Archive: Documents from the LRCI and LFI


LRCI: The Trotskyist Manifesto (1989)

League for a Revolutionary Communist International, Summer 1989

 


Below we reprint the founding document of the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) - the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI). This program was adopted at its congress in summer 1989. Naturally, a number of aspects of this program are already outdated or have been enhanced. The actual program of the RCIT, adopted in spring 2012, can be read here.


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1989 Preface to the English Language Edition

 

During 1989 the foundations of the world order were shaken. The magnitude of the upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union can scarcely be underestimated. They will profoundly affect the future of these states and Stalinism as a force within the world labour movement. Whilst the epicentre of this earthquake is found in Moscow its shock waves have hit Washington, Tokyo, Bonn and London. From Central America to Southern Africa the impact of Stalinism's crisis has been felt.

 

Beginning with the February electoral debacle of the Polish United Workers' Party and later the dissolution of the Hungarian Stalinist party, the concessions on civil liberties in these two states lit the fuse that was to explode the charges under the monolith of the Stalinist regimes in the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia.

 

In these countries beleaguered circles of dissident intellectuals gave way to mass movements of millions in a matter of weeks. Without the support and even with the security of the Kremlin, Honecker and Jakes came crashing down from their bureaucratic pedestals. Oppositionists who had been imprisoned were invited into dialogue and negotiations. An era of power sharing, pluralism and free elections was promised.

 

These events reverberated in the "west". German imperialism stepped forward to voice its own project of a reunited capitalist Germany. The US administration and its British adjunct were caught without a policy beyond a visceral desire to restore capitalism in Eastern Europe. They recognise in Gorbachev and the "reformers" people willing to assist them in the dismantling the planned property relations. But the imperialists are deeply uncertain as to how far to go with economic aid and the dissolving of alliances.

 

Even if the USA had the resources equivalent to the Marshal Aid Programme that saved Western Europe for capitalism in the 1940s, Pouring this volume of investment into states where the capitalist class has yet to be re-established would be a gamble of major proportions.

 

Likewise, to undertake a dismantling of NATO in conditions where a return to power of the hardliners is far from impossible is a risk they dare not take. Yet if they make no concessions of substance, what will happen to the reformers' uncompleted market "reforms"?

 

For these reasons the first flush of rejoicings amongst the imperialist leaders who launched the new Cold War has given way to dark mutterings about the dangers of instability. They preach the need for caution and the preservation of alliances-even or rather especially those of the "enemy". The governments of Bush and Thatcher, Kohl and Mitterrand clearly fear the spectre of revolution even when it appears to be bearing the gift of capitalist restoration. Why? Because they fear the unleashing of class struggle in these countries above everything-a struggle in which they may be obliged to take sides, a struggle which will open the rifts and conflicts of interest amongst themselves.

 

The USA, Britain and France clearly fear that Germany and Japan their defeated rivals of forty years along ago-may begin a whole new career of political and military independence and rivalry. For the Anglo-Saxon powers any fundamental change is likely to be for the worse.

 

Yet if the forces of world imperialism are obliged to temper their public rejoicings with private anxiety, the forces of world Stalinism are in open disarray. Those, like the Euro-communists who had during the mid1970s period of detente come close to Social Democracy, welcome not only the collapse of the unbridled dictatorship of the bureaucracy, but also shout for joy at the impending collapse of planned property. Like all converts they try to outdo the old believers in the fervour of their devotion to the "mixed economy", to market forces-in short, to capitalism. No abuse is too strong to hurl at the god who failed. Not only Stalinism but the October Revolution itself is vilified. The most important political event in twentieth century history is now an embarrassment to those who wish to fly headlong into the arms of the Social Democrats.

 

The erstwhile Stalinist parties of Eastern and Western Europe are forming an excited and disorderly queue at the portals of the Socialist International. The "party of Gramsci and Togliatti" can scarcely wait to transform itself into the Italian Labour Party and to bury the symbols of its past, the hammer and sickle.

 

Yet these unseemly celebrations cannot but alarm the vanguard workers who had falsely identified Stalinism with a more militant, class struggle policy and thought of it as some sort of builder of socialism. This anxiety will be shared by many on the left wing of Social Democracy and subjective revolutionaries who, whilst they never thought the USSR and its satellites were a socialist heaven on earth, at least saw them as bastions against the unbridled dominance of world capitalism. In the semi colonial world national liberation fighters also look with the gravest concern on the collapse of powers which, however capriciously and self-servingly, did occasionally supply them with arms, with training and with a place of exile.

 

Yet to all these vanguard fighters we have to say-it is not the god of socialism, communism or the planned economy that has failed, but the monstrous idol of Stalinism. For half of this century it stood apparently unshakable. Yet there was one voice that predicted its downfall-that of Leon Trotsky.

