RED SYMPHONY

R. - Yes, I shall be able to mention that which you consider necessary to know and I shall do it on my own initiative, but I shall not be able to assert that this is always the thinking also of "Them."

G. - Yes, I shall look on it like that.

R. - We agreed that at the present moment the opposition cannot be interested in defeatism and the fall of Stalin, insofar as we do not have the physical possibility of taking his place. This is what we both agree. At present this is an incontrovertible fact. However, there is in existence a possible aggressor. There he is, that great nihilist Hitler, who is aiming with his terrible weapon of the Wehrmacht at the whole horizon. Whether we want it or not, but he will use it against the USSR? Let us agree that for us this is the decisive unknown fact or, do you consider that the problem has been correctly stated?

G. - It has been well put. But I can say that for me there is no unknown factor. I consider the attack of Hitler on the USSR to be inevitable.

R. - Why?

G. - Very simple; because he who controls it is inclined towards attack. Hitler is only the condottiere of international Capitalism.

R. - I agree that there is a danger, but from that to the assumption on this ground of the inevitability of his attack on the USSR - there is a whole abyss.

G. - The attack on the USSR is determined by the very essence of Fascism. In addition he is impelled towards it by all those Capitalist States which had allowed him to re-arm and to take all the necessary economic and strategical bases. This is quite obvious.

R. - You forget something very important. The re-armament of Hitler and the assistance he received at the present time from the Versailles nations (take good note of this) - were received by him during a special period, when we could still have become the heirs of Stalin in the case of his defeat, when the opposition still existed ... Do you consider this fact to be a matter of chance or only a coincidence in time?

{p. 14} G. - I do not see any connexion between the permission of the Versailles Powers of German re-armament and the existence of the opposition ... The trajectory of Hitlerism is in itself clear and logical. The attack on the USSR was part of his programme already a long time ago.The destruction of Communism and expansion in the East - these are dogmas from the book "Mein Kampf," that Talmud of National-Socialism ..., but that your defeatists wanted to take advantage of this threat to the USSR that is, of course, in accordance with your train of thought.

R. - Yes, at a first glance this appears to be natural and logical, too logical and natural for the truth.

G. - To prevent this happening, so that Hitler would not attack us, we would have to entrust ourselves to an alliance with France ..., but that would be a naivete. It would mean that we believe that Capitalism would be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of saving Communism.

R. - If we shall continue the discussion only on the foundation of those conceptions which apply for use at mass meetings, then you are quite right. But if you are sincere in saying this then, forgive me, I am disappointed; I had thought that the politics of the famous Stalinist police stand on a higher level.

G. - The Hitlerist attack on the USSR is, in addition, a dialectical necessity; it is the same as the inevitable struggle of the classes in the international plane. At the side of Hitler, inevitably, there will stand the whole global Capitalism.

R. - And so, believe me, that in the light of your scholastic dialectics, I have formed a very negative opinion about the political culture of Stalinism. I listen to your words as Einstein could listen to a schoolboy talking about physics in four dimensions. I see that you are only acquainted with elementary Marxism, i.e. with the demagogic, popular one.

G. - If your explanation will not be too long and involved, I should be grateful to you for some explanation of this "relativity" or "quantum" of Marxism.

R. - Here there is no irony; I am speaking with the best intentions ... In this same elementary Marxism, which is taught even in your Stalinist University, you can find the statement which contradicts the whole of your thesis about the inevitability of the Hitlerist attack on the USSR. You are also taught that the cornerstone of Marxism is the assertion that, supposedly, contradictions are the incurable and fatal illness of Capitalism ... Is that not so?

G. - Yes, of course.

{note: see item 13, A missing word in the English translation, below. I have added the word "not" to the next paragraph, within curly brackets, to bring the English translation into line with the Spanish original}

R. - But if things are in fact such that we accuse Capitalism of being imbued with continuous Capitalistic contradictions in the sphere of economics, then why should it {not} necessarily suffer from them also in politics? The political and economic is of no importance in itself; this is a condition or measurement of the social essence, but contradictions arise in the social sphere, and are reflected simultaneously in the economic or political ones, or in both at the same time. It would be absurd to assume fallibility in economics and simultaneously infallibility in

{p. 15} politics - which is something essential in order that an attack on the USSR should become inevitable - according to your postulate - absolutely essential.

G. - This means that you rely in everything on the contradictions, fatality and inevitability of the errors which must be committed by the bourgeoisie, which will hinder Hitler from attacking the USSR. I am a Marxist, Rakovsky, but here, between ourselves, in order not to provide the pretext for anger to a single activist, I say to you that with all my faith in Marx I would not believe that the USSR exists thanks to the mistakes of its enemies ... And I think that Stalin shares the same view.

