The
Proletariat and Organisation
Cornelius
Castoriadis Socialisme ou Barbarie
The organizations created
by the working class for its liberation have become cogs in the system of
exploitation. This is the brutal conclusion forced upon anyone who is prepared
to face up to reality. One consequence is that today many are perplexed by
an apparent dilemma. Can one become involved without organisation? And if
one cannot, how can one organize without following the path that has made
traditional organizations the fiercest enemies of the aims they originally
set out to achieve? Some believe the question can be approached in a purely
negative way."Experience shows,'' they say, "that all working-class organizations
have degenerated; therefore, any organization is bound to degenerate.'' This
is basing too much on experience-or too little. Up to now all revolutions
either have been crushed or have degenerated. Are we to deduce from this that
all revolutionary struggle should be abandoned? The defeat of revolutions
and the degeneration of organizations are different expressions of the same
phenomenon, namely, that established society is, at least provisionally, emerging
victorious from its struggles with the proletariat. If one concluded that
things will always be like this, one ought to be logical and give up the fight.
Concern with the problem of organization has meaning only for people convinced
that they can and must struggle together (hence, by organizing) and who do
not, from the very beginning, assume their own defeat is inevitable.
For such people the questions
posed by the degeneration of working-class organisations have a real, positive
meaning and demand real answers.Why have these organizations degenerated?
What does this degeneration mean? What has been the role of these organizations
in the temporary setback of the labor movement? Why has the proletariat supported
them? And, perhaps more significantly, why has it not moved beyond them? What
are the conclusions from all this for future organization and action?
There is no simple answer
to these questions, for they concern every aspect and task of the labor movement
today. Nor is there a purely theoretical answer. The problem of revolutionary
organization will only be resolved as such an organization is actually built.
This in turn will depend on the development of working-class action.
Nevertheless, the beginnings
of a solution should be attempted right now. Revolutionaries cannot totally
abstain from action and wait for working-class struggles to develop. The development
of such struggles will not solve the problem of how revolutionaries should
organize: They will merely bring it up at a higher level. And in the development
of these struggles, organization has a role to play. No real organization
will be built without the development of struggles, and there will be no lasting
development of these struggles without organization building. If you do not
accept this postulate, if you think that what you do or do not do is of no
importance, if you are acting purely so as to be at peace with your own conscience,
there is no need to read further.
The beginnings of a solution
cannot be empirical or just a set of negative prescriptions. A revolutionary
group can only adopt positive rules for its action and work, and these rules
must spring from its principles. However insignificant the organization, its
work, its activity, and its way of going about its daily business must be
the visible and verifiable embodiment of the aims it advocates. Responding
to the problem of building a revolutionary organization demands, therefore,
that we start from the whole experience of the revolutionary movement and
from an analysis of the conditions in which the movement finds itself in the
second half of the twentieth century. In order to do this we must make what
may seem like a detour, return to first principles and reconsider revolutionary
objectives and the history of the labour movement.
1. Socialism:
Management of Society by the Workers
One fact, because of its
direct and indirect consequences, has dominated human history in the twentieth
century: The working class carried through a revolution in Russia in 1917.
Far from leading to socialism, however, the revolution finally resulted in
the coming to power of a new exploiting class: the bureaucracy. Why, and how
did this happen?
In 1917 the Russian proletariat
mobilized itself to destroy the power of the czar and of the capitalists and
to put an end to exploitation. It took up arms and organized itself in factory
committees and soviets to conduct this struggle. But when, after a long civil
war, the remnants of the old regime had been cleared away, economic and political
power were once more found to be concentrated in be hands of a new group of
leaders, centered around the Bolshevik party. The proletariat did not take
over the management of the new society-which is another way of saying that
the working class did not itself become the ruling class. From that moment
on, it could only once again resume its position as an exploited class. The
degeneration of the Russian revolution was nothing other than the return to
a position of supremacy of a specific and restricted social stratum. The various
factors that led to this degeneration all have, when it comes down to it,
the same underlying significance. The proletariat did not take on the direction
of the revolution and of the society that emerged from it. From the very beginning,
it was the Bolshevik party that strove to wield complete power over the country
and very quickly it succeeded in doing so. The Party constituted itself based
on the idea that it provided a natural leadership for the proletariat and
was the expression of its historical interests. But the ideas and attitudes
of the Bolshevik party could never have prevailed had not the working class
itself, in its great majority, shared them and had it not tended to see the
party as a necessary organ of its power. And so the organs that ought to have
expressed the political supremacy of the toiling masses, the soviets, were
rapidly transformed into appendages of Bolshevik power.
And yet, even if this
development had not occurred in the political sphere, nothing fundamental
would have changed, for the revolution did not bring about any profound change
in the real relations of production.With the private owners expropriated or
exiled, the Bolshevik state entrusted the running of enterprises to managers
nominated by itself, and it fought the few attempts made by workers to seize
control of the management of production. But those who are masters of production
are, in the last analysis, masters of policy and society. A new group of industrial
and economic leaders rapidly developed, which, fusing with the leadership
of the Party and of the State, constituted a new ruling class
The basic lesson of the
experience of the Russian revolution is therefore that it is not enough for
the proletariat to destroy the governmental and economic domination of the
bourgeoisie. It can only achieve the objective of its revolution if it builds
up its own power in every sphere.If the direction of production, of the economy,
and of the "state'' again becomes the function of a particular category of
individuals inevitably the exploitation and oppression of workers will return.
With these, the permanent crisis that divides contemporary society will arise
again, for it owes its origin to the conflict at the point of production between
directors and executants. Socialism
is not and cannot be anything other than the management of production, the
economy, and society by the workers. This idea has from the very beginning
constituted the central thesis of Socialisme ou Barbarie. The Hungarian
revolution has since provided a striking confirmation of it.