 

Trotsky analysed the fearful contradictions that lay beneath the monolithic facade. He predicted-albeit on too short a time-scale-its disintegration. But his error was of time-scale not one of substance. It was an error similar to those made in an earlier period by Marx, Engels Lenin and with all those for whom theory is a guide to revolutionary practice and not a form of intellectual consolation. It was Trotsky who realised that no bureaucratic tyranny erected on post-capitalist property relations could survive. The latter only made sense, could only develop and expand, could only conquer capitalism on a world scale if they were the tools of the conscious, revolutionary proletariat. He insisted against the combined forces of Stalinism and imperialism, against the Third and the Second Internationals that Stalin was not the continuer of Lenin's work, but its destroyer; not the great leader of world revolution, but its grave-digger.

 

As a result the Trotskyists had to be annihilated in the USSR, as indeed they were, by the tens of thousands, fifty years ago. Stalin's murderous hand was to reach out to the leaders of the young and weak Fourth International and finally to strike down Trotsky himself. Yet history, however painfully and slowly at times it seems to work, undermines and brings to destruction everything, no matter how powerful and imposing, that is based on force and fraud. Stalinism has proved itself an illegitimate, temporary setback in the proletariat's struggle for its own emancipation.

 

Amidst the thunder and crash of its disintegration we, the Trotskyists, have least of all cause for pessimism or mourning. Neither shall we indulge in the smug self-satisfaction of the venal leaders of Social Democracy. We turn-full of revolutionary optimism-to the workers of the

 

degenerate(d) workers' states. They are being roused to struggle for elementary civil liberties, for a decent standard of living, against the obscenity of bureaucratic privilege and are impelled to recreate a living workers' movement, factory councils and trade unions. We turn to these workers recognising that in the first instance the leaders they may find will be more or less hidden agents of the world bourgeoisie. But if this bourgeoisie successfully enters the workers' states, it will bear not only the offerings of consumer society, but also gross inequality, unemployment, and mass poverty. This ensures that if capitalism were to triumph then the class struggle will continue against the bourgeoisie and its agents.

 

Here and now we sound the alarm bells against the surrender of the nationalised economy, the monopoly of foreign trade and the centralised plan. With them goes the partial and inadequate commitment to full employment and the right to work. With them goes the equally inadequate social services and welfare system. These insufficient gains discredited even by the Stalinists identification of them with "actually existing socialism"-must be built on and not abandoned. They are the prerequisites for the transition to genuine socialism and can be used as such once they are £reed from the grip of the bureaucratic tyrants.

 

For actually existing capitalism is not the consumer dream-realised only to some extent in the lives of the west's bloated middle classes and labour aristocracy. It is the poverty, exploitation and starvation of three quarters of humanity. The fate of most of the workers' states, if the working class fails to defend its gains, will be similar-semi-colonial servitude and super-exploitation.

 

The working class can and will rise to this task and there is only one programme adequate to this task, that of the Trotskyists. Yet, this programme, as Trotsky wrote it, has long been abandoned by most of

 

those who now call themselves his followers. This programme-the Transitional Programme-has long gathered dust on their bookshelves whilst his successors have aped and parodied every passing fad and fashion in the world labour movement: Stalinism, Labourism, Maoism, Castroism, Sandinism, feminism and ecologism. Like chameleons they have appeared only in the colours of their surroundings. Consequently for forty years the programme of Leon Trotsky has made no solid conquests. This situation was historically explicable given the temporary strength of Stalinism and Social Democracy and the treason of the epigones such as Mandel, Lambert and Healey. But the historic changes now taking place open the road for the triumph of the Trotskyist programme. The pre-conditions for this are that this programme should be developed and elaborated to meet tasks not existing fifty years ago and that an internationally organised force of cadres exists to fight for new revolutionary parries and a new international. But the most essential pre-condition is that the defenders of this programme and the builders of this international party "disdain to conceal their views and aims", in Marx's words, and that "they openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions".

 

Today, these conditions include imperialist capitalism and moribund Stalinism. Our manifesto, our programme, is for the resolution of the long crisis of leadership that Stalinism and Social Democracy inflicted on the world labour movement. It is the programme for the revolutionary self-emancipation of the working class and for the liberation of the whole of exploited and oppressed humanity. Workers-in the semi-colonial, Stalinist and imperialist countries forward to the world socialist revolution!

 

London, December 1989

 

 

 

Introduction

 

The Marxist programme is based on the principles of scientific socialism. It analyses all social and political development from the standpoint of dialectical materialism. It asserts that the class struggle is the motor force of history and it recognises the working class as the only consistently revolutionary class. However, whilst the general Marxist programme embodies the theoretical method of dialectical materialism and the strategic goals of socialism, the great programmatic contributions in the history of the Marxist movement have been focused on the practical tasks flowing from these fundamental principles. They embody the strategy and tactics to achieve the general goals and do not separate these questions off from the programme. There is no brick wall between strategy, tactics and principles in the Marxist programme. This is clear from the Communist Manifesto through to the Transitional Programme of 1938. With this method we set out to develop the programme of the LRCI.