R. - But I do think so ... Do not look at me like that, as I am not joking and am not mad.

G. - Permit me at least to doubt it, until you will have proved your assertions.

R. - Do you now see that I had reasons for qualifying your Marxist culture as being doubtful? Your arguments and reactions are the same as any rank and file activist.

G. - And they are wrong?

R. - Yes, they are correct for a small administrator, for a bureaucrat and for the mass. They suit the average fighter ... They must believe this and repeat everything as it has been written. Listen to me by way of the completely confidential. With Marxism you get the same results as with the ancient esoteric religions. Their adherents had to know only that which was the most elementary and crude, insofar as by this one provoked their faith, i.e. that which is absolutely essential, both in religion and in the work of revolution.

G. - Do you not now want to open up to me the mystical Marxism, something like yet another freemasonry?

R. - No, no esoterics. On the contrary, I shall explain it with the maximal clarity. Marxism, before being a philosophical, economic and political system, is a conspiracy for the revolution. And as for us the revolution is the only absolute reality, it follows that philosophy, economics and politics are true only insofar as they lead to revolution. The fundamental truth (let us call it subjective) does not exist in economics, politics or even morals: in the light of scientific abstraction it is either truth or error, but for us, who are subject to revolutionary dialectic, it is only truth. And insofar as to us, who are subject to revolutionary dialectic, it is only truth, and therefore the sole truth, then it must be such for all that is revolutionary, and such it was to Marx. In accordance with this we must act. Remember the phrase of Lenin, in reply to someone who demonstrated by way of argument that, supposedly, his intention contradicted reality: "I feel it to be real" was his answer. Do you not think that Lenin spoke nonsense? No, for him every reality; every truth was relative in the face of the sole and absolute one: the revolution. Marx was a genius. If his works had amounted to only the deep criticism of Capitalism, then even that would have been an unsurpassed scientific work; but in those places where his writing reaches the level of mastery, there comes the effect of an apparently ironical work. "Communism" he says "must win because Capital will give it that victory, though its enemy." Such is the magisterial thesis of Marx ...

{p. 16} Can there be a greater irony? And then, in order that he should be believed, it was enough for him to depersonalize Capitalism and Communism, having transformed the human individual into a consciously thinking individual, which he did with the extraordinary talent of a juggler. Such was his sly method, in order to demonstrate to the Capitalists that they are a reality of Capitalism and that Communism can triumph as the result of inborn idiocy; since without the presence of immortal idiocy in homo economico there could not appear in him continuous contradictions as proclaimed by Marx. To be able to achieve the transformation of homo sapiens into homo stultum is to possess magical force, capable of bringing man down to the first stage of the zoological ladder, i.e. to the level of the animal. Only if there is homo stultum in the epoch of the apogee of Capitalism could Marx formulate his axiomatic proposition: contradictions plus time equal Communism. Believe me, when we who are initiated into this, contemplate the representation of Marx, for example the one which is placed above the main entrance to the Lubianka, then we cannot prevent the inner explosion of laughter by which Marx had infected us; we see how he laughs into his beard at all humanity.

G. - And you are still capable of laughing at the most revered scientist of the epoch?

R. - Ridicule, me? ... This is the highest admiration! In order that Marx should be able to deceive so many people of science, it was essential that he should tower above them all. Well: in order to have judgements about Marx in all his greatness, we must consider the real Marx, Marx the revolutionary, Marx, judged by his manifesto. This means Marx the conspirator, as during his life the revolution was in a condition of conspiracy. It is not for nothing that the revolution is indebted for its development and its recent victories to these conspirators.

G. - Therefore you deny the existence of the dialectical process of contradictions in Capitalism, which lead to the final triumph of Communism?

R. - You can be sure that if Marx believed that Communism will achieve victory only thanks to the contradictions in Capitalism, then he would not have once, never, mentioned the contradictions on the thousands of pages of his scientific revolutionary work. Such was the categorical imperative of the realistic nature of Marx: not the scientific, but the revolutionary one. The revolutionary and conspirator will never disclose to his opponent the secret of his triumph ... He would never give the information; he would give him disinformation which you use in counter-conspiracy. Is that not so?

G. - However, in the end we have reached the conclusion (according to you) that there are no contradictions in Capitalism, and if Marx speaks of them then it is only a revolutionary-strategical method. That is so? But the colossal and ever-growing contradictions in Capitalism are there to see. And so we get the conclusion that Marx, having lied, spoke the truth.

R. - You are dangerous as a dialectician, when you destroy the brakes of scholastic dogmatism and give free rein to your own inventiveness. So it is, that Marx spoke the truth when he lied. He lied when he led into error, having defined the contradictions as being "continuous" in the history of the economics of capital and called them "natural and

{p. 17} inevitable," but at the same time he stated the truth because he knew that the contradictions would be created and would grow in an increasing progression until they reach their apogee.

