We publish here an article from the Internal Fraction of the ICC (IFICC) dating from 2004. It was published in its bulletin 26. The political aim of this republication is several-fold. Firstly, we are continuing our effort to re-appropriate and reflect on crisis theory and the debates it has provoked, which we began in the previous issue by reproducing Anton Pannekoek’s text on The Theory of the Collapse of Capitalism. Secondly, the IFICC text is based on an article in the then IBRP, now Internationalist Communist Tendency, which returned to the question of decadence, reaffirming its reality while warning against any mechanical or fatalistic vision of the crisis of capital that would see it collapse by itself, or at least be so weakened that a simple flick of the proletariat’s wrist would be enough to destroy it. Obviously, we share and support the then-IBRP’s vision and position.

This article also has the merit of presenting not only the debate between Pannekoek and Paul Mattick, which took place in the councilist milieu of the 1930s on the crisis itself, but also the political issues behind it: or how the catastrophic or fatalistic vision of the crisis is linked to councilism, that modern form of economistic opportunism which Lenin combated at the beginning of the 20th Century; how the vision, carried by Mattick, according to which the catastrophe of the crisis itself and its repercussions on the living conditions of the proletariat would mechanically lead the latter to revolutionary struggle. The result is an underestimation of both the role and the dimension, or scope, of class consciousness – and therefore of the proletarian political party – and therefore also Rosa Luxemburg’s position, as set out in her book The Accumulation of Capital.

Had the text stopped there, the reasons for its republication today would have been largely fulfilled. But as an added bonus, the IFICC text also returns to the theory of the decomposition of the ICC. It clearly shows that this is a modern version of the opportunist theory of the automatic collapse of capitalism. Of course, the IFICC’s critique remains within the programmatic framework of the original ICC – particularly its 1970s platform. It could not be otherwise, since it defined itself and intervened as an “internal fraction” of this organization. In this respect, the text clearly shows the “qualitative” leap that took place between the framework of decadence defined by the ICC in the 1970s and the adoption of the theory of Decomposition and, above all, the de facto substitution of the former by the latter. That the original ICC’s analysis of decadence had councilist weaknesses is hardly in doubt. But the transition to Decomposition did mark the beginning of a process of questioning the organization’s historical positions.

Today, other critics of the ICC’s theory of Decomposition are beginning to appear, such as the Counter-theses on decomposition that appeared on the “opposition-communiste.org” website – in English on Breath and Light website, (https://markhayes9.wixsite.com) –, or on that of the councilist journal Controverses. In the case of Controverses, it is regrettable that this was late in coming, since the editors – or the main editor – could not have been unaware of the IFICC’s struggle at the time, since they were still members of the ICC and defended its position of that time against the fraction.

But precisely the interest of this last part of the IFICC text is to demonstrate how Decomposition theory is typically linked to Councilism and its Councilist political implications. For us today, the theory of Decomposition was both a product of the ICC’s congenital councilism – which it was never really able to overcome, despite its efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s – and a factor accelerating this councilist opportunist drift. We refer readers to our critique of the ICC platform and to our own platform.

Footnotes are from the IFICC. Otherwise, they are enclosed in square brackets and 2024 is indicated.

The Editorial Team

Automatic Collapse of Capitalism or Proletarian Revolution
(Internal Fraction of the ICC, 2004)

Under the title For a Definition of the Concept of decadence, [1] the IBRP recently published, first in Italian in Prometeo 8 December 2003, then on its website in English and French, an article where it presents its position on the concept of capitalism’s decadence in a very open and succinct manner. The article not only recognizes that this concept has a "value", but it also discusses the difference between a clear notion of the decadence of capitalism and what would be a "false perspective". It explicitly recognizes the existence of an ascendant and another decadent phase in capitalism.