 

Social Democracy continues to peddle the minimum-maximum programme pioneered in the epoch of free competition capitalism. This programme was characterised by the rigid separation of the minimum demands (economic or political reforms achievable within the framework of capitalism) and the maximum goal of socialism. This separation of the two elements of the programme, enshrined in German Social Democracy's "Erfurt Programme", was the basis of its opportunist interpretation and application by the developing reformist wing of the Second International. Present day Social Democracy differs from its classical forebears only in the ever increasing feebleness of its pleadings for minimal reforms and in the ever decreasing use it has for holiday speechifying about socialism.

 

In the epoch of free competition capitalism the working class, especially in Europe, was obliged to fight for a series of economic and political rights in order to build an organised mass movement of trade unions and political parties. However, in this very process a reformist bureaucracy was crystallised out of the labour aristocracy. For this bureaucracy selected elements of the minimum programme, achieved by purely peaceful, legal and parliamentary methods, were ends in themselves. This stood in sharp contrast to the position of Engels and Lenin who argued that they were only means for developing an actual struggle for socialism. The onset of the imperialist epoch strengthened the reformist bureaucracy considerably. Exploiting the methodological weakness of the minimum-maximum programme, it enforced the rigid separation of the struggle for reforms from any revolutionary perspective for the overthrow of capitalism.

 

Reformism's strategic goal was to ensure a position of influence for itself within capitalism. To this end it attempted to subordinate working class struggles, transforming parliamentary electoral tactics into its central strategy for obtaining reforms under capitalism. World Stalinism, and even sections of petit bourgeois nationalism, misleads the masses with a variation of the minimum-maximum programme: the programme of stages based on the theory of socialism in one country. This programme and theory was fashioned by the conservative bureaucracy of the USSR in the 1920s during the period of its political counter-revolution against the working class. According to the programme of stages, the existence of the Soviet Union means that it is possible for revolutions to pass through a democratic stage prior to a peaceful evolution towards socialism. The theory argues that this democratic stage (variously called advanced democracy, people's democracy, anti -imperialist democracy) is rigidly separated from a socialist stage. Capitalism must be preserved during the democratic stage and socialism can then gradually and peacefully evolve according to the unique laws operating in each country.

 

This rehash of Menshevism is a cynical policy by the bureaucracy to limit the struggles against capitalism and be rewarded for its services with an endless period of peaceful co-existence with imperialism. This variation of the minimum-maximum programme, even in its most "left" form which argues that the implementation of the democratic stage cannot be left to the bourgeoisie but must be led by the proletariat, is a noose around the neck of the proletariat and the oppressed. Its consequence is always counter-revolution either by a capitalist class able to regroup during the "democratic" stage (Chile, Portugal, Iran) or by a Stalinist bureaucracy obliged to liquidate capitalism to defend itself, but only on the condition that it has already successfully politically expropriated the working class-as in Eastern Europe, China: Indo-China, and Cuba.

 

Whether in its Stalinist or Social Democratic garb the minimum maximum programme has outlived its progressive role and has been transformed into a means of obstructing not only the fight for socialism, but even an effective fight to win or defend reforms. Capitalism can provide neither permanent systematic social reforms nor lasting and fully-fledged bourgeois democracy. To solve its recurrent crises the bourgeoisie is obliged to attack every serious economic gain together with the political rights of the working class. The struggle to accommodate to such a system by the bureaucracy can only mean sacrificing even the minimum programme to the needs of the profit system. The defence of working class interests demands economic and political warfare against capitalism, even to achieve a decent wage or to secure a job.

 

The limits of the minimum-maximum programme are felt over the entire globe. Imperialism is incapable of overseeing radical and consistent agrarian reform or sustaining parliamentary democracy in much of the semi-colonial world. Despite periods of boom, and the attendant granting of reforms by capitalism to some sections of the world working class, this apparent justification for the minimum programme is only superficial. Even the proletariats of the most highly developed countries increasingly need a programme that links the most immediate defensive struggles with the main task of the epoch, the struggle for working class power. To advance the spontaneous class struggle towards socialist goals a bridge is needed. The programme of transitional demands is such a bridge.

 

Such demands were first systematically presented in Trotsky's Transitional Programme. Yet Marx and Engels formulated a set of transitional demands in the 1848 Communist Manifesto. Later, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, followed by the Communist International (Comintern), at its first four congresses, formulated focused action programmes based on the transitional method. But Trotsky's 1938 work, the programmatic basis of the Fourth International, was the clearest and most complete expression of the programmatic development that had occurred in the preceding ninety years of Marxism. At every stage the programmatic declarations of Marxism were enriched as capitalist society developed. In each case the Marxists have found it necessary to refine and re-elaborate the programme in the light of experience, which, in Trotsky's words, is the supreme criterion of human re3son. In 1938 Trotsky produced a sharply focused action programme addressing the key questions of the day and answering them in the light of the experience of the previous two decades of struggle and crisis throughout the world. It embodied the lessons from the collapses of the first three Interntionals) as well as from the contributions that they made during their healthy years. It was a re-elaborated programme of revolutionary Marxism.

