Nasser Paydar November 2000
“The anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.” Any inquiry other than this regardless of which class it might benefit leads only to servitude for the working masses of the world. A glance at global events from the turn of the last century to the present day offers a profound lesson for all humanity, but one of vastly greater significance for the international working class and the activists of its anti-capitalist movement. The chronology of this era can be catalogued in various ways briefly or in detail, and from conflicting perspectives. Major events include two great imperialist wars, the October Revolution, the rise of the Soviet bloc, the emergence of widespread nationalist and “populist’s socialist” movements, the ascent of social-democratic parties in Western and Northern Europe, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. But the narrative of revolutionary historical materialism does not merely trace a disjointed series of events; rather, it probes the material basis underlying their occurrence and the objective foundations of their class and social articulations. A fundamental issue for the working class is to examine why the history of the twentieth century and its ongoing substance, that turbulent torrent of class struggle defining the era traversed a path fraught with horror, devastation, disorientation, ruin, and soul-crushing, lethal wastelands all to the detriment of the working class, and *only* to its detriment. This question is vital for the proletariat; to escape current conditions, to organize its ongoing class struggle, and to adopt a clear approach with a socialist perspective, it must reflect upon what befell it and its struggle during that century and gain a deeper understanding. There is no way to achieve this awareness other than by investigating the roots of these events in their true origins. One must examine the pathways taken by the expansion of the capitalist economy or more precisely, the capitalist mode of production during this period: which routes it followed and which twists and turns it navigated? what strategies it employed to overcome obstacles; what needs it encountered during these various ups and downs and what actions it took to address them. It is essential to understand what happened to the working masses along this long journey: why events unfolded as they did, and what the international labour movement should have done to prevent such an outcome. Only by delving into the answers to these questions can the current state of the class struggle against the bourgeoisie be reassessed and the successful path for the continuation of that struggle be identified.
A century and a half ago, the capitalist world and the internationalist working-class movement operated in a vastly different climate. The demise of capitalism was viewed as imminent or, at the very least, was not relegated to the archives of distant historical beliefs and ideals. For Marx and the working masses of Europe, socialism was not merely the subject of an ongoing movement but the agenda for an immediate social revolution. At that time, the total European working-class population did not reach 40 million. The continent’s annual gross output did not exceed $15 billion (USD), and annual economic growth was recorded at figures in the range of $800 to $900 million at best. The average per capita output across the continent’s nations was less than $300, while the level of technology, social labour productivity, and other indicators of capitalist economic and social development bore no resemblance to those of today. Amidst conditions rife with the pressures of capitalist exploitation and under the yoke of the system’s political order and legal-civil structures at that specific stage of historical development the European working class moved from one uprising to the next, from one barricade to the next, bearing the banner of dismantling the old wage-labour order and clutching the *Communist Manifesto*. In those days, socialism was the watchword for liberation from capitalist barbarism; it was not yet associated with the “Eastern Bloc” and its various aligned or critical offshoots. Although the labour movement of that era met with defeat, it delivered a seismic shock to the history of human existence. For a class that has steered the locomotive of the era’s fundamental transformations, the defeat of a movement at a specific historical juncture is neither the final word on its existence nor the determinant of its future trajectory. Defeat even the most devastating defeat of the global labour movement does not erase the ongoing class struggle in history, nor does it alter its fundamental relevance. A defeated movement can achieve victory in subsequent stages, but this depends, above all, on integrating the genuine lessons and experiences of that defeat into future struggles and combining this praxis with a materialist, revolutionary, class-conscious, and socialist insight. The international labour movement failed to do this in the wake of its defeat. Nothing in history is predestined; the indifference of European and global workers toward the fate of their class struggle at that time was not a preordained outcome. Nevertheless, examining the material foundations of this phenomenon remains of great importance for our own movement today.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the capitalist system had assumed a character distinct from that of the century’s first half or midpoint. Developments in science and invention, technological growth, remarkable industrial progress across all sectors, the emergence of new machinery and modern transport systems, a surge in labour productivity, the rapid integration and concentration of capital both nationally and globally the unprecedented expansion of capital and commodity exports, the opening of new spheres of accumulation worldwide (alongside the exploitation of virtually free labour in those regions), and the import of low-cost raw materials collectively demonstrated the expansion of labour exploitation by capital on an international scale. All signs pointed to the continuous incorporation of the globe’s most underdeveloped regions into the sphere of capitalist organization, while previously low rates of exploitation were swiftly superseded by progressively higher ones. These transformations drove the growth of the annual social product or what the bourgeoisie terms GNP in the sixteen industrialized nations of Western Europe and North America to exceed 400% between 1870 and 1913, despite the severe economic crises that marked the era.
These events, alongside the defeat of the radical, anti-capitalist labour movements of the latter half of that century, further consolidated the foundations of bourgeois power. The economic underpinnings expanded the scope for the rise of social reformism among the lower strata of the bourgeoisie while simultaneously creating the necessary preconditions for “social-bourgeois” movements to penetrate the labour movement. Was history bound to take this path? To answer in the affirmative is sheer demagoguery. The Paris Commune need not have failed; the First International could have mobilized the global labour movement then pitted against the capitalist system to engage in the decisive battles that would determine the ultimate outcome. The European working class had the potential to triumph; had it done so, a victorious proletariat and its brand of socialism would have dictated the course of societal and global affairs. The ebb and flow, the rise and retreat of class struggle in any given era, are governed by a host of highly complex factors and variables. While history’s entry into the period Marx described as the era of acute contradiction between productive forces and relations of property (or production) certainly establishes the fundamental framework for the emergence of revolutions, the revolutionary process itself unfolding within that framework—must bear the weight of countless factors, both major and minor. Setting aside Trotsky’s political perspective and class-based outlook, he makes an observation regarding the events within the Russian labour movement in the days leading up to the February Revolution that is ironically quite significant. He writes, “Revolution sometimes carves its path to victory from between the legs of a horse.” Amidst the turbulent waves of class struggle, a multitude of factors can exert a decisive influence on the process of defeat or victory and on the specific nature and degree of these outcomes. These factors include the relative strength or weakness of the labour movement’s cohesion and organization; the level of workers’ consciousness; the clarity of the struggle’s horizon; the degree of creative versus passive intervention by the working masses; the depth or shallowness of analysis; the adoption of genuine strategies against the wage-labour system (or the reverse); an outlook rooted in revolutionary materialism versus a conservative one; and, ultimately, the correctness or error of the decisions made by the influential, informed, and dedicated activists of the socialist movement.