The
Autonomy of the Proletariat
The idea of workers' management
of production and society implies that power in postrevolutionary society
will be solely and directly in the hands of the workers' mass organs (the
councils). There can be no question of special organs of any sort -for example,
political parties-taking on the functions of governance and the exercise of
power. But this idea is not a simple "constitutional'' proposition. It necessitates
a reconsideration of all the theoretical and practical problems facing the
revolutionary movement.
It would indeed be nonsense
to talk of workers' management if workers were incapable of it and thereby
incapable of generating new principles for the organization and orientation
of social life. Revolution and, even more, the construction of a socialist
society presuppose that the organized mass of workers have become capable
of managing the whole of society's activities without intermediaries-and therefore
that they have become capable of directing themselves in all respects and
in a permanent fashion. Socialist revolution can only be the out- come of
Autonomous activity on the part of the proletariat, "autonomous'' signifies
"self-directing" and "responsible only to itself".
This question must not
be confused with the question of the technical capac- it of the proletariat
to manage production,'' The proletariat consists of all exploited wage earners
and salaried employees. It is the collective producer. Techical knowledge
has long ceased to be the monopoly of a few individuals. Today it is diffused
among a mass of office and lab workers who are daily submitted to a greater
and greater division of labor and who receive salaries only slightly higher
than those of manual workers. Technician-bosses are just as superfluous as
foremen in production. They are not great irreplaceable engineers but bureaucrats
who direct and "organize'' (i.e., disorganize) the work of the mass of salaried
technicians. Together the exploited workers in factories and offices possess
in themselves all the technical skills known to humanity today. For the proletariat
in power, the question of the "technical'' orientation of production will
therefore not be a technical question at all, but rather a political question
of the unity of workers on the shop floor and in offices, of cooperation between
them, and of collective management of production. And, in the same way, the
proletariat will be faced with political questions in every sphere,including
the problems of its own organization, of the proper balance between centralization
and decentralization, of the general orientation of production and society,
of relations with other social groups (the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie),
of international relations, etc.
Socialism, therefore,
presupposes a high degree of social and political consciousness among the
proletariat. It cannot arise out of a mere revolt against exploitation but
only from the capacity of the proletariat to extract from itself positive
answers to the immense problems involved in the reconstruction of modern society.
No one -no individual, group, or party-can be delegated this consciousness
"on behalf of'' the proletarian class or in its stead. It is not only that
a substitution of this sort would inevitably lead to the formation of a new
group of rulers and would rapidly return society to "all the old rubbish.''
It is because it is impossible for a particular group to take on such tasks,
since these tasks are on a scale that humanity and humanity alone is capable
of dealing with. Within a system of exploitation, such problems can be solved
by a minority of leaders (or rather they could in the past be solved that
way). The crisis of modern regimes shows that the direction of society is
a task that is henceforth beyond the capacity of any particular category.
This is infinitely more true for the problems that the socialist reconstruction
of society will pose and that cannot be solved or even be correctly posed
without the deployment of the creative activity of the immense majority of
individuals. For the real meaning of this reconstruction is, strictly speaking
that everything must be re-examined and refashioned: machines factories, articles
of consumption, houses, educational systems, political institutions, museums,
ideas, and science itself -according to the needs of the workers and according
to their view of things. Only they can be the judges of what these needs are
and of the means of satisfying them. For even if on a particular point the
experts have a "better'' idea, such an idea will be worthless so long as those
it should interest do not see the correctness or necessity of it. Any attempt
to impose upon people solutions to the problems of their own lives, solutions
they do not themselves approve of, automatically and immediately makes these
solutions monstrously false ones.
The Development of
the Proletariat toward Socialism
Is socialism, conceived
in this way, a historically reasonable prospect?Is it a possibility that exists
within modern society? Or is it just a dream? Is the proletariat just something
to be exploited, a modern class of industrial slaves that periodically breaks
out in fruitless revolts? Or do the conditions of its existence and struggle
against capitalism lead it to develop a consciousness-i.e., an attitude, a
mentality, ideas and ways of acting- whose content tends toward socialism?
The answers to these questions are to be found in the analysis of the real
history of the proletariat, its life in production, its political movements,
and its activity during periods of revolution. And this analysis in turn leads
to the overthrow of traditional ideas about socialism, labour demands, and
forms of organization. First,
the proletariat's struggle against capitalism is neither solely one of "making
demands'' nor solely "political''; it begins at the point of production. It
does not simply concern the redistribution of the social product or, at the
other end of the scale, the general organization of society. From the outset,
it opposes the fundamental reality of capitalism, the relations of production
within the enterprise. The so-called rationalization of capitalist production
is nothing but a web of contradictions. It consists in organizing work without
the involvement of the workers, abolishing their human role-which is inherently
absurd even from the point of view of productive efficiency. It aims untiringly
at in- creasing their exploitation - which-forces them to oppose-it nonstop.
Far from being concerned
only with wages, the workers' struggle against this method of organization
dominates every aspect and every moment of the life of the firm. First of
all, the conflict between workers and management over wages cannot but have
an immediate impact on every aspect- of the Organization of work.In the next
place, the workers, whatever their wage level, are led inevitably to oppose
methods of production that lead to their daily ever more intolerable dehumanization.
This struggle does not and cannot remain purely negative, its aim is not simply
to limit exploitation. Production must take place whatever happens, and the
workers, at the same time as they are struggling against the norms and the
coercive bureaucratic apparatus, maintain a work discipline and instaurate
a system of cooperation opposed in spirit as well as it practice to the rules
of organization of the factory. They thus take over certain aspects of the
management of production at the same time as they establish it what they do
new principles for the ordering of human relations in production they oppose
the capitalist morality of maximum individual gain and tend to replace it
with a new morality of solidarity and equality.
This struggle is not accidental,
nor is it connected with a particular form of organization of capitalist production.