 

Fifty years on profound developments in world imperialism) world Stalinism) the semi-colonies) the struggles of the world working class and the oppressed all oblige us to re-elaborate the Transitional Programme. This we have done and our programme) like the 1938 programme) is a development of the previous programmes of revolutionary Marxism to date) not a break from them. It stands on the shoulders of the preceding gains of revolutionary Marxism. It bases itself on their method and incorporates all of their essential features as well as many of their demands. Like the preceding programmes it will have to be broken down into action programmes for particular countries) conjunctures or sections in struggle. Such action programmes will) like Trotsky’s own Action Programme for France) contain all of the key elements of the general programme itself but will sharply focus them to a particular situation or country.

 

Our programme is a world programme for the world party of socialist revolution) focused towards the burning problems characteristic of the crisis wracked closing years of the twentieth century. It is a programme of transition towards the socialist revolution and as such applies with full force to imperialist countries and semi-colonies alike. But it is equally a programme for the transition to socialism within the workers) states. It addresses the urgent tasks facing the workers in those states where capitalism has been abolished but where the Stalinist bureaucracy has politically expropriated the working class and the actual transition to socialism has) as a result) been blocked. It is a guide to action for the millions struggling to resolve the problems facing humanity. It is a programme that can pave the way to a society based on the satisfaction of human need) not one based on either the lust for profit or the satisfaction of the needs of a parasitic bureaucracy.

 

While our programme contains, at its core, a focused action programme similar to that of the 1938 programme it is also obliged to address problems not dealt with in that document. As a re-elaborated programme, it has had to confront the fact that the continuity of the revolutionary Marxist movement was broken in 1951 with the degeneration of the Fourth International into centrism. A period of almost forty years has elapsed since this degeneration. Perspectives, tactics and strategy during those forty years have never been analysed in a revolutionary manner, nor embodied in a consistently revolutionary programme. The lessons of the major events during this period-the creation of degenerate workers' states, the long imperialist boom, the anti-imperialist struggles and lessons of the key class struggles and revolutionary situations-have not been incorporated into a series of programmes, theses and documents. Instead the record of the centrists emerging from the Fourth International is one of systematic errors, of various opportunist or sectarian distortions of the Marxist programme.

 

Our programme is, therefore, not based on an unbroken record of revolutionary positions and cannot base itself, as the 1938 programme could, on fifteen years of documents, positions, theses and programmes (from the Left Opposition through to the founding of the Fourth International). It is obliged to be more analytical, more expansive, than the 1938 programme needed to be. If Trotsky thought that in 1938 he was obliged to include more commentary than was proper in a programme we have had to do so to a far greater extent. In this sense it is an attempt not only to guide the struggles of millions, but also to clearly define the LRCI as against the many varieties of centrism that claim to represent Trotskyism. It also has to demonstrate to the militants of such tendencies, as well as to those of other organisations within the world workers' movement, the lessons we need to draw from the past period and the answers to the crises which will arise in the future.

 

Clearly our programme is far from being the last word on the international class struggle and the tactics and strategy for revolution. Since 1984 the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International (now the League for a Revolutionary Communist International-LRCI) has formulated resolutions and theses on the important questions of the international class struggle. They form a supplement to this programme. In addition we recognise that discussion with militants from countries where the LRCI has, as yet, no presence will enable us to enrich and develop the world character of our programme further. But we are firmly convinced that we have produced a programme that serves as the bedrock for such development. This programme, which in its method, its analysis, its demands and its tactics and strategy, embodies the living spirit of revolutionary Marxism, lays the basis for the re-establishment of authentic Trotskyism on a world scale.

 

 

 

Chapter 2 - The crisis of proletarian leadership

 

Capitalism, even in its imperialist death agony, will not depart the scene automatically. It needs to be consciously overthrown by the working class. For this to happen, a new revolutionary vanguard must be forged. This vanguard requires a conscious strategic plan, a programme and a working class vanguard party.

 

Today the central problem facing humanity remains: who leads the working class? On the eve of the last inter-imperialist war capitalism was gripped by a general economic depression which was plunging the whole world irreversibly into a revolutionary crisis. Trotsky's Transitional Programme, written in these years, pronounced that the crisis of humanity was reduced to the crisis of leadership. However, today it would be wrong simply to repeat that all contemporary crises are "reduced to a crisis of leadership".

 

The proletariat worldwide does not yet face the stark alternative of either taking power or seeing the destruction of all its past gains. Nevertheless, in many countries and, indeed, whole continents, the crisis of leadership does reach such a level of acuteness. Even in countries where this is not so a chronic crisis afflicts the workers' organisations, bringing about defeat, stagnation and even decline as a result of the repeated betrayals of the reformist leaders. Capitalism's inability to meet the basic needs of millions makes it both possible and necessary to transform the defensive struggles of the workers and poor peasants into the struggle for power. Yet none of the existing leaderships of the working class are willing or able to carry through such a fight. They are tied to the interests of the bourgeoisie or the parasitic bureaucracy of the Stalinist states. The imperialist bourgeoisie has long used its resources to sow divisions in the proletariat and even to accept the existence of a privileged layer, a "labour aristocracy", whose living standards were substantially better than those of the mass of the working class. This section of the working class formed the principal basis for a "labour bureaucracy" whose role was to negotiate with capital and whose spontaneous political outlook, therefore, was one of class collaboration.