Had the labour movement of the second half of the nineteenth century not failed, history would have taken a different path; but that was not to be. This defeat was imposed upon the continent’s working masses, and thanks to it, the system of wage slavery secured a lease on its continued existence. Victory and defeat in class struggle assume immense proportions within the confines of the dominant economic and social relations of any given era. These dimensions become even more complex and vast within the arena of the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in capitalist society. The victorious bourgeoisie, as the dominant economic and political class, maintained control over the entirety of the world’s affairs, allowing capitalism to usher in a new phase of its historical evolution. The high concentration of capital, the emergence of colossal industrial and financial monopolies, the export of capital to the farthest corners of the globe, the expansion of the foundations of accumulation worldwide, the transformation of the vast majority of the global population into low-wage wage slaves, the onset of the decline of earlier economic systems across the planet, and the accelerated capitalist development of countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America all these were transformations driven forward by capitalism, thanks to its escape from the grip of the powerful socialist labour movements of the nineteenth century.
Human living conditions shape people’s consciousness, thoughts, and social outlooks. The persistence of capitalism along with its newly emerging, anti-human manifestations cultivated and nurtured the illusion of the system’s permanence across various social strata, including within the working class itself. While various forms of bourgeois socialism had existed in earlier eras, the variant that now entered the spiral of history was no inept heir to its predecessors; rather, it was an offspring a thousand times cruder and more robust. Early 19th-century utopian socialism from Owen to Proudhon was far more a critic of wage labour than a defender of it; it embodied the confusion, lack of knowledge, and absence of vision within the anti-capitalist movement of the working masses. In contrast, the social democracy of the century’s end was highly conscious, substantial, visionary, and coherent; it injected and imposed the project of the “humanist reform” of capitalist society across all its facets and spheres into the working class’s realm of thought, political struggle, and social practice. Social democracy prescribed specific formulas for every aspect of the labour movement its analyses, perspectives, strategies, visions, and organizational structures and, countering the Marx’s and revolutionary narratives in each of these areas, unleashed concrete social-reformist alternatives and proposals into the heart of the labour movement. The social-democratic stance of opposition to the capitalist system by conflating the usurpatory appropriation of earlier radical anti-capitalist movements, a fabricated and misleading explanation for their failure, and the conditions resulting from the imperialist phase of the capitalist mode of production was able to generate immense pressure to gain influence within the contemporary international labour movement. Stalin, consistent with his other pronouncements, characterized “Leninism” as the “Marxism of the era of imperialism”!!! Setting aside his specific perspective and description, one might apply his rhetorical approach to social democracy in a different way: social democracy was, in fact, the robust and enduring bourgeois socialism of the imperialist era and it is precisely this version of socialism that, from that time onward, has absorbed the entire international labour movement, encompassing all its tendencies, revolutions, and even the myriad forms of radical critique directed against social democracy itself.
By triumphing over the radical anti-capitalist movements of the nineteenth century, leveraging the conditions of a new phase of imperialist evolution, and benefiting from the ascendancy of modern bourgeois socialism, the capitalist system achieved monumental successes in its global class struggle against the proletariat. Contrary to certain analyses and misconceptions, the service rendered by social democracy to the bourgeoisie was by no means limited to tethering the labour movements of Western and Northern Europe to trade unionism, legalism, and right-wing syndicalist reformism. Its more significant feat for capitalism was that it erased the prospect of abolishing wage labour from the horizons of even the most radical and powerful labour movements and indeed the great labour revolutions of the twentieth century. The profound influence of social democracy’s narrative of socialism and its anatomy of capitalism upon Bolshevism is glaringly obvious. “Bloc socialism” despite existing outside the realm of critiques, conflicts, and debates regarding dictatorship versus democracy became ideologically akin to social democracy the moment it ventured into the actual anatomy of socialist and capitalist economics. Similarly, left nationalism and the “Third Wordlist” socialist-populist movements despite their vastly different social roots, beliefs, goals, and expectations derived their own versions of socialism directly from the Eastern Bloc and indirectly from social democracy, a practice that continues to this day.
For communists active in the working-class anti-capitalist movement, comparing the world of the 1930s with the mid-19th century is, in many respects, a sombre yet instructive exercise. Radical uprisings challenging the wage-labour system had failed one after another. The Paris Commune had been defeated; the First International had been dissolved; and the final flickers of hope for the October Revolution had been extinguished. Communism and the movement to transform the existing reality was being reduced to a dark code word for the capitalist planning of social labour and production, the imposition of the most acute forms of capitalist exploitation upon workers, and the subjection of wage-slaves across nations to every form of disenfranchisement, oppression, and humiliation. The Western European labour movement which, in an earlier era, had proclaimed the destruction of capitalism from the very rooftops of that system was now either mired deep in the swamp of right-wing trade-union reformism or reduced to serving as mere cannon fodder for the state-capitalist camp. The First Imperialist War had seized the global proletariat from the trenches of the internationalist struggle against wage-slavery, forcing them clad in the ignominious uniforms of soldiers to fight one another on behalf of rival bourgeois camps. The Second Imperialist War loomed on the horizon, and capital’s human-incineration furnaces stood ready across the globe to reduce the bodies of wage-slaves to heaps of ash. Across the three continents (Asia, Latin America, and Africa), popular anti-imperialism had supplanted the socialist movement; here, the working masses donning the helmet of nationalism, hungry and destitute marched in the ranks of “Left nationalism” and under the banner of communism, fighting to establish an independent national industry!
