the Caucasus. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were independent. Eastern Rumelia obtainedadministrative independence. England took Cyprus. This “Balkan powder keg” would explode in the First World War.

The rapid development of European capitalism required an increased supply of both food and raw materials for industry, both to be found in neighbouring Africa. In less than 30 years the latter would be completely divided up between the European powers, with Ethiopia and Liberia the sole exceptions.

But expectations of an easy conquest would come up against the reality of stiff resistance from the armies of the more developed African states, which engaged the Europeans in prolonged revolts, some of which, like Algeria’s struggle with France, went on for decades. All these wars were “asymmetrical” insofar as they were fought between modern European armies and African forces armed mainly with traditional weaponry. The Europeans suffered several defeats, the most important being Isandlwana (1879), where the British were defeated by the Zulus, and Adowa (1896) where the Italians were defeated by the Ethiopians.

In 1884 a conference of the European states in Berlin was held to plan future conquests. It was feared that if a war broke out between the European countries over the African colonies, it might trigger proletarian revolts or even revolution in the mother countries.

The British Empire was the largest in the whole of human history: the

Subject territories were 94 times the size of the mother country, representing an enormous mass of extremely low cost labour power and cheap raw materials. In Africa, English colonization spread from the far South toward the far North, with a view to achieving territorial continuity spanning the length of the continent.

In the old Cape Colony there lived the Bantu tribe, predominantly pastoral semi-nomads but with an established military organization, together with other small non-migratory tribes, engaged in a backward agriculture; the Boers (“farmers”), descendants of the first colonizers, with a modern agriculture employing local labour; and the British, who were engaged in commerce, industry and administration.

The discovery of diamonds in the Orange River in 1867 attracted around 40,000, mainly English, prospectors. The mining cartel feared the Zulus would sell the mining concessions to the competition and called for a military solution. The first great battle took place on 22 January 1879. Only 50 of the English survived. The English counter-offensive routed the opposition: 12 cannons and 2 machine guns exterminated the Zulus.

The occupation of Egypt, part of the Ottoman Empire, is a clear example of economic, followed by military and colonial, domination. After the financial crash of 1893 the British government, through the Rothschild bankers, persuaded the Egyptian Viceroy to sell his share of the Suez Canal. The French and English then formed an “Egyptian Debt Commission” to protect their investments: taxes were increased and a part of the army was mobilized. A number of rebellions by the Egyptians followed.

The English fleet then commenced a heavy bombardment of Alexandria using its powerful new naval cannons, which allowed forces to disembark in the city. The English occupied the city of Ishmâ’ilya, on the Canal, using reinforcements from India. Egypt, though still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, would remain under British administration until 1956.

A feature of these wars was the use of machine guns; mainly of American manufacture, and becoming progressively lighter, these weapons could be mounted on tripods and manoeuvred by just one gunner.

The colonialism of the Italian bourgeoisie in Africa is an example of how a corrupt and contemptible class was capable of using against the indigenous populations the same violence it used in the home country against the proletariat.

The Italian government intended was to open a campaign of colonial penetration into the only part of Africa not yet occupied. After the acquisition of a small strip of land in the bay of Assab (in present-day Eritrea), the plan would be frustrated by popular revolts in Italy against the grist tax, and by the protests of the European powers. Italy hadn’t yet completed its unification but was already pressing for colonial expansion.

In 1882 the Rome government occupied the port of Mitsiwa, situated further up the Red Sea on the Eritrean coast. The rapid penetration towards the fertile high plateaus brought protests from the emperor of Ethiopia, an ancient and powerful empire of a feudal type formed of several federated kingdoms. On 26 January a column of 548 Italian soldiers was annihilated near Dogali. Crispi, the prime minister, decides to send in a contingent of 20,000 men. The Emperor Menelik, with money previously received from the Italians, acquires modern arms and munitions, some of Italian manufacture.

Menelik with 100,000 men, fire-arms, canons and machine guns attacks the Italian forces stationed in widely dispersed forts and outposts, but agrees to let the soldiers to leave in exchange for peace. The demand is rejected several times by the Italian government. The Italian troops are concentrated around Adigrat whilst the Ethiopian troops are gathered in the Adowa basin. Confusion reigns in the Italian command and in the government in Rome, the latter deciding to replace the field commander without letting the outgoing one know.

An attack by Menelik on all fronts, exploiting his far superior knowledge of the local terrain, resulted in a crushing defeat for the Italians who were either captured or killed. There is no plan of retreat. The Italian losses are serious: 7,000 dead, 3,000 taken prisoner, 1,500 wounded, plus all the artillery and equipment. The release of the prisoners costs the Italian government 5 million lira, which raises the money through public subscriptions.

Underlying the Second Anglo-Boer (or South African) War, were the interests of English capitalists in the gold mines. Discovered in the Transvaal in 1886, they had attracted an enormous number of new, mainly English, colonists, whereas the Boers were predominantly modern agriculturalists and stock raisers.

The Cape governor, Cecil Rhodes, a multi-millionaire and biggest producer of diamonds in South Africa, pressed for the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to be annexed by the British Empire. In 1895, with the secret support of London, he organized an attempted insurrection and invasion of the Transvaal using mercenary troops, the Jameson Raid, which was a resounding failure.

The Boers in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State attacked anticipating the arrival of English reinforcements. Their troops were recruited on a voluntary basis and had to provide their own equipment and support themselves. They were expert horsemen, good with guns and would form the so-called ’commandos’, units of around a thousand mounted infantrymen. There was no precise military hierarchy or binding rules. The State provided up-to-date artillery, as well as superior rifles (many of which were supplied by Germany) and there were around 90,000 volunteers in all.

To the initial batch of 22,000 English troops there was added a continual flow of reinforcements from the best English divisions, including those based in India, Iron discipline prevailed. The well-established tactic, which anticipated a preliminary heavy bombardment, followed by an attack by the infantry drawn up in close formation and a final cavalry charge, proved ineffective here and the English command had to modify it. The first Boer offensive took place on 12 October 1899. 21,000 Boers, divided into 4 groups, successfully laid siege to the English outposts. After this success they took up a defensive position, despite the situation being strategically in their favour.

With their new reinforcements the English attacked, but were heavily defeated. With their perfect knowledge of the land, the battle tactics of the Boer commandos proved very effective, countering the English frontal attack, with the powerful new Mauser repeating rifles, from their position in long trenches protected by barbed wire.

The new British commander adopted a change of strategy: instead of liberating the besieged positions he passed through the Orange Free State and headed for the enemy capital. The Boer commandos fell back to defend it in a disorganized fashion. A first English attack was repelled but their 20 Maxim machine guns would wreak havoc in the Boer camp; the Boers made an unconditional surrender. British losses from fever and dysentery were even higher, caused by drinking river water infected by the bodies of the dead.

The mopping up of the remaining pockets of guerrilla resistance in Orange took just two weeks, 4,300 out of the 6,000 Boers surrendering while the remainder fled to safe areas where they regrouped for future guerrilla attacks. Finally, at the battle of Bergendal, the Boers were defeated and 2,000 of them took refuge in Mozambique.

But 30,000 Boers were still under arms and determined to fight, especially after the British resorted to the tactic of destroying their harvests and burning their farms. The Boer commandos quickly reorganized and launched major attacks on the British rearguard which had pushed too far north.

The British command implemented the tactic of harsh, rapid repression. Mobile columns combed the areas occupied by the guerrillas, requisitioning harvests and livestock and deporting women and children as well. Enormous concentration camps were built for Boer civilians where illness and malnutrition were rife.

Finally, in 1902, the Boers surrendered once and for all. The two Boer republics ceased to exist and were annexed by the British Empire.

The figures seem incredible: over 500,000 English soldiers deployed, 8,000 dying in combat and 13,000 through illness. Around 100,000 Boers in arms, 4,000 dying in combat, 6,000 through illness, with 24,000 prisoners deported overseas. 28,000 Boer civilians perished in the 58 concentration camps, 22,000 of whom were children. 30,000 farms were burnt down.

The Boers lost the war mainly because their army lacked a clear command structure, a legacy of their social structure and economy adapted to the needs of independent farmers and stock-breeders in a vast territory. But their guerrilla tactics obliged the British to invest much for little return.

The Boer Wars mirror the struggle between two forms of capitalism: the more modern English one based on industry versus the Boer one based on extensive agriculture and they signal with the rise of the factories and the new cities the transformation of these farmers into merchants and manufacturers, in other words, the birth of modern South Africa.

An account of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 was then presented.

The long economic crisis had broken out in 1873 like a violent epidemic and infected all the most important economies of the time.

Alexander II, the reforming Tsar, had abolished serfdom in 1861, from which emerged millions of small and impoverished independent farmers. About as many again who had not been included in the redistribution of the land became pure proletarians, and provided the labour power for Russia’s mighty capitalist development. The railway network grew from 1,500 Km in 1860 to 31,500 Km in 1892. This allowed the coal fields to be linked up with the iron mining districts of southern Russia creating a powerful metallurgical industry.

The new productive capability supported Tsarism’s need to expand in a territorial sense. As Engels wrote: “in order to maintain absolutist government inside the country, Tsarism needed not only to be invincible in international relations, but to obtain continual victories, it had to compensate the unconditional submission of its subjects with the chauvinistic intoxication of victory, with ever new conquests”. After ceding Alaska to the United States, which was militarily indefensible against England, it sought to expand in three different directions: Constantinople and the Mediterranean; India and Persia; and the Far East, where it would come up against Japan.

Japan was also emerging from its long feudal period after the “Revolution from on high” of 1867-68, when the centuries old dualism of power between the military command, become hereditary and entrusted to the Shogun, and the quasi-symbolic role of the Emperor, had been suppressed. The young Japanese bourgeoisie, originally concentrated in trade and commerce, had taken hold of the economic direction of the country and needed to modernize its social and political structures. Some Shoguns, in a vain attempt to maintain the country’s isolation, had even forbidden the construction of modern ocean-going vessels.

The Emperor became a symbol of modernity. The Prussian system was taken as the model both for the new constitution and for the organization of the army, now by forced conscription, and for the formation of the General Staff.

In Japan, too, the power of modern industry was evident in the development of the railway network; in 1871 only 26 Km of railway track had been laid, by 1895 this had risen to 4,151; and the 38 Km of telegraph lines around in 1871 had become 52,704 by 1895. In 1871 Japan possessed a merchant marine of 86 ships; by 1895 this had become 717, of which 87 were ocean-going.

To better defend Japan from foreign attacks the strategy of the “line of advantage” was adopted, which involved expanding its borders overseas and creating a buffer zone on the continent. The first territory brought to heel in pursuit of this strategy was the Korean peninsula. Korea was an independent kingdom but a vassal and tributary of the Chinese empire, both of them bogged down in serious political crises. In 1876 Japan imposed commercial treaties on Korea and compelled it to open up some of its ports.

In 1894 the great peasant uprising known as the Donghak Rebellion broke out and advanced on the Korean royal palace. China despatched 2,300 soldiers and Japan 8,000. After the suppression of the rebellion the government of Japan nominated a pro-Japanese government. Following Chinese protests, war broke out, which was easily won by the small but strong and well organized army of Japan against the large but inefficient Chinese army. Korea, passing under Japanese control, ceded the Liaodong peninsular, including the fortress of Port Arthur, along with Taiwan and the Pescadore islands.

The European powers, concerned by the manoeuvrings of the Japanese, entered into agreements to oppose their expansion and obtained access to new ports and military bases in the area. Japan was forced to return the Liaotung peninsula to Korea, which was immediately leased to the Russians, who built an important naval base at Port Arthur.

Following the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1903, the Japanese set about arresting Russian expansion and the penetration of European goods into that part of Asia.

The Japanese continued to arm themselves and to organize a great naval fleet but the Russians had convinced themselves that little Japan would never dare to defy mighty Russia.