 

In Europe, by 1914, the mass workers' parties had become dominated by the politics of the collaborators. This was true both of parties like the British Labour Party, which had been a reformist party from its foundation, and of the Social Democratic parties which maintained a formal adherence to Marxism. It culminated in the betrayal of the working class by the leaders of the Second (Socialist) International. In 1914 they became recruiting sergeants for the imperialist war. Then, as a wave of revolutions swept Europe (1917-23) they openly sided with bourgeois counter-revolution against the working masses.

 

Social Democracy thus took on its fundamental shape. It became strategically wedded both to the capitalist economy and the capitalist state, albeit in the idealised forms of state capitalism and bourgeois democracy. This was true even where capitalism had not yet developed fully-fledged labour aristocracies and bureaucracies. In Russia, for example, the Mensheviks, arguing for a long period of bourgeois democracy as a necessary stage of development, opposed the workers' revolution and took up arms against it. For the reformists, direct action and military force were measures that could only be utilised against the opponents of their bourgeois democratic goals, never as means of defeating the opponents of the working class.

 

The degeneration of the Comintern

 

The Comintern was formed out of the consistent fighters against Social Democracy's betrayals during the post-1917 revolutionary period. In its first four congresses the Comintern began to re-elaborate the revolutionary programme for the imperialist epoch. But it degenerated into bureaucratic centrism after 1923 under the impact of the political counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. The goal of world revolution was replaced by the reactionary utopia of "socialism in one country". The centrist communist parties led the working class to bloody and unnecessary defeats in China (1927) and Germany (1933).

 

After the defeat of the German masses in 1933, Trotsky considered that the Comintern had become irreformable. Later that year he declared that the Comintern, having failed to recognise and to correct its mistakes, was, whilst still bureaucratic centrist, irreformable and, "dead for the purposes of revolution". He, therefore, demanded, in the first instance, the building of a new party in Germany and then a new International world-wide, although the Stalinists had not yet definitively passed over to the camp of counter-revolution.

 

In 1934-35 the Comintern completed its evolution into a counter-revolutionary International. It concluded a strategic alliance with the bourgeoisie of the so called "democratic" imperialisms in the name of a new "strategy", that of the popular front. This class collaborationist policy was imposed on the sections of the Comintern by the Kremlin bureaucracy, in order to satisfy its diplomatic needs. The Stalinist bureaucracy, trying to establish a utopian "peaceful coexistence" with "democratic" imperialism and its allies, transformed the Communist Parties of those states into reformist parties preaching collaboration and "peaceful co-existence" between classes. It commended to the masses the defence of their own imperialisms, thus following Social Democracy into the ranks of counter-revolution. The turn to social patriotism coincided with the liquidation of the old Bolshevik vanguard in the Moscow Show Trials. In the second phase of the Second World War, after the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the Stalinists in non-Axis countries became super-patriots and, in countries occupied by the Nazis or at war with Germany, gained a new mass following.

 

Today, these parties are hostile to the proletarian revolution, the self emancipation of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat based on soviets. Despite the stolen banner of communism they remain hostile to the goal of a communist, i.e. a classless and stateless, society. As such they are not the opposite of Social Democracy but its twin, sharing with it the ideology of social patriotism and reformism. The loyalty of the Stalinist parties to their own bourgeoisies cannot be as total as that of the Social Democrats because of the support they give to, and receive from, the bureaucracy of the degenerated workers' state. Despite the advanced tendencies to "social democratisation" exhibited by certain Parties they cannot simply evolve into Social Democracy without a rupture. Even where the Stalinist parties have virtually eclipsed their Social Democratic rivals to become the major working class parties with a political practice essentially the same as the Social Democrats of other countries, their differing origins, structures and traditions set them apart, both in the eyes of the working class and of the bourgeoisie. Nonetheless, the division between Social Democracy and Stalinism is a division within reformism. Neither can be thought to have evolved into purely bourgeois parties, without internal splits, simply because of their ideological abandonment of programmatic pledges to "social ownership" or the "proletarian dictatorship". For this, a rupture with their organic links to the proletariat would have to occur. Even fascism could not completely extinguish Social Democratic and Stalinist reformism. Their existence will only be ended when revolutionaries have won political dominance in the class.

 

Both the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties are servants of the bourgeois world order, yet both are rooted in organisations that the proletariat has created to fight for its class interests. Both are dominated by a privileged bureaucracy that selves the imperialist bourgeoisie. The fundamental roots of Social Democracy are within capitalist society. Stalinism's historic roots lie in the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union and, therefore, in post-capitalist property relations. But Stalinism is no less a servant of the bourgeoisie than Social Democracy. Through its political dictatorship of the Soviet Union, and the other degenerate workers' states, it blocks the advance to socialism and discredits the very goal of a classless, stateless society communism. It blocks the internationalisation of the revolution, spreading chauvinism and class collaboration. It objectively promotes the potential for capitalist restoration within the workers' states and, in a decisive crisis, will provide in its upper layers the cadres for social counter-revolution.