Thoughts, convictions, and beliefs are nothing in their abstract form and possess no history of their own. In any given era, their content is determined for each social class by the living and working conditions of the people belonging to that class. Under circumstances where capital everywhere under the banner of communism was marshalling national labour movements, and where the perpetuation of wage slavery or the expansion of capitalist development was increasingly being passed off as the prerequisite for realizing socialism and the initial phase of the socialist revolution, it was inevitable that the Marx’s dissection of capitalism and the anti-wage-labour narrative of communism would give way to new alternatives suited to the times. The international alliance between the “Eastern Bloc” and Left-wing nationalism required its own specific theories. Discourse on capitalism and the perspective found in *Capital* regarding the new evolutionary phase of this mode of production could not serve as the remedy for their needs. Consequently, *Capital* was consigned to the archives of “sacred historical texts,” while new theories of imperialism diverse in content and perspective yet united in shelving the proletarian class struggle against the capitalist foundation and in steering the labour army toward the realm of nationalist anti-imperialism stepped in to fill the void left by that book and all other Marx’s teachings. Criticism of the imperialist role of finance and monopoly capital supplanted the Marx’s critique of the political economy of the capitalist mode of production; the discourse of struggle against wage labour gave way to exhaustive debates on the struggle against the plunder and aggression of finance capital and even to the theory of waging war to establish a form of capitalism independent of imperialism! The theory of class struggle against the foundations of capitalism was pushed into the background; the portrayal of the miraculous power of state-capitalist socialism left no room for activists in the global working-class movement to recognize the true nature of socialism that is, the abolition of wage labour. Everything pointed to the defeat of the socialist working-class movement and the bourgeoisie’s triumph over it; yet, the greater tragedy was that the defeated class instead of grasping its own vanquished position, identifying the causes of its failure, regrouping its forces, and striving to establish a firm bastion of class struggle against capitalism was, in some quarters, busy celebrating “grand socialist victories” behind a wall of petty-bourgeois socialist delusions!! Meanwhile, in other quarters, while rallying under the banner of the fight to achieve those very same types of victories, it saw no reason to acknowledge the defeat or to examine the reality of its own subjugation.
Any setback for socialism regardless of duration, level, or scale granted decisive historical opportunities to the system of wage slavery; in the absence of the socialist movement’s ascendancy, and amidst conditions shaped by the authority of social democracy, the establishment of the Eastern Bloc, and the global rise of anti-imperialist popular movements, capitalism set about comprehensively tightening the shackles of wage slavery upon the hands and feet of the world’s workers. By the close of the nineteenth century, the relationship governing surplus-value production with all its profound, hidden intricacies stood starkly exposed before the working masses. While ordinary workers might not have grasped the nature of capital through the meticulous lens of Marx, they perceived its tangible, anthropomorphic embodiment filthy and executioner-like dogging their every step and felt the crushing weight of a mountain of hatred for its existence in every fibre of their being. The workers’ inner world of thought and emotion was a reservoir of rage, rancour, and hostility toward the owners of capital, and a clear, unadulterated class struggle played out across the landscape of their daily lives. Compared to later eras, the capitalist organization of labour possessed far less complexity, cohesion, scope, and power; the political order of capital lacked the intricate, labyrinthine structures that would later underpin its stability in the twentieth century, and the scaffolding of its civil society, legal frameworks, rights, culture, and social organization appeared far simpler. Seizing upon the absence or weakness of the socialist movement, the capitalist system rapidly altered the course of history to overcome these “Achilles’ heels” and forge a more robust, resilient, and structurally sound configuration. It was not the bourgeois intellect that paved the way and architected the system; on the contrary, it was capital everywhere that cultivated and fostered within the bourgeois mind the consciousness required for such navigation and architecture. The process of capital’s reproduction, accumulation, and self-expansion step-by-step engendered the need for this consolidation; the flow of capitalist cognition and thought provided the response to that need, while their social and objective expansion became the substance of the daily agenda for the stewards and rulers of capitalist society.
The relationship involved in the production of surplus value is, at its core, a relationship of the worker’s total alienation from the labour process and the product of their own labour. To the same extent that this relationship produces and expands the structures of political order, social contracts, civil institutions, cultural fabrics, moral frameworks, legal relations, customary norms and traditional standards as well as language, art, literature, and intellectual expression and insofar as it fashions these social institutions into the adornment and outward garb of its own economic existence, it simultaneously widens the scope of the worker’s alienation from the labour process and the fate of the product of that labour. The nineteenth-century worker whether English, French, Dutch, Italian, Belgian, or Swiss perceived a direct, stark, brutal, and intimate connection between the exploitation they endured along with all their pain, suffering, hunger, oppression, and lack of rights and capital personified. This relationship assumed a more complex and enigmatic character amidst the boundless expansion of state structures, political orders, and civil and legal institutions, and under the all-encompassing dominance of capital’s ideology, culture, and social contracts. Each of the aforementioned factors acted as a barrier between the worker and capital and indeed between the worker and the capitalist thereby making it increasingly difficult for a clear and unadulterated movement against the wage-labour system to emerge. When this situation merged with the dense fog of confusion and the volatile vapours arising from the nature of popular movements and the existence of the “Eastern Bloc” camp, the clarity of the struggle to abolish wage labour became even more obscured for the working masses. Amidst these conditions and events, the socialist perspective and the goal of eliminating wage labour became increasingly complex and enigmatic for workers, far beyond the issues of clarity surrounding the anti-capitalist movement discussed earlier. Let me emphasize that the foregoing does not imply that workers first “blueprint” socialism and then set out to engage in class struggle! The reality is quite the opposite. The latter is an inescapable necessity of working-class life; it unfolds whether broadly or narrowly, deeply or superficially, powerfully or weakly based on prevailing circumstances, the balance of forces, and various other factors, even in the complete absence of a socialist horizon. It is not the socialist horizon that creates the socialist movement; rather, it is the movement that constructs that horizon and integrates it as an inseparable, complementary component. All of this is taken as a given; our focus here lies elsewhere. The more hopeful, conscious, and familiar with the socialist horizon the labour movement is, the more powerful it becomes; conversely, the further removed it is from these qualities and states, the weaker, more vulnerable, and more enervated it becomes. The conditions outlined above, combined with the prevailing atmosphere surrounding the class struggle of the working masses particularly following the defeat of the October workers’ revolution have increasingly shrouded the prospects of socialism and the horizon of abolishing wage labour in uncertainty for workers worldwide. Despite lower levels of social, intellectual, and cultural development or less familiarity with the knowledge of their times the labour movement of the 1860s and 1870s viewed the possibility of self-managed labour and production, and the breaking of the chains of wage slavery, as more attainable than did their twentieth-century successors.