Every time capitalism makes major changes in the techniques and methods of
production in order to ward off this struggle, it rises up again. The workers'
tendencies toward self-management that this struggle brings out is universal
both in range and depth. It exists in Russia as well as in the United States
and in England as well as in France. Although the proletariat's struggle inside
production remains "hiddenn'' for it allows neither formal organization nor
a formulated program nor overt action, its' content can be found in the activity
of the masses each time a revolutionary crisis shakes capitalist society.
In every factory in the world workers fight nonstop against work norms; the
abolition of norms was one of the most important demands of the Hungarian
workers' councils in 1956. Like the commune and the soviets, workers' councils
were constituted on the principle that the elected delegates were liable to
recall. Shop stewards in English factories are always liable to recall by
the workers who elected theme and they must give these workers regular accounts
of their activities.
The socialist conception
of society, born in the obscurity of the day-to-day lives of producers, bursts
into broad daylight during the working-class revolutions that have marked
the history of capitalism. Far from rising up simply against poverty and exploitation,
in the course of these events the proletariat poses the problem of how to
organize the whole of society in a new way and provides positive answers.
The Commune of 1871, the soviets of 1905 and 1917, the factory committees
in Russia in 1917-18, the factory councils in Germany in 1919-20, and the
workers' councils in Hungary in 1956 were organizations formed to combat the
ruling class and its state and at the same time new forms of human organization
based on principles radically opposed to those of bourgeois society. These
creations of the proletariat were a practical refutation of the ideas that
have dominated man's political organization for centuries. They have shown
the possibility of a centralized social organization that, instead of politically
expropriating the population for the benefit of its "representatives'' on
the contrary places these representatives under the permanent control of their
electors and for the first time in modern history achieves democracy on the
scale of society as a whole. In the same way, workers' management of production,
sought by the Russian factory committees in 1917, was achieved by the Spanish
workers in 1936-37 and proclaimed by the Hungarian workers' councils in 1956
as one of their basic objectives.
But the development of
the proletariat toward socialism shows itself not only in factory life or
during revolutions. From the beginning of its history, the proletariat has
struggled against capitalism in an explicit way, that is to say, by forming
political organizations. The tendency of the working class or of broad strata
of workers to organize themselves in order to struggle in an overt and permanent
fashion is a theme running. through the whole of modern history. If this is
not recognized, one is doomed to understand as little about the proletariat
and socialism as if the commune or the councils were never known. For it shows
that the proletariat has the need and at the same time the ability to argue
the question of social organization as such not simply during a revolutionary
explosion, but systematically and permanently; to go beyond the territory
of its economic defence and to oppose bourgeois ideology with its own conception
of society; to leave the confines of the workshop, the firm and even the nation
and argue the question of power on an international scale. It is in fact entirely
false to say that the working class has created only economic and occupational
associations (trade unions). In certain countries, such as Germany, the workers
began by building a political movement, and the trade unions emanated from
this. In the majority of other cases, as in the Latin countries and even in
England, the trade unions themselves originally were by no means purely trade
unions; their proclaimed aim was the abolition of the wages system. It is
just as false to claim that the workers' political organizations were the
exclusive creation of intellectuals, as has been said, sometimes approvingly
and sometimes disapprovingly. Even where intellectuals played a predominant
role in their formations these organisations could never have acquired any
sort of reality if workers had not belonged to them in great numbers, sustained
them with their experience, their activity, and often their blood, and if
a large majority of the working class had not seen their interests expressed
in the programs of these organizations.
The
Contradictory Character of the Proletariat's Development
There is, therefore, an
autonomous development of the proletariat toward socialism that originates
in the workers' struggle against the capitalist organisation of production,
finds expression in the formation of political organizations, and culminates
in revolution. But this development is not the mechanical, automatic result
of the objective conditions in which the proletariat lives, nor is it a biological
evolution, an inevitable process of maturation that provides for its own development.
It is a historical process and essentially a process-of struggle. Workers
are not born socialists, nor are they miraculously transformed into such merely
by entering into a factory. They become, or more exactly they make themselves
socialists in the course of and out of their struggle against capitalism.
Nevertheless, we must
see exactly what this struggle is, where it is fought, and what the true enemy
is. The proletariat is not only fighting capitalism as a force outside itself.
If it were just a question of the physical power of the exploiters, their
State and their army, exploitative society would have been abolished long
ago, for it possesses no power of its' own beyond the work of those it exploits
It survives only insofar as it succeeds in making them accept their position.
It's most formidable weapons are not those it uses intentionally, but those
it is automatically provided with by the objective condition of the exploited
class by the way things are set up in present society, and by the way social
relations are organized so as to perpetually recreate its own bases. The proletariat
is not only systematically indoctrinated by the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy.
More generally, it is severely deprived of culture. It is robbed of its own
past, since it can know only what the ruling classes decide to let it see
of its history and its past struggles. It is robbed of awareness of itself
as a universal class as a result of the local, occupational, and national
factors of isolation engendered by the present social structure-and of its
present condition, since all the information , media are under the control
of the ruling classes. In spite of its position as an exploited class, the
proletariat struggles against these factors and makes up for them. It develops
a systematic distrust of bourgeois indoctrination and undertakes a critique
of its contents. It tends to absorb the culture from which it is cut off in
a thousand ways at the same time as it creates the beginnings of a new culture.
From a book-learned point of view, it is unaware of its own past, but it finds
before it its essential results in the form of the conditions for its present
action.
But by far the greatest
obstacle in the way of the development of the proletariat is the perpetual
rebirth of the spirit and reality of capitalism within the proletariat itself.
The workers are not strangers to capitalism; they are born into a capitalist
society, live in it, take part in it, and make it work. Capitalist ideas,
norms, and attitudes tend constantly to invade their minds and as long as
the present society lasts it will not be any different. The situation of the
proletariat is absolutely contradictory, for at the same time that it gives
birth to the elements of a new human organization and of a new culture it
can never free itself entirely from the capitalist society in which it lives.
