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/ CLASS WAR / We publish here a text from the German-speaking group AST (Anti-political Social-revolutionary Tendency) that we translated into English and French. Our overall assessment is that we appreciate the militant efforts of these comrades, especially when it comes to revolutionary defeatist action, i.e. the struggle against capitalist war and peace.

There are, however, unresolved points of disagreement in their contributions, particularly on the all-too-famous “question of the party” and its corollary “the transition period”, the question of the State in general and the capitalist State in particular, and not to mention the tricky issue of the very essence of democracy. For communists, the latter can only be grasped as the negation in action of class antagonism (and its revolutionary overcoming) as well as their merging into a national (re)conciliatory entity called “the people” – whether “sovereign” and voting, or under the yoke of a “dictator” or a one-party system, is of little importance. It’s clear that the dividing line is not between “democracy” and “dictatorship”, but between revolution and counter-revolution, between the abolition of capitalist social relations and their consolidation, even if it means painting them red, or even red and black. Fascist or anti-fascist, democracy is always the dictatorship of capital.

In the present text, the AST comrades elaborate in abundance their critique of “the party”, which they too quickly equate with the Leninist party, the Bolshevik party… When criticizing what they call “Party Marxism” (Parteimarxismus), what we see as to be particularly targeted are in fact “the builders of parties and internationals”, the “bearers of consciousness for the class”, this “socialist consciousness [that] is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without and not something that arose within it spontaneously” (Kautsky quoted by Lenin in “What is to be done?”).

But more generally, and beyond the terms and expressions used, we can see here a first disagreement with the comrades of AST about the organization of the struggle of the proletariat, which emerges spontaneously from the fertile soil of capitalist social relations, which necessarily asserts itself as a force, as a full energy, and which must bring down any materialization of the social dictatorship of the value, commodity, money, i.e. of Capital and its State. This social force, this destructive energy of “the existing” which destroys our humanity, it’s the proletariat which gets organized as a class (against all classes and for their definitive abolition!), which gets organized as a party (against all parties and for their as well definitive abolition!), which gets organized as a party that is not a party “in the traditional sense of the term” (as the comrades of the KAPD already affirmed over a century ago), but that is in practice an anti-class, an anti-party!!!!

The proletarian revolution has nothing in common with the political “revolutions” of the bourgeoisie. So, the organization of the proletariat as a party has nothing in common with bourgeois political parties and especially not with the Leninist conception of the party. What we refer to is the distinction between the party of Order against the proletarian class as the party of Anarchy, of socialism, of communism. (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852)

The proletariat organized as a party does not aspire to democratically conquer power but, on the contrary, arises from the imperious necessity to liquidate this power, this democracy and everything which separates the proletariat from its humanity, from its Gemeinwesen.

There was a time, in the 19th century and even at the beginning of the 20th, when the formula of the proletariat organizing itself as a class, and therefore as a party, was very well assimilated into the international discussion. It wasn’t a problem for any sincere militant of our class, even among those who claimed the Black Flag of Anarchy. Among the most militant of them, Malatesta, for example, openly referred to the “anarchist party”: “By anarchist party we mean the ensemble of those who are out to help make anarchy a reality and who therefore need to set themselves a target to achieve and a path to follow”. Or in another way thirty years later he was persisting and signing: “We anarchists can all say that we are of the same party, if by the word ‘party’ we mean all who are on the same side, that is, who share the same general aspirations and who, in one way or another, struggle for the same ends against common adversaries and enemies.”

Class and party are not two different historic entities which should be separately defined only to form a relationship later. On the contrary, they are the distinct expressions of one and the same historic being: Communism. The party is the communist movement constituted as an international force, the organization of the revolutionary class which will bring about communism, arising spontaneously and developing on the basis of a community of interests and perspectives, a real community of proletarian struggle.

This tendency towards the worldwide organization of the proletariat, towards its programmatical affirmation and its organic centralization confronts all the forces and ideologies of the counter-revolution.

