The following document is approximately the text of the introduction to a one hour meeting introduced by the Communist Workers’ Organisation in the Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair on April 23 2016. The meeting was advertised in the programme with these words

“Capitalism faces its longest ever unresolved crisis. In Britain we find ourselves between the illusion in state capitalism spearheaded by the Corbynistas or a rejection of the revolutionary potential of the working class (communisateurs, Paul Mason etc). A discussion for those who want proletarian revolution, not capitalism with a left face.”

The meeting was well-attended (although the numbers were noticeably down on previous years in all meetings in the Bookfair) and we managed to allow more than half an hour for discussion. Whilst some participants reported on determined local struggles against austerity and others started a debate about the role of the individual in standing up to injustice and exploitation the main focus of the meeting was on the illusions in Corbynism. This was a consequence of the argument put forward by IWW members that we were wrong to directly challenge those who had illusions in the Corbyn leadership and the prospects for reformism as this would only alienate them. The response (and not just from CWO members) was that this would be just pandering to those illusions and our task as revolutionaries was precisely as the title of the talk suggested to stand against the stream. This meant informing those who did not know the past history of the working class that the current reformist illusions were taking them nowhere. Time and experience would confirm once again the same things as we have seen before but our aim was to try to not only prevent more demoralisation but also to point to the real alternative.

CWO Introduction

We don’t usually make a habit of quoting Danish Christian existentialist philosophers but Kierkegaard once famously remarked that “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” What that implies is that whether we think about it or not, consciously or unconsciously, our actions and expectations are shaped by what we understand about the past. And the dilemma posed by Kierkegaard is that we can sometimes think we understand what went on in the past but the present we live through may be totally different. First World War generals who thought cavalry would still be decisive come to mind but in a more serious way we today are probably living through unique times even though certain features may look roughly the same as they did 80 years ago.

When the CWO began we thought that the post-war boom had ended due to the end of the cycle of accumulation brought about by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall had re-asserted itself. In fact we still think that today. However our assumption was that as the cycle had entered its downward phase then it would stimulate working class resistance and this would lead to the start of a revolutionary movement which we wanted to play a part in. We actually soon quickly realised that things were not so simple. We came to see that “money militancy” as we called it did not automatically lead to a rise in class consciousness even if it did lead to massive strikes. What we also did not see that the crisis would have a profound effect on the capitalists themselves. Our model of capitalism had been that capital was loyal to a nation state and that even under imperialism the export of capital was not intended to develop the rest of the world but simply see the repatriation of profits from that investment to the original nation-state. We also thought that the state would take any measures to defend what used to be known as “the commanding heights of the economy.” No capitalist power could survive without a strong industrial base.

But all this was trumped (an unfortunate use of the word in the current climate) by the question of the profitability of capital. Capitalists are rarely sentimental. The need to try to restart the cycle of accumulation was more important to the capitalists than old Victorian-style notion of loyalty to your local community. Abandoning the older manufacturing industry selling off the “family silver” as Harold Macmillan once famously remarked were seen as the only way to escape from a crisis which threatened to paralyse the state. Globalisation became the name of the capitalist game. At the same time its twin feature financialisation became more and more the basis on which the system grew. On the social front it had the added benefit of whilst writing off some capital was painful it also destroyed the old industrial bastions of the working class as we had known it since the dawn of capitalism. Already suffering an ideological defeat from the way in which the USSR was sold as “real communism” the loss of working class cohesion added to the sense of defeat of workers. And this is a process which has not yet been reversed.

Which brings us back to our Kierkegaard quote and the question of knowing where we are today. We were not surprised by the bursting of the financial bubble. In fact it was rather the other way round. We predicted many times but very directly in November 1998 that capitalism could not pretend that money of itself created money for ever and that the fictitious growth of that time was based on various speculative tricks. We had to keep on repeating that mantra for 8 years or more and even some of us were beginning to think we had missed something until 2007. There is now no doubt that the consequences of the bursting of the speculative bubble has created one of the deepest crises in capitalist history. And because this is one long crisis since the 70s the slump has not had the effects of previous crises. Previous cycles of accumulation usually led to either massive devaluations of capital and the consolidation and centralisation of capitalism in fewer larger firms or it has led to an all out imperialist war which has devalued capital on a massive scale and thus led to a new boom. One thing is inescapable. The crying overwhelming economic need for capitalism is for massive devaluation. The capitalists themselves are in denial about this. Their economists are lining up to explain how a bit more Keynesianism here or a few cuts there will start the process of accumulation again. What they really need is another global inferno to wipe out capital (and by that we mean both types – variable and constant). They are not yet so desperate that a global war is imminent but there are plenty of signs we are sliding into one bit by bit. In the meantime the one thing they can devalue is variable capital – that’s us.

Austerity plays a major part here – forcing people to work for nothing or on precarious zero hour contracts creates a lower baseline for wages and all the stats show that wages in the UK are stagnant despite the supposed record number in employment. But austerity has not lowered the debt issue (which continues to balloon) nor has it brought about economic recovery as previous recessions have done. Indeed the direct attack on the working class is contributing to the continuing crisis.

Austerity therefore has to be fought and there are campaigns and strikes which have taken place to oppose this or that aspect of it. The problem though is not only are these struggles and protests not united or joined up but there is currently no perspective as to where we are going.

Much of this goes down to the fact that as Warren Buffett said the capitalist class is still winning the class war. Their ideological hold over the system, despite its obvious failures, is still largely unchallenged. Obviously this is mainly because those who control the means of production also control the means of production of ideas but there is also the longer legacy of defeat such as the failure of the Russian or Spanish revolutions to produce a new society. And in the case of Russia we have the even bigger tragedy that a working class revolution which promised real freedom and a new society free from exploitation ended up producing the monster of the USSR.