The Japanese however launched a sudden attack on the Russian fleet docked at Port Arthur. During a sortie to break the Japanese blockade the Russian admiral was blown up by a mine and the counter-offensive was abandoned. Japanese strategy envisaged launching attacks from land and sea. The extremely bitter land battles resulted in major losses to the Japanese for small gains.

The attempt by the Russian fleet to break through the blockade and rejoin the fleet in Vladivostok was a failure: the fierce battle was fierce, some ships returned to port, others were hit by mines, and others sought refuge in Korean ports.

After taking the hill overlooking Port Arthur, the Japanese turned the captured Russian howitzers on the port’s defences and sunk the remaining ships. The Russians offered their surrender to the Japanese. The Japanese had obtained the much sought-after and definitive victory on land, although total victory at sea was still not theirs.

Following the loss of the Pacific Fleet the Tsarist court decided to make ready, with all possible speed, a great fleet to go to the assistance of those left in Port Arthur, an enterprise which was deemed costly and nigh on impossible. The fleet left St Petersburg on 10 October 1904. Meanwhile the fall of Port Arthur had rendered the expedition pointless, but it was decided to press on in order to join up with the Vladivostok fleet.

The fleet was spotted by Japanese patrollers slipping through the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. Only 2 small ships would eventually reach Vladivostok; the entire Russian Baltic fleet was lost: 22 ships sunk, 6 sequestered in neutral ports and 6 surrendering. 4,500 mariners lost their lives. The Japanese lost three small ships and 400 mariners.

The massive quantity of shipping and manpower involved in this war, the complex military strategies operating simultaneously on several fronts, and the massive loss of men and materiel is an anticipation of the First World War which would break out 9 years later.

Tsarism, after its defeat at the hands of an external enemy it had severely underestimated, now had to face the enemy within: the revolution of the proletariat and the poor peasants which commenced with the Bloody Sunday of 22 January 1905. The mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin on 27 June would mark the start of a massive revolutionary movement.

Lenin explains how financial capital dominates industrial capital in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In the United Kingdom the most developed capitalism in Europe was to be found. In 1913, English overseas investments, mainly in the countries of the British Empire, were up to 4 billion pounds; while exports of English industrial had products plummeted. ’The City’ was the most important financial centre in the world. Over the same period Germany assumed primacy as the main industrial producer in Europe, while the United States became the biggest producer at the global level.

In old Europe they were years of relative calm between States, without any major wars, years of great industrial development and of euphoria for the ruling class, as they lived it up during “La Belle Époque”; but they were also years when the proletariat was massively exploited and forced to emigrate to distant lands in their millions.

To understand our reading of the complex tangle of diplomatic accords between the great powers, which had as their aim the carving up of the colonial territories and markets, we must, on the one hand, take into account Marx’s warning that the capitalists, “false brothers”, are in continuous ferocious competition between themselves, but always in agreement and standing shoulder to shoulder when it comes to combating proletarian struggles and proletarian organisations. On the other, as Lenin put it, “In the capitalist world (…) the ’inter-imperialist’ alliances are nothing more than a ’breathing space’ between one war and (…) the peace alliances which prepare for wars and at the same time are generated by them”.

The speaker then went on to list the public and secret diplomatic accords of those years.

The international situation changed rapidly with the Revolution of the Young Turks, who would obtain important democratic and constitutional concessions. Austria feared independence movements would break out in the Balkans. The small Balkan States claimed compensation and damages from the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria, supported by Austria, declared itself independent from the Ottoman Empire and the following day Austria declared its rule would extend over Bosnia and Herzegovina. The strongest protests come from Serbia, which regarded these provinces as part of a State that would unite all Serbs. This was strongly opposed by Austria. Serbia also made moves to obtain an outlet to the Mediterranean via the port of Salonika, then still under Ottoman rule. Italy supported the Austrian move, counting on being handsomely recompensed.

In the followIn the following year Austria would reach an agreement with the Ottoman Empire, with an indemnification of 2.5 million Turkish lira, to annex the two provinces. This agreement was recognized by all of the powers except Serbia, which mobilized its troops.

The party’s activity in the Trade Unions

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At every general meeting there is a summary and explanation of the activity Party comrades have carried out in the trade union sphere; activity which is of the utmost importance insofar as it constitutes the main connecting link between the party’s theoretical activity and the proletarian class. y’s trade union, or ’syndical’, activity has a number of different aspects: 1) a purely theoretical aspect, i.e., study and description of the various movements, and their clashes with the enemy classes and their organizations on the economic battlefield. We therefore focus our attention on the main strikes, both at the national and international level; on the agreements reached at the company, category and general level; and on the actions of the unions and their internal struggles, both of the regime unions and those which place themselves on class terrain.

2) then there is the activity of spreading propaganda, promoting the party’s line on the trade unions by intervening in working class actions with targeted leaflets which aim to provide both the correct guidelines as regards the particular struggle concerned, and to situate it within the general context of the ongoing class war under capitalism, by highlighting the link between particular demands and the general demands of the working class.

3) Finally there is our activity inside the trade unions, wherever it is possible, with the aim of winning them over to the communist trade union line, considered by us to be the one most conducive to developing and maintaining the class character of organizations dedicated to workers’ struggle. From this derives the party policy of only carrying such activity in those unions it considers conquerable to the class line, and not in ones we hold to be definitively subjected to the capitalist regime. This evaluation of each trade union organization is guided both by studying them and by engaging in practical activity within them; and over a sufficient period of time such that class battles of a certain degree of intensity would have occurred, enabling the various organizations to show their mettle.

At the January 2014 General Meeting in Florence there was presented an analysis of an important agreement, valid for workers in the private sector in Italy, which was concluded between the main employers’ organization and the Cgil, Cisl, Uil and Ugl, all of them regime unions. This agreement, referred to as the Testo Unico sulla Rappresentanza (Consolidated Act on Representation), modifies a previous one from 1993 which deals with the same subject:
     – it defines those unions it considers to be ’representative’, that is, the unions the employers are prepared to negotiate with;
     – it guarantees an easier life within the companies for those unions, insofar as they are the only ones allowed to be part of the Rappresentanze Sindacali Unitarie (Unitary Tra (Unitary Trade Union Bargaining Units), one of the two organizations at the company level that represent the workers (the other being the Rappresentanza Sindacale Aziendale – Company Trade Union Bargaining Unit), and thus enjoy a series of trade union rights within the enterprise;
     – it restricts the freedom to strike by forbidding it, on pain of economic and disciplinary sanctions, when it is directed against agreements signed by the majority of representatives from the “representative” unions. is a case of a contract between both sides and not of a law, the trade unions who don’t sign remain free to call strikes, but their activity is hampered by the fact they are excluded from the RSU and from having trade union rights within the company.

The right of the unions who haven’t signed the Testo Unico to have their own section within the company is not affected because they can still form an RSA. This is what the SI Cobas, for instance, did within many of the co-operatives in the logistics sector. But if a trade union which hasn’t signed the Testo Unico wants to have its RSA recognized it will have to fight, a lot harder than before, both against the company and against the trade unions in the RSU.

What we are essentially dealing with here is an agreement which is orientated towards preventing the rebirth of the class union, and defending the regime’s trade unionism.

We have therefore criticized the erroneous position taken by the trade unions on this agreement, in particular by the FIOM, the main union in the metal-working sector, in the biggest of the pro-regime confederations in Italy, the CGIL, and also by some of the rank-and-file (base) unions.

As regards the base unions – which arose at the beginning of the 1980s in response to the increasingly anti-worker character of the CGIL – we highlighted some of their erroneous positions and explained the communist line on this important question of the trade union struggle.

At the subsequent reunion in Genoa in May 2014, the report referred to trade union activity carried out in the four month period since our previous meeting, and covered the different aspects mentioned above.

Brief referenBrief reference was made to our analysis, since published in our press, of three struggles of international importance: those of the Chilean dockers; of the workers’ revolt in Bosnia; and of the epic five-month strike of the miners in the South Africa platinum belt.

We then summed up our propaganda work, which involved the leafleting of workers’ actions with material designed to promote the relevance of our trade union line to the particular actions concerned. We covered:
     – four demonstrations in Italy of logistics workers organized by the SI Cobas;
     – May Day demonstrations in Milan, Turin, Pordenone, Paris, Liverpool, London and in Venezuela;
     – and strikes by workers in the Electrolux group, Piaggio Aeronautica, and the ABB. We dwelt in particular on the struggle at Electrolux, due to the immense amount of time and energy we devoted to making almost daily interventions in what turned out to be a very long battle.

The report concluded with a description and commentary on our activity within two organizations specifically formed to advance the workers’ struggle: the FLEC – a co-ordination of trade unions from single companies which has been formed across two Venezuelan districts – and the SI Cobas, the most combative of the base unions in Italy.

As regards the FLEC, our comrades drafted a proposal for a Constitutive Manifesto in which are declared the fundamental assumptions of a class trade union about capitalism, a series of FLEC Principles and a Platform of Struggle to be distributed to workers and delegate members and fought for in the constituent meetings of the federation. ds thAs regards the SI Cobas there was a report on the activity of the union’s Turin section, paying particular attention to an important strike organized at the CAAT, the general agriculture and food markets.

The report at the Party meeting in September 2014, in Turin, picked up from where the previous meeting left off. A presentation of our political activity during an all-out strike called by some workers in the SI Cobas; during the public sector workers’ general strike on June 19 organized by the Unione Sindacale di Base; and during the national demonstration of the SI Cobas in Piacenza, in support of the struggle against the retaliatory sackings in the City’s IKEA warehouse.

We were then informed about activity carried out inside the SI Cobas’s Turin branch and by our comrades in Venezuela, within the FLEC.

At this year’s general meeting in January in Florence we described the bourgeois government’s new offensive against the workers in Italy, the labour reform known  as the Jobs Act,and how the various trade union organizations, both regime and base unions, have reacted to it.

We intervened in the general strikes, both the ones called by the base unions and by the CGIL, and promoted our line on the struggle, criticizing both the openly anti-worker action of the regime unions as well as the sectarian stance taken by the leaders of the base unions, who organizing separate strikes for each of their variously acronymed trade unions, each in competition with the others, thereby divide and damage the working class struggle. The unique exception being the SI Cobas, which has organized the mobilization of workers independently from whichever trade union acronym may have promoted such and such a strike.

In conclusionIn conclusion a summary was given of a very thorough analysis that has been made of the important 35-day strike at the Terni steelworks, which involved 3,000 workers; which even if it did end in bitter defeat is still something we can learn from, giving full confirmation of the correctness of the party’s recommendations as regards trade union action.

The national question and the history of Ireland

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We have been making a new study of the “Irish Question”, enquiring into the distant origins of the country’s tortured history and examining the modern labour movement there, commencing with a review of the writings and statements of Marx and Engels on the subject.

The first writings we looked at were drafts of a proposed Ireland which Engels dedicated himself to between 1869 and 1870, of which he only managed to complete the first chapter, ’Natural Conditions’, and part of the second, ’Ancient Ireland’, which covered the physical characteristics of the island and its history up to the defeat of the Viking invaders at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

Setting out from observations on the island’s geological make-up and its lack of coal, relative to the abundant coal deposits to be found in England, Engels concludes: “It is obvious that Ireland’s misfortune is of ancient origin; it begins directly after the carboniferous strata were deposited. A country whose coal deposits are eroded, placed near a larger country rich in coal, is condemned by nature to remain for a long time the farming country for the larger country when the latter is industrialized. That sentence, pronounced millions of years ago, was carried out in this century”.

Conversely Engels refers to the land’s natural fertility. Even the climate, in terms of temperature and rainfall, is more conducive to tillage than in England. This belies the myth spread about by the Irish landlords and English bourgeoisie that Ireland wasn’t suitable for tillage, but only for cattle-rearing, and thus to provide meat and dairy products to England, whilst the Irish, starved of bread, are supposed to emigrate to make way for cattle and sheep.