Or in other words, we are partisans of the revolutionary self-organization of the proletariat, that is, of the “historical party” of the world communist revolution, which springs up spontaneously from the soil of bourgeois society and has nothing to do with self-proclaimed vanguardism. The self-organization of the proletariat, class independence, and direct action are inseparable and mean struggling without intermediaries or representatives; that is, struggling outside and against unions, parties, elections, parliaments, bourgeois legality, etc.

Considering that, when the proletariat rises up and shakes the capitalist order, the right and left wings of Capital unite into one single party against it, that is, “the party of democracy”; in return, the “historical party” of the revolutionary proletariat is a party against democracy, that is, against the social dictatorship of Capital and its State over the proletariat.

The “historical party” is not a formal party in the “traditional” sense, or a State like the Leninist parties wrongly called “communist”. But it is a party of action which, although it needs to structure itself in order to organize revolutionary tasks, goes far beyond formal aspects. It is the proletariat itself that organically organizes and acts as a revolutionary class. It is the real movement that terminates and overcomes the present state of things. It is the party of communism and anarchy against the party of democracy. It is the revolutionary self-organization of the proletariat in action.

A second disagreement also appears clearly in the point 2 “For the revolutionary destruction of all States”. The proletariat in struggle confronts all the organized forms of the capitalist State, which imposes and realizes the social dictatorship of the value valorizing itself through wage labor, exchange, world market, money… But against this reality, our class must organize, structure and impose its world dictatorship of human needs against Capital and revolutionary terror against bourgeois forces, and this process will not be achieved by simply erasing words and expressions that might seem awkward. This is somewhat clumsily expressed in the AST text: “In the world revolution there will therefore be classless and stateless communities as well as capitalist States”. But they fail to see how they confront each other in a life-and-death struggle…

The proletarian dictatorship means abolishment of existing social relations: abolition of wage labor, abolition of useless professions and productions, elimination of exchange relations from all aspects of our lives, abolition of economy and production for profit and subordination of all productive forces to human needs and needs of the world revolution, disappearance of the difference between work and leisure, city and countryside and all other separations, violent destruction of the State and its replacing with organs of proletarian revolutionary self-organization, all of that which the triumph of the revolution turns into a global human community. Through this historical revolutionary process, the proletariat (as last existing class) abolishes itself and thus the whole class society and fully develops worldwide human community.

The dictatorship of the proletariat thus means the violent abolition of wage labor, abolition of the capitalist mode of production and all the social relations it reproduces. It is necessarily violent, repressive and despotic as well as subversive process that uproots the very social fabric of capitalist reality. It directly and immediately imposes the satisfaction of our human needs, which we are dispossessed from under capitalism by our very role as a class, whose labor power is exploited and whose products of labor are alienated from us.

There will be a violent insurrection against the State, in which the proletariat will seize the means of production and the infrastructures of communication and distribution, and violently attack and overthrow the centers of State power. Then the proletariat will expropriate factories and land to produce for the direct satisfaction of its needs, rather than for the profit of capitalists. Proletarians in uniform will turn their weapons against their own generals, stop fighting the capitalists’ wars, loot weapons depots and share them with the rest of the proletariat, and together, they will release prisoners and storm the centers of power. The capitalist State will be attacked from all sides and actively repressed and subverted by our class violence. Not only the government and the forces of repression, but also the State as a totality, as a system of capitalist social relations – i.e. trade unions, citizenship, faith, family, education, etc. – will be absorbed into the maelstrom of the revolutionary abolition of the existing. This process, which we call the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the transition period between capitalism and fully-achieved communism, is by no means embodied in “apparatuses of violence separate from the society”, as the AST text assumes, but rather as a dialectical unity between the struggling proletarian class and its most far-sighted leading elements, whose motricity, if not a guarantee of the revolution’s success, at least pushes it to its ultimate consequences.

Let’s be clear, this can only be achieved by extending the revolution worldwide, and all human activity must be subordinated to this goal. There’s no such thing as “socialism in one country” (or group of countries), as the Bolsheviks/Leninists of all kinds claim (including even the libertarians who drool with admiration over the “Rojava Revolution”, the Zapatista “Free Communes” or “Free Palestine”, ad nauseam) – on the contrary, it’s an absolutely counter-revolutionary position! The concept of “socialism in one country” was nothing but a tool to enable and justify the strengthening of capital’s dictatorship over the proletariat in Russia at the hands of the Bolshevik party and its policies.