Everything discussed thus far has amounted to an enumeration of the advantages capitalism held over the socialist movement and the working class’s struggle to abolish wage labour during the first half of the 20th century particularly from the 1930s onwards. The sequence of events mentioned enabled the bourgeoisie to freely address the self-expansion requirements of the surplus-value-generating production relation on a global scale. At the dawn of the 20th century, labour productivity within the sphere of social capital valorisation in Western nations a ratio that had previously stood at less than two-to-one compared to the rest of the world leaped to over twenty-to-one, continuing its upward trajectory at that same rapid pace for a prolonged period. The acute, widespread economic crisis of the 1890s subsided dramatically thanks to these developments and the aforementioned factor in particular while subsequent waves of crisis leading up to the 1930s proved less destructive. This phenomenon exerted significant pressure on the theories regarding crisis mechanisms formulated by figures such as Bernstein and the leaders of the Second International, fuelling their capital-friendly critiques of the Marx’s theory of crisis. The massive outflow of capital into the accumulation markets of countries across three continents combined with the extensive development of wage-labour relations, low organic composition of capital, reduced costs for forming constant capital, and, most crucially, the extremely cheap labour force in this part of the world collectively gave rise to high profit rates in these regions. Simultaneously, the role of massive imperialist monopolies and trusts in determining and dominating international profit rates ensured that a significant portion of the surplus value generated by workers in these countries flowed into the sphere of capital valorisation for major Western enterprises. This dynamic enabled Western capital to continuously transform production processes, harness immense human scientific achievements toward this end, plan and invest in the further development of these advancements and ultimately maximize labour productivity; such feats would have been impossible without the rapid process of globalization and the relentless expansion of capital accumulation across the globe. The high profit rates in these new zones of capital investment, coupled with the massive influx of surplus value into the realm of social capital reproduction in Western nations, provided the tangible guarantee that these colossal industrial and financial monopolies could achieve their objectives.
However, everything we have discussed represents only one side of the coin. The other side was that the entire aforementioned process both internally and externally challenged the very foundations of this system’s existence. Above all, in the realm of class struggle, what signified gain, spoils, expansion, and longevity for capitalism could mean nothing but defeat, ruin, retreat, hunger, poverty, and incineration reducing people to heaps of ash in the flames of an imperialist, humanity-consuming war for the working masses of the world. Capitalist development in the countries of the three continents offered the “masses” neither bread, housing, schools, nor medical care and medicine; instead, it merely concentrated billions of dispossessed people in the dark, damp slums surrounding the world’s major cities, forcing them to sell their labour power at the lowest possible price. At a time when social democracy and right-wing trade union reformism in Western Europe, Scandinavia, and North America were undermining every anti-capitalist movement of the working class, waves of successive strikes by working-class masses demanding nothing more than plain bread and a shack for shelter swept across the emerging capitalist societies of the era, spreading from workshop to workshop, school to school, city to city, country to country, and continent to continent. The capitalist system, which in the second half of the nineteenth century had faced a movement of tens of millions of wage labourers in the opposing camp at its most acute stage, now confronted a vast, global army of human beings numbering well over a billion. These were people who possessed nothing for their daily sustenance other than the sale of their flesh, skin, and bones in other words, their labour power. One might perceive a contradiction between this statement and what was said earlier! It might be asked: what grave threat could the masses of workers lined up behind a “united anti-imperialist front” and standing outside the realm of direct socialist struggle possibly pose to the system of wage slavery? The answer to this question is crystal clear and unambiguous. Socialism is not merely an ideological or doctrinal badge; it is the movement of the working class against the capitalist system and for the abolition of wage labour. The billions of workers immersed as they were in populist illusions and nationalist anti-imperialism were nonetheless compelled, despite clinging to the rotten prop of “populist anti-imperialism,” to struggle against capitalism for their daily bread, clothing, and shelter. The absence of a clear socialist vision for abolishing wage slavery did not deter them from the urgency and inevitability of the anti-capitalist struggle, nor did it prevent them from concentrating their forces to exert pressure on the arteries of capitalist profit in the interest of their own survival. This struggle, in turn, increasingly constricted the conditions for the reproduction and expansion of social capital within societies and of global capital as a whole.
Another significant issue in this context concerned the inevitable consequences of the rapid process of capital accumulation in the countries of the “three continents.” During the latter half of the nineteenth century, while examining the interplay between British industry and the markets receiving its exports, Marx astutely observed that the expansion of capitalist markets in these regions despite the lucrative gains for British industry and the opening of vast markets like Australia and California would not resolve the dilemma facing British capital; market expansion simply could not keep pace with capital’s growing requirements. Marx’s analysis pertained to the era of colonialism and commodity exports. However, the problem of capitalism manifested on a vastly different scale and level during the period under discussion here. Countries where the expansion and dominance of the capitalist system in the early twentieth century had provided a “breathing space” shielding the concentrated, monopolistic sector of global capital (characterized by a high organic composition) from precipitous drops in profit rates and the turbulent waves of inevitable economic crises began, by the early 1950s, to assume a role that contradicted their previous function. Societies that had formerly served as zones for generating massive profits and transferring vast amounts of surplus value to the realm of large-scale monopoly and imperialist capital now began intermittently yet inevitably to exert the pressure of their own capitalist economic crises upon that more advanced and concentrated sector of capital. It was a phenomenon that exerted decisive pressure on the mechanisms of reproduction and the continuity of the capitalist system. Statistical data reveals that the per capita GDP of major capital-exporting nations which had targeted an annual growth rate of 4% during the 1950s fell below the 2% mark from the 1960s onwards, and particularly during the 1970s. Economic growth rates declined sharply compared to previous years, and the telltale signs and symptoms of a protracted, irreversible economic crisis became clearly visible across the face of the capitalist system. This crisis which, beginning in the 1970s, gradually engulfed the global capitalist mode of production amidst fluctuating intensity continues to relentlessly batter the very fabric of the system’s historical existence, despite the deployment of both traditional and novel countermeasures.
