By the end of last Spring, a new issue of the review ‘Controverses’, organ of the Forum for an internationalist Communist Left, has been released in French language. Hereafter we present and introduce its contents. By way of introduction to its depth and scope, we offer our translation of its lead article: The Combination of Capitalism’s Four Crises: economic, social, imperialist and ecological.
The editor, October 2023.
Contents
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Capitalism’s four crises come together: economic, social, imperialist and ecological (p. 4)
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The succession of modes of production. A validation of historical materialism (p. 11)
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Obsolescence and periodization of capitalism (p. 17)
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Marx: an empirical validation of Labor-Value (p. 28)
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Inflation, interest rates and the distribution of wealth (p. 35)
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Don’t fight for ‘your’ country (p. 40)
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The Erring Ways of the ICC’ on inter-imperialist relations (p. 47)
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Letters to the editor (p. 56)
Controverses is the review of the Forum for an Internationalist Communist Left. It is published twice a year in French, English, and Spanish, accompanied by irregularly published thematic notebooks. All these publications can be freely downloaded and distributed from our website. The website also publishes other texts from the workers’ movement, positions on current events, contributions to debates within the working class and its vanguard, as well as updates to some of our foundational texts.
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Presentation
Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, capitalism is sinking into a quadruple crisis: imperialist, economic, social and ecological:
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Imperialist, with the war in Ukraine threatening to spread and/or degenerate into a nuclear holocaust, and the growing polarization of war tensions between Washington and Beijing.
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Economic, with signs of a severe recession, coupled with a drastic fall in wage-earners’ purchasing power as a result of soaring inflation. The recent bank failures are the first signs of this.
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Social: after a half-century’s setback, class struggles are undergoing a significant reawakening, at least in several countries, albeit in a very limited context and with a low level of awareness and self-organization.
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Ecologically, with global warming thresholds now certain to be exceeded, to mention just one aspect among dozens of others that threaten the existence of life on earth.
How are we to understand these four crises, which are mutually and dangerously intertwined? In other words, where does capitalism stand in the arc of its historical development, and what are the consequences for proletarian struggles and the positioning of revolutionary minorities?
These are the topics of this issue of Controverses (n°6, May 2023).
The 1st, editorial, article (‘The Combination of Capitalism’s Four Crises’) addresses the issues at stake in the four crises generated by a capitalism that has become obsolete at the dawn of the 21st Century. (Our English translation can be read here)
The 2nd article (‘The succession of modes of production’) reaffirms the relevance of the Marxist analysis of the succession of the best-known modes of production, with an empirical validation of historical materialism that identifies, for each of them, an ascendant phase in which new social relations of production stimulate the development of the productive forces, and an obsolescent phase in which these obsolete social relations hold back the productive forces. Indeed, it is these phases of obsolescence that provide the objective basis for the emergence of a new exploiting class, the bearer of new social relations of production. This initial, introductory analysis will be the subject of subsequent, more in-depth contributions, on the one hand to take up a program of work begun by Marx, but abandoned by reformist social democracy and then frozen by Stalinist counter-revolution, and on the other, to respond to the abandonment of this analysis by certain groups and elements within the Communist Left itself.
The 3rd article (‘Obsolescence and periodization of capitalism’) applies this analytical framework to capitalism, identifying the real roots of its obsolescence in the exhaustion of the social relation of wage production that defines it as a mode of production. It also situates the moment, at the turn of the 21st Century, when capitalism became “unfaithful to its vocation whenever, as in this case, it stands in the way of the development of productivity. By this it simply proves, once again, that it is entering its senile period and that it is increasingly outliving itself”, as Marx explains. The article also presents a periodization of capitalism into four productive orders, based on an analysis of the evolution of the rate of surplus-value, in the image of what Marx set up in his analysis of the formal and real subjugation of labor by capital. Finally, the article introduces the second part to come: the implications of these different periodizations for the positions defended by revolutionaries.
The 4th article (‘Marx: an empirical validation of Labor-Value’) demonstrates the theoretical and empirical validity of Marx’s law of Labor-Value for understanding the determination of commodity value by the average social labor-time crystallized in them in the productive process. At the same time, it completely deconstructs the neoclassical theory of prices as taught in economics textbooks. Based on these results, the article explains the relationship between productivity gains and real wages, as well as between inflation and wage-earners’ purchasing power.
The 5th article (‘Inflation, Interest Rates and the Distribution of Wealth’) reveals the true function of inflation and the policies designed to contain it, namely that inflation and the interest rate hikes introduced to control it combine to form a formidable tax on wages, making it possible to restore the profitability of capital, which has been undermined since 2014 and exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. In passing, the article refutes the official monetarist theory of inflation.
The 6th article (‘Don’t fight for “your” country’) deconstructs all the arguments urging us to side with one of the two imperialist camps involved in the war in Ukraine. As a counterpoint, he vigorously and very concretely defends the need to opt for the only internationalist and revolutionary position in this conflict, namely revolutionary defeatism. (1)
The 7th article (‘The Erring Ways of the ICC’ on Inter-Imperialist Relations’) criticizes the serious analytical errors in the International Communist Current’s understanding of current inter-imperialist relations. It also points to the cascade of inconsistencies at this level that stem from the Luxemburgist analysis of capital accumulation, in particular regarding China’s place in the current concert of nations. Finally, the article develops an analysis of the evolution of social conflicts in the central countries and the reasons for their decline from the mid-1970s onwards. (2)
The last article (‘Letters to the Editor’) is made up of significant extracts from an e-mail exchange between Controverses and a group of young internationalists taking a proletarian internationalist stance on the war in Ukraine, and claiming to be part of the Communist Left.
Finally, we published on our website a tribute in memory of Guy Sabatier, (3) a very active and involved comrade within our Controverses Forum, who sadly passed away at the very beginning of this year 2023. This tribute owes much to:
a) the collection of memoirs he wrote at the end of his life, entitled ‘Les quatre Mousquetaires’ (“The Four Musketeers”), in homage to the four Communist Left militants who had the greatest impact on his political life;
b) a series of testimonies on his militant past that he shared with us at Controverses ;
c) as well as additions and corrections kindly provided by relatives, former comrades and friends. We would like to thank them all.
We will publish this tribute in a forthcoming issue of our Cahiers Thématiques (“Topical Notebooks”), devoted entirely to his activist life and his political, theatrical and literary work.
Controverses, May 24, 2023
Source: Controverses n°6
Translation: H.C., October 2023.
Notes
1 This article by Sanderr, March 23, 2022, can also be read on the website of Internationalist Perspectives: DON’T FIGHT FOR “YOUR” COUNTRY ! [editor’s note]
2 The conclusion of this article can also be read in English at ‘A Free Retriever’s Digest’: Critique: The Erring Ways of the ICC on Inter-Imperialist Relations. (July 9, 2022). [editor’s note]
3 In French: A la mémoire de Guy Sabatier – 1947-2023.
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