The second chapter of this regrettably incomplete History deals with Irish origins. From the 5th Century Patrick set about his work of converting pagans to Christianity and founding monasteries; it would be Irish missionaries who would convert Anglo-Saxons, British Scots and Picts, Swiss, Germans, Franks; and Ireland was considered a nursery of learning throughout Europe.

At the end of the eighth century the country was still divided into a multitude of fiefdoms.

The Norsemen passed from raiding and pillaging to establishing themselves in fortified harbour-towns, and even to temporary conquest of the whole island in the middle of the ninth Century, which was made a great deal easier by the quarrelling of the Irish princes among themselves. Invasions and battles continued with varying success up until a major defeat of the concentrated force of the invading Norsemen in 1014. After their defeat at Clontarf the Norse raids became less frequent and less dangerous, and after a couple of generations the Dublin Norsemen were assimilated by the native population.

Here unfortunately Engels’ History comes to an end, but for an account of subsequent events we can rely on the draft conspectus of a Speech on the Irish Question delivered by Marx on December 16, 1867 to the German Workers’ Educational Association in London.

The first English conquest of less than half of Ireland goes back to the year 1172. Marx notes: “Mixing of English common colonists with Irish, and of Anglo-Norman nobles with Irish chiefs”.

But there was much worse in store for Ireland during the Elizabethan era, when a plan was hatched to exterminate the natives, take their land and settle English colonists in their place. However, the English succeeded only in planting a landowning aristocracy on the confiscated land.

It would take the destructive force of the English revolutionary bourgeoisie to bring about the violent submission of the Irish people. In 1649 and 1652, the complete conquest of the island was accompanied by bloodshed, devastation, depopulation of entire counties, removal of their inhabitants to other regions, sale of many Irish into slavery in the West Indies and replanting of the land with new colonies of English Puritans.

Heavy taxes were imposed on the export of Irish woollen goods to foreign countries, and also on the export of manufactured goods to England. This depopulated her cities and threw the people back on the land. The Penal Code would discriminate against and persecute Catholics, who were forbidden from owning property in land, and this reinforced religious sentiments and enhanced the standing of the Church among the population.

Marx goes on to record in his notes that the English incomers, who founded new towns, were absorbed into the Irish people and Catholicized. There is no English colony (except Ulster Scotch) but there are English landowners.

After the English surrender to the American “rebels” in 1777, and then after the revolution in France, “The British cabinet [is] forced to make concessions to the Nationalist (English) party in Ireland”.

In 1798 the peasants were not yet ripe to support a rebellion of the Belfast Republicans.

The 1800 Act of Union, as far as the English parliament was concerned, closed the struggle between the Anglo-Irish and English. As the Act came into effect it resulted in the gradual extinction of Irish manufactures “except for coffin-makers”, and the Irish were once again forced back to the countryside and into agriculture.

Rents on land rose enormously. “Rapacious and indolent proprietors letting it to monopolising landjobbers, to be relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among the wretched starvers on potatoes and water”. There was a massive increase in the export of Irish corn to England. “Middlemen accumulated fortunes that they would not invest in the improvement of land, and could not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in machinery, etc. All their accumulations were sent therefore to England for investment”.

Between1846-7 the potato blight caused over a million deaths from hunger and consequent diseases; between1847-55, over 1.6 million left the country. There was an exodus of the young and a substitution of pasturage for crop farming. The Repeal of the Corn Laws saw the price of Irish corn fall, spelling new disaster for Ireland. Eviction en masse of insolvent tenants by crowbar brigades. Drastic reduction in agricultural production between 1850 and 1866.

There followed a major flow of labour towards the industrial cities of England and Scotland, with men, women and children in a state of near starvation. The reduction in the human population coincided with a corresponding increase in cattle, sheep and pigs.

From 1851 to 1861 the process of consolidation of farms was in full swing: there was a massive reduction in farms under 15 acres while the number of larger farms increased.

The speaker tThe speaker then went on to discuss some other documents produced by our teachers, no longer about the history of Ireland but regarding the attitude of communists towards the political movements which were inflaming it at the time.

The first is a “Confidential Communication” from Marx in March 1870 to the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association, paragraphs 4 and 5 of which were read out at the meeting, and in which it is stated:
     1. Although revolutionary initiative will probably come from elsewhere, England alone can serve as the lever for a serious economic revolution. It is the only country where there are no more peasants and where land property is concentrated in a few hands and the majority of the population consists of wage labourers. Because of its domination on the world market a revolution in Great Britain must immediately affect the whole world.
     2. From this it follows it is best that the General Council remain in Great Britain, in the happy position of having its hand directly on this great lever of proletarian revolution, and provide English proletarians with the spirit of generalization and revolutionary fervour that they lack.
     3. The only point where one can hit official England really hard is Ireland.
     4. In Ireland the economic struggle is concentrated exclusively against landed property and is at the same time national. The power of the landlords in Ireland is maintained solely by the English army…
     5. The moment the forced union between the two countries ends, a social revolution will immediately break out in Ireland.
     6. It suits the bourgeoisie to divide its wage-earners into two hostile camps in competition with one another.

The consequence of this was that the International Working Men’s Association should hope that a great blow to be struck in Ireland would encourage the social revolution in England: “to transform the present forced union qual and free confederation if possible, into complete separation if need be”.

Another question considered by the General Council (at a meeting on May14, 1872) directly regards the party. Here we should bear in mind that the Association was formed, and functioned, as we know, on a federal basis, and was thus, necessarily, an immature expression of the class party. Engels records that some English delegates had called for the request by some Irish members to form their own section be rejected, insofar as it contradicted the anti-national principles of the Association. While these Irish workers’ sections were declaring themselves for the republic and for the liberation of Ireland from foreign domination, the International was supposed neither to set itself the aim of changing governmental forms, nor concern itself with the liberty of nations.

Engels intervened in the debate stating that the real purport of the motion was to bring the Irish sections under the jurisdiction of the British Federal Council, a thing to which the Irish sections would never consent. The General Council could not deny the Irish workers what the Association had conceded to the French, Germans, Italians or Poles. The Irish, to all intents and purposes, formed a distinct nationality of their own. After centuries of English oppression and conquest, for as long as that oppression existed, it was an insult to Irish working men to ask them to submit to a British Federal Council. It would be like asking the Polish workers to acknowledge the supremacy of a Russian Federal Council or Alsatian and Danish sections to submit to a Federal Council in Berlin. Rather than being anything to do with internationalism this would be but a justification and perpetuation of the dominion of one nation over another.

There exist times and places in which, to overcome the nationalisms, it is not enough, indeed it is counter-productive, to simply negate them.

We hardly need recall that the question of national sections was no longer posed, or shouldn’t have been, in the Third International; all the more reason why it will not be posed in the future world communist party, whose members will join up not as Germans, Irishmen or Englishmen, but as undifferentiated communists, each striving to overcome, ’to repudiate’, their particular upbringing in the nodes of this society.

The party takes into account the complexities arising from bourgeois and pre-bourgeois survivals from the past, the order in which these classes appeared and the dynamic of the social conflicts they inevitably give rise to, but it isn’t part of them, nor does it attempt to thwart them, and in terms of its doctrine, its internal organization and in the social struggle the party maintains its separateness and opposition to them, even when they may be considered progressive. And, as clearly evidenced by the political line they took on such matters, Marx and Engels were also convinced of this.

To conclude we heard a number of quotations on this theme from the works of our two founding fathers.

At the subsequent general meeting, another comrade cast light on a later phase in the history of the labour movement in Ireland, covering the rise of the trade unions and the first independent workers’ party on the island.

In 1871 sections of the First International were formed, notably in Belfast, Cork and Dublin. It would soon attract many supporters and participate in workers’ struggles, earning itself the condemnation of the Catholic Church.

Following the decline of the International, largely due to the active victimization of its members, the next significant movement in Ireland was the Irish land war of 1879-82, directed against landlordism, and the parallel movement for land nationalization. The oppressive Coercion Bill of 1881, introduced by the Liberal government, meant this party’s allegedly pro-Ireland, pro-worker stance was no longer credible and this would stimulate the radical and socialist movement in England to independent expression, giving rise to the Democratic Federation founded in the same year. A delegation of the DF was invited to Ireland by the Land League and would speak on joint platforms across the country. After the DF had formally adopted socialism, changing its name to the Social Democratic Federation in 1884, it would split a few months later and the majority of its Executive would resign, leaving to form the Socialist League.

The latter would form branches in Dublin but cease to exist in the early 90s due to the encroaching domination of anarchist influences. Towards the end of the 80s, many socialists, influenced to a greater or lesser degree by Marxism, would direct their energies toward the broader workers’ movement, actively inspiring the organization of non-specialized workers and their recruitment into the Gasworkers’ Union, whose victorious strike in England in 1889 had given this sector of the proletariat a massive boost.

In February, 1891, Engels gave the Gasworkers’ Union credit for giving impetus to the labour movement in Ireland, noting that they were also organizing the agricultural labourers, that they had the most powerful organization in Ireland, and that they were putting up their own candidates in the upcoming elections. The Second Congress of what had now become the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers of Great Britain and Ireland, would be held in Dublin in May, and Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling would attend. The Congress adopted a decision on the participation of the Union in the forthcoming International Socialist Workers’ Congress in Brussels and Eleanor and William Thorne were elected as its delegates.

In her speech at the Brussels Congress Eleanor made special reference to the 25,000 members of the union in Ireland, and reported that: “no words were more enthusiastically cheered at a huge demonstration in Phoenix Park than ‘Let Ireland be free, but let it be an Ireland of free workers; it matters little to the men and women of Ireland if they are exploited by Nationalist or Orangemen; the agricultural labourer sees his enemy in the landlord, as the industrial worker sees his in the capitalist”. In conclusion, Eleanor Marx affirmed that the rise of the unskilled workers indicated that there was at last a genuine working class movement again, and that this augured well for the formation of a genuine working class party, distinct from other political parties.

After the first Irish Trade Union Congress in 1894 important sections of the Independent Labour Party were formed in Belfast and Dublin. But the party soon became increasingly imbued with Fabianism, and the Dublin Section (whose members included its secretary Adolphus Shields, who had been very active in the Gas Workers’ Union) broke away and embarked on a search for greater theoretical clarity. It was this group, the Dublin Socialist Society, which offered James Connolly, a Scot of Irish descent living in Edinburgh, an appointment as an organizer for the society, inviting him to Dublin in the spring of 1896. It was not long before Connolly had convinced the society’s members to disband the society and reform as a new working-class party, the Irish Socialist Republican Party.

In his first public statement on behalf of the new party, Connolly stated: “The struggle for Irish freedom has two aspects: it is national and it is social. Its national ideal can never be realized until Ireland stands forth before the world a nation free and independent. It is social and economic, because no matter what the form of government may be, as long as one class owns as their private property the land and the instruments of labour, from which all mankind derive their substance, that class will always have it in their power to plunder and enslave the remainder of their fellow creatures”.

A programme was adopted which was modelled on that of the Social Democratic Federation and called for the “Establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic”.

In the same year the party launched a campaign against the Boer War, whose purpose Connolly would identify as that of “enabling an unscrupulous gang of capitalists to get into their hands the immense riches of the diamond fields”.

A widening of the franchise which resulted from the Irish Local Government Act in 1899 also saw increased participation by workers in the elections and labour electoral associations would spring up to put forward candidates. Connolly would be horrified at the speed with which the candidates succumbed to corruption and failed to back workers’ demands of any significance once elected. At the subsequent election, the labour electoral associations suffered total defeat, and into the vacuum would step the Fabians, seeking to provide justification for working class participation within the electoral process under the banner of “municipal socialism”.