The strongest hold of society is found mainly in the holds that are given
the least thought; they are the time- honored habits, the "self-evident''
axioms of bourgeois common sense that no one calls into question, inertia,
and society's systematically organized inhibition of people's activity and
creativity. During a revolution, capitalism may be defeated militarily and
yet remain victorious if, in order to defeat it and under the pretext of "efficiency,''
the revolutionary army or the production process is organized along capitalist
lines (as was the case in Russia in 1918-21), for this "moral'' victory for
the old society soon will manage to transform itself into complete victory.
The workers may score the enormous victory of building a revolutionary organization
that expresses their aspirations..-, and immediately turn victory into defeat
if they think that once the organization is built it re- mains only for them
to have confidence in it for it to solve their problems.
The proletariat's struggle
against capitalism is, therefore, in its most important aspect, a struggle
of the working class against itself, a struggle to free itself from what persists
in it of the society it is combating. The history of the labor movement is
the history of the development of the proletariat through this struggle, a
development that has not been a continuous advance but an unequal and contradictory
process of gaining and losing ground, containing entire periods of regression.
2.The
Degeneration of Working Class Organisations
The evolution of workers'
organizations can be understood only in this context. For a century the proletariat
of all countries has been setting up organizations to help them in their struggle,
and all these organizations, whether trade unions or political parties, ultimately
have degenerated and become integrated into the system of exploitation. In
this respect it matters little whether they have become purely and simply
instruments of the State and of capitalist society (like the reformist organizations),
or whether (like the Stalinist organizations) they aim to bring about a transformation
of this society, concentrating economic and political power in the hands of
a bureaucratic stratum while leaving unaltered the exploitation of the workers.
The main point is that such organizations have become the strongest opponents
of their original aim: the emancipation of the proletariat.
Of course this is not
a question of "mistakes'' or of "betrayals'' on the part of leaders. Leaders
who "err'' or "betray'' are sooner or later removed from the organizations
they lead. But the degeneration of workers' organizations has gone hand in
hand with their beauracratisation, i.e., with the formation within them of
a stratum of irremovable and uncontrollable leaders. Thenceforth the policy
of these organizations expresses the interests and aspirations of this bureaucracy
Tounderstand the degeneration of these organizations is to understand how
a bureaucracy can be born out of the labor movement.
Briefly, bureaucratization
has meant that the fundamental social relationship of modern capitalism, the
relationship between directors and executants, has reproduced itself within
the labor movement, and in two forms: first, within the workers organisations,
which have responded to the enlargement and multiplication of their tasks
by adopting a bourgeois model of organization, inaugurating a greater and
greater division of labor until a new stratum of leaders has crystallized
separate from the mass of militants who from then on are reduced to the role
of executants; and second, between working-class organizations and the proletariat
itself. The function these organizations have gradually taken on has been
to lead the working class in its own, well-defined interest-and most of the
time, the working class has agreed to rely on these organizations and carry
out their instructions. And so we have arrived at a complete negation of what
was the essence of a socialist movements namely, the idea of the autonomy
of the proletariat.
This evolution has a counterpart
in the corresponding evolution of revolutionary theory and ideology, made
possible by the initially contradictory character of Marxism itself. In a
sensed nothing of what has been said here about workers' management and the
autonomy of the proletariat is new. It all goes back to Marx's formula, "The
emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the workers themselves'';
in other words, emancipation will take place only insofar as the workers themselves
decide the means and the ends of their struggle. This intuition of autonomy
is in keeping with the deepest and most positive aspects of Marx's work: the
central importance he accorded to the analysis of the relations of production
in the capitalist factory, the radical critique of bourgeois ideology in all
its aspects and even of the traditional notion of "theory,'' and the vision
of socialism as a new reality whose elements are beginning to appear in the
lives and attitudes of the workers even now. Yet Marxism itself born in capitalist
society, has not freed itself, and could not free itself completely from the
culture in which it grew up. Its position-like the position of any revolutionary
ideology and like the situation of the proletariat until the revolution-remains
contradictory."The ruling ideas of each epoch are the ideas of its ruling
class'' does not simply mean that those ideas are physically the most widespread
or the most widely accepted. It also means they tend to be assented to, partially
and unconsciously by the very people who oppose them the most violently. In
the theoretical sphere no less than in the practical sphere, the struggle
of the revolutionary movement to free itself from the hold of capitalism is
a permanent struggle.
The Decline of Revolutionary
Theory
Very quickly the idea
began to catch on that Marxism was the science of society and revolution.
Attempts were made to present it as the synthesis and continuation of the
creations of bourgeois culture (German classical philosophy, English political
economy, and French utopian socialism), ignoring the fact that the prime feature
in Marx's work was precisely his overthrow of the fundamental postulates of
that culture. This quite naturally led to it being said, in consequence, that
socialist political consciousness has to be introduced into the working class
"from the outside,'' for "modern socialist consciousness can only arise upon
a basis of deep scientific knowledge'' and "the vehicle of science is not
the proletariat but the petty bourgeois intelligentsia.''(Kautsky,endorsed
by Lenin as "profoundly true and significant" in What is to be Done.)
