Paul Mattick offers a succinct summary of the frame-work for the thinking of participants of a June, 1935 underground, international gathering of Council Communists held in Brussels.

‘The Brussels Conference’ by Paul Mattick from International Council Correspondence. Vol. 1 No. 11. September, 1935.

Toward the middle of June, 1935, there was held in Brussels a conference of the international council-communist groups, at which, among others, our German, Dutch and Danish groups were represented.

The conference served to show, after thorough discussion, that the various groups possess a unitary conception regarding the international tendencies of capitalist development, which economically are heading for state capitalism and politically for fascism. A unitary conception likewise prevailed in regard to the situation of the labor movement in the various countries and to the resulting tasks and tactical necessities.

The following general basic conception was evolved:

The attempt of the various national bourgeoisies to remedy the economic crisis by means of the old private-capitalist methods has essentially failed and has led to a further sharpening of the general world crisis. In this connection, local structural alterations are to be noted. The impossibility of overcoming the crisis on the basis of private economy leads, on an international scale, to an accentuation of the tendencies toward relieving the private-economy anarchy through state-capitalist “planned economy”. With this development the socialization process of capitalism advances toward its highest state of perfection and the epoch of the bourgeoisie attains its historical close. The state-capitalist economic system reveals itself essentially as a coordination of the different class interests to a unitary economic order, whereby private-capitalist initiative is abolished in favor of state-capitalist. This development does not unconditionally presuppose the abolition of private property in means of production, as happened in Russia, but certainly comes to light in the direction and “planning” of economy through the State. Corresponding to these structural alterations of economy, there changes also the social super-structure. Thus fascism expresses itself in a nationalization of minds, elimination of the right of the masses to participate in the forming of decisions and replacement of that right by the authoritarian principle of leadership, militarizing of the entire nation, together with dictatorship of a party over the masses, in which connection the dictatorship may be bolshevist, socialist, democratic, bourgeois, nationalistic. This general developments leads to the overcoming of the earlier class stratification of bourgeois society–big bourgeoisie, middle strata and proletariat–and to the emergence of two starkly opposed social groupings: the class of owners of the means of production with its trinitarian apparatus of party, economy and State, and the great majority of the population as exploited, impoverished masses of producers.

The elaboration of state-capitalist “planned economy” likewise clearly demonstrates the identity of this historical close of the bourgeois epoch with the socialist final goal of the old labor movement. And precisely in virtue of this necessary development the working masses are bound to realize more and more clearly that the new economy must take a form which is fundamentally of a different nature from that of the Socialists and Bolshevists with their projects of a socialist planned economy is resting, just like the capitalist variety, on wage labor. So longe as wage labor exists, capitalist economy prevails.

The state capitalist development, in the elaboration of “planned economy” logically bridges over the national antagonisms and demands the formation of mammoth economies transcending national boundaries. The capitalist competitive struggle is thus shifted more and more onto the field of whole continents against each other. The overcoming of the national antagonisms within continental framework is therefore only a question of time, the duration which is conditioned by the necessity of bringing about a cooperation within the framework of the mammoth economy. The mammoth planned economy” is thus an overcoming of the old capitalist mechanism of crisis based on the competitive struggle for the available markets, the opening of new markets and the tapping of new sources of profit. The explosion-like, undulatory crisis convulsions tend more and more to disappear. Their place is taken by the latent, constantly sharpening crisis, which leads to a slow but unremitting impoverishment of the masses. The development of the class struggle will thus hereafter be less determined through transitory, constantly changing crisis convulsions then through the sharpening of the class antagonisms between the exploited and impoverished masses, on the one hand, and on the other the parasitical bureaucracy in charge of the politico-economic state apparatus.

The overcoming of the class antagonisms through the proletarian revolution is possible only as the self-emancipation of the masses. In each phase of their struggles, the masses must have the initiative and direction in their own hands: this is the only assurance against every form of tutelage and leadership over the mases. This self-emancipation is at the same time one of the essential presuppositions in the reshaping of the economic relations. Through the circumstance that the masses liberate themselves, they also acquire the schooling for the direction of the economic process, and the discovery of methods for the direct right of disposal of the producers over the means of production and over the products is possible only by way of the councils and shop organizations. It is only through doing away with each and every kind of wage labor that the complete overcoming of all capitalist modes of economy is assured. So that we, now have as the immediate tasks of the workers’ movement, to the end of their self-emancipation from capitalist exploitation and suppression, the abolition of wage labor and its replacement by labor-time accounting and the exercise of direct producers’ control over the products and means of production, as the basis of the new economic order.

The new labor movement must not only recognize, but above all practically apply, the lessons of the Paris Commune and of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1917 as well as the experiences of the development down to the present time. This is necessary because the smashing of the state apparatus and the combining of the power of decision and execution in the hands of the masses, organized in councils under their constant control, is possible only through practical application of the council principle in all developing struggles of the working masses. It is therefore the task of the council-communist groups in all countries not yet gone fascist to promote the autonomous direction of these struggles, as well as to strive for the extension of all struggles beyond their local and occupational limits into mass struggles and to intervene in such struggles actively on their own part. By the side of this, propaganda directed to making the masses conscious concerning the real tasks of the workers’ struggle in relation to the reshaping of economy and the replacement of wage labor by labor-time accounting should be conducted in the most intensive manner possible and in a generally understandable form adapted to the workers’ ideology. By putting to use the experiences of the illegal movement in the fascist countries, the council-communist groups must prepare themselves even now for the state of illegality and adopt all corresponding measures: The organizational safeguarding of the labor movement through elaboration of the group system. Elimination of all old working methods and rejection of unserviceable und unreliable connections (the local conditions and the changing composition of the groups make desirable the application of new working methods varying from case to case). Elaboration of forms and methods for winning masses now standing aloof or in the enemy camp. Avoidance of slogan propaganda. Adaptation of ideas to the altered conditions, etc.

The International Council Correspondence was a left/council communist magazine published in Chicago by the United Workers Party, a split from the Proletarian Party. Published monthly from 1934 to 1938 and edited by Paul Mattick, in 1938, it changed its name to Living Marxism and again to New Essays in 1942. Karl Korsch, Anton Pannekoek, Max Nomad, Daniel Guérin, Otto Rühle, Dwight Macdonald and Victor Serge also were contributors.

PDF of full issue: https://files.libcom.org/files/ICC%20Vol%201%20No%2011.pdf