G. - This means that with you there is an antithesis?

R. - There is no antithesis here. Marx deceives for tactical reasons about the origin of the contradictions in Capitalism, but not about their obvious reality. Marx knew how they were created, how they became more acute and how things went towards general anarchy in Capitalistic production, which came before the triumph of the Communist revolution ... He knew it would happen because he knew those who created the contradictions.

G. - It is a very strange revelation and piece of news, this assertion and exposal of the circumstance that that which leads Capitalism to its "suicide," by the well-chosen expression of the bourgeois economist Schmalenbach, in support of Marx, is not the essence and inborn law of Capitalism. But I am interested to know if we will reach the personal by this path?

R. - Have you not felt this intuitively? Have you not noticed how in Marx words contradict deeds? He declares the necessity and inevitability of Capitalist contradictions, proving the existence of surplus value and accumulation, i.e. he proves that which really exists. He nimbly invents the proposition that to a greater concentration of the means of production corresponds a greater mass of the proletariat, a greater force for the building of Communism, is that not so? Now go on: at the same time as this assertion he founds the International. Yet the International is, in the work of the daily struggle of the classes, a "reformist," i.e. an organization whose purpose is the limitation of the surplus value and, where possible, its elimination. For this reason, objectively, the International is a counter-revolutionary organization and anti-Communist, in accordance with Marx's theory.

G. - Now we get that Marx is a counter-revolutionary and an anti-Communist.

R. - Well, now you see how one can make use of the original Marxist culture. It is only possible to describe the International as being counter-revolutionary and anti-Communist, with logical and scientific exactness, if one does not see in the facts anything more than the directly visible result, and in the texts only the letter. One comes to such absurd conclusions, while they seem to be obvious, when one forgets that words and facts in Marxism are subject to strict rules of the higher science: the rules of conspiracy and revolution.

G. - Will we ever reach the final conclusions?

R. - In a moment. If the class struggle, in the economic sphere, turns out to be reformist in the light of its first results, and for that reason contradicts the theoretical presuppositions, which determine the establishment of Communism, then it is, in its real and true meaning, purely revolutionary. But I repeat again: it is subject to the rules of conspiracy, that means to masking and the hiding of its true aims ... The limitation of the surplus value and thus also of accumulations as the consequence of the class struggle - that is only a matter of appearances, an illusion, in order to stimulate the basic revolutionary movement in the masses. A strike is already an attempt at revolutionary mobiliz-

{p. 18} ation. Independently of whether it wins or not, its economic effect is anarchical. As a result this method for the improvement of the economic position of one class brings about the impoverishment of the economy in general; whatever may be the scale and results of the strike, it will always bring about a reduction of production. The general result: more poverty, which the working class cannot shake off. That is already something. But that is not the only result and not the most important one. As we know, the only aim of any struggle in the economic sphere is to earn more and work less. Such is the economic absurdity, but according to our terminology, such is the contradiction, which has not been noticed by the masses, which are blinded at any given moment by a rise in wages, which is at once annulled by a rise in prices. And if prices are limited by governmental action, then the same thing happens, i.e. a contradiction between the wish to spend more, produce less, is qualified here by monetary inflation. And so one gets a vicious circle: a strike, hunger, inflation, hunger.

G. - With the exception when the strike takes place at the expense of the surplus value of Capitalism.

R. - Theory, pure theory. Speaking between ourselves, take any annual handbook concerning the economics of any country and divide rents and the total income by all those receiving wages or salaries, and you will see what an extraordinary result emerges. This result is the most counter-revolutionary fact, and we must keep it a complete secret. This is because if you deduct from the theoretical dividend the salaries and expenses of the directors, which would be the consequence on the abolition of ownership, then almost always there remains a dividend which is a debit for the proletariat. In reality always a debit, if we also consider the reduction in the volume and quality of production. As you will now see, a call to strike, as a means for achieving a quick improvement of the well-being of the proletariat is only an excuse; an excuse required in order to force it to commit sabotage of Capitalistic production. Thus to the contradictions in the bourgeois system are added contradictions within the proletariat; this is the double weapon of the revolution, and it - which is obvious - does not arise of itself: there exists an organization, chiefs, discipline, and above that there exists stupidity. Don't you suspect that the much-mentioned contradictions of Capitalism, and in particular the financial ones, are also organized by someone? ... By way of basis for these deductions I shall remind you that in its economic struggle the proletarian International coincides with the financial International, since both produce inflation, and wherever there is coincidence there, one should assume, is also agreement. Those are his own words.

G. - I suspect here such an enormous absurdity, or the intention of spinning a new paradox, that I do not want to imagine this. It looks as if you want to hint at the existence of something like a Capitalistic second Communist International, of course an enemy one.

R. - Exactly so. When I spoke of the financial International, I thought of it as of a Comintern, but having admitted the existence of the "Comintern," I would not say that they are enemies.

G. - If you want to make us lose time on inventions and phantasies, I must tell you that you have chosen the wrong moment.