Although these formulations
of Kautsky's were taken up by Lenin, they are not in any way the exclusive
attribute of bolshevism; they also express the typical attitude of the leaders
of the Second International and of the reformists. But their spirit is found
in Marx himself. The debasement of revolutionary theory is symbolized by the
gap between the subtitle of Capital ("a critique of political economy''-not
"a critique of bourgeois political economy'' but a critique of the very notion
of political economy, of the very idea that there is a science of political
economy) and what it became during the course of its elaboration'. an attempt
to establish the "laws of movement of the capitalist economy.'' In the hands
of his epigones the idea was further transformed into a scientific proof that
the downfall of capitalism and the victory of socialism were inevitable and
"guaranteed by natural laws.'' The Marxist theory now tries to reproduce the
model of the natural sciences in relation to society-which comes down to saying
that it borrows its logical structure from the bourgeois thought of its period,
just as it borrows its method of exposition from bourgeois culture. Conceived
in this way, it can only in fact be expounded by intellectual specialists,
cut off from the proletariat. Even its basic premises, in the final analysis,
reflect basically bourgeois ideas.
In the strict sense, the
economic theory expounded in Capital is based on the postulate that capitalism
has managed completely and effectively to transform the worker-who appears
there only as labor power-into a commodity; therefore the use value of labor
power-the use the capitalist makes of it-is, as for any commodity, completely
determined by the user, since its exchange value- wages-is determined solely
by the laws of the market and in the first place by the production costs of
labor power. This postulate is necessary for there to be a "science of economics''
along the lines of the physico-mathematical model Marx followed to an increasing
degree during the course of the exposition of Capital. But he contradicts
the most essential fact of capitalism, namely, that the use value and exchange
value of labor power are objectively indeterminate they are determined rather
by the struggle between labor and capital both in production and in society.
HERE Is the ultimate root of the "objective'' contradictions of capitatism
(see On the Content of Socialism, 111). The attempt to make them variables
whose behavior is completely determined by objective laws leads, not as Marx
and generations of Marxists after him thought, to the proof of an "inevitable''
crisis of capitalism, but on the contrary, to the "proof'' of the latter's
permanence. There would be no kind of historically important crisis if the
proletariat remained completely passive as Capital postulates. The paradox
is that Marx, the "inventor'' of class struggle, wrote a monumental work on
phenomena determined by this struggle in which the struggle itself was entirety
absent.
It is hardly necessary
to point out the degree to which such a conception is in contradiction to
the idea of a conscious socialist revolution carried out by the masses. The
latter would then indeed only have the role of supplying a verification of
what the theory had already deduced a priori.
Revolutionary politics
tended in this vision to be transformed into a technique Just as the
engineer applies the science of the physicist under given conditions and with
certain ends in view, so the revolutionary politician applies the concluions
of the "scientific'' theory of revolution in given conditions. Stalin, characterizing
Lenin as the "brilliant engineer on the locomotive of history,'' was only
expressing this idea with the crushing banality of which he alone was capable.
The
Debasement of the Party Program and of the Function of the Party
The technical aspects
of traditional revolutionary theory gradually assume prime importance in the
programs of political organizations. On the one hands the objectives of the
proletariat can and should be determined by the theory; the emancipation of
the proletariat will be the work of the technicians of the revolution correctly
applying their theory in given circumstances. On the other hand, what this
theory allows theoreticians to grasp are solely the "objective'' elements
in the evolution of society, and socialism itself seems more and more bereft
of all its human content and increasingly like a simple, "objective,'' external
transformation; in its essentials, it comes to appear like a mere modification
of certain economic arrangements out of which everything else would result
as a by-product at some indeterminate future date. Exclusive preoccupation
with the distribution of the social product as well as with the regulation
of property and of the overall organisation of the economy ("nationalization''
and "planning") thus becomes inevitable, and the fact that socialism must
mean above all a radical upheaval in the relationships between people, whether
in production or in politics, is completely masked over.
And if socialism is a
scientific truth to which specialists obtain access through their theoretical
expositions, it follows that the function of the revolutionary party would
be to bring socialism to the proletariat. The latter could not reach it through
its own experience; at the very most it could recognize the party that incarnates
this truth as the representative of the general interests of humanity- and
support it. There could be no question of its having any control over the
party except through its passivity and refusal to follow it. Even then the
party would have to conclude simply that it was unable to make its program
concrete enough or its propaganda convincing enough-or that it was mistaken
in its "appreciation of the situation''; but it could not learn much from
the working class about anything basic. The party would possess the truth
about socialism since it possesses the theory that alone leads to it. It is
therefore the rightful leader of the proletariat, and it must become so in
fact, since decision making can belong only to the specialists in the science
of revolution. Insofar as it is permitted at all, democracy then is only an
instructive procedure or an adjustment justified by the "imperfect'' nature
of revolutionary science. But only the party knows and can decide what the
correct dose is.
The
Revolutionary Party Organized on a Capitalist Model
This view, or more exactly
this mentality, finds its counterpart within the organization in its mode
of operation, in the type of work it carries out, and in the relationships
that are unsaturated inside it. The action of the organization will be correct
if it conforms with the theory or at least with the art or technique of "politics''
which has its specialists, too. Whatever the degree of formal democracy that
exists within the organization, the militants will be aware that it is for
the specialists to assess the objective situation and to deduce from it the
line that must be followed; hence, all year long they will do nothing but
carry out orders formulated by the political specialists. The dividing up
of tasks, which is indispensable wherever there is a need for cooperation,
becomes a real division of labour, the labour of giving orders being separate
from that of carrying them out. Once unsaturated, this division between directors
and executants tends to broaden and deepen by itself. The leaders specialize
in their role and become indispensable while those who carry out orders become
absorbed in their concrete tasks. Deprived of information, of the general
view of the situation, and of the problems of organization, arrested in their
development by their lack of participation in the overall life of the Party,
the organization's rank-and-file militants less and less have the means or
the possibility of having any control over those at the top.