On the international level, the split between the reformist elements, like the Fabians, and the intransigent revolutionaries would come to a head at the Congress of the Socialist International which assembled in Paris in 1900. The matter of the Socialist deputy Millerand, who had entered a government which included General Galliffet, “butcher of the Commune” urgently needed to be addressed. Two delegates from the I.S.R.P were present at the Congress, and only Ireland and Bulgaria voted unanimously against Kautsky’s equivocal position.

And yet the IAnd yet the I.S.R.P. distinguished its position from that of Rosa Luxemburg, who accepted the annexation and the partition of Poland in the name of international workers’ solidarity.

Origins of the labour movement in Italy

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After relating the rise and development of the Partito Socialista Rivoluzionario di Romagna (Revolutionary Socialist Party of Romagna), its participation in the 1882 elections, and the entry of the first socialists into the bourgeois parliament, where a genuine policy of revolutionary parliamentarianism was conducted mainly by Andrea Costa, we paused to consider the mechanisms set up by the left-leaning governments to repress all forms of proletarian organization: indiscriminate arrests, sequestration and suppression of newspapers, violent repression of all street protests and demonstrations, etc. We concluded by looking at the birth of the second proletarian party, the Partito Operaio Italiano, (Italian Workers’ Party).

In 1883-84 the peasant masses of the Po Valley, prompted by centuries of poverty and by a recent aggravation of their already precarious situation, entered into the fray with a series of massive strikes which would later influence the development of the labour and socialist movement in Italy. A mass movement of the agrarian proletariat had been brought into being, and one which was conscious both of its own strength and of the need to embark on the path of uncompromising class struggle.

The first mass strikes erupted in March 1882. Thousands of farm labourers demonstrated with the call for “bread and work”. The 1.80 lira offer made by the landowners was rejected. Two companies of soldiers were then brought in and the strike was violently crushed. Already weak with hunger, many of the demonstrators were then arrested and imprisoned for up to three months.

Partial strikes and riots nevertheless continued, and organizational work would bear fruit in two large associations which were formed in 1884, bringing together thousands of farm labourers. Police repression was swift and 168 arrests were made, including of the movement’s leaders; meanwhile large contingents of infantry, bersaglieri and carabinieri were brought up. The united landowners, with the bayonets of the king’s troops protecting them, could now shut down the strike.

In May 1886 general elections took place. In Romagna the 1882 alliance between the democratic left and the socialists was re-affirmed.

The stance taken by the Workers’ Party, of absolute separation, infuriated radical democracy, which launched against it a vicious and slanderous campaign, even accusing it of being a tool of the police. A violent polemic opened between radicals and workerists.

This episode served to dispel any illusion that it would be possible to walk part of the way with radical democracy, in order to conquer the democratic liberties that both of them were interested in obtaining. Yes, the various bourgeois factions and fractions do fight among themselves, but, when faced with the proletariat – who they recognize as not just any old adversary but one that embodies the negation of the capitalist regime – they form a united front, with the State adopting the instruments of violent repression, and radical democracy the methods of slander and calumny.

It was during this same period that the Italian government embarked on its colonial policy. On January 17, 1885, a small expeditionary corps set sail from Naples in order to, in the words of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: “go to the Red Sea in search of the keys to the Mediterranean”. On February 5 the Italian soldiers disembarked at Mitsiwa. However the Italian soldiers found themselves faced not just with “a few pirates”, as they had been led to believe, but ten thousand warriors, who at Dogali, on 25 January 1887 would massacre them.

In the Chamber of Deputies, the small extreme left nucleus, with Andrea Costa indisputably the most combative among them, had vigorously opposed the government’s colonial policy ever since May 1885 when it had first come up for discussion. He would express the absolute aversion of Italian socialists and proletarians to any intervention in Africa and on several occasions demand the troops be recalled. Costa’s watchword was “né un uomo né un soldo” – not a single man, not a single penny. After the Dogali disaster the extreme left would fight in vain to prevent reinforcements from being sent.

The third congress of the Italian Workers’ Party (IWP) was convened at Pavia on 18 and 19 September 1887. Costa intervened on behalf of the revolutionary socialists and Luigi Molinari for the anarchists. The workerists declared that their programme consisted of “defining the class struggle”, above all in the economic sphere, but Andrea Costa’s call for the two parties to unite was ignored once again. The IWP wanted to reassert its distance both from the socialists and the anarchists. A change was made to the party’s statutes and programme that widened its restrictive membership qualification, which had hitherto allowed only wage earners to join, extending it to include independent workers, but the “worker exclusivism” of the party was newly reasserted by its denial of membership to non-proletarians, even to those who accepted the party’s programme and principles.

Taking up the issues of women’s and children’s labour, the workerists refused to place any faith in legislative solutions, stating that these problems could only be resolved by class struggle.

Meanwhile, a new initiative was being taken by Turati, with Lazzari’s agreement, which gave rise to the birth of the Lega Socialista Milanese (Milan Socialist League) which aimed to regroup the socialists by excluding the anarchists.

The Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) was going through a serious crisis prompted by its repeated attempts to find common ground not only with the workerists and anarchists, but also with radical democrats and left Mazzinians. This tactic rather than strengthening the party in fact continually weakened it.

At its meeting in Forlì on 30 June 1889, the RSP decided to attend two international congresses, the “possibilist” and the “Marxist” ones, which were due to take place in Paris in the following month. The revolutionary socialists declared that what divided the congresses was of no interest to them and their delegation would attend both. The delegates were briefed to act in favour of the unification of the two congresses and for the reconstitution of the International. The Workers’ Party, on the other hand, only sent its representative to the “Possibilist” congress, whereas Turati gave Costa a mandate to represent the Milan Socialist League as well.

The International Workers’ Congress (“Marxist”) began on 14 July 1889; the Socialist Workers’ Congress (“Possibilist”) on the day after. The agenda of the two congresses was practically the same, and focussed mainly on social legislation. The Marxist congress attracted the most delegates, including many of international socialism’s eminent personalities (Lavrov, Guesde, Vaillant, Aveling, De Paepe, Liebknecht, Bebel, Bernstein, Zetkin, etc.).

Costa was elected to the chair of both congresses and in accordance with his mandate worked to bring the assemblies together, but without success.

Both congresses resolved to render the international links permanent by maintaining ongoing relations between the parties in the various countries. The “Marxists” proposed that on the first of May 1890, workers should abstain from work in defence of the eight hour working day. From the “Marxist” congress would arise the Second International, whereas the international of the “Possibilists” was dead in the water.

The Italian delegates returned from Paris bolstered with the sensation that the workers’ movement was now a major force. Great was their admiration for German social-democracy, which appeared as the model all socialist parties should follow. Thus, on the occasion of the Halle Congress, in October 1890, an enthusiastic address was sent to the German social-democrats.

Meanwhile in Italy three congresses were in gestation: that of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Workers’ Party and the anarchists.

It seemed that the decline of the RSP might be halted when in 1889 Il Sole dell’Avvenire, the organ of the revolutionary socialists, reappeared for the third time, this time with an appeal entitled “The need to reorganize the Italian Revolutionary Socialist Party”. But the congress of the RSP wasn’t in fact convoked to reorganize the party, but with the much more modest aim of improving its organization in preparation for the November 1890 general elections.

The anarchists, who weren’t invited because they were abstentionists, made a violent attack on “legalitarian and parliamentary socialism” and started to prepare for their own congress, to be held in Switzerland.

But the RSP congress, devoted entirely to the forthcoming elections, pleased neither the Workers’ Party nor the Milan socialists, who refused to take part. Even Turati and Labriola declared against it.

In a long letter, Turati alerted socialists to the perils of “potential alliances with allegedly like-minded parties”. In electoral contests, declared Turati, there must be a “clear distinction between the programmes, each one issued under its party name and stating its ideals, so that lack of clarity, which is all too entrenched in public life already and which makes it far too easy for personal ambition to prevail, shall be dispelled from our ranks and not end up contaminating us as well”.

The response of Antonio Labriola was much more perfunctory: “I am sorry to have to respond with a firm and explicit No. I have never approved of the idea of this Congress which is dedicated solely to the aim of putting up candidates”. A few days before, on 13 October, he had written to Turati: “The obsession with becoming a deputy, with the generic votes of democrats of every sort, is not compatible with class struggle or with the genuine proletarian movement”.

On November 1st, in Milan, the fifth and last congress of the Italian Workers’ Party was held, and it was the first one not to be attended by the anarchists, who had participated in, and disrupted, every previous one. Another key question, which had already been debated at the Paris congresses, was the founding of the Chambers of Labour, or Labour Exchanges. The original one, in Milan, was in the process of formation and others were getting off the ground in Turin, Florence and Piacenza, etc.

Proceeding then to discuss the eight hour agitation and May Day, the congress adopted the Paris resolutions and, regarding the organization of peasant farmers and women, a motion was passed to improve their organization and to launch a more vigorous propaganda campaign.

This would be the last congress of the Workers’ Party which, like the Revolutionary Socialist Party, was clearly in decline. The economistic and corporative ideology of a party which limited itself to economic but not political resistance would die a natural death.

Between January 4 and 6, near Lugano, the anarchists would hold their congress and attempt to form a Revolutionary Anarchist Socialist Party, but it was a case of a very strange party indeed from the moment that central organs were deemed unnecessary and each section or group was given unlimited autonomy. Indeed, the individual members were free to decide whether or not they wanted to apply the congress resolutions, passed by the majority, or not. The programme was limited to a general indication of theoretical principles and of the practical means the party proposed to adopt. As regards the former, nothing new with respect to the theses of the old anarchist international. The means were to include “propaganda in whatever form” and “participation in all workers’ movements”, a step forward if one considers that previously the anarchists had even condemned strikes as a useless method of “legal” struggle.

With these three congresses, therefore, all of them held within the space of three months, not a single step was taken to form a national socialist party; something which had been everyone’s express intention and had now become indispensable.

Instead the one in Genoa in 1892 was the first national socialist congress to be held in Italy. Intended originally as a workers’ congress, it was converted into a socialist one due to a split that occurred: on one side the new party which would arise as an independent party with a life of its own, on the other the anarchist movement and intransigent corporative workerism.

It is no accident that the two extremist wings of the workers’ movement, anarchism and workerism, with their seemingly irreconcilable ideologies, joined together to oppose the new socialist party and to form, ephemeral though it was, the Italian Workers’ Party mark 2.

The separation from the anarchists was a historical necessity, which had already become apparent at the international congress held in Brussels in the previous year.

Turati, representing Italy at that congress, expressed in an article in Critica Sociale on 10 September 1891 the reasons for the split, which likewise was carried out in Italy in the following year. Turati demonstrated that the separation from the anarchists was a necessity because the two schools were incompatible. As regards what anarchism and socialism had in common, the most that could be said was that they both made a negative critique of capitalism, “but the two schools are essentially different as regards their conception of social evolution, their objectives and, above all, their conflicting methods of action”.

The other problem the socialists were faced with was workerism. In Critica Sociale on 16 August 1892 Turati wrote: “In the Italian working class – party in formation – that fermentation process is still underway which we find in the early history of all workers’ parties. It hasn’t yet got over its childhood maladies (…) Hence there still predominates that tendency, kept alive among many of our workers (…) to stand aloof, to dig in on so-called economic terrain and christen this eunuch tactic with the fateful name “class struggle” (…) The great and definitive summarizing statement of Marx’s work: “Workers of the world unite!”, and the International’s great epigraph: “the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves” is translated thus: “Let us cut ourselves off from intelligence, independence and culture and look to the blue-collar workers, not to principles (…) and let us form a workers’ party of the illiterate”.