“The value of the term decadence lies in the identification of those factors which, in the process of the accumulation of capital and in the determining of cyclic crises, as in every other form of expression of the economic and social contradictions of capitalist society, render all these phenomena more acute, less administrable to the point of putting the very mechanisms which rule over the process of valorisation and accumulation of capital. (…) The investigation of decadence either individuates these mechanisms which regulate the deceleration of the valorisation process of capital, with all the consequences that that brings with it, or it remains within a false perspective, which prophecises in vain, or, worse still, is teleological, lacking any objective confirmation.”

We would like to welcome and underline the importance of this article because it opens up the possibility of a serious and profound discussion of the agreements and differences on this issue which, in view of the perspective opened on 11 September 2001, is more current than ever and requires the greatest possible clarification from revolutionaries [2]. The best way to do this is by expressing our critical reflections and comments, while calling on the groups and elements of the proletarian camp to participate in this necessary debate [3].

In so far as various aspects are dealt with, we will begin by returning here only to the first concern expressed by the IBRP in its text regarding a confusion that existed in the proletarian camp between the notion of "decadence" and that "economic collapse" of capitalism. Let the word to the IBRP (emphasis added):

“The term decadence, inherent to and in the form of the relations of production and the bourgeois society being referred to, presents itself with both valid and ambiguous aspects. The ambiguity lies in the fact that the idea of decadence, or the progressive decline of the capitalist form of production, proceeds from a kind of ineluctable process of self-destruction whose causes are traceable to the essential aspect of its own being, and this auto-destructive decline is exemplified by the role that a neutron plays in the meeting of atoms, in a kind of obligatory course where two forces, which are mutually contradictory, progressively approach one another to the point where they produce their reciprocal destruction. The atomic encounter matches the teleological one, where, for this way of posing the question, the disappearance and destruction of the capitalist economic form is an historically given event, economically ineluctable and socially predetermined.

This, as well as being an infantilely idealistic approach, ends up by having negative repercussions on the political terrain, creating the hypothesis that, to see the death of capitalism, it is sufficient to sit on the banks of the river, or, at most, in crisis situations, and only then, to create the subjective instruments of the class struggle as the last impulse to a process which is otherwise irreversible. Nothing is more false. The contradictory aspect of capitalist production, the crises which are derived from this, the repetition of the process of accumulation which is momentarily interrupted but which receives new blood through the destruction of excess capital and means of production, do not automatically lead to its destruction. Either the subjective factor which has in the class struggle its material fulcrum and in the crises its economically determinant premise intervenes, or the economic system reproduces itself, posing, once more and at a higher level, all of its contradictions, without creating in this way the conditions for its own self-destruction.”

Yes! The idea that with the entry into its phase of decadence, capitalism could self-destruct, collapse by itself under the weight of its purely economic contradictions, on the margins of class struggle, had to be fought consistently throughout history in the Marxist camp. We have already addressed this question, by the way, in different parts of our series on decadence. Let us recall here, for example, how Rosa Luxemburg had already had to warn against this possible interpretation of her theory:

“But by this process capital prepares its own destruction in two ways. [on the one hand, by extending itself at the expense of non-capitalist forms of production, it advances the moment when all humanity will no longer] consists of capitalists and proletarians, further [expansion and therefore] accumulation will become impossible. At the same time, [as it moves forward, it aggravates...] the absolute and undivided rule of capital aggravates class struggle throughout the world and the international economic and political anarchy to such an extent that, long before the last consequences of economic development, it must lead to the rebellion of the international proletariat against the existence of the rule of capital.” (Rosa Luxemburg, Anti-Critique, The Question at Issue [4])