For the capitalist system, the recent period is characterized in terms of real indicators by a distinct phase and in terms of defining components by a serious era of degeneration. Lenin’s characterization of the imperialist stage of capitalism as the system’s “death throes” was, in certain respects, not entirely accurate. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the export of capital and the wage-slavery system’s drive to expand capitalist accumulation across the globe accompanied by an unprecedented surge in newly generated surplus value and the opening of vast arenas for massive investment characterized by low organic composition and minimal costs for constant capital served not as a harbinger of imminent demise, but rather as a “passport” to an indefinite stay and a form of temporary persistence. Of course, Lenin’s interpretation also took into account other factors regarding capitalism: the distinction in the nature of barbarism and inhumanity between the pre-imperialist and post-imperialist eras; the drawing of a line however faint between finance capital and industrial capital; the “anti-people” nature of imperialism; and the emergence of rifts within the bourgeoisie across societies in regions of the world divided both economically and territorially. These, however, are points that fall outside the scope of our current discussion. A crucial issue to examine is the situation that emerged in the history of capitalism during the second half of the twentieth century. Applying the term “decline” to this period is entirely apt, though it differs from the narrative of capitalist decline that appeared in the early years of that century. Capitalism has entered a phase that must be viewed as a distinct stage in the process of decline and the brutalization of wage-labour relations; a unique era marked by the continuous deepening and structural expansion of the system’s economic and social crises; and, ultimately, the harbinger of an age of anti-capitalist workers’ revolutions aimed at abolishing wage labour in the near future. Regarding the capitalist mode of production, the defining characteristics of this era include: unprecedented globalization and the worldwide integration of the capitalist economy; the colossal growth of social labour productivity; extremely high rates of capital accumulation; a staggering upward trend in the average organic composition of international capital; a dramatic acceleration in the rate at which advanced capital outpaces surplus-value production on a global scale; and the increasingly severe nature of crises and their perpetual recurrence within the process of international capital reproduction. It appears that the majority of events over the past half-century can be explained in terms of the dynamics of the process driven by these indicators. I will elaborate on this later, but for now, let us delve a bit deeper into the true origins of this process specifically, within the context of the production of surplus value at the current historical juncture. It is worth citing an example in this regard.
Let us consider the Iranian automobile manufacturer “Iran Khodro” as a specific component of the global capital organism. This factory was established in the early 1960s with a capital of 10 million tomans (at the value of that time). By the end of that decade, the company’s workforce numbered approximately 10,000. One fact is clear here: a capital sum of 10 million tomans was employing and exploiting a workforce of 10,000 people across various stages of production and marketing. The ratio between these figures is 1,000 to 1; more precisely, every 1,000 units of constant capital required one worker. Available evidence suggests that in the early 1970s, the company’s annual production reached 60,000 vehicles, or approximately 200 units per day. This brings us to the second point of interest: the data indicate that, on average, a group of 50 workers produced, assembled, and prepared a single car for sale within a single workday. A third point is that each vehicle sold for 20,000 tomans; based on the relative calculations of that era, approximately 15,000 tomans of that amount accrued to the company’s capitalist owners as surplus value. The results of this calculation indicate that each worker generated output worth over 350 Tomans per workday while receiving a wage of 50 Tomans, thereby enduring an exploitation rate of 700%. Let us keep these figures and calculations in mind as we move forward in time to the present day. Today, “Iran Khodro” operates with a capital exceeding 300 billion Tomans and employs a workforce of approximately 30,000 people. Thus, the ratio of 1,000 Tomans of capital per person prevalent in the late 1960s or early 1970s has now been replaced by a ratio of 10 million Tomans per worker. Statistical data published by the Islamic-bourgeois government of Iran is inconsistent across different editions, and the Persian versions do not match their English translations. Figures cited for the company’s annual vehicle production in recent years range from 500,000 to 900,000 and sometimes even higher so we will use an average for this calculation. Let us assume a conservative estimate of 600,000 vehicles per year, which translates to 2,000 vehicles per workday. Based on this, it is evident that every 15 workers produce and prepare one vehicle for the market each day. In other words, the ratio of 50 workers per vehicle produced in the early 1970s has shifted to 15 workers per unit under current conditions. Regarding the company’s sales volume and the surplus value generated by each worker, suffice it to say that the 700% rate of exploitation from that era has been replaced by a rate of at least 1,200% today.
The reference to the aforementioned data was by no means intended to present a mere report on the budget, operational workflow, or annual income and expenditure of an industrial enterprise in Iran; quite the contrary, the company in question is viewed as a unit of capital within the structure of global capital. What has occurred here is but a minuscule reflection of a massive reality unfolding across the entire capitalist world. Compared to colossal global monopolies or when contrasting Iran’s aggregate social capital with that of the US, the Eurozone, Scandinavia, Britain, Japan, Russia, and, in short, the vastest segments of international capital “Iran Khodro” operates at a significantly lower level in terms of social labour productivity and organic composition of capital. If we examine the transformation process in question by looking at capital accumulated in the TMT sector, the figures rise to staggering levels; in mobile phone manufacturing, for instance, we encounter labour productivity that is tens of times higher, with production times slashed from hours to mere minutes. Even within the automotive industry of a country like Japan, the scale of the data and figures involved makes them hardly comparable to those of “Iran Khodro.” Even setting aside these highly decisive differences, we still observe that what was once produced by fifty individuals selling their labour power is now prepared for market sale using the wage labour of just fifteen. A capital of 10 million has given way to 300 billion; an output of 200 units achieved under the worst possible conditions has been replaced by 2,000. Rates of surplus value have skyrocketed, the organic composition of capital has as we have seen leaped upward, and consequently, profit rates have fallen markedly. In recent decades, for the world’s largest industrial trusts—such as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler this rate has plummeted from 30% in the 1970s to around 10% today. If we make this trend—which is undeniably the natural and ongoing trajectory of the capitalist mode of production on a global scale—the focal point of our inquiry, what conclusions do we reach? Finding the answer requires no complex research or convoluted reasoning; one need only open one’s eyes and look around the world. Colossal mountains of capital scale ever-greater heights; capital requires progressively less labour power for its own reproduction; the global market, under the pressure of capital saturation, continuously loses its capacity for further accumulation. The need for ever-greater surplus value to sustain the cycle of re-accumulation coupled with the relentless drying up of the very sources that generate that surplus value inevitably results in intensified economic crises, collapses, warmongering, and the relentless expansion of the barbaric, “Tartar-like” onslaught of capital against the working class. Regarding the direct and organic link between current events in the capitalist world and this process, the following key points are briefly highlighted.