In order to realize the organized activity of the society up to the achievement of communism, the proletarian revolution must violently destroy all the institutions and apparatuses of the counter-revolution which seek to maintain the dictatorship of value against human needs. We must insist on this point – it means the active suppression of wage labor, of exchange (trade), of any form of regional or local autonomy that could become the basis of future nationalist reaction, of freedom of expression and association for counter-revolutionary forces…

But to come back to the AST’s text, may the few and other points of disagreement we emphasized not spoil the pleasure of sharing internationally and submitting for collective criticism this contribution by comrades who, with strengths and weaknesses (as any revolutionary internationalist militant structure developing under the black sun of capital), are trying to outline and affirm the program of communism and the direct action of the proletariat in struggle. And in this sense, the development/consolidation of our world proletarian community of struggle, to which the present text contributes, beyond the division into ideological families, seems to us more than necessary, and indeed inescapable!

Have a good reading!

CW.

For the creation of a global network of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists!

The mass murderous crisis and war dynamics of global capitalism are calling for the creation of a planetary network of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists. The world proletariat is being mercilessly subsumed by the world bourgeoisie. The class struggle of the proletariat is still being waged within the reproductive framework of capitalism, whose perspective for the proletarians can only mean exploitation, unemployment, State administration of misery, a deepening eco-social crisis and war or an antisocial peace.

The global institutionalized workers’ movement (trade unions and political parties) is the bureaucratic expression of the limits of the proletarian class struggle that reproduce capitalism. The bourgeois-bureaucratic party and trade union apparatuses integrated themselves for the most part into capitalism and became the flesh of its flesh. Anarcho-syndicalism and Party Marxism (Parteimarxismus) (Left Social Democracy, Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism and Left Communism) are either themselves part of the capitalist problem or incapable of developing a revolutionary alternative to the capital, to the State and to the institutionalized workers’ movement.

The latter is particularly true for Left Communism. Due to its anti-parliamentarism, its hostility to trade unions and its rejection of national liberation/self-determination, it is too radical to integrate itself into capitalism, but too ideologically narrow-minded to recognize the counter-revolutionary character of statist Bolshevism since 1917 onwards and to understand that a political party is fundamentally a bourgeois-bureaucratic form of organization that can only reproduce capitalism, but not overcome it in a revolutionary way. The embarrassing procrastinations about with the question of the State – the famous “semi-State” that the left communists are planning in the revolution – is an anti-revolutionary tendency. Firstly, there can only be complete States and secondly, they are always counter-revolutionary!

The creation of a global network of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists as an organizational and substantive alternative to anarcho-syndicalism and Party Marxism is therefore absolutely necessary. The Anti-political Social-revolutionary Tendency (AST) is striving for a global federation of these revolutionary forces in the medium term.

No bureaucratic-centralist and ideological-dogmatic “International”!

We are not striving for a bureaucratic-centralist International with a huge global apparatus that leads the individual sections in the various nations. No, the creation of a global network of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists, which we want to patiently build together with you in the medium term, should clearly and unambiguously break with the bureaucratic-centralist and ideologically dogmatic tradition of the four Party Marxist Internationals (social-democratic, Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist). Of course, it should also distinguish itself from international anarcho-syndicalist and left communist groupings.

The creation of a global network should not level out the different theoretical and cultural origins and traditions, but rather bring them together productively. It should enable individuals and small groups to have practical community experiences and prompt in-depth discussion among them, thereby overcoming isolation. It is based entirely on the collective solidarity of individuals and groups. Individual and free like a tree, yet fraternal like a forest!

Of course, arbitrariness must also be avoided. The creation of a global network of revolutionary groups and individuals cannot be an end in itself, but must be a joint practical and mental preparation for the possible world revolution.