“Rosa Luxemburg pushes her theoretical reasoning to the limits where any accumulation would be "impossible". Right after, as if to prevent false conclusions, she specifies that ’long before (…) the rebellion of the international proletariat’ will come. This point of limit is only a theoretical recourse, a kind of ’point of view on the horizon’ inaccessible, whose sole meaning is to underline the historical limit of capitalism. This was all the more necessary because at that time it was necessary to fight against the dangerous theory of ’unlimited and peaceful development’ of capitalism. It was only later, in other historical circumstances, those of the Stalinist counter-revolution, and in front of another political struggle, that of the struggle against the theory of the ’stabilization’ of capitalism, that the theory of the ’fall’ developed of capitalism, sometimes wrongly attributed to Rosa Luxemburg, theory according to which capitalism could collapse, collapse by reaching a point of ’economic’ contradiction, without the mediation of class struggle, which Rosa Luxemburg explicitly rejects.” (Guerre impérialiste ou révolution prolétarienne, [5] Bulletin n°19 of our Fraction, June 2003, not in English)

Grossmann’s ’Theory of the Collapse of the Capitalist System’

But it is surely from the second half of the 1920s, and with the work of Henryk Grossmann, The law of Accumulation and Collapse of the Capitalist System, that merged the main source of confusion between the notion of “decadence” and that “economic collapse” of capitalism.

Grossmann tried to fight theories that defended the possibility of capitalism reaching a situation of equilibrium, peaceful development, unlimited and without crisis. However, in doing so he has erected a particular theory which, despite its claim to be the first to “reconstruct the method and clarify Marx’s theoretical system”, actually contained such profound deviations from the materialist-method as historical theory of capitalist accumulation formulated by Marx:

 firstly by rejecting the previous theoretical developments of the revolutionary camp in relation to the historical limits of capitalism and decadence (especially Rosa Luxemburg’s theory but not only) as simple “erroneous” interpretations of Marx without trying to understand their historical significance, the specific class struggle they expressed, nor the historical truth relating to a given period that they contained ;

 secondly, by speculatively deducing his theory not from the actual historical development but from a new interpretation of Marx’s famous “schemes of reproduction” and then taking some real events as “proof” of this theory. Indeed, Grossmann takes the schemes elaborated by Otto Bauer to refute Rosa Luxemburg and he continues them arithmetically for several decades showing that from these schemes one finally arrives at a paralysis, at a “collapse” of capitalist accumulation. With this “verification”, Grossmann could have just as easily arrived at the same conclusion as R. Luxemburg: that the problem of the historical future of capitalism is not solved by means of the elaboration of any scheme. Instead, Grossmann starts to develop a whole theory of “collapse of capitalism” caused by a “lack of valorization in relation to over-accumulation”, by a “decrease of the mass of surplus value”, which is a pure deduction from the scheme he has worked out. But in this way he shifted the crucial problem of political economy that Marx had succeeded in explaining critically, that is, the tendency of the fall in the rate of profit as a product of the fundamental contradiction between the tendency to unlimited development of productive forces and capitalist relations of production limited by the pursuit of profit, accumulation; he has precisely left aside the tendency behind which we discover the existence of a historical limit of capitalism;

 third, by concluding from his own theory the collapse of capitalism only from its economic contradictions, Grossman comes to the point that accumulation becomes “useless” for capitalists:

“Despite the periodic interruptions that repeatedly defuse the tendency towards breakdown, the mechanism as a whole tends relentlessly towards its final end with the general process of accumulation. As the accumulation of capital grows absolutely, the valorisation of this expanded capital becomes progressively more difficult. Once these countertendencies are themselves defused or simply cease to operate, the breakdown tendency gains the upper hand and asserts, itself in the absolute form as the final crisis.” (H. Grossmann, The law of Accumulation and Collapse of the Capitalist System [6], emphasis added)

This notion of “economic collapse” is repeated throughout Grossmann’s book to the point that it becomes the typical model for the conception of an “automatic” end of capitalism even if Grossmann himself (and his defenders like Paul Mattick) try to push back this notion. Thus, in the last chapter of his book, he effectively considers the question of class struggle as the framework within which the whole economic question unfolds. However, Grossmann reduces the class struggle to wage increases, to the pressure that wage struggle exerts on the tendency towards economic collapse: the tendency towards collapse is reduced if wages are falling and accelerated if they are rising. And, in the same sense, it reduces the significance of the revolution:

“The ultimate objective for which the working class fights (...) consists, as indicated by the law of collapse set forth here, in the result produced by the immediate everyday class struggle, and whose materialization is accelerated by these struggles.” (idem, Final Considerations, translated from Spanish [7])

That is to say, the struggle for wages (“the immediate daily struggle”) “accelerates the materialization” of the economic collapse of capitalism. In the end, Grossmann reduces the class struggle (once already reduced to the wage struggle) to a variable within his economic theory of collapse, and this until revolution. He does not deny “the political question concerning power”, he does not deny the necessity of the proletarian revolution, but he identifies them “simply” with economic collapse. It dilutes them in the latter. But then as the IBRP points out:

“This, as well as being an infantilely idealistic approach, ends up by having negative repercussions on the political terrain, creating the hypothesis that, to see the death of capitalism, it is sufficient to sit on the banks of the river, or, at most, in crisis situations, and only then, to create the subjective instruments of the class struggle as the last impulse to a process which is otherwise irreversible.”

The “Councilist” Current and The Theory of Collapse

Grossmann’s theory was the focus of important discussions in the proletarian camp of the 1930s, especially within the current of the Communist council.

Anton Pannekoek rejected it and criticized it not only from the theoretical point of view but also from the method. According to Pannekoek, Grossmann maintains a mechanistic position in which the social and economic laws are imposed on men as if they were an independent “superhuman power”. For Marx, on the other hand, there is a dialectical relationship between laws and social needs and the will and action of men:

“For Marx the development of human society, and so also the economic development of capitalism, is determined by a firm necessity like a law of nature. But this development is at the same time the work of men who play their role in it and where each person determines his own acts with consciousness and purpose — though not with a consciousness of the social whole. (…) For Marx all social necessity is accomplished by men; this means that a man’s thinking, wanting and acting — although appearing as a free choice in his consciousness — are completely determined by the action of the environment; it is only through the totality of these human acts, determined mainly by social forces, that conformity to laws is achieved in social development.” [8]

In other words, while the production relationships that men establish between them constitute the axis of social development, social relations are not reduced to these production relationships, nor are they the only ones that determine them. All intervene, especially political relations and class struggle. Against the deduction “that capitalism must collapse for purely economic reasons in the sense that, independently of human intervention, revolutions, etc., it would be impossible for it to continue to exist as an economic system,” Pannekoek defines the collapse of capitalism as nothing but the result of the proletarian revolution:

“The contradictions of the capitalist economy, which repeatedly emerge in unemployment, crises, wars, class struggles, repeatedly determine the will to revolution of the proletariat. Socialism comes not because capitalism collapses economically and men, workers and others, are forced by necessity to create a new organisation, but because capitalism, as it lives and grows, becomes more and more unbearable for the workers and repeatedly pushes them to struggle until the will and strength to overthrow the domination of capitalism and establish a new organisation grows in them, and then capitalism collapses.” (A. Pannekoek, Ibidem)

For his part, Paul Mattick, in defending Grossmann’s book, not only rejects the criticism made of him on a “collapse for purely economic reasons” and “independently of human intervention”, but reaffirms that “the analysis of capitalist accumulation leads to class struggle” and that the end of capitalism will be the product of the proletarian revolution. It even goes as far as to take up R. Luxemburg’s notion, between the prospect of arriving at a point where accumulation becomes “impossible” and the historical reality in which will occur ’long before’ the proletarian revolution:

“The theoretical recognition that the capitalist system, because of its internal contradictions, must necessarily go towards collapse, does not at all lead to consider that the real collapse is an automatic process, independent of men (...). Before the «limit point» obtained theoretically on the basis of a set of abstractions meets its parallel in reality, the workers will have already realized their revolution.” (P. Mattick, On the Marxist Theory of Accumulation and Collapse, Rätekorrespondenz n°4, 1934, idem, translated by us from Spanish) [9]

In reality, Mattick develops here a political position which is unique to him and in which he separates himself from Grossmann since for the latter “economic collapse” is not a separate “theoretical limit point” of the “revolution” as Mattick asserts. On the contrary, it is precisely the point where coincide, identify, “the impossibility of continuing accumulation” and the passage of control of society into the hands of the proletariat.