 

The contradictory character that Stalinism and Social Democracy share is best summed up in the characterisation that they are bourgeois workers' parties. Neither is qualitatively preferable to the other. Of course, the fact that a party possesses a Social Democratic or Stalinist ideology does not, of itself, prove that it is a bourgeois workers' party. Significant numbers of parties of the Socialist International are bourgeois nationalist parties without any decisive organic links to their own proletariat. On the other hand there are Stalinist parties whose social base is the peasantry or the urban or rural petit-bourgeoisie. Yet, as world tendencies, both retain the character of bourgeois workers' parties

 

In certain countries towards the end of the Second World War revolutionary struggles developed (e.g. in Italy, the Balkans and France). But the combined forces of Social Democracy and Stalinism resolutely dissipated the spontaneous will of the masses to settle accounts with their discredited bourgeoisies. The Social Democratic parties and the Communist Parties, having performed their role as agents of democratic counter-revolution, were thrust to one side by the capitalists who then installed, wherever possible, openly bourgeois parties at the helm of the booming economies of the 1950s and 1960s.

 

The late 1960s initiated a new period of intense class struggle in the imperialist heartlands, invariably started from below by a confident and well organised working class. Throughout Europe the Stalinist and Social Democratic leaders and their trade union allies successfully fought to contain these struggles, to keep them within the limits of legality and official organisation. In France, Portugal and Spain, Stalinism and Social Democracy were given the chance to demonstrate yet again their counter-revolutionary loyalty to capitalism. With serious defeats in many countries of Western Europe by the mid 1970s, the European workers' movement was again thrown back and pacified for the next period.

 

By the onset of the second major recession, that of 1979-82, the existing leaderships had successfully demobilised working class resistance, opening the proletariat of the imperialist countries to a decade of austerity, anti-union laws and attacks on democratic rights. In government the traitors were only too happy to preside over and to initiate these attacks. Thus in the 1980s the crisis of leadership in the imperialist heartlands takes the form of the inability of the working class to resist the attacks of the Thatcherite-Reaganite economic liberals with its own existing parties, unions and politics, With the discrediting of Keynesian, social-liberal welfarism, with its "mixed economy" and state intervention in the economy, the Social Democratic and Stalinist Parties are thrown into ideological and policy crisis. The bourgeoisie does not want their old programme and, at the same time, that programme is pitifully inadequate to the needs of a working class hit by austerity and unemployment. The trade union bureaucracy cannot mount effective resistance to the attacks. The centrist forces of the 1970s are shrunken and demoralised. Yet the working class has fought back against its enemies. Massive and bitter workers' struggles have marked the 1980s, but not one of them has been able to gain a decisive victory. Only a new leadership and a new programme can solve the chronic crisis in the workers' movement of the imperialist heartlands. . In the degenerate(d) workers' states, the Stalinist bureaucracy has f I managed to discredit the very idea of socialism and communism in the r I eyes of the working class. The ruling castes have failed to legitimise their role in these societies, have failed to overcome the fundamental objection to their very existence: they are unnecessary to-indeed are a drain upon- the system of planned property relations.

 

In the post-war decades this caste has tried to shore up its rule by lurching from market experiments (to overcome stagnation) to a tightening of bureaucratic command in the economy. This experience has created factional strife within the bureaucracies and even political openings for an opposition from below.

 

The working class of the degenerate(d) workers' states has repeatedly proved itself to be the most determined force in this opposition. More than once it has hurled itself against bureaucratic privilege and political oppression. In the post-war era this struggle has taken the workers to the brink of proletarian political revolution. This has been demonstrated by the creation of soviets (Hungary 1956) and proto-soviet bodies (the inter-factory committees in Poland 1980 and China 1989).

 

But the absence of a political revolutionary strategy means that it has been defeated in every major political revolutionary crisis. Its spontaneous struggles have generated ideas that have served both to leave the power of the bureaucracy intact and, in certain instances, to positively strengthen the forces for capitalist restoration.

 

In Hungary and Poland in 1956 misplaced hopes in a section of the bureaucracy led the working class to ultimate defeat. Syndicalism and trade unionism, as with Solidarnosc in Poland, led the struggle away from the goal of political power and diverted it into a utopian struggle for independent trade unions co-existing with bureaucratic rule. Even the left wing of Solidarnosc peddled the illusion that self-managed enterprises rather than workers' management of the centralised planning mechanisms could overcome the crisis of the command economy.

 

In the USSR, nationalism strengthens the hand of bourgeois and clerical restorationists. In Eastern Europe and China, the workers aspire to parliamentary democracy, a sentiment that springs from the experience of a stifling autocracy. The bloody slaughter of the courageous forces of China's "Democracy Movement" by the tyrants of the Chinese Communist Party, served only to strengthen the bourgeois democratic current within the opposition movement.