Discussion basis for a minimum consensus on the content of a global federation of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists

In order for the creation of a global network of revolutionary anarchists and anti-Leninist communists to become a clear organizational and substantive alternative to Party Marxism and anarcho-syndicalism, it must be based on clear fundamental principles. The AST proposes the following points for discussion.

1. For the revolutionary abolition of commodity production. Commodity production is based on globally separated petty-bourgeois and capitalist economic entities, which must exchange their products by means of the commodity-money relations. Money is the independent expression of exchange value. The basis of exchange value is the production value, the average, socially necessary production time of a commodity. As a rule, higher the production value of a commodity is, higher is its exchange value. Exchange value is also determined by market competition between supply and demand.

By transferring the means of production and the social infrastructure under the control of the society as a whole and by destroying the State, the revolutionary proletariat abolishing itself creates the conditions for the abolition of exchange value. Overcoming exchange value means that in the classless and stateless community, products are not exchanged – not even through an exchange in kind without money! – but distributed collectively and in solidarity throughout society. Individuals are not passive objects of the overall social management and planning of production and the distribution of products, but active subjects.

Revolutionaries criticize any “socialization” within the commodity production and the State as a false alternative. Cooperatives and “self-managed” enterprises within capitalism are, at best, petty-bourgeois collective forms of commodity production and merge seamlessly into corporations.

2. For the revolutionary destruction of all States. States are fundamentally social-reactionary apparatuses of violence of class societies. In capitalism, the States are the political apparatuses of violence of capital reproduction. There can be no “progressive” or “socialist” States. The proletariat, abolishing itself through revolution, must destroy the State! The “semi-States” of an alleged “transitional society”, fantasized by Left Communism, cannot exist. There is no state-like “transitional society” between the capitalist State and the classless and stateless community, but “only” the possible revolutionary smashing of the State! To smash the State means the collective organization of life in society as a whole without apparatuses of violence and professional politicians.

Since the proletariat in a country, in a group of countries, in a continent cannot possibly wait with the social revolution until their class brothers and sisters worldwide are ready, the world revolution can only be a permanent chain of the smashing of Nation-States. In the world revolution there will therefore be both classless and stateless communities as well as capitalist States. The revolutionary struggle against the counter-revolution – both of marauding gangs and of States – is based on the collective militancy of the proletariat, which is abolishing itself through the revolution, i.e. the classless and stateless community, but not on apparatuses of violence separate from the society. The latter would be the State reproducing itself. In practice, it will be difficult to exercise necessary revolutionary violence against the counter-revolution without reproducing the State. But the State reproducing itself is the counter-revolution! This is why it’s important to struggle uncompromisingly against the left-communist ideology of the “semi-State” in the alleged “transition period” between capitalism and communism! The world revolution is only over when all capitalist States have been revolutionarily smashed.

3. Against the institutionalized workers’ movement (trade unions and political parties). Trade unions are the bureaucratically alienated expression of the reproductive class struggle of the proletariat within capitalism. In early capitalism, the bourgeoisie still took totally repressive action against the proletarian class struggle. Strikes and trade unions were absolutely banned. However, large sections of the ruling class recognized in a social learning process – also due to pressure from the struggling proletariat – that in a class society the class struggle cannot effectively be banned in absolute terms. Thus, the reproductive class struggle and trade unions were legalized under certain conditions in the various States. The class struggle was legalized and thus tended to be de-radicalized. Trade unions became co-managers of capitalist exploitation through the system of collective agreements, enterprise committees and social partnership as well as the presence of trade union bosses on the corporate boards.

Most trade unions are characterized by an antagonistic class opposition. On the one hand, there are the bourgeois-bureaucratic apparatuses of the full-time officials – who do not (or no longer) belong socially to the proletariat – and on the other, the voluntary officials and the wage-dependent rank and file as the maneuvering mass. The main tendency of the trade union apparatuses is to get integrated completely into the capitalist State.

In principle, trade unions can only wage a reproductive and social reformist class struggle for higher wages, shorter working time and less labor intensity as well as against the attacks of capital and the State within capitalism, but they cannot wage a revolutionary one for a classless and stateless society. Of course, there are big differences between them. For example, there are totally social-reactionary trade unions that are fully integrated into their respective States and also support their imperialist wars, but there are also grassroots trade unions that wage a pacifist-reformist class struggle against rearmament, the arms trade and war.