Thus, the substance of the debate between Pannekoek and Mattick on Grossmann’s work does not rest on the possibility, or not, of an “automatic collapse” of capitalism since both, besides explicitly rejecting this notion, clearly reaffirm that the end of capitalism will come only with the proletarian revolution. Their real divergence, on the other hand, focuses precisely on the conditions of that, on the conditions for the development of the struggle and revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat.

P. Mattick reproaches Pannekoek for ignoring the material conditions necessary for a revolutionary situation to open up, a course towards the revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat: conditions of deep crisis, without a way out of capital which would lead to an unbearable pauperization of the working masses which would be pushed into a definitive struggle against capital – condition that Mattick, taking up Grossmann’s concepts, calls “tendency or beginning of collapse”. Indeed, for the Pannekoek of the 1930s, the catastrophic situations of capitalism (crises, wars), although they push to “lose illusions” on a possibility of improvement within capitalism and the class struggle of the proletariat, are only a constant of capitalism that ultimately determines the opening of a course towards revolution. The determining factor, according to Pannekoek, is the consciousness, the “self-education” of the proletarian masses:

“That the present crisis, deeper and more devastating than any previous one, has not shown signs of the awakening of the proletarian revolution. But the removal of old illusions is its first great task (…). The working class itself, as a whole, must conduct the struggle (...) make itself familiar with the new forms of struggle. (…) And should the present crisis abate, new crises and new struggles will arise. In these struggles the working class will develop its strength to struggle, will discover its aims, will train itself, will make itself independent and learn to take into its hands its own destiny, viz., social production itself. In this process the destruction of capitalism is achieved. The self-emancipation of the proletariat is the collapse of capitalism.” (Pannekoek, Op.cit.)

On the contrary, for Mattick it is precisely the tendency towards the economic collapse of capitalism, towards the worsening of the living conditions of the proletariat, which will lead, in a natural and spontaneous way (we could even say mechanical) to the revolutionary struggle of the class:

“Class struggles depend on the class position of the proletariat. They will always and necessarily have an economic character. It will not be before the collapse begins, that is to say when capital can continue to exist only on the basis of absolute and continuous pauperization of the masses, when this economic struggle transforms itself, whether or not it is conscious for the masses, in political struggle that raises the question of power (...). The revolution is imposed on men through this economic situation.” (P. Mattick, Op.cit.)

And so, while for Pannekoek class consciousness is the determining factor, for Mattick on the contrary class consciousness is simply a product, a reflection of material conditions and spontaneous activity of the masses. And it does not play any active role in the transformation of “economic” struggles into “political” struggles. For Mattick, revolution arises only from the economic “necessity” of which consciousness is merely a passive reflection:

“... consciousness must ultimately prevail, but under such conditions [under capitalism] it can only do so by materializing. Men do by necessity what they would do by free will under free relations (...). The insurrection of the masses cannot develop from ’intellect-consciousness’; capitalist conditions of life exclude this possibility since the conscience is in the end always that of the existing practice. And yet the material needs of the masses drive them to actions as if they were really educated revolutionarily; they become «aware of the facts». Their vital needs have no other possibility of expression than revolutionary. The revolutionary action of the proletariat cannot be explained by any other motive than that of its vital material necessities. But these depend on the economic condition of society. If capital has no objective limit, then neither can one count on a revolution.” (P.Mattick, Ibidem)

On the one hand, Pannekoek comes to the conclusion that the notion of “economic collapse” is nothing but another subterfuge to introduce the justification for the necessity of a party which leads the proletarian masses because, from this notion, one tends to accept that the revolutionary uprising could take place without the proletarian masses having “ripened revolutionarily”, that is to say without the necessity of having reached class consciousness. It is sufficient then that a party take power on their behalf:

From Grossmann’s theory, it can be deduced that the revolution “is independent of their [the workers’] revolutionary maturity, of their capacity to take power over society and to hold it. This means that a revolutionary group, a party with socialist aims, would have to appear as a new governing power in place of the old in order to introduce some kind of planned economy.” (Pannekoek, Op.cit.)