1. The Rapid Spread of Poverty, Unemployment, and Hunger
Since the 1970s, the world has undoubtedly witnessed the rapid escalation of poverty, hunger, unemployment, and homelessness among humanity. This trend is absolutely irreversible within the framework of the capitalist system’s dominance, and no bourgeois strategy, solution, or plan can even slow its pace. At this very moment, one billion of the Earth’s inhabitants are unemployed. Approximately three billion people live on a daily income of less than two US dollars, with half of that population earning less than one dollar a day. Every minute, twenty children die of starvation before their mothers’ tear-filled eyes. One and a half billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and an equal number are deprived of basic medical care and access to doctors. It might be argued that capitalism essentially baptized its very existence in a flood of human poverty and hunger, and that none of the aforementioned facts are new. This is undeniably true; there is no disputing the statement that “capital was born exuding filth and blood from every pore.” But the crucial point lies elsewhere. Throughout the history of capitalism, the deepening exploitation of the working masses and the attendant miseries and hardships has coincided with instances where the system was forced to retreat in the face of the working class’s demands regarding livelihood, welfare, and social rights. Amidst this intensification of exploitation, oppression, and disenfranchisement, numerous schools and hospitals were built, and concessions were made under pressure from the labour movement to implement medical insurance and unemployment benefits. As capital became concentrated and labour productivity rose, employment opportunities emerged, wages increased in a manner that improved the living standards of certain segments of the workforce, and other similar changes took place. The period under discussion lacks this characteristic; this absence is not merely local but widespread, extending to the international scale. United Nations statistics indicate record-high rates of capital export to many countries, yet simultaneously report unprecedented levels of unemployment, poverty, and hunger within those very societies. Even in Sweden the pinnacle of social welfare in the world of wage slavery an average of twenty primary and lower-secondary schools is completely shut down each year. Over the past decade, the number of hospital beds in this country has been cut in half, and the healthcare workforce has shrunk by approximately 30%. Actual working hours have risen informally, if not officially in most nations, and the retirement age is climbing across the majority of societies. Job security has vanished everywhere, and its last vestiges are rapidly disappearing. According to a *Wall Street Journal* report, between 1 and 2 million jobs in the US alone are at risk of elimination annually; furthermore, the International Metalworkers’ Federation predicts that within the coming decades, a mere 2% of the current global workforce will suffice to produce all the goods demanded by the global market. Other reliable statistics indicate that between 1972 and 1992, labour productivity in the United States rose by about 35%, while employment levels fell by 15% during that same period. A deep dive into these statistics would require an extensive discussion; suffice it to say that increased investment has consistently been accompanied by rising unemployment and a drastic decline in wage levels. The growth rate of real hourly wages which stood at nearly 5% prior to the 1970s has dropped below 0.5% since the onset of that decade. This trend is irreversible, and the unfolding of its various components and stages aligns organically with the nature of the process described earlier.
2. The New Phase of Globalization and the Rise of Neoliberalism.
The new phase of capitalist globalization differs fundamentally in several respects from the globalization that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, the eastward expansion of capital or its spread across the three continents coincided with the broadening of the general foundations of accumulation, the forced historical collapse of feudal systems, and the capitalist development of these nations. As Marx observed regarding India, this process despite the ruin, displacement, and misery it inflicted upon the vast, dispossessed masses of these continents simultaneously realized a historical transformation. Agrarian feudal relations gave way to the commodification of labour power; the horrific oppressions of feudalism were replaced by capitalist exploitation, subjugation, and disenfranchisement; rural structures disintegrated while urbanization expanded. A new way of life supplanted the old. The system that was passing away was barbaric in its very fabric, and the system that was emerging was no less inhumane or savage than its predecessor; yet, amidst this, humanity ascended to a new rung of history, attaining within the confines of this new existence advancements and achievements that marked progress compared to the past. The bleak, barren feudal world yielded to the rise of industry, technology, and scientific flourishing; simultaneously, the historical struggle of peasants against feudal landownership gave way to the movement of wage labourers striving to establish a world free from exploitation and class divisions. While the current globalization is just a new round of further globalization of the capitalist production method and the development of capital accumulation, not only does it not contain any of the so-called “civilizing” approaches of the previous phase of this anti-human system, which is the unconditional escalation of exploitation, the slaughter of human beings in the most unprecedented ways in the profit-making workshops, the biggest victim of the earth’s population on the verge of increasing capital profits and turning the universe into an unbearable hell. The driving force of this phase is the same as the pre-struggle phase with the forced crisis of capitalism, but there the process of fighting the crisis is combined with a phase of historical developments, even with a deadly birth, and here the deepening, intensity and ascension to the explosive stages of capitalist exploitation of the masses selling labour power form the content of the process. In that period, capital showed its presence in the workshop and factory, and the reserve army of labour resulting from the dispossession of intellectual producers was dressed as employment. Today, the huge giant of industrial monopolies in the world sends its half-made electronic products without establishing any factory, without any employment, without accepting any kind of conditions in front of any labour force, straight to the depths of the crypts of Bengal tigers, young Filipino children and old men in Chinese and Indian graves. The dimensions of exploitation are much, much more horrifying than what happened a hundred years ago at the beginning of imperialist accumulation. Globalization at the beginning of the last century brought together hundreds of millions of uprooted villagers under one roof and made them all in the chain of wage slavery, against the employer, a united force of a movement. The existing globalization programs the relationship of buying and selling labour in the black slum of India with multiple profit rates of General Motors, Ford and Microsoft, and alienates the masses of workers in the solitary cells of the prison of exploitation. The beginning of the imperialist conditions of capitalist production opened the door to massive labour strikes, the globalization of the beginning of the 21st century by locking tens and hundreds of millions of people selling labour in the torturous cells of residential shacks sweeps away the horizon of the strike from the worker. While a century ago, the opening of new spheres of capital accumulation worldwide paved the way for the emergence of social democracy and right-wing trade union reformism in Europe, the current phase of capital’s globalization transforms social democracy into a quagmire of neoliberalism and turns the trade union movement into an instrument for the slaughter of the working masses at the hands of the capitalist system’s neoliberal agendas. The assertion that the discourse on globalization is nothing new in the history of capitalism is certainly true, yet it represents only half the truth. The other half lies in the intrinsic fusion of this new phase of globalization with a wholly unprecedented level of historical degeneration, misanthropy, and the inevitable barbarism of capital in this era.