The 16 July edition of Critica Sociale would announce that a circular on the convocation of the national congress had been sent out entitled “Organizational congress of the Italian working class”. Any workers club or association which wanted to attend had to accept certain principles: constitution of the workers’ party, independent of all other parties; organizing to demand the placing of capital and land in the hands of the community of workers; conquest of the public powers, as another means of emancipating labour.

Ultimately there was enough to place the party in the camp of socialism, but at the same time it was so generic as to be all things to all men. But the movement without a programmatic base, confined within the factory walls and with a consciousness that was corporative rather than class based, not only wouldn’t grow of its own accord but as time passed it would wither away, until even its primitive impulse to fight was extinguished.

On the morning of 14 August those attending the congress converged on Genoa from all over Italy. The biggest names in Italian socialism were present and all the political currents under whose direction the workers clubs and societies had formed were represented: workerists, revolutionary socialists, anarchists, evolutionists, social-democrats, and republican collectivists.

The split from the anarchists, even if not explicitly spelled out, was already taken for granted. But even without the anarchists everyone knew the congress would be a far from quiet affair. In fact arguments broke out right from the start. Firstly the anarchists, lining up with the workerists, demanded that the members of the presidency should be authentic workers. Prampolini responded to the anarchists, thus: “For years and years now, from when the socialist party was just beginning to establish itself in Italy, we have constantly been squabbling amongst ourselves, in the press, at meetings, in the public squares and at the congresses. I won’t say that bad faith exists on one side or the other, because it doesn’t. You are as honest as we are, but it is indisputable that this struggle exists, and it goes on every hour of every day, and this is because we are essentially two different parties; we are pursuing two absolutely opposed paths; amongst us there is no community of interests (…) If we are going to pursue two different paths, let’s do it as good friends would; you go your way, and we’ll go ours, let us part without rancour (…) Tomorrow you assemble at another venue, and we will do the same and believe me it is the only way we can settle this”.

The organizing committee decided to dissolve the congress, but seeing that the minority had no intention of abandoning it, it was left to the majority to do so. On the evening of the same day, Turati met up with a small group of congress attendees in a trattoria. It was decided to invite all members of the congress who accepted participation in elections (this was the formula for separation from the anarchists) to meet at another venue on the following day.

There were some who strongly protested at the way the split had come about and the judgement of a small group which had arrogated to itself the right to decide in the name of the majority. It was clearly a coup de main. But the majority would never have been able to overcome the obstructionism of the anarcho-workerists, and it above all demonstrates that even then socialists, as had always been the case with communists, didn’t feel constrained by democratic forms and Turati did well, under the circumstances, to confront everyone with a fait accompli.

Turati’s salutary act of strength completed the final separation of the socialists from the anarchists, which by this time was historically due and was irrevocable. Thus an old conflict was brought to an end once and for all, and with it the fruitless contest between the two theories which, 13 years after Andrea Costa’s letter “To my Roman friends”, was still paralyzing the socialist movement.

But the socialists’ battle was not yet over. Turati proposed, in the name of a group of comrades, to make substantial changes to the projected programme, removing typical notions of the democratic-bourgeois-republican-radical variety, such as the natural equality of man, popular sovereignty, etc. Moreover the party statutes even removed the condition which restricted membership to workers.

In response to criticisms Turati’s telling response was: “The party which accepts pretty much anyone is an old illusion (…) There is only one terrain in which a party can be planted and really take root: the grounds of conviction. You fear the ignorance of the masses: let us then instruct them. It is not on a party’s feet that the programme must be modelled but on its head. We needn’t fear that the head will hamper the motion of the feet: rather it will guide them”.

Clearly at the start of its life the socialist party had many limitations, and these will be treated in more detail in the full account of the report, to be published in Comunismo.

History of the labour movement in Venezuela

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A study of the history of the trade unions in Venezuela is now underway.

The working class of colonial Venezuela – before national independence – consisted of wage labourers in manufacture and on the land, with slave labour prevalent in the latter sector.

But even though in this period there were no trade union organizations but only clandestine Christian-inspired confraternities, signs of workers’ militancy can already be detected. These confraternities, linked to craft guilds, were constituted on a professional rather than a class basis.

After independence was won, following a bloody war with Spain in 1824, the Republic came into being. In the years that followed there was a revival of the guilds, which transformed themselves into associations of bosses of the rising manufactures, while the confraternities took on the character of mutual aid societies, formed for the most part by wage earners.

The war of independence ruined many small rural producers and craftsmen who were deprived of their means of production, which ended up in the hands of landed proprietors, merchants and money lenders. These also acquired ownership of the sources of raw materials and of the manufacturing companies, and it was here that ruined artisans, workers and apprentices from the old workshops, along with numerous impoverished peasants, ended up working.

Between 1859 and 1863 there was a civil war known as the Federal Revolution, in which the oligarchy was opposed by the liberals and there were peasant insurrections against the big landowners. The victorious liberals would put an end to slavery.

In 1885 the railway workers got organized and during this second half of the century, with increasing imports and exports, the Dockers were roused into action as well and the first generations of proletarians in the gold mines were established.

Also during the second half of the 19th century socialist ideas began to take hold. We know that after the May Day struggle in Chicago in 1886 some organizations in Venezuela took up the cause of the 8 hour day. In the middle of 1893 there was the so-called “First meeting of the socialist workers of Venezuela” at the Caffê Caracas, at which 14 German-speaking workers, who had taken refuge in Venezuela after the defeat of the Paris Commune, decided to found the Venezuelan section of the Second International. They nominated a delegate to the 3rd International Workers’ Congress in Zurich which took place in August 1893. On 28 October 1896 a “Workers’ Congress” met in Caracas, which declared the necessity of constituting a workers’ party.

The formal creation of trade unions was only permitted by the government after the death of General Juan Vicente Gomez (17 December 1935), but the existence of organs of economic struggle predated this: already in the first decade of the 20th century Venezuelan workers had united under the cover of charitable and mutual aid societies, particularly in the burgeoning oil industry.

At the beginning of the last century Venezuela’s economy was focused on the export of agricultural products. In 1907 there was a strike in the principal port, La Guaira. In 1909 the Association of the Workers and Artisans of the Federal District was formed, which published the paper Workers’ Unity and similar organizations began to sprout up all over the country. The typographers approved their articles of association in 1909. In 1911 there was strike in a cigarette factory in Valencia; in 1914 the first strike in a strategic sector of national scope, the telegraph operators. In 1919 and 1920 in Caracas the shoemakers, the printers, the tramwaymen, the telephone workers and the workers in the Aroa copper mines went out on strike.

During these years anarcho-syndicalism exerted a certain influence, receiving the backing of Spanish workers, mainly militants of the General Confederation of Labour (founded in Spain in 1910) and Italians. However this influence soon began to wane. We can nevertheless state that in the early years of the Venezuelan trade union movement there was no clear ideological reference point, as had occurred in other countries in the region where social-democratic and anarchist influences was evident.

The discovery of oil introduced significant changes to the economic life of the country. From the 1920s the Venezuelan economy began to move away from agricultural exports such as coffee and cocoa and to focus on oil-based activities along with the consequent profits. Henceforth the Venezuelan economy would become integrated into Europe’s international capitalist circuit, mainly England’s, and thus become tied in to the general division of labour generated by capitalist development.

The oil industry requires a marked division of labour and major technological input. From the ranks of the peasants labour began to flow into the oil companies, which by 1925 was already employing ten thousand workers.

This was the background to the first oil workers’ strike in 1922, directed against the inhuman conditions to which they were subjected, such as working 12 hours per day, including Sundays, and living in fenced off shacks under heavy surveillance. A demand was put forward for a 50% wage increase, from 5 to 10 bolivares a day, and for a working day of 8 hours for the entire working class. The strike lasted 9 days.

The workers, protected by their Mutualist societies, workers’ clubs and cultural centres, with which they sought to circumvent the Gomez government’s persecution of trade unions, got together at night in their huts to hold discussions. First of all they fought for decent housing, water and sanitary services; then came the wage demands.

From 1936 onwards, after the 27 year dictatorship came to an end, it was possible to put forward demands in an open and generalized way. The working day was 12 hours a day in the majority of industries, but up to 14 or even 16 in others. Laws to protect workers didn’t exist, or trade union rights, much less the right to strike. Throughout Venezuela an intense organizational activity got underway, which soon led to a series of economic strikes.

Unlike in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the trade unions which began to form in Venezuela at the beginning of the last century were not openly subordinated to any political party. In the pre-1936 period, partly due to their clandestine nature, there was a degree of confusion as to the distinction between party and trade union, and some trade union sections eventually came to resemble sections of a party. After 1936 unions became legal, but the years of leading a clandestine or semi-clandestine existence under the dictatorship, along with the continued presence of militants who had fought in the earlier struggles, would see these organizational traits maintained.

The industrialization of Venezuela is accomplished in the years 1940-45, and is characterized by an extensive use of manpower to compensate for the lack of technology and machinery. In 1944 the government gives financial aid to non-oil sectors of production to encourage the production of the raw materials for the nation’s industry. This in its turn encourages the growth of the working class.

But the latter is still strongly influenced by petty bourgeois politics, a political immaturity determined by the fact that the working masses are mainly composed of peasants recently arrived from the countryside in the cities and centres of production, bringing with them an attachment to property and an individualist outlook. This would facilitate the maintaining of the working class’s political and trade union direction under the leadership of the “tropical” version of social-democracy, which would use various stratagems to mobilize the workers against their own real interests and to divert them from their true aims.

From 1960, after the return of democratic government, there is a development and consolidation of the main trade unions. All of them guarantee the bourgeoisie social control of the workers. The struggles and divisions within the main trade unions in Venezuela are for the most part just a reflection of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, with “communists” (revisionists and opportunists of various Stalinist currents) counter posed to “anti-communists” (democrats and social-democrats influenced by the policies of North America and the multinationals).

In the major strikes between 1970 and 1998 the main protagonists are the steelworkers and workers employed by the Corporacion Venezoiana de Guayana, the textile workers, the workers in the law courts, and the health workers and teachers.

As a consequence of the global crisis at the end of the 70s, and the fall in the price of oil in the 80s and 90s, the right-wing parties (mainly the AD and the COPEI) began to lose their over the social movement and their political influence was reduced. But the discontent which had accumulated amongst the masses was not channelled by the organizations of the reformist left.

In 1989 there was the “Caracazo”, a generalized and spontaneous revolt. In 1992 two attempted coups d’etat by the Bolivian Army Movement didn’t manage to take power, but nevertheless showed the new way of replacing government personnel the bourgeoisie was starting to adopt.

In Venezuela the workers’ movement has followed the same historical course as its European counterpart, passing through the phases of prohibition, tolerance, and submission. The trade union organizations would end up subjugated to the requirements of the bourgeois State same as in the rest of the capitalist world.

All of the parties that control the trade union leadership in Venezuela, ranging from the bourgeois democratic, social democratic, social Christian and reformist left parties, to the Stalinist, trotskist, Maoist and guerrilla-backed parties; all of them, without exception, have raised the banner of inter-classism. This approach manifests itself in practice as class collaboration within the trade unions, with all the main union trade unions incorporating non-wage earners, namely, peasants, self-employed lorry drivers, unauthorized traders, and other expressions of small proprietorship. These groupings, even though also victims of capitalist oppression, do not belong within the trade unions and their federations, which should only organize wage earners.

From its earliest days the workers’ struggle in Venezuela has had an orientation which is both anti-employer and anti-imperialist imposed on it. This has been justified, on the one hand, by the sizeable presence of the multinational companies, on the other in opposition to the open subjection of the bourgeois national governments to imperialism. This was the line taken by the bourgeois-democrat, social democrat and Stalinist parties which, with the tacit consent of the various military governments, introduced it into the trade union movement, bringing about its submission to the notions of defence of the nation and national economy, of peaceful resolution of labour disputes, and of collaboration with the bosses.