On the other hand, Mattick concludes that the absolute pauperization that accompanies “economic collapse” would be sufficient for the opening of a revolutionary course since consciousness would only be something of a later and passive, a reflection of the activity proper to the masses which would arise from pure economic “necessity”.

Thus, behind the controversy about the “collapse”, we see how, within the “councilist” current, the dialectical relationship between material (“economic”) conditions and organizational and consciousness (“political”) conditions, which is indispensable for the opening of a course towards revolution, has been ideologically separated. But, as the IBRP comrades rightly point out:

“Either the subjective factor which has in the class struggle its material fulcrum and in the crises its economically determinant premise intervenes, or the economic system reproduces itself, posing, once more and at a higher level, all of its contradictions…”

The New ICC Theory on “The Automatic Collapse of Capitalism”

We cannot finish this quick overview of the theories of “collapse” without mentioning the theory on “social decomposition” that the current ICC defends. We do not intend to return here to the general criticism of this theory which we have already discussed on several occasions. [10] Here we just want to draw attention to how this theory, in so far as it has become the standard of a degenerating organization, has increasingly become a theory with characteristics analogous to those of the theories of collapse of the past.

Generally expressed, this theory argues that, in the face of the historical impasse reached by the two fundamental classes of capitalist society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the persistence of the economic crisis opens the way to a “terminal” phase the decadence of capitalism. The historical impasse is due to the fact that both social classes, the proletariat having managed to stop the outbreak of a new imperialist world war but remaining at the same time unable to raise its struggles to the level of an international revolutionary movement, They are blocking each other’s passage to their respective historical solution to the chronic economic crisis of capitalism. The “terminal” phase of decadence leads to a growing decomposition of the social fabric, to an increasing disintegration of social relations in all fields and classes, to “each for himself”, to chaos, irrationality and calamities of every kind (aggravated and uncontrolled terrorism, regional wars and conflicts, disasters caused by natural phenomena, famines, epidemics, gangsterism, etc...). But the most important consequences of decomposition are at the level of social classes. On the one hand, the tendency to each for himself within the bourgeoisie opens the possibility that it will no longer succeed in organizing itself into imperialist “blocs” which definitively closes the alternative of a new world war; on the other hand, the influence of decomposition within the proletariat leads to the danger that it permanently loses its capacity to unify, to become aware and expand its revolutionary struggle, opening the way to a third “path” : the end of humanity through decomposition.

It is certain that the theory of decomposition contains from its origin an element “collapse”: the possibility that capitalism (and with it the whole humanity) comes to an end not as a product of the class struggle but as a product of the indefinite and hopeless prolongation of the crisis, of the simple impossibility of continuing to go forward as a system. However, it should be noted that at the beginning – and for years – alongside the notion of “decomposition”, the ICC has maintained – in a contradictory way – the “classical” Marxist analysis of crisis, imperialist struggles and class struggle. For example, in the 1990 theses on decomposition, it was still considered a phenomenon of the “superstructure”, that is to say an “effect”, while the economic crisis was still seen as the determining factor of the social situation: “unlike social decomposition which essentially effects the superstructure, the economic crisis directly attacks the foundations on which this superstructure rests; in this sense, it lays bare all the barbarity that is battening on society, thus allowing the proletariat to become aware of the need to change the system radically, rather than trying to improve certain aspects of it...” (Theses on Decomposition, Thesis 17, International Review 62, 1990, emphasis added) [11]

