2. The Degeneration of Working-Class Organizations

The evolution of workers’ organizations can be understood only in this context. For a century the proletariat of all countries has been setting up organizations to help them in their struggle, and all these organizations, whether trade unions or political parties, ultimately have degenerated and become integrated into the system of exploitation. In this respect it matters little whether they have become purely and simply instruments of the State and of capitalist society (like the reformist organizations), or whether (like the Stalinist organizations) they aim to bring about a transformation of this society, concentrating economic and political power in the hands of a bureaucratic stratum while leaving unaltered the exploitation of the workers. The main point is that such organizations have become the strongest opponents of their original aim: the emancipation of the proletariat.

Of course this is not a question of “mistakes” or of “betrayals” on the part of leaders. Leaders who “err” or “betray” are sooner or later removed from the organizations they lead. But the degeneration of workers’ organizations has gone hand in hand with their bureaucratization, i.e., with the formation within them of a stratum of irremovable and uncontrollable leaders. Thenceforth the policy of these organizations expresses the interests and aspirations of this bureaucracy.[8] To understand the degeneration of these organizations is to understand how a bureaucracy can be born out of the labor movement.

Briefly, bureaucratization has meant that the fundamental social relationship of modern capitalism, the relationship between directors and executants, has reproduced itself within the labor movement, and in two forms: first, within the workers’ organizations, which have responded to the enlargement and multiplication of their tasks by adopting a bourgeois model of organization, instaurating a greater and greater division of labor until a new stratum of leaders has crystallized, separate from the mass of militants who from then on are reduced to the role of executants; and second, between working-class organizations and the proletariat itself. The function these organizations have gradually taken on has been to lead the working class in its own, well-defined interest — and most of the time, the working class has agreed to rely on these organizations and carry out their instructions. And so we have arrived at a complete negation of what was the essence of a socialist movement, namely, the idea of the autonomy of the proletariat.

This evolution has a counterpart in the corresponding evolution of revolutionary theory and ideology, made possible by the initially contradictory character of Marxism itself. In a sense, nothing of what has been said here about workers’ management and the autonomy of the proletariat is new. It all goes back to Marx’s formula, “The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the workers themselves”; in other words, emancipation will take place only insofar as the workers themselves decide the means and the ends of their struggle. This intuition of autonomy is in keeping with the deepest and most positive aspects of Marx’s work: the central importance he accorded to the analysis of the relations of production in the capitalist factory, the radical critique of bourgeois ideology in all its aspects and even of the traditional notion of “theory,” and the vision of socialism as a new reality whose elements are beginning to appear in the lives and attitudes of the workers even now.

Yet Marxism, itself born in capitalist society, has not freed itself, and could not free itself completely from the culture in which it grew up. Its position — like the position of any revolutionary ideology and like the situation of the proletariat until the revolution — remains contradictory. “The ruling ideas of each epoch are the ideas of its ruling class” does not simply mean that those ideas are physically the most widespread or the most widely accepted. It also means they tend to be assented to, partially and unconsciously, by the very people who oppose them the most violently. In the theoretical sphere no less than in the practical sphere, the struggle of the revolutionary movement to free itself from the hold of capitalism is a permanent struggle.

The Decline of Revolutionary Theory

Very quickly the idea began to catch on that Marxism was the science of society and revolution. Attempts were made to present it as the synthesis and continuation of the creations of bourgeois culture (German classical philosophy, English political economy, and French utopian socialism), ignoring the fact that the prime feature in Marx’s work was precisely his overthrow of the fundamental postulates of that culture. This quite naturally led to it being said, in consequence, that socialist political consciousness has to be introduced into the working class “from the outside,” for “modern socialist consciousness can only arise upon a basis of deep scientific knowledge” and “the vehicle of science is not the proletariat but the petty bourgeois intelligentsia.”[9]