This division of labour
is supposed to be limited by "democracy.'' But democracy, which should mean
that the majority rules , is reduced to meaning that the majority designates
its rulers; copied in this way from the model of bourrgeois parliamentary
democracy, drained of any real meaning, it quickly becomes a veil thrown over
the unlimited power of the rulers. The base does not run the organization
just because once a year it elects delegates who designate the central committee,
no more than the people are sovereign in a parliamentary-type republic because
they periodically elect deputies who designate the government. Let us consider,
for example, "democratic centralism'' as it is supposed to function in an
ideal Leninist party. That the central committee is designated by a "democratically
elected'' congress makes no difference singed once it is elected, it is de
facto and de jure the absolute ruler of the organization. It is not only that
it has complete (statutory) control over the body of the Party (and can dissolve
the base organizations, kick out militants, etc.) or that, under such conditions,
it can determine the composition of the next congress. The central committee
could use its powers in an honorable way, these powers could be reduced; the
members of the Party might enjoy "political rights'' such as being able to
express themselves in internal and even outside publications, to form factions,
etc. Fundamentally, this would not change the situation, for the central committee
would still remain the organ that defines the political line of the organization
and controls its application from top to bottom, that, in a word, has a permanent
monopoly on the job of leadership. The expression of opinions only has a limited
value once the way the group functions prevents this opinion from forming
on solid bases, i.e., permanent participation in the organization's
activities and in the solution of problems that arise. If the way the organization
is run makes the solution of general problems the specific task and permanent
work of a separate category of militants, only their opinion will, or will
appear, to count to the others. And this situation will carry further into
the political tendencies that exist within the Party. Under such conditions,
a congress meeting at regular intervals is no more "democratic'' than parliamentary
elections; indeed, both boil down in effect to inviting electors to voice
their opinions from time to time on problems from which they are removed the
rest of the time, while moreover taking away from them all means of having
any control over what happens as a result. This criticism applies not only
to bolshevism, but also to social-democratic organizations and trade unions
of all kinds. In this respect, the difference between a Stalinist and a reforming
party is comparable to that between a totalitarian regime and a bourgeois
"democratic'' one. Formal individual rights may be greater in the second case
but this makes no difference in the actual structure of power, which in both
instances is the exclusive power of a particular category of people.
The
Objective Conditions for Bureaucratization
The phenomenon of degeneration
and bureaucratization that working-class organizations undergo is a total
one, embracing every aspect of their existence. It is a process of debasement
just as much in revolutionary theory as in the program, activities, function,
and structure of these organizations, and the work that militants accomplish
in them.
This does not mean that
their actual historical evolution is the result of the debasement of ideas
in the heads of individuals. This debasement is only the expressing of the
persistence of capitalism and capitalist ways of thinking and acting within
the labour movement. It means that the movement has not managed to free itself
from the hold of the society in which it was born, and that it is falling
under its indirect influence again at the very moment it thinks it is putting
up its most radical opposition to it.
That this hold had a basis in the totality of productions economic,
political, and ideological relationships of the established society and that
in particular the bureaucratic evolution of the workers' organizations has
been conditioned by the objective evolution of capitalism is certain. A reforming
bureaucracy is inconceivable except in a developing capitalist economy that
makes such reforming possible. A "revolutionary'' or "totalitarian'' bureaucracy
such as the Stalinist bureaucracy is inconceivable except in a situation of
permanent crisis in society that the traditional ruling classes are incapable
of solving. More generally, a bureaucracy of any significant size in a workers'
organization is inconceivable without a corresponding degree of concentration
in the areas of production and statification of economic life. Both business
enterprises and the labor force are concentrated, while the organizational
form of huge trade unions easily prevents any initiative on the part of its
members. And State intervention in economic and social life offers the bureaucracy
an ideal terrain on which to carry out its activity,both with respect to economic
grievances as well as on the political level. This type of analysis is indispensable
but incomplete and unsatisfactory. It would be false to present the bureaucratization
of workers' organizations simply as a result of the evolution of capitalism
toward concentration and statification. Very early on, the action of the proletariat
or of "its'' organizations played a determining role in the evolution of modern
society so that after a certain point "cause'' and "effect'' can no longer
be distinguished, Bureaucratic organizations have transformed their social
environment so as to adapt it to their conditions of existence, and they continue
to do so. Everything an analysis of this sort teaches us shows us that the
objective situation makes bureaucratic degeneration possible (which we knew
already), but it does not teach us that it makes it inevitable. ' And as far
as revolutionary action in the future is concerned, it is of little use. It
would be vain for example, to claim to foresee a future evolution of events
or conditions that would render bureaucratization "objectively impossible.''
It is certain that capitalist
society will always leave the possibility open for a leading section of the
exploited classes to become integrated into the system of exploitation. It
is also certain that the tendencies favoring the birth and growth of bureaucracy
in workers' organizations are the prevailing tendencies of modern capitalism,
which is becoming more and more a bureaucratic capitalism every day. Objective
analysis is of the first importance, for it shows that bureaucratization,
by no means an accidental or passing phenomenons is a factor with which the
revolutionary movement will always have to reckon. But it does not suffice
to explain this phenomenon or guide our action.
This can be seen better
by looking at a particularly important example. One's tendency is to present
the bureaucratization of working-class organizations as inevitable result
of their numerical expansion: trade unions or parties numbering hundreds of
thousands of members cannot, it is thought, organize, coordinate, and centralize
their activities except by setting up organs specifically charged with these
tasks, and hence by making leadership into a separate job entrusted to individuals
who devote themselves to it professionally.
The sterility of such
considerations is immediately noticeable; if things were go, the construction
of a nonbureaucratic workers' organizations however large, would be impossible
-and that of a socialist society too, probably. For its reasoning boils down
to the assertion that the problem of centralization can be solved only by
bureaucracy. But we see right away that this "objective'' analysis is in no
way objective, for before the start it has already adopted the post deeply
rooted of bourgeois prejudices. What is objective is the problem of
centralization that arises inevitably in the modern world. To this problem
there are two solutions -and here objectivity ends. According to the bourgeois-bureaucratic
solution, centralization is the particular responsibility of a particular
stratum of leaders. This is the response workers' organizations have in the
end subscribed to, and it is the one the argument set forth earlier implicitly
accepts. But in the course of its struggles the working class has solved the
problem of centralization in a completely different fashion. A general meeting
of strikers, an elected strike committee, the commune, the soviet, the factory
council-that's centralization. The
proletarian response to the problem of centralization is direct democracy-
and the election of recallable delegates: And no one can prove that it would
have been impossible for workers' organizations to solve the problem of centralization
with the inspiration of this response rather than the bourgeois response.