Anarcho-syndicalism’s claims that there could be revolutionary trade unions and that it would build them were refuted by its own practice. Through its adaptation to the system of collective agreements, enterprise committees and social partnership as well as the reformist consciousness of the majority of the proletariat, anarcho-syndicalism itself became a current of global trade union reformism. Trade unions are the organizational form of the reproductive class struggle within capitalism, and they are definitely not revolutionary to the point of smashing it. Trade unions cannot be revolutionary and revolutionary class struggle organizations (see point 5) cannot be trade unions!

In non-revolutionary times, revolutionaries can be ordinary members of trade unions. But they must not take on any part-time or full-time functions in them. Trade unions must in principle be replaced by revolutionary class struggle organizations, which, however, can only possibly emerge in the social revolution. Already in the reproductive class struggle within capitalism, proletarian self-organization is developing as an alternative to the trade union bureaucracy (see point 5). Trade union apparatuses fully integrated into the capitalist State, which also support imperialist wars, must be actively destroyed in the social revolution!

Since the 19th century onwards, political parties became the basic units of bourgeois politics – not absolutely necessary, but widespread. Parliamentary democracies are pluralistic multi-party dictatorships. In them, political parties compete for control of the State apparatus in the form of free elections. Free elections turn proletarians into voting cattle that empower their structural class enemies, the professional politicians, to either govern the capitalist State or to oppose it with loyalty to the system. In addition to democracies, there were and still are fascist and Marxist-Leninist (see point 4) one-party dictatorships.

Political parties are class-divided into bourgeois-bureaucratic apparatuses consisting of full-time functionaries and professional politicians and ideologues on the one side and the petty-bourgeois-proletarian base on the other. A distinction can be made between petty-bourgeois radical protest/insurrection parties and the system parties of the big bourgeoisie.

Since the second half of the 19th century, mass social democratic parties formed as the political wing of the institutionalized workers’ movement. Some of them fooled themselves and the proletariat as well with a “revolutionary” ideology that did not correspond to their practice of parliamentary social reformism, but rather disguised it. They took part in elections and increasingly integrated themselves into the parliamentary system. The main tendency of the bourgeois-bureaucratic apparatuses of the social democratic parties was to become fully recognized as government personnel of the capitalist State by the bourgeoisie.

For European social democracy, this moment came in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War and the European revolutionary post-war crisis (1917-1923). Most European social democratic parties supported the First World War on the side of their respective Nation-States. Only pacifist and radical sections of social democracy opposed participation in the war. During the European revolutionary post-war crisis, social democracy – especially the German SPD – became openly counter-revolutionary, bloodily crushing the struggling revolutionary proletariat. Today, social democracy is fully integrated into capitalism.

As a result of the European revolutionary post-war crisis, the radical wing of social democracy split worldwide, both as party “communism” and as council communism. In some nations, Marxist-Leninist party dictatorships emerged (see point 4). In highly developed private capitalist democracies, Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist parties integrated themselves into the parliamentary system. By participating in parliamentary elections, Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism help to reproduce democracy as the dictatorship of capital in a practical-mental way and to train the proletarians to become voting cattle and good democratic citizens.

The networking groups of revolutionary anarchism and anti-Leninist communism reject the political party as an organizational form of the struggling proletariat and the revolutionary minorities. Their small groups are neither trade unions nor political parties, nor do they aspire to become such.

4. Revolutionary anti-Leninism. The political seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party in October 1917 – according to the old Russian calendar – was not a “proletarian revolution”, as Party Marxism, including left-wing communism, claims, but the prologue to the State-capitalist counterrevolution. The social-reactionary Lenin-Trotsky regime smashed the soviets as organs of the class-struggle self-organization of the proletariat. From the nationalization of large-scale industry in the early summer of 1918, it was State capitalist. This was followed by further social-reactionary political conquests of power by Marxist-Leninist party apparatuses and the emergence of State capitalist regimes in Euro-Asia, Africa and Cuba.