Although these formulations of Kautsky’s were taken up by Lenin, they are not in any way the exclusive attribute of bolshevism; they also express the typical attitude of the leaders of the Second International and of the reformists.[10] But their spirit is found in Marx himself. The debasement of revolutionary theory is symbolized by the gap between the subtitle of Capital (“a critique of political economy” — not “a critique of bourgeois political economy” but a critique of the very notion of political economy, of the very idea that there is a “science” of political economy) and what it became during the course of its elabouration: an attempt to establish the “laws of movement of the capitalist economy.” In the hands of his epigones the idea was further transformed into a scientific proof that the downfall of capitalism and the victory of socialism were inevitable and “guaranteed by natural laws.”[11] The Marxist theory now tries to reproduce the model of the natural sciences in relation to society — which comes down to saying that it borrows its logical structure from the bourgeois thought of its period, just as it borrows its method of exposition from bourgeois culture. Conceived in this way, it can only in fact be expounded by intellectual specialists, cut off from the proletariat. Even its basic premises, in the final analysis, reflect basically bourgeois ideas.

In the strict sense, the economic theory expounded in Capital is based on the postulate that capitalism has managed completely and effectively to transform the worker — who appears there only as labor power — into a commodity; therefore the use value of labor power — the use the capitalist makes of it — is, as for any commodity, completely determined by the user, since its exchange value — wages — is determined solely by the laws of the market and in the first place by the production costs of labor power. This postulate is necessary for there to be a “science of economics” along the lines of the physico-mathematical model Marx followed to an increasing degree during the course of the exposition of Capital. But he contradicts the most essential fact of capitalism, namely, that the use value and exchange value of labor power are objectively indeterminate; they are determined rather by the struggle between labor and capital both in production and in society. Here is the ultimate root of the “objective” contradictions of capitalism (see “On the Content of Socialism, III”). The attempt to make them variables whose behavior is completely determined by objective laws leads, not as Marx and generations of Marxists after him thought, to the proof of an “inevitable” crisis of capitalism, but on the contrary, to the “proof” of the latter’s permanence. There would be no kind of historically important crisis if the proletariat remained completely passive [se laissait faire a 100%], as Capital postulates. The paradox is that Marx, the “inventor” of class struggle, wrote a monumental work on phenomena determined by this struggle in which the struggle itself was entirely absent.

It is hardly necessary to point out the degree to which such a conception is in contradiction to the idea of a conscious socialist revolution carried out by the masses. The latter would then indeed only have the role of supplying a verification of what the theory had already deduced a priori.[12]

Revolutionary politics tended in this vision to be transformed into a technique. Just as the engineer applies the science of the physicist under given conditions and with certain ends in view, so the revolutionary politician applies the conclusions of the “scientific” theory of revolution in given conditions. Stalin, characterizing Lenin as the “brilliant engineer on the locomotive of history,” was only expressing this idea with the crushing banality of which he alone was capable.

The Debasement of the Party Program and of the Function of the Party

The technical aspects of traditional revolutionary theory gradually assume prime importance in the programs of political organizations. On the one hand, the objectives of the proletariat can and should be determined by the theory; the emancipation of the proletariat will be the work of the technicians of the revolution correctly applying their theory in given circumstances. On the other hand, what this theory allows theoreticians to grasp are solely the “objective” elements in the evolution of society, and socialism itself seems more and more bereft of all its human content and increasingly like a simple, “objective,” external transformation; in its essentials, it comes to appear like a mere modification of certain economic arrangements out of which everything else would result as a byproduct at some indeterminate future date. Exclusive preoccupation with the distribution of the social product as well as with the regulation of property and of the overall organization of the economy (“nationalization” and “planning”) thus becomes inevitable, and the fact that socialism must mean above all a radical upheaval in the relationships between people, whether in production or in politics, is completely masked over.

And if socialism is a scientific truth to which specialists obtain access through their theoretical expositions, it follows that the function of the revolutionary party would be to bring socialism to the proletariat. The latter could not reach it through its own experience; at the very most it could recognize the party that incarnates this truth as the representative of the general interests of humanity and support it. There could be no question of its having any control over the party except through its passivity and refusal to follow it. Even then the party would have to conclude simply that it was unable to make its program concrete enough or its propaganda convincing enough — or that it was mistaken in its “appreciation of the situation”; but it could not learn much from the working class about anything basic. The party would possess the truth about socialism since it possesses the theory that alone leads to it. It is therefore the rightful leader of the proletariat, and it must become so in fact, since decision making can belong only to the specialists in the science of revolution. Insofar as it is permitted at all, democracy then is only an instructive procedure or an adjustment justified by the “imperfect” nature of revolutionary science. But only the party knows and can decide what the correct dose is.