In fact, the proletariat has on a number of occasions tried to organize itself
in its own way, even in "normal'' times. The first English trade unions practiced
what Lenin called primitive democracy, contemptuously in What Is to Be Done?
and admiringly in State and Revolution. These attempts could only disappear
sooner or later. The vanguard, which played a prime role in the formation
of these organizations, did not see organization in this way; all the same
it could never have carried its point of view if the working class itself
had not accepted it. And this allows us to see another essential aspect of
all these problems.
The Role of the Proletariat
in the Degeneration of Working-class Organizations
Degeneration means that
the working-class organization tends to become separate from the working class
and an organ apart, its de facto and de jure leadership. But this does not
come about because of defects in the structure of these organizations or their
mistaken ideas or some sort of an evil spell cast on orgaization as such.
These negative features reflect the failure of these organizations, which
in turn is only an aspect of the failure of the proletariat itself. When a
director/executant relationship is set up between the trade union or party
and the proletariat, it means that the proletariat is allowing a relationship
of the capitalist type to be instauturated within itself. Hence degeneration is not a phenomenon
peculiar to working-class organizations. It is just one of the expressions
of the way capitalism.. survives in the proletariat; capitalism expresses
itself in the corruption of leaders by money,but as an ideology, as a type
of social structure and as a set of relations between people. It is a manifestation
of the immaturity of the proletariat vis-ˆ-vis socialism. It corresponds to
a phase in the labor movement and, even more generally, to a constant tendency
toward integration into the system of exploitation or toward aiming for power
for its own sake, which is expressed in the proletariat in symmetrical fashion
as a tendency toward relying, consciously or passively, on the organization
for a solution to its problems.
In the same way, the Party's
claim that in possessing theory it possesses the truth and thereby should
take the lead in everything would not have any real appeal if it did not make
use of the conviction shared by the proletariat-and daily reproduced by life
under capitalism-that general questions are the department of specialists
and that its own experience of production and society is "unimportant.'' These
two tendencies express one and the same sense of frustration and failure;
they originate in the same facts and the same ideas and are impossible and
inconceivable one without the other. Of course, we should judge differently
the politician who wants to impose his point of view by all possible means
and the worker who is totally incapable of finding a reply to his flow of
words or of matching his cunning, and even more differently the leader who
"betrays'' and the worker who is "betrayed''; but we must not forget that
the notion of treason has no meaning in such relationships. No one can indefinitely
betray people who do not want to be betrayed and who do what is necessary
to prevent their being betrayed any longer. Understanding this allows us to
appreciate what all this proletarian fetishism and all these antiorganizational
obsessions that recently have taken hold of certain people are really all
about. When trade-union leaders carry through reformist policies, they only
succeed because of the apathy, the acquiescence, and the insufficient response
of the working masses. When, for four years, the French proletariat allows
the Algerians to be massacred and tortured and only feebly stirs when the
question of its being mobilized or of its wages becomes involved, it is very
superficial to say that it is all a crime of Mollet's or of Thorez's or of
organizational bureaucratization in general.
The enormous role played
by organizations themselves in this question does not mean that the working
class plays no part at all. The working class is neither a totally irresponsible
entity nor the absolute subject of history; and those who only see in the
class's evolution the problem of the degeneration of its organizations paradoxically
want to make it both at once. To hear them tell it, the proletariat draws
everything from itself - and plays no part in the degeneration of workers'
organizations. No, as a first approximation we should say that the proletariat
only gets the organizations it is capable of having.
The situation of the proletariat
forces it always to undertake and continuously recommence its struggle against
capitalist society. In the course of this struggle it produces new contents
and new forms-socialist contents and forms, for to fight capitalism means
to put forward objectives, principles, standards, and forms of organization
radically opposed to established society. But as long as capitalism endures,
the proletariat will remain partly under its hold. The effect of this hold
can be seen particularly clearly in workers' organizations. When capitalism
takes hold of them, these organizations degenerate- which goes hand in hand
with their bureaucratization. As long as capitalism exists there will always
be "oppresive conditions'' making this degradation possible. But this does
not mean that bureaucratization is fated. People make their own history. Objective
conditions simply allow a result that is the product of man's actions and
attitudes to happen. When they have occurred, these actions have taken a very
well defined path. On the one hand, revolutionary militants have partly remained
or have returned to being prisoners of capitalist social relationships and
ideology. On the other, the proletariat has remained just as much under this
hold and has agreed to act as the executing of its organizations.
3.A
New Period Begins for The Labour Movement
Under what conditions
can this situation change in the future? Firsts the experience of the preceding
period will have to allow revolutionary militants and workers alike to become
aware of the contradictory and, basically, reactionary elements in their own
and the other's conceptions and attitudes. Militants will have to overthrow
these traditional ideas and come around to viewing revolutionary theory, program,
politics, activity, and organization in a new way, in a socialist way. On
the other hand, the proletariat will have to come around to seeing its struggle
as an autonomous struggle and the revolutionary organization not as a leadership
responsible for its fate but as one moment and one instrument in its struggle.
Do these conditions exist
now? Is this overthrow of traditional ideas an effort of will, an inspiration,
or a new more correct theory? No, this overthrow is made possible from now
on by one great objective fact, specifically the bureaucratization
of the labour movement. The action of the proletariat has produced a bureaucracy.
