First paragraph (Teaser):

The 1905 Russian Revolution was a preparation for 1917 in the sense that the revolutionary programme which led to 1917 emerged strengthened from the earlier battles. There is no guarantee today that there will be such an episode of generalised, insurrectionary conflict which, although resulting in the immediate defeat of the class, also strengthens revolutionary forces.

Rest of the text:

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We publish this platform in three parts. This is the first one.

Platform of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party

Preface

The present period

The collapse of the USSR brought an end to the Cold War. It did not bring an end to capitalist exploitation nor to imperialism and the threat of global war.

On the contrary, the demise of the USSR was due to factors fundamental to the operation of the capitalist system itself. First, the global crisis of the world economy. Since the early 1970s all capitalisms, whether state [posing as 'socialist' or 'command' economies] or the so-called 'mixed' economies in the self-styled 'free world', have faced an increasing crisis of stagnation. This is due to the fact that capitalism has reached the downward trough in another cycle of accumulation. One of the first signs of this was the US devaluation of the dollar in 1971and the accompanying collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement which had shaped imperialism's post-war economic order. This was an attempt to make the rest of the world pay for the slowdown in US growth.

Second, the stagnation of the USSR economy itself. This was not "really existing socialism" as its supporters maintained but a particular form of capitalism where the state had taken on the role of the classical bourgeoisie. By virtue of its monopoly hold on state power the CPSU had become the vehicle of the new ruling class, passing on their privileges from one generation to another.

In addition there was the relative weakness of the USSR. Economic stagnation coupled with increasing technological backwardness vis-a-vis the US and the West meant that the economic basis for supporting militarism was weaker. In the unprecedented arms race of the 1970s and 1980s the USSR's economy was in no position to match the spending of the US state. Gorbachev's attempts to end the arms race and restructure the economy came up against sabotage from inside the ruling class and the limited room for manoeuvre imposed by the very economic crisis he was trying to resolve.

Together, all these factors contributed to the USSR's eventual collapse in 1991.

The history of the present period therefore confirms two things:

1. Full state control of the [i.e. the so-called command economy] is not socialism. In a genuine socialist economy the producers themselves would collectively decide what to produce on the basis of human need. Economic planning would be a question of rational administration, involving the allocation of labour power according to society's own priorities. There would be no economic crisis of the kind experienced in the old USSR.

2. Neither attempts by the capitalist state to suppress or regulate its own law of value, much less the unattainable fantasy of giving it free expression [the so-called law of the market], can do away with the world crisis of the capitalist economy.

Despite all the attempts to manage the economic crisis; despite agreements by the leading Group of 7 economic powers and international debt postponements; despite the micro-chip revolution and despite capitalist restructuring cushioned by welfare benefits and redundancy payments, the fundamental problem of capitalist accumulation remains. This is the chronic shortage of surplus value, a shortage which is driving capital to find ever more means of increasing the exploitation of the working class both relatively and absolutely.

The general situation and perspectives for the working class

Let us examine class relations today. There is an enormous disproportion between the severity of the economic crisis and the consequent threat of imperialist war on the one hand, and the low level of the proletariat's response to this crisis on the other. Capital's real domination over production and distribution has become more and more a total domination over social and political relations as a whole. Bourgeois ideology has deeply penetrated the working class via the social democratic parties and trades unions. As such they suffocate at birth working class attempts to resist the effects of the crisis.

Strikes which have occurred, sometimes even in an entire branch of the national production, have not been extended because any sense of solidarity and class unity has been strangled by nationalism, by the idea of changing things in one firm at a time, by individualism: in fact, by those forms of capitalist ideology that the left of the bourgeoisie has instilled amongst workers. The domination of capitalism over the working class by means of the unions and left capitalist parties is the concrete manifestation of what Marx called the "reification of social relations". Whatever their historical origins, today they are the material instruments of capital's totalitarianism. They must be faced as such, both politically and organisationally and not by mere denunciation.

Despite capitalism's undoubted success at containing the class struggle its contradictions persist. As Marxists we know they cannot be contained for eternity. The explosion of these contradictions will not necessarily result in victorious revolution. In the imperialist era global war is capital's way of 'controlling', of temporarily resolving, its contradictions.

However, before this happens the possibility remains that the bourgeoisie's political and ideological grip on the working class may be broken. In other words, sudden waves of mass class struggle may occur and revolutionaries have to be prepared for these. When the class once again takes the initiative and begins to use its collective strength against capital's attacks, revolutionary political organisations need to be in a position to lead the necessary political and organisational battles against the forces of the left bourgeoisie.

Each successive wave of struggle will be a preparation for the revolution only if the programme and organisation of revolutionaries emerge strengthened from them; only when the revolutionary programme (and the organisation upholding it) is able, through the struggle itself, to sink deeper roots into the working class. This is demonstrated by the historical experience of the working class.