The ultra-centralist and over-bureaucratic State capitalist relations of production favored the initial, late and accelerated industrialization of former agrarian nations, but in the long run they could not withstand the competition of highly developed private capitalism, and this is why pro-private capitalist reform factions developed in the Marxist-Leninist State parties and conquered political power. These then transformed State capitalism into private capitalism. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Marxist-Leninist party dictatorships collapsed. In China, Vietnam and Cuba, capital was and is being privatized under the rule of the Marxist-Leninist parties.

5. For class-struggle self-organization and revolutionary self-abolition of the proletariat. The proletariat can only assert its interests and needs against capital and the State through class-struggle self-organization. Class-struggle self-organization is already directed against the bourgeois-bureaucratic trade union apparatuses in the reproductive class struggle within capitalism. Particularly in longer work stoppages, which are officially led by the trade unions, forms of dual power sometimes develop. On the one hand the self-organization of the rank and file and on the other the bourgeois-bureaucratic trade union apparatuses. The self-organization of wage earners in the reproductive class struggle takes on its highest form in wildcat strikes independently of trade unions. If the work stoppage is relatively short and the workforces are relatively small, the informal self-organization of wage earners is often sufficient. However, if the wildcat strike lasts longer and/or involves larger or several workforces, then official bodies of class-struggle self-organization, non-union strike committees, become necessary.

Small revolutionary groups focus on the class-struggle self-organization of the proletariat, but reject to aspire to its “leadership”. Their role is to provide practical and mental impulses for the radicalization of the class struggle. While knowing that the main impulse for the radicalization of the proletariat is its own practical struggle. Revolutionaries reject all proxy politics vis-à-vis the proletariat, including guerrilla warfare separate from the class struggle.

In extraordinary situations, the proletarian class struggle can radicalize into a social revolution. Then the revolutionary class struggle organization is necessary. We understand this to mean the organization of the revolution. This will be shaped both by the informal action of the proletariat and by official organs of class-struggle self-organization. The task of the revolutionary class struggle organization will be the abolition of commodity production (point 1) and the revolutionary smashing of the State (point 2). If this succeeds, then the revolutionary class struggle organization will transform into the classless and stateless community. The revolutionary class struggle organization is thus the self-abolition of the proletariat as a process.

This revolutionary organization of the proletariat can only abolish commodity production and smash the State if it is based entirely on the collective-solidary self-organization of the class without bureaucratic apparatuses and professional politicians. Full-time trade union and party functionaries as well as professional politicians have no place in the revolutionary class struggle organization of the proletariat! Revolutionary small groups of the pre-revolutionary period are absorbed into the revolutionary class struggle organization. This can only give birth to the classless and stateless society if it is already full of its organizational principles.

We do not know what the future revolutionary class struggle organization will look like. The workers’ and soldiers’ councils of the European revolutionary post-war crisis (1917-1923) were only potentially and tendentially revolutionary. They had not yet set themselves the clear goal of the abolition of commodity production and the revolutionary destruction of the State. And in Russia, for example, they were first deformed by Menshevik and “social revolutionary” professional politicians who tried to integrate the soviets into the pro-private capitalist State. Later, Bolshevik professional politicians became stronger and stronger in the soviets. The Bolsheviks demagogically demanded: “All power to the soviets!” Once they had conquered political power with the help of the soviets, they smashed them as organs of the self-organized class struggle. There is only one lesson to be learned from this: professional politicians get out of the revolutionary class struggle organization! All political parties – including the left communist ones – and trade unions, including the anarcho-syndicalist ones, which aspire to lead the revolutionary proletariat, must be given a good rap on the knuckles!

6. Revolutionary critique of anti-fascism. Social revolutionaries fight democracy uncompromisingly – just like all other forms of government. They fight against fascists, Nazis and military coups and dictatorships, but they never defend democracy. Just as anti-fascism supported democratic regimes against fascist States and military coups during the Second World War and the Spanish Civil War, thus helping to organize the great capitalist massacre of the world proletariat, it is also part of the ideologies which justifies the mobilization for democracy in the various massacres today. Revolutionaries reject united and popular fronts with bourgeois forces – including social democracy, Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism – against neo-fascism. They fight it on a class-struggle-revolutionary basis.