This bureaucracy has become integrated into the system of exploitation. If
the proletariat's struggle against the bureaucracy continues, it will be turned
not only against bureaucrats as persons but against bureaucracy as a system,
as a type of social relationship, as a reality and an ideology corresponding
to this reality. This is an essential
corollary to what was said earlier about the role or objective factors. There
are no economic or other laws making bureaucratization henceforth impossible,
but there is a development that has become objective, for society has become
bureaucratized and so the proletariat's struggle against this society can
only be a struggle against bureaucracy. The destruction of bureaucracy is
not "predestined'' just as the victory of the proletariat in its struggle
is not "predestined'' either. But the conditions for this victory are from
now on satisfied by social reality, for awareness of the problems of bureaucracy
no longer depends upon any theoretical arguments or upon any exceptional amount
of lucidity; it can result from the daily experience of workers who encounter
bureaucracy not as a potential threat in the distant future but as an enemy
of flesh and bone, born of their very own activity.
Proletariat
and Bureaucracy in the present period
The events of recent years
show that the proletariat is gaining experience of bureaucratic organizations
not as leadership groups that are "mistaken'' or that "betray,'' but in an
infinitely more profound way. 'Where these organizations are in power, as
in Eastern Europe, the proletariat sees them of necessity as purely and simply
the incarnation of the system of exploitation. When it manages to break the
totalitarian yoke, its revolutionary struggle is not just directed against
bureaucracy; it puts forward aims that express in positive terms the experience
of bureaucratization. In 1953 the workers of East Berlin asked for a "metalworkers'
government'' and later the Hungarian workers councils demanded workers' management
of production.
In the majority of Western countries, the workers' attitude toward bureaucratic organizations shows that they see them as foreign and alien institutions. In contrast to
what was still happening
at the end of the Second World War, in no industrialized country do workers
still believe that "their'' parties or trade unions are willing or able to
bring about a fundamental change in their situation. They may "support'' them
by voting for them as a lesser evil; they may use them-this is often still
the case as far as trade unions are concerned-as one uses a lawyer or the
fire brigade. But rarely do they mobilize themselves for them or at
their call, and never do they actively participate in them. Membership in
trade unions may rise or fall, no one attends trade-union meetings. Parties
can rely less and less on the active militancy of workers who are party members;
they now function mainly through paid permanent staff made up of "left-wing''
members of the petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals. In the eyes of the workers,
these parties and trade unions are part of the established order-more or less
rotten than the rest-but basically the same as them. When workers' struggles
erupt they often do so outside the bureaucratic organisations and sometimes
directly against them.
We therefore have entered
a new phase in the development of the proletariat that can be dated, if you
like, from 1953; this is the beginning of a historical period during which
the proletariat will try to rid itself of the remnants of its creations of
1890 and 1917. Henceforth, when the workers put forward their own aims and
seriously struggle to achieve them, they will be able to do so only outside,
and most often in conflict with, bureaucratic organizations. This does not
mean that the latter will disappear. For as long as the proletariat accepts
the system of exploitation, organizations expressing this state of affairs
will exist and will continue to serve as instruments for the integration of
the proletariat into capitalist society. Without them, capitalist society
can no longer possibly function. But because of this very fact, each struggle
will tend to set the workers against these bureaucratized organizations; and
if these struggles develop, new organizations will rise up from the proletariat
itself, for sections of wage labourers, salaried workers, and intellectuals
will feel the need to act in a systematic and permanent fashion to help the
proletariat to achieve its new objectives.
Need
for a New Organization
The working class is to
enter a new phase of activity and development, immense practical and ideological
needs will arise. The proletariat will need organs that will allow it to express
its experiences and opinions beyond the workshops and the office where the
capitalist structure of society at present confines them and that will enable
it to smash the bourgeois and bureaucratic monopoly over the means of expression.
It will need information centers to tell it about what is happening among
various groups of workers, within the ruling classes, in society in general,
and in other countries. It will need organs for ideological struggle against
capitalism and the bureaucracy capable of drawing out a positive socialist
conception of the problems of society. It will feel the need for a socialist
perspective to be defined, for the problems faced by a working class in power
to be brought out and worked out, and for the experience of past revolutions
to be drawn out and put at the disposal of present generations. It will need
material means and instruments to carry out these tasks as well as interoccupational,
interregional, and international liaisons to bring people and ideas together.
It will need to attract office workers, technicians, and intellectuals into
its camp and to integrate them into its struggle.
The working class cannot
directly satisfy these needs itself' except in a period of revolution. The
working class can bring about a revolution "spontaneously'', make the most
far-reaching demands, invent forms of struggle of incomparable effectiveness,
and create organs to express its power. But the working class as such, in
a totally undifferentiated state, will not, for example, produce a national
workers' newspaper, the absence of which is sorely felt today; it will be
workers and militants who will produce it, and who will of necessity organize
to produce it. It will not be the working class as a whole that spreads the
news of a particular struggle fought in a particular place; if organized workers
and mili- tants don't do it, then this example will be lost, for it will remain
unknown. In periods of normalcy, the working class as such will not absorb
within itself the technicians and intellectuals whom capitalist society tends
to separate from the workers all their lives; and without this sort of integration
a host of problems facing the revolutionary movement in a modern society will
remain insoluble, Neither will the working class as such nor intellectuals
as such solve the problem of how to carry on a continuous elaboration of revolutionary
theory and ideology, for such a resolution can only come about through a fusion
of the experience of workers and the positive elements of modern culture.
Now, the only place in contemporary society in which this fusion can take
place is a revolutionary organization.
To work toward satisfying
these needs therefore necessarily implies building an organization as large,
as strong, and as effective as possible. We believe this organization can
exist only under two conditions.
The first condition is that the working class recognize it as an indispensabe tool in its struggle. Without substantial suppor