The Revolutionary Party Organized on a Capitalist Model

This view, or more exactly this mentality, finds its counterpart within the organization in its mode of operation, in the type of work it carries out, and in the relationships that are instaurated inside it. The action of the organization will be correct if it conforms with the theory or at least with the art or technique of “politics,” which has its specialists, too. Whatever the degree of formal democracy that exists within the organization, the militants will be aware that it is for the specialists to assess the objective situation and to deduce from it the line that must be followed; hence, all year long they will do nothing but carry out orders formulated by the political specialists. The dividing up of tasks, which is indispensable wherever there is a need for cooperation, becomes a real division of labor, the labor of giving orders being separate from that of carrying them out. Once instaurated, this division between directors and executants tends to broaden and deepen by itself. The leaders specialize in their role and become indispensable while those who carry out orders become absorbed in their concrete tasks. Deprived of information, of the general view of the situation, and of the problems of organization, arrested in their development by their lack of participation in the overall life of the Party, the organization’s rank-and-file militants less and less have the means or the possibility of having any control over those at the top.

This division of labor is supposed to be limited by “democracy.” But democracy, which should mean that the majority rules [dirige], is reduced to meaning that the majority designates its rulers; copied in this way from the model of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, drained of any real meaning, it quickly becomes a veil thrown over the unlimited power of the rulers. The base does not run the organization just because once a year it elects delegates who designate the central committee, no more than the people are sovereign in a parliamentary-type republic because they periodically elect deputies who designate the government.

Let us consider, for example, “democratic centralism” as it is supposed to function in an ideal Leninist party. That the central committee is designated by a “democratically elected” congress makes no difference since, once it is elected, it is de facto and de jure the absolute ruler of the organization. It is not only that it has complete (statutory) control over the body of the Party (and can dissolve the base organizations, kick out militants, etc.) or that, under such conditions, it can determine the composition of the next congress. The central committee could use its powers in an honorable way, these powers could be reduced; the members of the Party might enjoy “political rights” such as being able to express themselves in internal and even outside publications, to form factions, etc. Fundamentally, this would not change the situation, for the central committee would still remain the organ that defines the political line of the organization and controls its application from top to bottom, that, in a word, has a permanent monopoly on the job of leadership. The expression of opinions only has a limited value once the way the group functions prevents this opinion from forming on solid bases, i.e., permanent participation in the organization’s activities and in the solution of problems that arise. If the way the organization is run makes the solution of general problems the specific task and permanent work of a separate category of militants, only their opinion will, or will appear, to count to the others. And this situation will carry further into the political tendencies that exist within the Party. Under such conditions, a congress meeting at regular intervals is no more “democratic” than parliamentary elections; indeed, both boil down in effect to inviting electors to voice their opinions from time to time on problems from which they are removed the rest of the time, while moreover taking away from them all means of having any control over what happens as a result.

This criticism applies not only to bolshevism, but also to social-democratic organizations and trade unions of all kinds. In this respect, the difference between a Stalinist and a reformist party is comparable to that between a totalitarian regime and a bourgeois “democratic” one. Formal individual rights may be greater in the second case but this makes no difference in the actual structure of power, which in both instances is the exclusive power of a particular category of people.

The Objective Conditions for Bureaucratization

The phenomenon of degeneration and bureaucratization that working-class organizations undergo is a total one, embracing every aspect of their existence. It is a process of debasement just as much in revolutionary theory as in the program, activities, function, and structure of these organizations, and the work that militants accomplish in them.[13]

This does not mean that their actual historical evolution is the result of the debasement of ideas in the heads of individuals. This debasement is only the expression of the persistence of capitalism and capitalist ways of thinking and acting within the labor movement. It means that the movement has not managed to free itself from the hold of the society in which it was born, and that it is falling under its indirect influence again at the very moment it thinks it is putting up its most radical opposition to it.