This is the lesson of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), in which the institutionalized workers’ movement – from the Stalinists and social democrats to the left socialist POUM and the anarcho-syndicalist CNT – formed a popular front with other bourgeois forces, against which the generals under Franco staged a coup. The Popular Front waged both an intra-capitalist and social reactionary civil war against the putschist generals and a class struggle from above against the proletariat and the left wing of the Popular Front (POUM and the base of the CNT). The Popular Front won the class struggle from above, while it lost the civil war against Franco. Revolutionaries had to fight both the Popular Front and the putschist generals.

7. Against national “liberation”, self-determination, autonomy. Nations are compulsory communities as well as a semblance of communities which allow capital and wage labor to grow. Their organizing core is the Nation-State. Nations are based economically on the extended reproduction of national capital, politically on the enforcement of the State monopoly on the use of force and ideologically on nationalism. The latter integrates the wage earners into the respective Nation-States and divides the world proletariat. The latter is mercilessly subsumed in the global interaction of nations – both cooperative competition and competitive cooperation. The proletarians are set upon each other in bloody carnage by nationalism – in the interests of global capitalism.

Revolutionaries fight against the nationalist discrimination and oppression of cultural, linguistic and religious minorities as well as racism against people with certain skin colors. But they also oppose the fact that new nations are formed from these minorities through nationalist policies. For which either autonomy is demanded and enforced in existing Nation-States (such as “the Kurds” in Northern Iraq and Syria) or a new independent Nation-State is created. National “liberation”, self-determination and autonomy can only reproduce capital and the State, but not overcome them. No national “liberation” can help against nationalist oppression, but only social liberation from the nation through the possible world revolution and the global classless and stateless community. In the global competition between nations, revolutionaries support no one, but fight against all of them.

8. Against pacifism. (Petty) bourgeois pacifism advocates bourgeois peace both within and between capitalist States. But this is merely the non-military form of competition of all against all. It is antisocial and violent. Internally, it is based on the State monopoly on the use of force and in foreign policy on armament. Bourgeois peace within capitalism is not the alternative to war, but its source.

Pacifism demands the voluntary, cooperative and significant disarmament of capitalist States. But this is illusory due to global competition. There can only be one real disarmament: the destruction of all States through the possible global revolution. Uncompromising class war! World proletariat against world bourgeoisie!

9. Fundamental critique of both capitalist patriarchy and bourgeois women’s emancipation under capitalism. For the revolutionary struggle against capitalist patriarchy. Capitalist patriarchy is both cross-class and class-specific. Women are underrepresented within the bourgeoisie (capitalists, managers, professional politicians and top civil servants), while proletarians are subjected to sexist overexploitation. For example, women’s wages are on average lower than men’s wages. Another expression of capitalist patriarchy is that most biosocial reproductive activities (shopping, cleaning the home, caring for sick and/or elderly people, supervising and educating children…) are on average performed mainly by women, both within the family and through wage labor. Further aspects of capitalist patriarchy are the degradation of women’s bodies to sexual objects – especially in pornography and prostitution –, patriarchal-sexist violence against women, including femicide, and State repression against abortion.

(Petty) bourgeois feminism fights for equal rights for women and men within capitalism and thus within the class stratification. In its history, it has fought for women’s suffrage, the admission of women to certain professions and more and more female professional politicians and business managers. And the sexist overexploitation of women was also mitigated. The complete implementation of bourgeois women’s emancipation within capitalism would mean that women would no longer be underrepresented within the bourgeoisie and that proletarian women would no longer be exploited in a sexist way and that biosocial reproductive activities would be distributed equally between the sexes but unequally between the classes. The realization of point one is more likely than points 2 and 3, but the female proletarians have nothing to gain from being governed by more female politicians, exploited by female capitalists and ordered around by female bosses. Bourgeois feminism leads straight to the “feminist foreign policy” of capitalist-imperialist States…

No matter how much (petty) bourgeois feminism denies it, there is also female sexism against men. Of course, the bourgeois nuclear family is fundamentally patriarchal – also due to its history – and characterized by male sexism. But there are also interpersonal relationships in which women oppress men. And there is also sexual harassment of men by women. This female sexism is also partly expressed in (petty) bourgeois feminism. For example, when feminist ideology subliminally suggests but sometimes also openly asserts that women are the better than men. Or when some feminists agitate against trans-women as “men in women’s clothing”. This is not “only” anti-trans, but also sexist against men. Revolutionaries fight female sexism just as consistently as male sexism.