3. The Collapse of the [Socialist] Bloc and the Demise of Popular Movements
The collapse of the Bloc manifested the historical impasse of the capitalist system in reproducing the conditions of production and sustaining its own existence. What was revealed during the collapse of the Bloc was by no means limited to the dead-end of a specific form of capitalist planning regarding labour and production (i.e., state capitalism). Rather, it was the historical degeneration of the labour-power commodity relationship in its general sense that was laying bare its reality to the working masses of the world, in a specific context and in a concrete manner. The collapse of the Soviet bloc stemmed from the very same internal causes and contradictions of the capitalist mode of production that gave rise to neoliberalism. What distinguished the composition of the bloc’s nations from the Western capitalist pole was their lower level of social labour productivity, the limited extent of their national social capital’s presence in the global capital market, and the smaller share of the bloc’s capital in the distribution of the total surplus value generated by the exploitation of the international working class. The structure of the political order played a negligible role in this context. Under the pressure of these factors, the capital of the bloc’s nations was unable to reproduce itself; any step taken to plan its reproduction necessitated an increasingly horrific intensification and deepening of worker exploitation much in the same way that Western capital could not reproduce its conditions of production without adopting the most savage neoliberal approaches. Given the specific composition and positioning of its capital within the global capital landscape, the bloc constituted the system’s weaker link and was doomed to disintegration. The outcome of this collapse was nothing other than the deeper integration of various segments of global capital, the relocation and restructuring of capital within the framework of the prevailing neoliberal globalization, the imposition of even more savage and brutal capitalist exploitation upon workers, and the tightening of the shackles of their wage slavery.
The “Camp” emerged from specific historical conditions, and the alteration of those conditions rendered its continued existence impossible. Two parallel and convergent processes were at work in laying the foundations of this Camp. On one hand, the defeat of the October Revolution, and on the other, the widespread rise of popular anti-imperialism across vast regions of the globe, defined the content of these two processes. In the immediate wake of its victory, the October Revolution had under the banner of Communism imprinted the promise of humanity’s liberation from exploitation and class society upon the vision of the world’s workers and the oppressed. Conversely, the revolution’s defeat occurring in the same location, under the same flag, and cloaked in the same Communism imprinted a specific form of planned labour-power commodification upon the consciousness of the Russian and global working masses, while claiming the same miraculous potential and offering the same false promises. Weary from the savagery of capitalist exploitation, humanity pinned its hopes on the Camp for a long period, sustained by a haze of mass illusions; the state-capitalist apparatus, in turn, transformed these widespread illusions held by the working masses into the arsenal of its own power and the bedrock of its authority. Concurrently, the imperialist nature of capitalist production enabled the dissatisfied bourgeoisie across the “three continents” to mire the struggles of workers and peasants in the quagmire of nationalist aspirations, using the pretext of anti-imperialism. In both arenas, it was the bourgeoisie that truly orchestrated the planning and policymaking; and in both instances, the broad movement of the working masses served merely as a conveyor belt for the bourgeoisie’s ascent to the stage of power, a pawn in internal factional settling of scores, or a tool for constructing a new pole of capitalist power. The bourgeoisies involved in both camps were in dire need of each other; both were wielding their swords in the name of socialism!!! Both sought to harness the proletariat as a reserve army for their own power, and both were locked in conflict with a common rival. They shared a common horizon; the stagnation of the labour movement and the obscuring of the vision for a socialism that rejects wage labour served as a trump card for both. The historical conditions of capitalism had created numerous commonalities between them, and both reaped substantial mutual benefits from these circumstances.
The collapse of the “Eastern Bloc” and the end of the era of “anti-imperialist popular” movements followed the same pattern of shared historical conditions and factors that had governed their rise. Throughout the twentieth century and up until a few decades before its close countries across the three continents transformed into capitalist societies, where the commodification of labour power became dominant in every respect. The barren, socio-romantic dreams and the “independent industrialization” agendas of Left-wing nationalism melted away in the crucible of the era’s inescapable capitalist development, leaving the vessel of “anti-imperialist popular” movements stranded everywhere. The capitalist societies in question gradually secured their positions within the global capitalist structure; but the “Bloc” pole’s share of the total surplus value generated by the workers of these societies was far smaller than that of its rival pole. The Bloc’s predicament did not end there. Competition with Western imperialists demanded crippling military expenditures that had to be financed down to the last penny through the surplus labour of the Bloc’s working masses. Imposing such hardships and suffering upon the working class of Russia and other Bloc societies made the eventual establishment of a savage capitalist dictatorship in all these countries inevitable. Given these characteristics and factors, the Bloc constituted the weakest link in the system of wage slavery and, inevitably, disintegrated.
4. The end of the Cold War and the onset of capitalism’s “hot wars” against humanity.
The Cold War was the embodiment of conflicts between the internal poles of the capitalist system. This was a form of polarization that based on the aforementioned reasons was bound to disintegrate. A combination of factors brought the era of the balance of power between the two hostile blocs of global capital to an end: the acute crisis in the reproduction of social capital within the countries of the “Eastern Bloc”; the workers’ inability to endure the prevailing socio-economic conditions in these societies; the absence of any socialist or anti-wage-labour horizon for the working masses; the comprehensive, calculated, and costly planning by Western imperialists to achieve a unipolar capitalist world; the end of the era of popular movements; and the collapse of the material, economic, and historical foundations underpinning the polarization shared by the Eastern Bloc and segments of the bourgeoisie in the countries of the “Three Continents.” The Cold War had to be replaced by a “hot war” waged by the bourgeoisie against the international working class, alongside a simultaneous internal shift within global capital toward new forms of polarization. This transition took place, and the events of the last decade bear clear witness to this reality. At their core, the wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq as well as other conflicts in the making are wars aimed at reconstructing the capitalist order of production, politics, and society on a global scale, employing the most ferocious and barbaric neoliberal standards against the entire international working class. The fundamental objective of all these wars for the US bourgeoisie and its allies has been:
– To refine and consolidate the global capitalist political order in a manner that favours the US bourgeoisie and its allied states.
– The implementation of all methods to intensify, deepen, and expand the exploitation of the masses who sell their labour power drastically reducing the working class’s “necessary labour” while massively increasing its “surplus labour” must be consolidated as a universal international phenomenon.
– The cost of fixed capital formation for the dominant sector of global capital must be minimized as much as possible through control over energy resources and other raw materials.
– In the ongoing distribution of surplus value derived from the exploitation of the international proletariat among the various sectors of global capital, the share claimed by massive monopoly capitals and giant industrial trusts must become increasingly dominant.
Recent capitalist wars have all pursued this objective. The breakup of Yugoslavia; the overthrow of regimes such as those of Milošević in Serbia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Saddam in Iraq; or the persistent conflict with the bourgeois Islamic state in Iran—all form part of a plan to refine the global capitalist political order and eliminate its internal inconsistencies, thereby clearing the path to achieve the aforementioned goals.