The 1905 Russian Revolution was a preparation for 1917 in the sense that the revolutionary programme which led to 1917 emerged strengthened from the earlier battles. There is no guarantee today that there will be such an episode of generalised, insurrectionary conflict which, although resulting in the immediate defeat of the class, also strengthens revolutionary forces. One thing is certain though: should such a mass movement occur without revolutionary ideas taking on substantial political and organisational form inside the working class as a whole then any defeat would assume general historical proportions. It is the task of the proletarian political organisation to return to the working class the lessons of its own historical experience so that they become a material force in the emancipation of our class.

The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party

The International Bureau was formed in 1983 as a result of a joint initiative by the Internationalist Communist Party [PCInt.] in Italy and the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) in Britain. There were two main reasons for this initiative. The first was to give organisational form to an already-existing tendency within the proletarian political camp.

This had emerged from the International Conferences called by Battaglia Comunista between 1977-81.

. The basis for adherence to the last of these conferences was the seven points for which the CWO and PCInt. had voted at the Third Conference. these were:

. Acceptance of the October Revolution as proletarian.

. Recognition of the break with Social Democracy brought about by the first two Congresses of the Third International.

. Rejection without reservation of state capitalism and self-management.

. Rejection of the Socialist and Communist Parties as bourgeois.

. Rejection of all policies which subjects the proletariat to the national bourgeoisie.

. An orientation towards the organisation of revolutionaries recognising Marxist doctrine and methodology as proletarian science.

. Recognition of international meetings as part of the work of debate among revolutionary groups for coordination of their active political intervention towards the class in its struggle, with the aim of contributing to the process leading to the International Party of the Proletariat, the indispensable political organ for the political guidance of the revolutionary class movement and the proletarian power itself.

The second was to act as a focus for organisations and individuals newly-emerging onto the international scene as capitalism's deepening crisis provoked a political response. In the event, the first decade of the Bureau's existence has hardly been one of a massive revival in the class struggle. On the contrary, as we have said, workers' response to increasing attacks by capital have in the main been limited to sectional conflicts, even if militant (such as the British miners' strike of 1984-5 or the on-running struggle of Spanish shipyard workers) and have as a result been defeated. International capital has thus been given a breathing space in which to restructure at the cost of millions of workers' livelihoods, increasing austerity measures, worsening conditions of work and the terms for the sale of labour power.

In this context, it is not surprising that there were relatively few newcomers to proletarian politics during the Eighties. Many who did make an appearance later disappeared as political isolation overwhelmed them. Nevertheless, despite the unfavourable objective situation and our own modest forces, the organisational existence of the Bureau has been consolidated. As well as sharing responsibility for world-wide correspondence and where possible organising face-to-face meetings and discussions with the political elements we come into contact with, the IBRP has issued several international statements and distributed them in various languages at crucial points over recent years.

Finally, we have said that the Bureau exists as a specific and identifiable tendency within the broad proletarian camp. Briefly this latter can be defined as those who stand for working class independence from capital; who have no truck with nationalism in any form; who saw nothing socialist in Stalinism and the former USSR at the same time as recognising that October 1917 was the starting point for what could have become a wider world revolution. Amongst the organisations which fall within this broad framework there remain significant political differences, not least over the vexed question of the nature and function of the revolutionary organisation. The IBRP's framework is as follows:

1. The proletarian revolution will be international or it will be nothing. International revolution presupposes the existence of an international party: the concrete political expression of the most class conscious workers who organise together to fight for the revolutionary programme amongst the rest of the working class. History has shown that attempts to form the party during the revolution itself were too little too late.

2. The IBRP thus aims for the creation of the world communist party as soon as the political programme and international forces exist for this. However, the Bureau is for the party, and does not claim to be its sole pre-existing nucleus. The future party will not be the simple expansion of a single organisation.
3. Before the world party can be formed the precise details of the revolutionary programme will have to be clarified in all its related aspects via discussion and debate amongst its potential constituent parts.

4. The organisations which eventually come to form the world party must already have a meaningful existence inside the working class in the area from which they spring. The proclamation of the international party (or its initial nucleus) on the basis of little more than the existence of propagandist groups would be no step forward for the revolutionary movement.

5. A revolutionary organisation has to strive to become more than a propaganda network. Despite the limited opportunities, it is the task of proletarian organisations today to work to establish themselves as a revolutionary force inside the working class; this in order to be in a position to point the way ahead in the class struggle of today as a precursor to organising and leading the revolutionary struggles of tomorrow.

6. The lesson of the last revolutionary wave is not that the working class can do without organised leadership, nor that the party is the class (a metaphysical abstraction of latterday Bordigists). Rather, that leadership and its organisational form (the party) is the most important weapon that the revolutionary working class has. Its task will be to fight for a communist perspective in the mass organs of proletarian power (soviets). The party, however, will remain a minority of the working class and is not a substitute for the class in general. The task of establishing socialism is one for the working class as a whole. It is a task which cannot bedelegated, not even to the class conscious vanguard.

International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party 1997

Internationalist Workers'Group, Canadian affiliate of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party

Email: can...@ibrp.org

Website: www.ibrp.org