Currently, however, the ICC has not only come to the conclusion that decomposition has become a “decisive factor in society’s evolution” or that it is “the central factor of the evolution of the whole of society”, but that “Decomposition signifies a slow process of destruction of the productive forces up to the point at which communism would no longer be possible.” (“Marxism at the roots of the concept of capitalism’s decomposition”, International Review 117, 2004, underlined by us) [12]

Here, the ICC does not refer to the destruction of productive forces caused by the capitalist crisis, but to capitalism as a whole in the phase of decomposition in which it would have entered. It refers to a general process that “the process of the destruction of humanity, under the effects of Decomposition, even though long and disguised, is irreversible.” (idem) That is to say, for the ICC the capitalist mode of production no longer implies a tendency towards the development of productive forces.

But the opposite is true. It involves a process of destruction of the productive forces. Thus, the present ICC denies its own theory of decadence which, rejecting Trotsky’s thesis that “the productive forces of humanity have ceased to grow”, defended that “absolute halts in the growth of the productive forces do, in fact, appear during the phases of decadence. But these stoppages appear only momentarily in the capitalist system because the economy cannot function without a constantly increasing accumulation of capital. They are the violent convulsions which regularly accompany the progression of decadence.” (ICC pamphlet on The Decadence of Capitalism, ch.4 A total halt to the productive forces?, emphasis in the original version)

But with its new definition, the current ICC not only denies its theory of decadence but also simply rejects that the fundamental contradiction of capitalism as it was stated by Marx himself even for whom this contradiction consists in the fact that “the capitalist mode of production involves a tendency towards absolute development of the productive forces (...) while, on the other hand, its aim is to preserve the value of the existing capital and promote its self-expansion to the highest limit (…). The limits within which the preservation and self-expansion of the value of capital resting on the expropriation and pauperisation of the great mass of producers can alone (...) come continually into conflict with the methods of production employed by capital for its purposes, which drive towards unlimited extension of production, towards production as an end in itself, towards unconditional development of the social productivity of labour.” (K.Marx, Capital, Tome III, ch. XV, Conflict Between Extension of Production and Production of Surplus-Value, emphasis added)

In the same sense, originally the ICC was able to analyze and recognize, at the level of the life of the bourgeoisie, that there existed both “the tendency to each for himself and chaos” and the tendency to form a new set of imperialist blocs as contradictory tendencies acting simultaneously. Today, in exchange, the ICC is increasingly passing the idea that the great powers are no longer heading towards a generalized imperialist war but that they would be more and more – and in the first place the United States – the main promoters of peace and social order by their attempts to prevent countries and regions from falling on the periphery of capitalism into chaos and local wars. This is how it opens the doors wide open to opportunism, that is to say a policy of collaboration between classes.

And finally, in relation to the proletariat, whereas originally decomposition meant “additional difficulties” for its struggle, now the ICC is developing more and more the notion of “loss of identity” of the working class to introduce the idea that with decomposition, we would have entered a phase of disintegration and dismemberment of the working class, sector after sector, that is to say in a process of practical disappearance of the working class as such.

Finally, the erosion of the foundations of Marxism in the “economic” field has its counterpart in their erosion also in the “political” field:

“Decomposition obliges the proletariat to develop its weapons of consciousness, unity, self-confidence, its solidarity, its will and its heroism,” says today’s ICC. However, according to the same ICC, decomposition produces exactly the opposite: “the effects of decomposition…have a profoundly negative effect on the proletariat’s consciousness, on its sense of itself as a class (…). They serve to atomise the class, increase the divisions within its ranks, and dissolve it (...)” (“Marxism at the roots of Decomposition”, op.cit.)

How then can one say that “Decomposition obliges the proletariat to develop its weapons of consciousness”, etc... ? When, for example, Marxism (and with it the “old” ICC) asserts that the crisis, by aggravating the living conditions of the proletariat, “obliges” it to rise up, to struggle, it expresses an objective necessity, a product of the very material conditions of capitalism. On the other hand, now, when the ICC states that “Decomposition obliges the proletariat to develop its weapons of consciousness”, it does not express an objective necessity. What it expresses is simply the desire of the ICC itself that the proletariat “develop its weapons of consciousness” etc., a desire which however has no material substance (because according to the ICC itself what produces decomposition in an objective way is precisely the opposite). Thus, the ICC reduces historical determinism to a mere moral imperative.

