Introduction

The Argentinian economic collapse is a preview of future turmoil which capitalism's crisis will inevitably bring. It is from such a collapse that revolutionaries look for the seeds of a future revolutionary assault on the entire capitalist system. The political forces of the communist left have understood both the seriousness and the potential of this crisis, however, they have differed in their assessment of the response of the Argentinian working class. While the IBRP has seen in these struggles the potential for future revolutionary struggles the ICC has dismissed them as "sterile revolts". Although we consider the ICC's conclusions are wrong, the present text is not aimed at refuting them. What follows attempts to expose the method through which the ICC analyses these events and to locate in its method the root of its erratic pronouncements.

The Significance of Argentina's Collapse

The dramatic collapse of the Argentine economy after December 2001 represents a partial break in a link of the imperialist chain which ties Latin America to the capitalist heartlands. Before the collapse at the end of 2001 Argentina had an economy which was approximately 40% the size of that of the UK and its importance to the US and EU is shown by its trade connections and its debts. The US and EU account for 50% of the country's imports and form markets for 30% of its exports, while its debt to the major capitalist financial centres stands at $155bn. The enormous amounts of surplus value which the major financial centres extract from Latin America is shown by fact that in the two decades between 1980 and 2000 $280bn more was repaid to these centres than was lent ⁽¹⁾. The situation in Argentina is itself an indication of the seriousness of the economic crisis now affecting global capitalism. Although the world bourgeoisie is doing all it can to isolate the contagion to Argentina, while they repair the chains, the possibility of it spreading to surrounding countries, particularly Brazil cannot be excluded. The social effects of this collapse have been similarly dramatic, with massive unemployment, pauperisation and hunger within the working class. These events have opened up the potential for massive workers struggles.

As the IBRP has reported in the press of its national sections workers have engaged in mass resistance which has created orgnaisations which have by-passed the usual agents for containing and sabotaging workers struggles. The trade unions and the political parties of the left have so far failed to defuse the struggles and the barriers they have thrown up have been swept aside. While the IBRP has saluted these achievements it has also noted the limitations of the movement at present, particularly the lack of a real class perspective within it and the absence of a revolutionary minority able to agitate for a revolutionary direction.

The ICC's Analysis

The ICC in its publication, International Review No.109, in an article entitled Only the proletariat on its class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie has attacked the IBRP for overestimating the resistance of the Argentinian working class. The ICC emphasises the weaknesses in the struggle and point to its inter-classist and heterogeneous nature and its bourgeois leftist leadership. They complain about the intra-class violence and the domination of bourgeois ideology such as nationalism. For them this lack of communist consciousness makes the movement a "sterile and futureless revolt." All the above is a confirmation of the ICC's more general theory of decomposition of capitalism, and we are reminded that the state of decomposition is so serious that the proletariat may not be able to prevent the collapse of capitalist society into barbarism. History, instead of proceeding on a path towards social revolution, as the ICC maintained in the 70s and 80s, may now be heading towards the common ruin of the contending classes. The Argentinian events confirm this.

It is an irony of the ICC's political evolution over the last decade that it now attacks the IBRP for over-estimation of the potential of the working class, whereas in the 70s and 80s the ICC saw the working class as having a pre-revolutionary consciousness enabling it to prevent the bourgeoisie initiating imperialist war. The 80s were characterised as the decade of truth, which as the IBRP has pointed out can only mean the decade of revolution. During this period the path along which the ICC saw history to be moving was towards revolutionary confrontations and the IBRP were derided for maintaining that the historical path was not predetermined and could lead either to revolution or war. The IBRP was similarly attacked for arguing that the level of class consciousness amongst workers, far from being pre-revolutionary, was low and was not holding back the bourgeoisie's plans for imperialist war. In short the IBRP was attacked for its pessimism. Today we are attacked for our optimism. The truth is that our methods and perspectives have remained constant whereas the ICC's polemics are really about the collapse of their own absurd perspectives in the 1980s. This collapse is the basis of their recurring crises and splits (the latest of which we comment on in the next article).

Decomposition and Class Consciousness

An attempt at underpinning this reversal of the ICC's estimation of working class consciousness and the march of history in a theoretical way was provided by the theory of decomposition and chaos. This theory, which was advanced following the collapse of the Russian bloc, has been criticised in the IBRP press ⁽²⁾ previously and we do not intend to repeat these criticisms here. We wish, however, to point once more to the idealist nature of the theory and the idealist nature of the ICC's pronouncements on Argentina. Behind these pronouncements and assertions lies an idealist method of analysis which is in direct contradiction with the materialist method of Marxism and is leading the ICC into erratic conclusions.

It is clear that the communist revolution cannot succeed until a significant minority of the working class is conscious of the need for communism and are prepared to fight for its creation. For the communist transformation of the world to succeed it is necessary for this minority to decisively break with the dominant bourgeois ideology and adopt an opposing communist one. The question which we all face is how can this be achieved?

As Marx observed in The German Ideology,

The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.

However, as history demonstrates, ruling classes and systems of production are overthrown and ruling ideas change. The key to this process is found in the material conditions of life since as Marx notes,

Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and existence of men is their actual life process ⁽³⁾.

Thus when the conditions of material life of the working class reflect the decadence and bankruptcy of the capitalist system the hold of capitalist ideology on the working class becomes weakest since this ideology is directly contradicted by the material conditions of the class's existence. In such a period workers become open to ideas which radically contradict the bourgeois ones which they have been fed from the cradle. It is at this point that communist ideas can take root and lead to the development of communist consciousness in significant sections of the working class. This in turn can lead to the adoption by this section of the class of the communist programme and the development of conditions for revolution. Obviously this cannot be seen mechnaically but it is only in times of crisis when great leaps of consciousness can be made and the potential for the creation of a wider class movement and a communist minority exist. All the above is self evident and so relevant to the situation in Argentina that one wonders how anyone could contradict it. But this, in fact, is what the ICC is doing through their description of consciousness.