 

But these hopes in "democracy", emptied of a working class content, are a cruel deception, one fostered by imperialism to ease the passage of the masses of these countries into the camp of capitalist exploitation. Without revolutionary leadership, and a revolutionary programme, the break up of Stalinism in its heartlands will benefit only a ruling minority inside these states. By contrast a majority of the multi-national firms within the imperialist countries will prosper.

 

Without revolutionary leadership the potential for political revolution, embodied in the events of Hungary 1956 and China 1989, cannot be realised. Without such leadership the ruling Stalinist parties will continue to be either the handmaidens of capitalist restoration or the harbingers of military bureaucratic retribution.

 

Stalinism against permanent revolution

 

The counter-revolutionary character of Stalinism is also expressed in its violent opposition to the perspective and programme of permanent revolution in the semi-colonies and wherever bourgeois democratic questions assume a revolutionary importance. Social Democracy has been less enduring in the semi-colonies. In these countries the labour aristocracy and labour trade union bureaucracy has been less firmly established because of the under-developed nature of capitalism. Also the more craven legalism and parliamentarism of Social Democracy has ensured that it more completely disappears when democracy and parliaments themselves fall victim to Bonapartism or dictatorship. From Indonesia through Chile to South Africa today, Stalinism has clung to the perspective of a democratic stage, which excludes the fight for working class power, but embraces all kinds of bourgeois, petit bourgeois, clerical and military Bonapartist allies. This popular frontist strategy which ushered in democratic counter-revolution after 1945 has resulted since then in bloody and decisive defeats in key revolutionary situations.

 

In Indonesia the PKI, the largest Stalinist party in the capitalist world, entered the left nationalist government of Sukarno in 1965, claiming it to be at the head of a "people's state". Unarmed and unwarned by their leaders, the masses of the PKI were then slaughtered by the military. This disaster bears direct comparison with events in China in 1927 and Germany in 1933.

 

In Chile, Stalinism and the Social Democratic Socialist Party led the workers and poor peasants to disaster. Allende's government, installed in 1970, was a popular front whose programme was limited to reforms. Allende renounced from the outset the arming of the workers and guaranteed the reactionary high command a monopoly of armed force.

 

Nevertheless, spontaneous working class militancy led to the creation of cordones industrial, proto-soviets, and even badly armed militias. It led to demands for expropriations which Allende stood firmly against. Economic crisis and sabotage created the climate for a coup d'etat by Pinochet in September 1973, which left tens of thousands dead, tortured or imprisoned and hundreds of thousands forced to flee the country. In Iran, the Stalinist Tudeh Party participated in the mass overthrow of the Shah, only to support the imposition of Khomeini's Islamic Republic. In the name of revolutionary loyalty the Tudeh assisted Islamic reaction in the slaughter of masses of workers, leftists and Kurdish rebels. In return Khomeini unleashed his repressive apparatus against the Tudeh itself.

 

As the leading force within the ANC, the South African Communist Party squandered a revolutionary opportunity with its policy of using the township revolts to seek negotiations with the "enlightened" wing of South African imperialism. Now, it is beating a retreat from all forms of revolutionary activity in the interests of the "global stability" sought by the Kremlin. The bankruptcy of Stalinism and Social Democracy has prolonged the life of bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalism among wide sections of the semi-colonial working class. Despite their occasional ability to speak and act more radically than the workers' parties, the mass nationalist movements and parties remain incapable of solving the plight of the workers and peasants. Garcia's APRA, the Mexican PRI, the FSLN, the PLO, and Sinn Fein all remain strategically tied to capitalism. Their acts of defiance against imperialism are carried out only so long as the working class is absent, as an independent force, from the struggle. Once challenged by the distinct demands of the exploited, these "anti-imperialists" become the abject defenders of imperialism.

 

Unless a revolutionary party can dislodge all these forces from the leadership of the working class they threaten to repeat their mistakes in the mighty class battles ahead. To prevent this it is essential, in what remains of the twentieth century that the class conscious vanguard of workers and poor peasants throughout the world is regrouped around an international transitional programme.

 

 

 

Chapter 3 - A programme of transitional demands

 

The present period is punctuated by defensive mass economic struggles in the imperialist countries, by actual or latent political revolutionary crises in the degenerate(d) workers' states, and by pre-revolutionary and revolutionary crises in the semi-colonial countries. This continuing unevenness makes it impossible to speak, as Trotsky did in 1938, of a general world pre-revolutionary situation. But this in no way detracts from the urgency of arming the working class movement with a transitional programme.

 

Only such a programme can ensure that the gains made by the masses in this or that partial struggle, are built upon and consolidated and not stolen from them by the forces of reaction at the earliest opportunity. Only such a programme can resolve the fundamental contradiction that afflicts the international workers' movement: on the one hand the readiness of the masses to defend their gains, and even take the revolutionary offensive; whilst on the other, established leaderships are still capable of demobilising and betraying these same struggles.