The bosses have promoted secessionist unions, mainly in the public sector, when difficulties have arisen around managing agreements, and in response to trade union demands and struggles.

In Venezuela, in many social and industrial sectors (oil, education and health) workers are gathered together in trade union centres, federations and base unions. At the beginning of the 1980s these started losing members because of the reduction in the number of workers employed. However the main cause was the official unions’ success in demobilizing the labour movement in the middle of an economic crisis, which the bourgeoisie sought to remedy with low wages and sackings. Thus, although some new “alternative” unions appeared, the main union structures continue to appear as “representatives” of the wage labour masses against the bosses and the government.

Episodes of genuine class struggle, wildcat strikes with no notice given and no minimum service offered, have occurred when groups of workers have freed themselves from union control, but these have been isolated and short lived. The party was not present in these struggles.

In 1998 elections Hugo Chavez was elected, after which the phase of the AD-COPEI two-party system was definitively abandoned; already defunct in any case as it no longer guaranteed the bourgeoisie social control of wage labour.

In 1999 “Chavismo” convoked a Constituent Assembly, charged with drawing up a new constitution, and promoting a “Bolivarian revolution”, the new façade behind which the bourgeois class dictatorship would continue its rule.

A front of parties opposed to Chavez, consisting mainly of those groups that had lost their privileges and quota of power during the two-party period, started to take shape.

Chavismo and its allies (the “Patriotic Pole”) have met resistance in the union centrals controlled by AD and COPEI, and mainly from the CTV, which at the time was the largest organization and included the largest number of federations and unions. At first Chavismo was critical of the union centrals, which were accused of being antidemocratic, corrupt and aligned with the positions of the opposition front.

On 5 April 2003 a new union central was created, formed by the Bolivarian Workers Force (FBT), Union Autonomy (AS) and the Carabobo Classist and Democratic Union Bloc. On 1 and 2 August 2003 the founding congress of the Workers Union of Venezuela (UNT) was held, a completely artificial central with close links to the government.

Thus the new landscape of union centrals existing in Venezuela is: CTV, UNT, CODESA, CUTV, ASI and CGT.

These are all regime unions; all practice class collaboration with the bosses. The differences between them are due to some belonging to the party front opposed to Chavismo, while others have lined up in defence of the Chavist government and its “21^st century socialism”.

All of these union organizations and political currents, despite almost always referring to themselves “classist”, in practice prostrate themselves before bourgeois law, defence of the country, the firm and the national economy; and engage in conciliatory dialogue with the bosses. Some of these centrals, like the CBST, call themselves “anti-imperialist”, but remain staunch advocates of parliamentary democracy and free enterprise.

As a rule all union centrals or organizations are linked to specific political movements, which quarrel over parliamentary and government posts. The result of all this is relative social peace and continuing capitalist exploitation. In Venezuela there are a lot of trade unions but not many members. The number of trade union organizations has more than doubled since the end of 2001, when 2,974 organizations were registered to hold meetings by the bosses’ National Electoral Council, and the figure now stands at 6,200. However, while the number of trade unions is rising, the level of unionisation has fallen from 40% in 1974 to 11% today. Still, the activists in the sectors that can officially join trade unions in the industrial centres represent 25% of the economically active population, which is around 3.5 million, of whom 2.3 million work in the public sector.

Workers’ control and co-management have been proposed in the case of the so-called “salvaged companies”, that is, bankrupt companies expropriated by the government and handed over to the workers or jointly managed with them. These expropriations, billed by the government as first steps towards socialism, are actually just a way of supporting bankrupt capitalists. Beyond the productive success of these firms, as well as the change of management, entrusted to the workers, it is still commodities being produced to be sold on the market. The firm makes a profit by exploiting its workers. This is what the Chavists call “21st century Socialism”.

Given a situation where firms are going bankrupt and workers being kicked out onto the streets, some of the opportunist movements, principally those of trotskist inspiration, have launched the slogan of ‘salvage companies by restructuring and nationalizing them’. The bourgeois government of Chavismo, favoured at the time by an increase in the price of oil, launched a “bail-out” policy and support package for the bankrupt capitalists, favouring, after some hesitation, the expropriations, which it described as socialist. It is with this demagoguery that the illusion of “workers’ control” and co-management was sold to the workers.

Even in its Chavist manifestation the bourgeois government has continued to perfect its repressive apparatus by means of plots, terrorist attacks and threatened coups d’etat. What is more, over the past 15 years, the legal system has been modified, by refining laws and decrees and equipping itself with repressive bodies and secret services, to facilitate the repression not only of strikes but also of the most timid and conservative protests. This entire machinery has been used against the workers and its trade union leaders whenever the government deemed it necessary.

After street clashes, revolts, and the opposition’s barricades, with elements from the discontented middle classes ever ready to thrust themselves to the fore, the government established additional ’security areas’, concentrated mainly around the industrial zones, in which all crises of public order (that is, workers’ protests) are met with a rapid response by the forces of repression. When the workers have refused to bow before these restrictions the government has not hesitated to use violent repression against them. The workers’ fronts and co-ordinations which have arisen at the local level are a response to the requirements of self-defence. But due to weaknesses inherent in the current situation, class positions, when expressed, are often accompanied by legalistic and nationalistic illusions, influenced by the warring bourgeois gangs.

For the past 15 years the bourgeoisie has achieved social control of the workers by using the opportunist illusion of Chavist “21st century Socialism”, by diverting the energy of workers into defending bourgeois and anti-proletarian causes. The trade unions have helped to confirm this deception. The Trade union movement has been divided over the false opposition of capitalism versus (Chavist) socialism and thus the leaders of the central trade unions, like the national fronts between parties, have maintained control of the movement, although without being able to count on a real capacity to mobilize.

Although the present unions in Venezuela are regime unions, allied with the bosses and the government, there are many trade unions at the company level which are not controlled by the trade union leaders and federations and the parties which control them. There have also emerged co-ordinations of these company level trade unions, known in Venezuela as “base trade unions”, and these have tended to conduct their struggles and agitations on the periphery of the trade union centres and federations. It is a process in its early stages and opportunist positions have frequently been adopted.

Nevertheless, the mobilization of the workers in Venezuela, even if under false “socialist” and “revolutionary” banners, has evidenced once again the gigantic energy and power that resides within the working class. Today this energy is being turned by the bourgeoisie to its own account in order to conserve capitalism. But when the time is right for a revival of the class struggle the wage-earners will form themselves into organizations of economic struggle outside and against the present trade unions, and function once again as transmission belt for the policy of the revolutionary communist party.

Concepts of dictatorship – Before Marx

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The concept of revolutionary dictatorship is born at the time of the French Revolution. The theory remains at a rudimentary level, its highest expression represented by Babeuf and Filippo Buonarroti, but its practice is more advanced, prompted by the necessity of defending the revolution from its internal and external enemies.

During the eighteenth-century Enlightenment we find little or nothing regarding such ideas, which is not surprising given the social structure of the time, in France was very advanced with respect to most of the other countries in Europe, but not on a par with England, where the birth of industrial capitalism was then underway.

The Enlightenment (Illuminismo), in itself a very vague term given that it embraces a number of very different positions, nevertheless definitely constitutes the ideological preparation for the French Revolution, which like all revolutions happened out of necessity, but which had discovered in the Enlightenment, and in Rousseau in particular, often unconsciously modified, an ideology and theoretical weapon the revolutionaries could use.

But the influence of others, in particular Diderot, was no less important.

As regards the concept of the right to rebel against the ruling power, already St Augustine in his Confessions talks of a contractual principle which even the monarch must adhere to, and of the people’s right to rebel if that should not be the case. In the eleventh century the German jurist Manegold of Lautenbach spoke of a pact between king and people binding for both parties. Imperial authority is thus a function entrusted to the sovereign by the people, and the oath of allegiance counts for nothing if the sovereign breaks the pact. In the following century even Thomas Aquinas, in De regimine principum, writes that the people have the right to remove a tyrant who doesn’t honour agreements and does not fulfil his function.

In the sixteenth century Calvin, exponent of Protestant reform, realized a theocratic government in Geneva, and theorized obedience to the constituted authority. The French Calvinists, forced into a bitter struggle against the Catholic monarchs, ended up theorizing armed resistance as their right. The Genevan theologian Teodoro di Beza, in his De Iure Magistratuum in subditos of 1574, reaffirmed the principle of popular sovereignty, of the government’s contract, and of the right of an oppressed minority to rebel against tyrants. One of the various ’Huguenot Libels’ of the French protestants, the Vindaciae contra tyrannos of 1579 written by Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, was inspired by the usual biblical examples to justify the right to resist and to kill the tyrant; which is why they were called ’monarcomachs’.

These ideas influenced the English Puritans and permeated the English Revolution of 1640. The English jurist John Selden wrote at the time: “To know what obedience is owed to the prince, look to the contract between him and the people (…) When the contract is broken, and there is no longer an arbiter to judge, it will be up to arms to decide”.

During the Enlightenment, and not just in France, we find a lot of interesting material being written about materialism, atheism and communism.

Morelly, Mably and Rousseau all made critiques of private property, seen as the origin of all evil, although the political solution they arrived at as a result of their reflections lay in an enlightened despotism, that is, in a sovereign who would realize the new ideas.

We should mention that up to the 1760s there was no real prospect of any change at all, and the vision of the enlightenment and utopian thinkers was restricted by the society within which they lived. Their greatness lies in having posed the question in a society which was becoming increasingly less feudal, more and more mercantile, and with power becoming increasingly centralized within the royal absolutism.

A vague nod toward something we can more easily refer to the concept of revolutionary dictatorship we can see in Morelly. In the second part of his most famous work, the Code of Nature, we read: “If the situation isn’t such that a man is always disposed to yield to the most reasonable advice and remonstrances, our hypothesis doesn’t in fact exclude that a strict authority may overcome this initial aversion, obliging him to begin with to take on duties the practice of which, and the evidence of their utility, will then make them easier to accept”.

In Rousseau’s On the Origin of the Inequality of Mankind of 1754, we find a critique of private property which was too strong for the revolutionaries of ’80 and ’93, but not for Babeuf.

What will be particularly important in the elaboration of republican and Jacobin ideology however is the concept of “natural law”, which undergoes a remarkable transformation. Rousseau engages in a controversy over the doctrine of natural law as defended by Hobbes, Locke, Puffendorf and Grotius, which he considers to be a simple justification of existing power relations. The “social contract” which had been talked about up to then was just a delusion: “The rich man, thus urged by necessity, conceived at length the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to employ in his favour the forces of those who attacked him, to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire them with different maxims, and to give them other institutions as favourable to himself as the law of nature was unfavourable”. And then: “the popular insurrection that ends in the strangulation or deposition of a sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects. As he was maintained by force alone, it is force alone that overthrows him”.

As a matter of fact Rousseau’s ideal, given the impossibility of a return to primitive communism, was a society of craftsmen and small farmers.

Natural equality, considered as one of man’s natural indefeasible rights, becomes transformed into legal and political equality, thus sanctifying actual inequality, which acquires force and stability. The State is thus seen as an instrument used by a privileged class against another class, with the aim of maintaining existing privileges.

For us communists, law equates with force. That was the case for Rousseau as well in the society which he observed, but he believed a different society possible, one which would be based on the “law of nature” and the “rights of man”, in which “morality” would have an autonomy and pre-eminence over the social and economic structure, and in itself would create and inform a society guided by the “general will”.

This was the tragic illusion of the Jacobins. The new bourgeois class took stock of its needs, and abandoned the ideologies and institutions that had now served their purpose, exchanging them for other more functional ones adapted to their need to exert full control over the state apparatus.

On dictatorship we read: “The orderliness and slowness of conventional practice require a space of time that sometimes circumstances don’t allow; thousands of cases may crop up unforeseen by the legislator; and it is necessary to foresee that not everything can be foreseen. One should not therefore consolidate the political institutions to the point of not being able to suspend them”.