That this hold had a basis in the totality of productive, economic, political, and ideological relationships of the established society and that in particular the bureaucratic evolution of the workers’ organizations has been conditioned by the objective evolution of capitalism is certain. A reformist bureaucracy is inconceivable except in a developing capitalist economy that makes such reformism possible. A “revolutionary” or “totalitarian” bureaucracy such as the Stalinist bureaucracy is inconceivable except in a situation of permanent crisis in society that the traditional ruling classes are incapable of solving. More generally, a bureaucracy of any significant size in a workers’ organization is inconceivable without a corresponding degree of concentration in the areas of production and statification of economic life. Both business enterprises and the labor force are concentrated, while the organizational form of huge trade unions easily prevents any initiative on the part of its members. And State intervention in economic and social life offers the bureaucracy an ideal terrain on which to carry out its activity, both with respect to economic grievances as well as on the political level.

This type of analysis is indispensable but incomplete and unsatisfactory. It would be false to present the bureaucratization of workers’ organizations simply as a result of the evolution of capitalism toward concentration and statification. Very early on, the action of the proletariat or of “its” organizations played a determining role in the evolution of modern society so that after a certain point “cause” and “effect” can no longer be distinguished. Bureaucratic organizations have transformed their social environment so as to adapt it to their conditions of existence, and they continue to do so. Everything an analysis of this sort teaches us shows us that the objective situation makes bureaucratic degeneration possible (which we knew already), but it does not teach us that it makes it inevitable. And as far as revolutionary action in the future is concerned, it is of little use. It would be vain, for example, to claim to foresee a future evolution of events or conditions that would render bureaucratization “objectively impossible.”[14]

It is certain that capitalist society will always leave the possibility open for a leading section of the exploited classes to become integrated into the system of exploitation. It is also certain that the tendencies favoring the birth and growth of bureaucracy in workers’ organizations are the prevailing tendencies of modern capitalism, which is becoming more and more a bureaucratic capitalism every day. Objective analysis is of the first importance, for it shows that bureaucratization, by no means an accidental or passing phenomenon, is a factor with which the revolutionary movement will always have to reckon. But it does not suffice to explain this phenomenon or guide our action.

This can be seen better by looking at a particularly important example. One’s tendency is to present the bureaucratization of working-class organizations as the inevitable result of their numerical expansion: trade unions or parties numbering hundreds of thousands of members cannot, it is thought, organize, coordinate, and centralize their activities except by setting up organs specifically charged with these tasks, and hence by making leadership into a separate job entrusted to individuals who devote themselves to it professionally.

The sterility of such considerations is immediately noticeable; if things were so, the construction of a non-bureaucratic workers’ organization, however large, would be impossible — and that of a socialist society too, probably. For its reasoning boils down to the assertion that the problem of centralization can be solved only by bureaucracy. But we see right away that this “objective” analysis is in no way objective, for before the start it has already adopted the most deeply rooted of bourgeois prejudices. What is objective is the problem of centralization that arises inevitably in the modern world. To this problem there are two solutions — and here objectivity ends. According to the bourgeois-bureaucratic solution, centralization is the particular responsibility of a particular stratum of leaders. This is the response workers’ organizations have in the end subscribed to, and it is the one the argument set forth earlier implicitly accepts. But in the course of its struggles the working class has solved the problem of centralization in a completely different fashion. A general meeting of strikers, an elected strike committee, the commune, the soviet, the factory council — that’s centralization. The proletarian response to the problem of centralization is direct democracy and the election of recallable delegates. And no one can prove that it would have been impossible for workers’ organizations to solve the problem of centralization with the inspiration of this response rather than the bourgeois response.