The ICC's fundamental error is that instead of resolving consciousness to its material basis in the material conditions of life of the working class it attempts to resolve it to an ideological basis. This leads to hopeless contradictions and the erratic changes of position mentioned above. The theory of decomposition, if it means anything, must mean capitalism as a material system of production is decomposing. It is therefore failing to meet the material needs of the working class and should therefore lead to a weakening of the grip of capitalist ideology on the working class. When the ICC observe that this is not the case, they look for an explanation, not in the material conditions of life of the working class, but in their ideas. They conclude that the proletariat has suffered an ideological attack which has produced its present consciousness. They identify this as the bourgeois propaganda which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union and proclaimed the blissful and eternal nature of capitalism. The consciousness of the proletariat is therefore derived, not from the material conditions of its life under capitalism, but from the ideology of the bourgeoisie. This is a complete inversion of the Marxist method!

In this process a number of secondary problems are thrown up. For instance the ICC forgets its earlier pronouncements that the historical blow of the Stalinist counter revolution struck in the 20s and 30s. In other words the proletariat had already suffered the Stalinist counter revolution, and had no illusions in the Soviet Union and, by the late 60s, was an undefeated class holding back war etc. Yet the demise of the Soviet Union six decades after the counter revolution somehow formed the basis for a devastating ideological attack! This could only succeed if the proletariat retained illusions in Stalinism. This in turn would imply the characterisation of the working class as undefeated from the 1960s onwards was wrong. These contradictions cannot be resolved by the ICC, they can only be compounded.

When this analysis is applied to Argentina the ICC finds the working class corrupted by the ideology of decomposition and sees little positive in what has occurred. Support for bourgeois ideals such as nationalism remains strong and the proletariat has not separated itself from the petit bourgeoisie. For the ICC, those who see in the economic crisis, social convulsions and the rottenness of the ruling class the basis for a break with bourgeois ideology are "vulgar materialists" ⁽⁴⁾. Such an analysis, they claim, fails to understand the use the bourgeoisie makes of the projection of selfishness, destruction of social life, nihilism, escapism, drugs etc. What the ICC is claiming is that those who see consciousness as expressing material life are vulgar materialists since they ignore the basis of consciousness which is to be found in the ideology of the bourgeoisie! This inversion of Marxism is a repetition of the error which underlies the theory of decomposition.

The ICC's Idealist Method

If we were to assume that the ICC were correct in these assertions, how, we ask, is communism ever to be achieved? In their pamphlet Communist Organisations and Class Consciousness the ICC argue that for the communist revolution to succeed the proletariat's consciousness must be determined by the communist mode of production ⁽⁵⁾. They argue here that social relations of a mode of production which does not yet exist, namely communism, must somehow determine political consciousness under the present capitalist relations of production. This is utterly impossible - the sort of thing which could only happen in "Alice in Wonderland." It is a confused echo of Hegel's idea of the development of mind realising itself in the formation of a new society through world history. It is directly opposed to Marxism which turned this idea on its head and argued that, on the contrary, history was determined by the material world, specifically by the development of the forces of production and the contradictions in the relations of production. Consciousness, which of course is a key factor in social change, can only be determined by the material conditions of life in their social and historical fullness.

The resolution of the conundrums the ICC sets itself can only be found in a more profound analysis of the conditions of life of the proletariat. If, for example, the premise of decomposition is rejected the changes in the proletariat's consciousness can be explained. As we have stated elsewhere the present period is one of restructuring of capital, globalisation of production and increased international division of labour. The present period, rather than being one of general decomposition, is one of recomposition of imperialist blocs. It is from these material changes that the consciousness of the working class needs to be explained.

Similarly in regard to Argentina, the consciousness of the working class is determined by the historical and social background to the present. It is understandable that nationalism, bourgeois leftism and hatred of the IMF hold sway. It is idealistic to expect the working class to immediately break from these previous ideologies and adopt the communist programme at the present stage. The fact that workers are breaking out of the trade union prisons and rejecting the parties of the left is an indication that a process of development is under way and development of communist consciousness is possible. Of course, this can only be a long process developing out of many struggles and a process which requires the development of a political organisation of the Argentine working class. This is something we have recognised in our publications. The ICC, however, see no process and little positive in what has occurred. For them the heterogeneous nature of the movement condemns it to being a "sterile and futureless revolt." However, all the great movements of the past have started off as heterogeneous and populist revolts. We need only recall the Paris commune, the 1905 Russian Revolution and the 1917 February Revolution to see that such movements initially dominated by bourgeois ideology have potential to advance. The key to this advance is the development of the material conditions of life and the action of the proletariat's political organisation. While the IBRP does not claim that such an advance will occur we do not exclude the possibility either.

As has been argued above the ICC's analyses are erratic because they are approaching fundamental questions in an idealistic way. The ICC needs to return to the materialist method of Marxism if it is to find its way out of the maze into which it has wandered.

(1) World Bank figures quoted by the ICC "Only the proletariat on its class terrain can push back the bourgeoisie" International Review 109

(2) See "War and the ICC" in Revolutionary Perspectives 24

(3) German Ideology, Students Edition p.47

(4) Although the IBRP are also called "idealist" in World Revolution 252 because we are supposed to advocate that the party will emerge independently of a mass movement of the class! Not even the Bordigists have such an absurd position still less ourselves. The ICC, however, assure us that they do not make sectarian polemics...

(5) See "Communist Organisations and Class Consciousness" p.5. For more on the IBRP view on class consciousness and political organisation see the current series of articles on this vital question in Revolutionary Perspectives 21-26.