It is the Jacobins who will transform the practice, and to a lesser degree the idea, of the classical dictatorship. It is therefore in the fire of the revolution and war that the new, powerful weapon is forged: the revolutionary dictatorship.

Denis Diderot played an important part in the French Revolution and in the shaping of its ideology as well, although the Jacobins were very mistrustful of the Encyclopaedists, who they considered to be atheists and materialists and even inspirers of the more moderate political positions, from the constitutional monarchists to the Girondins.

However, beyond Diderot’s materialism, which we can describe as dialectical, and his declared atheism, he was never a supporter of enlightened despotism.

In the Apology of the Abbé Galiani written in 1770, Diderot showed that bourgeois liberty didn’t solve every problem, or guarantee public contentment. Replying to the Abbé Morellet, who put the sacred right of property before human rights, Diderot wrote: “Maybe the sense of humanity is no more sacred than the right of property, which is shattered in peacetime, in war in an infinite number of circumstances, and which the lord abbé preaches should be respected to the extent we die for it, kill each other for it, and starve to death?”. Diderot evidences his greatness in this passage, accepting and supporting the importance and necessity of capitalist development, but also managing to hint at the limits of an economic and social system then still in its infancy.

In 1776 Diderot started to consider revolution as the only solution. Another fundamental event was the American Revolution, a practical demonstration of the possibility of even a large State becoming a democratic republic. Now even Montesquieu and Rousseau could be seen from a different point of view, and used as the basis for a revolutionary conception.

Among the French revolutionaries the first to talk of the need for a revolutionary dictatorship was certainly Marat. Such a view, on the other hand, was not held by the enragés, or among the exagerés or Hébertists. Among the enragés we find an undeniable class instinct which cannot really be defined as Jacobin, although they attended the club, because they didn’t agree with the idea of an alliance between the petty and middling bourgeoisie, to which the Jacobins in large part belonged, and the sans-culottes, that is the urban lower classes composed of craftsmen, and their dependents, and to a lesser but important degree the wage labourers from those same craft workshops.

The enragés were united with the Jacobins in not wanting to eliminate private property, but wanted a society composed of independent craftsmen and small peasant proprietors. They bemoaned the fact that the old aristocracy had been replaced with the new aristocracy of wealth and, like Hébert, called for the requisitioning of everything that could be used to appease the people’s hunger and for all the speculators and engrossers who were trying to corner the market to be sent to the guillotine. Although having no sympathy with the monarchist past, like all sans-culottes they saw in the old regulations, in the corporatist organization, and in the common rights the only way of safeguarding the existence of the greater part of the population.

Jacques Roux, the Parisian priest, wrote: “Liberty is nothing but a vain fantasy when one class of men can starve the other with impunity, when the rich, by means of a monopoly, exercises the right of life and death over their fellows. The Republic is nothing but a vain fantasy when the counter-revolution is materializing, day after day, through the prices of essential necessities, which three quarters of the population can only afford by shedding blood, sweat and tears”.

On moving to Paris, Marat, born in Switzerland of a Sardinian emigré, got in contact with the encyclopaedists. Between 1765 and 1776 he lived in London, and the living conditions he witnessed in the poor districts caused him to reject the myth of English democracy, then enjoying much favour among Voltaire and a lot of the other enlightenment thinkers. Back in 1790 Marat, essentially an outsider even among the Jacobins, was probably the only person talking about a republic and the need for a revolutionary dictatorship. On September 25, 1792 the Girondins accused the Paris deputies of wanting a dictatorship. Danton and Robespierre protected themselves by distancing themselves from Marat, who replied: “I believe I am the first political writer and maybe the only one after the Revolution who proposed a military tribunal, a dictatorship, triumvirs, as the only means of eliminating traitors and conspirators”.

The history of India and the establishment of capitalism

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The comrade introduced the first report on India’s history with a reassertion of the principal features of our materialist and dialectical method, which bases the analysis of any historical period principally on the geophysical, social and economic conditions within which human beings find themselves, and on other cardinal factors such as the level attained by the relations of production and the intensity of the struggle between the classes. For we communists it is a matter of tracing out the historical sequence of the social forms of production. And this is the method we also apply to the history of India with a view to arriving at a better understanding of present day Indian capitalism, denouncing the enemies of its numerically powerful proletariat and unmasking its numerous false friends.

The rhythmic progression of social forms and economic relations within the Indian sub-continent is described by Marx, ranging from the primary form, primitive communism, through to the present mode of capitalist production, passing through the Asiatic mode of production.

The Asiatic variant of the second mode of production is deeply affected by the climatic and geographical conditions of the area within which it is found. If in the continent of Europe rainwater irrigates the land in sufficient quantities or can be contained in small reservoirs in case of drought, in Asia or in North Africa, where rainfall is insufficient or irregular, agriculture is only possible thanks to a rational distribution of water via an efficient system of irrigation on a grand scale, which is achievable only by highly centralized and disciplined communities of men working together. The keystone in the development of the Asiatic variant will therefore be a State that incorporates and absorbs everything and within which community relations are concentrated.

For many centuries the lack of written material meant the study of ancient India was full of gaps, and 80% of the extant documentation about the pre-Islamic era derived exclusively from the oral tradition. Only after 1900, thanks mainly to archaeological discoveries, were the numerous lessons passed down the centuries either confirmed or denied.

The first settled society in the Neolithic era is the Mehrgarh community, a people which begins its sedentary life by establishing reciprocal relations between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists, who tend to become progressively more urbanized. The forms of distribution are still collective because conditioned by the main productive force, the community.

For the first urban civilization we must move to the Indus Valley. From 4000 BC the Dravidians, a people likely originating from the Middle East, penetrated into the sub-continent from the West and settled in the Indus and Ganges Basins, eventually spreading to all of central India. The Indus Valley civilization would develop in a way comparable to the coeval civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It would reach full maturity between 2500 and 2000 BC and then enter a period of decline in the seventeenth century BC, disappearing entirely in the sixteenth.

The Indus Valley civilization was literate and practised the domestication of animals but not of the horse. Copper and bronze, but not iron, were worked, and earthenware pottery was made. Agriculture, based on the cultivation of wheat and barley and the production of cotton, reached a high level of development but was restricted to the river basins. Its economic base was purely agrarian and trade relations with the contemporary Mesopotamian civilization were intense.

This stateless society, without private property in the means of production or a law of value operating within it, undoubtedly organized its social life in a harmonious, we might say communistic, way, with a division of labour between farmers, priests and warriors. The transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture and stock raising did not immediately give rise to opposed classes, in fact it strengthened the power of communal labour, thanks to the extremely favourable natural environment.

The reasons for this civilization’s collapse are generally ascribed to the subcontinent’s invasion by the people known as Aryans or Indo-Aryans, part of the wave of invasions that commenced around 1700 BC. They were nomadic and belonged to the Indo-Iranic group. Among the Aryans the horse was very important; they had a nomadic economic base and spoke an Indo-European language which was oral, not written.

In the period when the Rig Veda was written down, Aryan society remained essentially tribal and pre-urban, characterized by a gradual evolution from pastoralism and nomadism to a sedentary life based mainly on agriculture. Property in land still didn’t exist. And yet the growth in the social importance of the priests, the Brahmins, ensured that donations to them became ever less voluntary.

The spread of urban civilization up the Ganges valley from the sixth century BC was the most visible expression of series of profound social and economic changes. The process of finally adopting a sedentary lifestyle goes hand in hand with the prevalence of agriculture. It was an agriculture that allowed the rural population a higher standard of living that they can expect today, even if for some time the world of farming had come to be dominated by a class of well-to-do landed proprietors.

Meanwhile an increase in the colonization of uncultivated land contributed to the marginalization of the aboriginal tribal peoples who still lived off the spontaneous fruits of the land and from hunting. There thus emerged social groups denominated outcasts, pariahs or untouchables.

In the cities from the sixth to fifth centuries BC the handicrafts developed, a system of small pre-modern industries. This intense economic development marked a progressive transition from a tribal society to one clearly divided into classes. In the city the spread of the craft industries accompanied that of the guilds, whose members lived in specific districts and were united by strict ties of kinship; economic collaborations that gradually brought the caste system into existence.

The differentiation of the economy and consequently the progressive sub-division of the tribes into castes summoned various States into existence, ranging in type from monarchist to republican. Towards the end of the fourth century the process led to the creation of the first pan-Indian empire, that of the Maurya, which at its maximum extent included not only most of the sub-continent but part of Afghanistan as well. Despite the splendours of the Maurya Empire, which lasted from 321 to 185 BC, it was fragile due to its vast size, subjecting it to internal tensions because of the co-existence of many ethnic groups within it and major social imbalances. In 233 BC the territories to the south of the River Narmada seceded from Mauryan control and the rest of empire was divided up.

There followed a long period of political fragmentation, which only ended many centuries later with the ascent of the Gupta Empire (319 AD), characterized by the expansion of urban civilization, differentiation of social structures and the emergence of new specializations in the realm of production. However, due to the caste system preventing social mobility, and the fact that the urban classes, which can be defined as pre-bourgeois, remaining a minority on the sub-continent, the economic prosperity and the influence of the new classes of merchants, artisans and bankers left the political power of the warlords and priests intact.

While in the European version of the second mode of production a minority managed to gain possession of the collective land, in the Asiatic version the concentration of landed property in the central unit prevented the village communities and the caste of merchant usurers, then on the rise, from taking possession of the land. Craft industry was still intimately bound up with agriculture and hadn’t become independent from it.

In post-Maurya India, the urban classes didn’t conquer any significant political influence.

The later Gupta Empire, in existence from 240 to 550 AD, included at its maximum extent most of northern India, present eastern Pakistan and Bangladesh. Power was strongly centralized and equipped with an efficient system of administration. Among the super-structural features of the Gupta age we find the gradual emergence of Hinduism and the decline of Buddhism, due principally to the decline of those intermediate urban classes linked to long-distance trade and associated economic activities.

At the beginning of the sixth century there began a new phase in the history of India destined to endure for almost seven hundred years. The period presents a series of political and cultural peculiarities similar to those found in Europe in the Early Middle Ages: affecting the economy and the society of most of the subcontinent there was a radical contraction of the urban world, a reduction in long-distance trade (except in southern India) and the emergence of an economy which was almost exclusively rural, where political control lay in the hands of local magnates. The essential difference is that whereas the feudal barons in Europe remained almost always independent from the control of the central political power, the Brahmins, and in general the legatees to whom grants of land were conferred in India, were almost always accountable to the monarch who was master of the land.

Marx was at pains to emphasize that the feudal system of mediaeval Europe, despite the similarities, cannot be equated with the Indian system: serfdom, a characteristic of feudalism, wasn’t that important in India; furthermore in India the feudal lords didn’t have the role of protectors of the peasantry. Engels is emphatic that “the absence of landed property is truly the key to the orient as a whole: in this lies its political and religious history”.

The product in excess of the local community’s consumption goes to the supreme central authority, which is the guarantor, in its vital centralizing role, of all the general conditions of existence. The indissoluble union between agriculture and domestic handicrafts constitutes a stable, self-sufficient system, enclosed and insular. The cities remain appendages of the countryside.

This subdivision of labour between castes and craft guilds, hereditary by tradition and specialization, will become enshrined in State law.

Invasions by the eftalites and of other peoples from central Asia inaugurated a new cycle of political fragmentation in India which was destined to last until the beginning of the twelfth century. At the end of the eighth century there emerged a multiplicity of new states of various sizes in the north of India. Political power passed from the old aristocratic families, descended from functionaries and vassals of the Gupta Empire, to professional warriors of uncertain social and ethnic origin.