In fact, the proletariat has on a number of occasions tried to organize itself in its own way, even in “normal” times. The first English trade unions practiced what Lenin called primitive democracy, contemptuously in What Is to Be Done? and admiringly in State and Revolution. These attempts could only disappear sooner or later. The vanguard, which played a prime role in the formation of these organizations, did not see organization in this way; all the same it could never have carried its point of view if the working class itself had not accepted it. And this allows us to see another essential aspect of all these problems.

The Role of the Proletariat in the Degeneration of Working-Class Organizations

Degeneration means that the working-class organization tends to become separate from the working class and an organ apart, its de facto and de jure leadership. But this does not come about because of defects in the structure of these organizations or their mistaken ideas or some sort of an evil spell cast on organization as such. These negative features reflect the failure of these organizations, which in turn is only an aspect of the failure of the proletariat itself. When a director/executant relationship is set up between the trade union or party and the proletariat, it means that the proletariat is allowing a relationship of the capitalist type to be instaurated within itself.

Hence degeneration is not a phenomenon peculiar to working-class organizations. It is just one of the expressions of the way capitalism survives within the proletariat; capitalism expresses itself not in the corruption of leaders by money, but as an ideology, as a type of social structure and as a set of relations between people. It is a manifestation of the immaturity of the proletariat vis-à-vis socialism. It corresponds to a phase in the labor movement and, even more generally, to a constant tendency toward integration into the system of exploitation or toward aiming for power for its own sake, which is expressed in the proletariat in symmetrical fashion as a tendency toward relying, consciously or passively, on the organization for a solution to its problems.

In the same way, the Party’s claim that in possessing theory it possesses the truth and thereby should take the lead in everything would not have any real appeal if it did not make use of the conviction shared by the proletariat — and daily reproduced by life under capitalism — that general questions are the department of specialists and that its own experience of production and society is “unimportant.” These two tendencies express one and the same sense of frustration and failure; they originate in the same facts and the same ideas and are impossible and inconceivable one without the other. Of course, we should judge differently the politician who wants to impose his point of view by all possible means and the worker who is totally incapable of finding a reply to his flow of words or of matching his cunning, and even more differently the leader who “betrays” and the worker who is “betrayed”; but we must not forget that the notion of treason has no meaning in such relationships. No one can indefinitely betray people who do not want to be betrayed and who do what is necessary to prevent their being betrayed any longer. Understanding this allows us to appreciate what all this proletarian fetishism and all these anti-organizational obsessions that recently have taken hold of certain people are really all about. When trade-union leaders carry through reformist policies, they only succeed because of the apathy, the acquiescence, and the insufficient response of the working masses. When, for four years, the French proletariat allows the Algerians to be massacred and tortured and only feebly stirs when the question of its being mobilized or of its wages becomes involved, it is very superficial to say that it is all a crime of Mollet’s or of Thorez’s[15] or of organizational bureaucratization in general.

The enormous role played by organizations themselves in this question does not mean that the working class plays no part at all. The working class is neither a totally irresponsible entity nor the absolute subject of history; and those who only see in the class’s evolution the problem of the degeneration of its organizations paradoxically want to make it both at once. To hear them tell it, the proletariat draws everything from itself — and plays no part in the degeneration of workers’ organizations. No, as a first approximation we should say that the proletariat only gets the organizations it is capable of having.

The situation of the proletariat forces it always to undertake and continuously recommence its struggle against capitalist society. In the course of this struggle it produces new contents and new forms — socialist contents and forms, for to fight capitalism means to put forward objectives, principles, standards, and forms of organization radically opposed to established society. But as long as capitalism endures, the proletariat will remain partly under its hold.

The effect of this hold can be seen particularly clearly in workers’ organizations. When capitalism takes hold of them, these organizations degenerate — which goes hand in hand with their bureaucratization. As long as capitalism lasts, there will always be “objective conditions” making this degeneration possible. But this does not mean that bureaucratization is fated. People make their own history. Objective conditions simply allow a result that is the product of man’s actions and attitudes to happen. When they have occurred, these actions have taken a very well defined path. On the one hand, revolutionary militants have partly remained or have returned to being prisoners of capitalist social relationships and ideology. On the other, the proletariat has remained just as much under this hold and has agreed to act as the executant of its organizations.