This has had a profound effect on those who have come, through the class struggle itself, to understand that capitalism has to be superseded. The legacy of the past lies like a nightmare on the working class and explains the divisions amongst revolutionaries and potential revolutionaries. One of the biggest defeats has been the sense that political organisation is not only a waste of time but could even be a barrier to revolution. Historically we saw it first with councilism which not only rejected all political parties as bourgeois social formation but that all the working class needed were class-wide organisations like councils. For them the spontaneous movement would be enough for the working class. Parties were only organisations for taking them over and the re-erecting a new state and form of exploitation. Councilism has few organised expressions today but it has been replaced by newer even more apolitical ideas. Perhaps the most widely publicised are those of the various communisateurs who argue (and you’ll find them difficult to pin down) that capitalism is already creating the conditions for a new society and that new forms of cooperation will magically transport us there. Workers simply combining together in cooperation will be enough to undermine the system and there will be no need for a period of transition between capitalism and communism as the building blocks of a more cooperative system will be built up first.

The same idea lies behind Paul Mason’s most recent work “Post-capitalism – a guide to our future” in which he avers that “it is entirely possible to build elements of the new society molecularly within the old”. Now this would be true if the working class had a form of property to defend (like the bourgeoisie) but we don’t. All we have is our collective capacity to fight together when need arises. This is why for us the process has to be a conscious one. Unless we know what we want and how we are going to get it we cannot turn our collective strength in the right direction.

Mason thinks that the Internet is a wonderful means to undermine capitalist relations with networking and free software but the internet is just a tool and as far as any revolutionary is concerned it is a double edged sword. Not only can the capitalists drown out revolutionary discourse but they just shut it down at periods of heightened tension. The internet is not a new mode of production. It is just a new technology which capitalism can use more readily than any anti-capitalist movement.

However at least these are discussions about a future different society but as yet they only involve a tiny minority. Far more dangerous to any revolutionary perspective in the immediate term is the latest capitalist cargo cult of Corbynism. Although it was only a capitalist cock-up that allowed Corbyn to become Labour leader 180,000 have since joined the Labour Party thinking that they can overturn 30 years of New Labour and restore Labour to what it was. But then most of them are too young to remember that Old labour was not much better than New Labour for failing the working class. From its support for British imperialism in World War One to its implementation of the Means Test and austerity 1930s-style Labour has always been about the “good of the country” before the good of the working class”. It’s a job it has done well for nearly a century. It even played this role in its supposedly “socialist” post-war Government of 1945-51. The programme they adopted was that of the entire British ruling class who recognised during the war that the working class were not going to go back to living like they had in the 30s. The paradox of war meant that such things like rationing actually improved most workers’ living standards. With red flags going up on barracks across the British Empire, strikes in key industries and the threat that the fake socialism of the USSR created as a social model, the introduction of the welfare state on the basis of the Liberal Beveridge Plan became almost inevitable. And no-one remembers that the Atlee government secretly took Britain down the nuclear road and used troops a record 19 times against striking workers at this time of what the then Chancellor of the Exchequer called “austerity”.

But are the current Labour leaders any better equipped to bring relief to those suffering under austerity programme than previous governments? Already John McDonnell has repeated the mantra that the budget has to be balanced. This can only mean higher taxes and/or more cuts. It’s also at odds with experience as Britain has only had a balanced budget in 18 of the last 63 years. They are already crumbling under pressure from the unions on policies like the renewal of Trident despite the colossal diversion this will mean of any funds that might be used to balance the books. In short even if the British ruling class allowed a Corbyn-led Labour Party to win an election the mantra of “kick the Tories out” to end austerity is a pipedream. The Tories may be odious but the real problem lies with a capitalist system stuck at the end of a cycle of accumulation. It promises not only worse living conditions but more war and environmental destruction. There is every possibility that the nationalist and racist agenda which is rising everywhere will lead not to a new and better society but to even greater barbarism. A system based on profit has no interest in resolving the issues of war and environmental destruction but will stop at ohting to defend the existing property system. But that poses for us all the even bigger challenge of how we avoid the fate that the current trajectory has planned for us and to arrive at a world in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

And this is the tricky bit since we cannot invent a revival of class combativity. That has to come from the wider class movement itself. At the moment it is at best episodic. All we can do is act within the movement encouraging wherever we can the autonomous actions of the class, bringing workers who are divided by different union affiliation to seek solidarity with each other (thus breaking the law – the first step in breaking with the state), helping to set up assemblies of workers across sectional divides but above all taking a revolutionary political agenda into those struggles and movements. And whilst we are doing this we have to encourage people to get involved with revolutionary political organisations (obviously preferably our own) to try to build a political culture of revolutionary resistance. In the long run we believe that the working class will still need to create a political organisation, a party if you like, of internationalist and revolutionary dimensions which brings together all those who already reject the capitalist system. We do not yet know what this organisation will be like but we do know that it will be part of the class, will not be a government in waiting and it will not take power anywhere. Its task will be to remain free to promote and spread revolution to as many places as possible leaving the class-wide organisations or workers councils to actually be the places which make the day to day decisions based on the principle of mandated delegates who are instantly recallable.

We know that what we are arguing is swimming against the stream not only against the reformist agenda of the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn but also against the zeitgeist which looks on all political organisation with suspicion and equates them with the Stalinist and Trotskyist past. There is no quick fix but a patient long term perspective based on the sure and certain knowledge that capitalism has outlived its usefulness and that the class struggle however weak it can become never goes away. And that’s why we are still in there fighting …