At the beginning of the new millennium the Indian monarchs had to face a new adversary: the Afghan Turk, Amir Mahmud, the Muslim lord of Ghazna. The Indians had come into contact with Arabic and Turkish Muslims before. In 711, about 80 years after the death of the Prophet and contemporary with the invasion of Visigothic Spain by Tariq, another Muslim condottiere, the Arab Muhammed Bin Qasim, swept through the plains of Makran and into the Sindh in present-day Pakistan, bringing the conquest to close in 712. Subsequently the Arab governors of the Sindh, after completing the conquest of the Indus Valley, launched a series of raids and attempted invasions of the rest of India. The Indian princes however proved strong enough to ward off the invaders.

The Islamic dominions straddling the millennium were subdivided into various potentates, the furthest east of them established by the Samanid dynasty, which controlled a vast area stretching from Eastern Iran to Jordan with Bukhara as its capital. After further campaigns the Muslims seized part of the Kabul Valley and from there launched a series of incursions into the Punjab, eventually seizing Peshawar and the surrounding area and defeating a confederation of some of the most powerful Indian princes in 991. Incorporated into the empire were a large part of the territories between Afghanistan and the Caspian Sea as well as most of the Iranian plateau.

But in 1030 the empire rapidly fell apart, and for the next 150 years the Indian princes could dedicate themselves to their principal activity, fighting among themselves.

In 1192 a powerful Turkish army annihilated the Indian forces and the immense vistas of the Ganges plain opened up before the victor.

Islam had arrived in India before the military conquest and many conversions had preceded it. The creation of states ruled by Islamic dynasties would disperse it more widely but the inhabitants of the subcontinent were never entirely converted to Islam. Conversion was favoured by the economic support given to internal colonization by the new Muslim rulers, with an interest in tilling virgin land and bringing the land abandoned over the previous centuries back under cultivation. The native peoples of the regions encompassed by the empire, previously classified as ’untouchables’ and outside the caste system, and now colonized and become sedentary, were encouraged to convert to Islam.

The third chapter of the report described the period of the Sultanate in more detail.

The Delhi Sultanate existed from 1206 to 1555 in the territory corresponding to a large portion of the northern part of the subcontinent, and was governed by a series of Pashtun and Turkish dynasties. The Turkish conquerors, given their small number, were concentrated in the urban centres, collecting taxes through intermediaries who were often the representatives of the old pre-Islamic ruling classes, or occasionally members of the peasant class who had acquired significant power at the village level.

A major threat to the survival of the sultanate came when the Mongol peoples, under their leader Genghis Khan, raided the Punjab in 1221. The Mongol invasion wouldn’t just take in India but devastated a large part of the then existing civilized world. Their incursions continued throughout the thirteenth century, launching successful attacks on Eastern Europe, conquering all of China, attacking Vietnam and Japan and, finally, annexing Persia and Mesopotamia.

The efforts of the sultans to construct a powerful war machine would not be in vain. After years of fighting the Mongols with varying degrees of success in 1292 the Mongols were soundly defeated.

After having conquered most of northern India, the sultans were often tempted by the idea of driving their armies through the Vindhya Mountains, a mountain range separating the Ganges Plain to the north and Deccan plateau to the south. If it might have been relatively easy to conquer these territories, holding on to them would have been another matter, necessarily involving the creation of new provinces as well as the disposition and financing of troops which, given the distance from Delhi, wouldn’t have hesitated to question the authority of the sultan or even to openly rebel.

The penetration of the Delhi troops proceeded bit by bit, eventually reaching Cape Comorin on the extreme southern tip of the peninsula. These long-distance raids aimed not so much to conquer but rather to loot and pillage and, where possible, impose tributary relations. During this period much of India thus found itself under the direct control or under the high sovereignty of the lords of Delhi.

This scenario threw open the portals of India to the devastating march of another great Turkish warrior chief, the dreaded Amir Timir, known in European literature as Tamerlane who, after ascending to the throne of Samarkand in 1369, launched a series of incursions which would devastate Persia, Anatolia, Afghanistan, Mesopotamia and southern Russia. In 1397 the vanguards of this invasion force penetrated deep into the Punjab, and in 1398 Tamerlane himself assumed command of operations in India. Outside Delhi on 17 December of the same year, 90,000 of his cavalrymen clashed with the sultan’s forces, composed of 10,000 cavalrymen, 40,000 infantry and 120 armoured elephants. The battle ended with the complete defeat of the Sultanate’s forces and Delhi was occupied and destroyed. When, some months later, the Turks abandoned the sub-continent for ever, northern India was plunged into chaos.

We find ourselves now in the concluding phase of the Middle Ages, and not just in India but in most of the civilized world; a phase characterized by strong demographic and economic depression caused by a pandemic of plagues and by a major agricultural recession. In 1330 the plague spread beyond the Chinese province of Hubei and in the next twenty five years would affect most of the rest of the world, transported along land and sea routes by merchants and armies. In Europe the plague appeared around 1346 and would wreak havoc there until 1353, the year in which it completed its devastation of China. The demographic slump caused by the plague caused a general decline in economic activity and in long distance trade, which underwent a further contraction following the loss of Mongol hegemony over Asia which, after its initial devastations, had created a sort of enormous, united empire, through which it was relatively easy to travel and move goods from the Mediterranean to China, both by land and by the maritime routes which extended along the coasts of China to the Persian Gulf passing through India.

But even before the spread of the disease the symptoms of a grave agrarian crisis had been evident for some time. The cause shouldn’t be sought in climatic change, which had been the case before, but in the increasing exploitation of the land already under cultivation, and the consequent depletion of its nutritive elements. The areas hardest hit were those where agriculture had been practised longest and most intensely. This explains the reduction in wealth which occurred between the middle of the 14^th and the beginning of the 16^th centuries in some key areas such as the Nile Valley and the Tigris and Euphrates basin, the latter zone not having been as severely affected by the plague. The recession which occurred across the Ganges plain is probably ascribable to this same agricultural crisis as well. The only solution, given the technological limitations of the time, was to put virgin lands under the plough, and this was possible in Europe, where the demographic catastrophe among the nomadic populations, who had been scourged by the plague, had freed up vast tracts of cultivatable land, the vast expanses of the Ukraine being one striking example.

The beginning of the 16th century saw a new player participating in the affairs of the Deccan peninsular: Portugal. In May 1498 a large fleet headed by Vasco de Gama would dock in the port of Calicut, capital of the small state of Malabar. For some decades, although encountering some resistance, the Portuguese prevailed over all their naval adversaries and controlled many of the ocean routes. Wanting to procure a safe base for their fleet they conquered the city of Goa, which became their main military centre in 1510. Almost to the exclusion of all else the Portuguese were interested in spices and war horses, whereas for other wares they would impose a 5% tax on the Asiatic merchants. Attempts to monopolize these trades would soon meet with failure, due mainly to their limited military resources.

In response to the anti-centralist claims of the aristocracy the governor of Lahore would call on the prince of Kabul, known as Babur (Tiger) for help. The latter, a descendent of Tamerlane, looked on the Delhi Sultanate as his legitimate inheritance. Despite the Sultanate army’s numerical superiority it would be completely annihilated. The following year Babur defeated another powerful army which had been deployed by an alliance of the main Rajput tribes. The battle of Panipat is considered to mark the founding date of the Moghul Empire, so called because Babur also claimed to be a descendant of Genghis Khan (“moghul” deriving from the Arabic word for “mongol”).

The arming of the States

[GM120]

Our school predicts that the only way capitalism will be able to survive the global economic crisis of over-production is by having another world war. The international proletariat must prepare for war too, but not for a fratricidal war between proletarians fighting against each other on behalf of their respective states, but for the class war, a war fought by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and its lackeys.

It is also important, therefore, to gain a better understanding and knowledge of our enemy from the point of view of its military potential, of its strategies and alliances.

Along with the analysis of the data relating to the global economy which was examined in another report, there was a presentation of some data relating to trends in global military spending.

The economic crisis has caused a reduction in global military spending. In the post-war period this reached a peak in 1988 but declined after the collapse of the USSR, reaching a low in 1998. After that it rose, reaching a new peak thirteen years later in 2011. Military expenditure has been declining since then, albeit very slowly. In 2013 it had risen to 1,739 billion, up from 1,701 billion in 2011. This stagnation in arms spending at a global level can be attributed to the consequences of the economic crisis, which has forced some of the European states and above all the United States to tackle mounting state deficits.

Some states have reduced their expenditure quite substantially while others have increased it, resulting in the slight overall rise. By analysing the expenditure of the 15 states that spend most on arms we can see that over the last year the United States, France, Japan, Great Britain, Germany, India, Brazil, Italy, Australia and Canada have all reduced their expenditure, whereas China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey have increased it.

It was noted that the United States alone represents 37% of global military spending, China 11% and Russia 5%; thus just three countries already spend 53% of the total. A further 15 states are required to take the percentage of global arms spending up to the 80% mark.

Looking back over the past 25 years we can see that if spending by North and Central America, as a percentage of the global total, has remained fairly stable, spending by South America, the Middle East and Africa has doubled, whereas spending by Asia has trebled.

It is also interesting to observe trends in the arms trade. The 15 biggest exporters supply 95% of the market. In 2013 Russia, although experiencing a slight decline relative to the previous two years, overtook the United States, victim of a sharp decline in its foreign trade, and has thus become the top exporter. These figures go some way to explaining why Washington is so insistent that the countries belonging to NATO should increase their military budgets.

The biggest importer by a long way is the Indian colossus followed, according to the figures!, by the United Arab Emirates, which is a mere dot on the map. In third place we find China, which mostly produces its own arms but still needs to acquire certain types of weaponry abroad. In fourth place we find another financial power in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, whereas Pakistan, which up to 2010 ranked just behind its Indian neighbour, has dropped to fifth place.

This ongoing research, which we will report in much greater detail, will also bring up to date the recent evolution in the balance of military power between the various states and the various areas subject to imperialist influence.

The Labour Movement in the USA

[GM120]

The latest chapter in this ongoing study was presented to the meeting, taking up the story from where it left off at the beginning of the last century. The United States economy, by now completely recovered from the Great Depression of the ’90s, now began a long period of expansion which would only draw to a close after the economic boom of the First World War years. As big capital drove forward this epoch-making advance during what became known as the ’Progressive Era’; a newly formed working class, which was in a state of constant flux, was amassing in the cities as a result of the successive waves of immigrants arriving from Europe.

Big capital strove to attain its usual objectives: stability of the financial system, predictability of market trends, elimination of the damaging effects of competition and a reduction in the number of labour disputes. Thus major reforms, above all at the federal level, would end up being supported, and even being drafted and managed by, the politically most ’enlightened’ exponents of big industrial and financial capital.

The process was accelerated once it was recognized that the United States, sooner or later, would have to enter the First World War; which would consecrate the country as the main economic and military power. The central power took on the task of regularizing relations with the working class, both with the part regimented in the yellow unions–both those in and outside the AFL–and the more combative elements which the AFL neither represented nor wanted to represent, and among whom the IWW had found the most fertile ground.

As regards the proletariat the new development, which was very relevant because it had been announced by the events of the previous decades, was the complete de factoincorporation of the AFL and the reactionary, aristocratic trade unions into the state structure.

The upshot was that during this period of growth and massive profits the bourgeoisie managed to contain the class struggle, by making marginal concessions, but with the bosses’ ’iron heel’ still firmly in place. The one outcome was the recognition of the collaborationist unions, something which however only brought advantages to the leading cliques, that is, a strata of well-paid functionaries situated between the bourgeoisie and the working class who knew, much better than any sheriff, how to divide the class and sap its energy in any number of ways. In substance, if not in form, it all prefigured the corporatism of the absolutist regimes which would become established a few years after the war in some European countries, and the state/trade union relations that were set up in all countries after the Second World War.