This whole “evolution” of the theory of decomposition within the ICC, and in particular in recent years, can only be explained as a mere reflection of the multiplication and extension of the phenomena it tries to explain. It is true that at the end of the 1980s, we witnessed a period of “historical impasse” which was confirmed by the fall of the imperialist bloc of the East. With it, not only the danger of a third world war was temporarily removed but, above all, the proletariat, without going as far as suffering a historical defeat of the magnitude of that which it experienced from the middle of the 1920s, entered a period of confusion, demoralization and the decline of its struggles as a product of the implosion of the Eastern bloc and the campaign developed by the bourgeoisie on “the end of communism”, “the final victory of democracy” and “the end of history”. And it is in the interpretation of this period that lies the origin and explanation of the theory of “social decomposition”.

However, and especially from 2001 (marked by the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York), with the new open expression of a tendency towards imperialist bipolarization and generalized war on one side, and on the other side with demonstrations by the proletariat of an international revival of its class struggles (Argentina, France, Great Britain, Italy...), that is to say with the return to the fore of the historical scene of the alternative of “war or revolution”, it is well known that the ICC has not only been unable to analyse this change, nor to recognize that “the historical impasse” could only be momentary, but it even goes so far as to deny – and even consciously and voluntarily hide – these expressions of the historical alternative of class and to abandon more and more up to the basic notions of Marxism in exchange for supporting, introducing and imposing the theory of decomposition even if it proves each time more inconsistent and absurd.

Thus, as in the other cases of theories of “collapse”, the dogmatic predominance of the theory of “decomposition” to the detriment of Marxist analysis is not only explained by the “objective” social conditions, and even less so when the latter tend to change and disprove more clearly the theory that tried to explain them. This is only understood by the internal difficulties of the organization within which this theory arose, by the loss of critical and analytical capacity, because in its interior there are obstacles to question this theory and, finally, because this theory has become an instrument to justify a determined political orientation, positioning and attitude.

It is noteworthy that the political attitude of the current ICC also presents some analogies with that of the old “councilists”. Indeed, the councilists considered that the working class did not need a political organization to orient it, to direct it politically (or, in the last instance as in the case of A. Pannekoek, they reduced the role of revolutionaries to a kind of educators or counsellors), a position which itself entailed the dissolution of the councilist organizations themselves. For its part, the current ICC is increasingly adopting an attitude of passivity and contempt towards workers’ struggles which implicitly denies its function as an active factor of orientation and impulse within the working class (or which reduces its role to “cultivate and develop these qualities in a profound and extensive way” [(sic) The Marxist roots of the notion of decomposition, idem] of the working class to counteract the effects of decomposition), which contains in itself its liquidation in the long run. And it is certain, as the IBRP points out, that both the “collapse” and the “decomposition” theories “ends up by having negative repercussions on the political terrain, creating the hypothesis that, to see the death of capitalism, it is sufficient to sit on the banks of the river.”

Finally, the theory of “social decomposition” has also gained the field of the functioning of the organization of revolutionaries. According to it, social decomposition also contains a tendency of the militants to be carried away by individualism and bourgeois ideology in general, to form clans and bands within the organization; this is the reason why the theory of decomposition which has been introduced and dominates the ICC in recent years, has also served, above all, to justify the policy of “bolshevization”, disciplinary type, of “laminating” divergent opinions, of the suffocation of debates and of the prohibition of oppositions (fractions) under the pretext of the fight against the “clans” and the “troublesome elements”. Thus, as in the other theories of “collapse”, behind the theory of decomposition we discover the tendency to liquidation – in one form or another – of the revolutionary organization.