5. New Capitalist Polarizations
The conditions resulting from the collapse of the [Socialist] bloc “shone brightly” for the dominant sector of global capital, “but were short-lived.” The reason for this has already been touched upon earlier in this text. In real and economic terms, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc constituted a form of refinement a process generated by global capital within its own reproductive structure as a means to overcome the crisis besetting it. Following this event, Western imperialists and the world’s massive financial and industrial institutions sought to steer the resulting conditions toward an ever-deeper integration of capital, favouring the dominant power centres of the time. But it is not these intellectual and political representatives or bourgeois economists who determine the trajectory of capital’s operations; quite the contrary, it is capital itself that instils the imperatives and conditions for its continued value accumulation into the very fabric of their minds and thinking, shaping the content of their knowledge, reasoning, and planning. Amidst the disintegration of that bloc, the groundwork for the emergence of new polarizations within the capitalist world was simultaneously taking shape. The acute structural crisis of the capitalist system; the drastic decline in economic growth rates across the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan in the early 1990s; the impasse of the IMF’s “economic adjustment” and “structural reform” programs; the pressure exerted by devastating economic crises in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa on the global capital reproduction process particularly regarding US, European, and Japanese capital; the staggering average organic composition of massive monopoly capital; the relative decline in the general rate of profit in these regions; and numerous other factors all serve to cast increasing doubt and uncertainty over the prospect of the prevailing capitalist poles overcoming the current structural crisis and its acute phases.
In contrast to the prevailing conditions in established capitalist regions, the social capital of countries such as China, Russia, and India operates under markedly different circumstances. Factors such as a vast, virtually free labour force; lower levels of domestic capital saturation compared to Europe, Germany, or Japan; extensive opportunities for capital accumulation; a significantly lower average organic composition of social capital; a weak labour movement (even relative to Europe); and international competitiveness driven by the aforementioned economic and social variables enable these nations to emerge as new poles of capital within the global capitalist market. China currently accounts for over 47% of Latin America’s total foreign trade, and the share of Chinese capital in Africa’s foreign trade is expanding rapidly. The export of Chinese capital and manufactured goods to Iran, Arab nations, and Southeast Asia is also growing swiftly. China’s annual economic growth over the past decade has been remarkably impressive on a global scale. Furthermore, current-year statistics indicate a foreign trade imbalance with the United States amounting to $200 billion a deficit for the U.S. and a corresponding surplus for China. While perhaps not to the same extent, Russia and India also demonstrate significant advantages over certain Western nations regarding rates of capital accumulation and annual economic growth.
As for what new face these emerging polarizations will give to capitalism whether the conditions of the post-World War II era and the old style of bloc formation will recur, or whether a new Cold War (or the opposite) will unfold such questions not only lack any ready-made answers from any authority, but in reality, they will not determine the fundamental, fateful issues of humanity’s future. These new polarizations represent a specific link in the chain of capital’s accelerating, ever widening, and deepening globalization in current conditions. China’s emergence as a powerful global capitalist pole signifies, above all, the massive transfer of American and European capital to that region to facilitate the even more ruthless exploitation of the vast Chinese workforce. The same applies to Russia and, even more emphatically, to India. The fundamental aspect of this entire process is the internal but calculated drive of global capital toward expanded accumulation in more profitable sectors and the intensification of the brutal exploitation of the working masses. The competition between these poles follows this same trajectory, serving as a preparation for even more savage assaults on the international labour movement. While engaging in protracted debates—regarding the decline of the dollar empire and the rising stature of the euro, China’s growing economic might, the downward trajectory of the US economy, and so forth may offer a compelling subject for academic research by leftist scholars, it does nothing to alleviate the suffering of the global working class.
6. The Threshold of Workers’ Revolutions to Abolish Wage Labour
There is no need to reiterate the points above in outline form; a single thread connects them all. The global working class has entered a phase that, while organically continuous with earlier periods of capitalism, has reached a critical, explosive juncture demanding a decisive resolution. In the context of these conditions, one thing has become the most obvious mathematical theorem. We live in a world where every minute is more terrifying than the last. The number of unemployed is continuously increasing. Every day we encounter a much larger population of hungry people in the four corners of the world. Bread, water, health, medicine and treatment and housing are becoming more and more out of the reach of people. There is no guarantee even for the sale of labour in the next few weeks or days for many workers. Homelessness and displacement take on greater dimensions than ever before, and there is not a day that tens and hundreds of hungry people do not drown in the waters of the oceans on the way to find a morsel of bread. War and campaigning and ruining the lives of millions and millions of people with the aim of increasing capital profits have become the daily gamble of capitalist statesmen. All of these events have become the determinism of the capitalist life process and the inevitable condition for the survival of capitalism. It is not good and bad governments, right and left parties, democracy or dictatorship, private or state ownership, globalization and neoliberalism or any other form of capitalist planning that fuels the process of the above events. On the contrary, it is the very existence of the production method and the economic and social relations of capitalism or the system based on the relationship of buying and selling labour force, which in the current phase of its life history has made the imposition of all the aforementioned hardships and sufferings on human life inevitable.
The trend of intensifying exploitation alongside the spread of poverty, misery, and the deprivation of rights facing contemporary humanity under this system shows no signs of slowing; rather, it races forward at maximum speed, with billions of people who sell their labour power worldwide serving as its immediate victims. Within its limited scope, this article seeks to highlight the truth that, within the confines of the capitalist system, all avenues for human life have been blocked. In reality, only one path remains open: the return of the global labour movement to its great historical destiny. Marx’s assertion that “the proletariat is the gravedigger of capitalism” despite the heavy layers of dust settled upon it by the bourgeoisie’s long-standing onslaught continues to shine brilliantly, presenting the greatest necessity of human existence to the world’s gaze. This event may not come to pass. Should that happen, there is but one alternative: the destruction of humanity a statement that is certainly no mere slogan or rhetoric, but the lived reality of billions of workers across the globe. Another crucial point made by Marx concerns class struggle the inevitability of this struggle for the exploited and historically progressive class, and its role as the locomotive of historical transformation. Is the global proletariat, amidst the conditions described, currently preparing to fulfil this role? There is no simple answer, yet one thing is abundantly clear: this is the only path to its continued survival. What is currently happening in the nascent workers’ councils in this and that Argentine state, in the workers’ council of the German “Cycle System” factory, in a germinal form within the Iranian labour movement, in the approach of workers’ councils in some American automobile factories, and the like, is a living reflection of the effort to get out of the swamp of wage slavery. What is essential is not fortune-telling and prediction regarding the above question, but the effort of every activist of the anti-wage labour movement in every corner of the world to help in the process of preparing this struggle.