Revolutionaries fundamentally contrast the bourgeois emancipation of women under capitalism with the revolutionary struggle against patriarchy. Through the social revolution and the classless and stateless community, many biosocial reproductive activities, which under capitalism are mainly carried out within the family and by women, can be socialized on a voluntary basis and distributed fairly among all genders. Only through the revolutionary abolition of the commodity-money relations as well as the abolition of social and sexual misery can prostitution also be overcome. Its prohibition by the State, demanded by some feminists, can only drive it underground and make the lives of prostitutes more difficult.

10. Against heterosexual and gender norms – but also against the State mendacious “rainbow tolerance” and petty-bourgeois identity politics. Revolutionaries fight both the State repression against people who do not conform to the heterosexual and binary gender norm – homosexual/bisexual, non-binary and trans people – in those countries where this exists, as well as the mendacious “rainbow tolerance” of more liberal nations and alliances of States on this issue. In principle, capitalism does not need heterosexual and gender norms. As long as gays, lesbians, non-binary and trans people increase capital through industrious production and open-minded consumption and are well-behaved citizens, everything is fine for modern liberalism. Liberal States and alliances of States such as the European Union (EU) also turn “rainbow tolerance” into an imperialist weapon against States with which they compete for other reasons and which repressively enforce heterosexual and gender norms.

Revolutionaries differentiate between biological genders, social gender roles and individual gender identities. They want to abolish social gender roles through the social revolution (see point 9), while they tolerate all individual gender identities as long as they are not directed against others. Let everyone be happy in their own way. But revolutionaries also know that under capitalism, all identities – including “nation”, skin color, religion, biological gender, social gender role and individual gender identity as well as sexual orientation – become costumes in the competition of all against all. The right-wing conservative-neo-fascist competitive chauvinism against “foreigners”, “non-whites”, homosexuals, non-binary and trans people just like the left-liberal agitation against “cis gender men” and “old, white men” – so that the young, “non-white” women can make a proper career within the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. Revolutionaries fight both right-wing conservative-neo-fascist and left-liberal identity politics as competitive chauvinism and division of the world proletariat.

11. Fundamental critique of bourgeois “environmentalism” within capitalism. For the cleansing of the planet of capitalist filth! The capitalist relation of production, in which everything revolves around the limitless increase of exchange value/money, is absolutely socially reactionary and destructive of the plant and animal world. The mass poisoning, concreting, pollution and deforestation of our planet, climate change and the mass extinction of species are life-threatening expressions of the socio-ecological crisis permanently produced by capitalism. The technocratic attempts by capitalist States to at least curb climate change, are only exacerbating this crisis. Electromobility instead of the combustion engine! So that life-threatening, resource-wasting and destructive, but also very profitable, individual transportation continues to be reproduced. And forests have to make way for new highways. Curbing climate change with wind turbines in “nature conservation areas”! This is what the “solutions” of capitalist technocracy look like.

Even the cross-class environmental movement is not in a position to stop the capitalist destruction of the plant and animal world and climate change on its own. Only the possible world revolution can contain the eco-social crisis by overcoming the capitalist relations of production and consumption. This does not preclude revolutionaries from participating in local movements against specific capitalist destruction of nature in order to provide radicalizing impulses. But they must always criticize the structural petty-bourgeois limitations of even the most radical cross-class environmental movement. In principle, revolutionaries have no place in the institutionalized environmental movement, i.e. in the various petty-bourgeois associations.

English translation: The Friends of the Class War / Die Freunde des Klassenkriegs