 

A transitional programme strives to address this subjective weakness by building a bridge for the masses between their immediate defensive struggles and the struggle for socialist revolution. This bridge takes the form of an interlinked series of demands which, in their entirety, constitute an overt and direct challenge to capitalist rule. But revolutionaries are not sectarians. They fight for minimum demands, and in every partial struggle revolutionaries are the most thorough and most meticulous tacticians and organisers. We stand in the front line trenches of every struggle of the working class, no matter how partial. For this reason it would be false to counter pose the transitional programme to the existing struggles of the masses as an ultimatum.

 

But it is a centrist distortion of the transitional programme to dislocate individual demands entirely from the interlinked system and present them as thinly disguised isolated trade union demands. Similarly any attempt to present transitional demands as structural reforms of capitalism is grossly opportunist. The very purpose of transitional demands is to mobilise the masses against capitalism. The task of the revolutionary vanguard, therefore, is to use particular demands in the immediate struggles of the masses within the context of a fight for the programme as a whole.

 

In practice this will mean agitation within a particular struggle for focused, relevant transitional demands whilst making propaganda for the programme as a whole through the explanation of what the realisation of this or that demand will pose in the next phase of struggle. How is this gain to be consolidated, how can we prevent a counter-attack by the bosses? The relationship 'between such agitation and propaganda, the point at which propaganda is superseded by mass agitation, will have to be determined in response to the scope, tempo and intensity of the struggle, the transitional character of the system of demands is expressed by several features. In the first place such demands address the fundamental economic and political needs of the masses as determined by the objective situation. The demands do not depend for their correctness on their acceptability to the reformist consciousness of the masses; nor are they invalidated if the capitalists or the Stalinist bureaucrats are forced to grant such demands. Secondly, transitional demands seek to organise the masses independently of the open political representatives of the bourgeoisie and their reformist agents within the labour bureaucracy. This we strive to do through unions, factory committees, workers' councils and the revolutionary party.

 

Mobilised around these demands in such organisations the working class challenges the rule of the capitalists. It encroaches on this rule in the factory, office and school, on the picket line and on the streets, at the level of government itself. To this end each transitional demand embodies a fight for some element of direct workers' control over the capitalists. In establishing even elementary workers' control over production in the battle to protect jobs, the struggle will be forced onto a higher level. The question is posed: who is the power in the factory, the workers or the boss? In turn a successful struggle at plant level puts new challenges before the workers in relation to other branches of industry and to society as a whole.

 

In addition, the system of workers' control, by training the masses in running the factories, prepares them for the tasks ahead under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus transitional demands are both the means of transition from today's immediate struggles to a revolutionary assault on the whole capitalist regime and they are a school, a means of educating workers, in the tasks of the transition to socialism itself.

 

Against the capitalist offensive

 

The concerted offensive of the capitalists to resolve their crises and establish economic recovery has taken a heavy toll on the living conditions of the world working class and the oppressed peasantry. High prices, reaching the level of hyper-inflation in some semi-colonies, and mass unemployment are the cost of temporary stabilisation. To preserve its fighting strength, the working class is obliged to defend its right to work and earn a living wage. It is forced to defend and extend the welfare systems conceded by the bourgeoisie-the so called social wage. It is essential to advance demands that seek to put an end to the struggle for survival. In each country we fight for a legally guaranteed minimum wage at a rate decided by the labour movement not the bosses. This in no way implies that collective agreements limit themselves to such a minimum. The working class must constantly strive to advance beyond the minimum wage, which is merely a safety net to combat low pay and poverty for 'the most oppressed section of workers.

 

Inflation

 

Under conditions where the bosses use rising prices to pauperise the workers we fight to protect collective agreements against every price rise imposed by the bosses. To this end we fight for a sliding scale of wages which guarantees a rise to match any rise in the cost of living. Of course the bosses will try to dupe the masses with phoney indices to prove that the cost of living is not rising. Against this trickery we fight for a workers' I Cost of living index, assessed and decided upon by price watch committees delegates elected from the workplaces and the working class communities: the housing estates, the workers' districts, the barrios and shanty towns, the organisations of working class women and of proletarian consumers. In conditions of hyper-inflation further measures will be needed to protect the exploited and oppressed from starvation, the destruction of their security and meagre savings. They must fight for control over the necessities of life. This means workers' control over the food industry, the large farms, processing plants, transport and supermarket chains. It means establishing direct commercial links between the workers and peasants over the exchange of goods. It entails the building of workers' and peasants' committees to control food pricing and distribution.

 

But to bring a halt to hyper-inflation the workers must seize control of the banks; force their complete nationalisation including the confiscation of the assets of the bourgeoisie and the foreign multinationals. We demand action to prevent the transfer of capital abroad, the immediate repudiation of the foreign debt and the cessation of all interest payments on it. The savings of the workers, peasants and petit bourgeoisie should be guaranteed at pre-hyperinflationary values, all these measures point to the necessity for a state monopoly of foreign trade and the introduction of democratic planning by the producers. To carry through a workers' and peasants' programme against inflation a government of these classes is the indispensable instrument. Without this the bourgeoisie will use hyper-inflation to demoralise the workers and turn the peasantry and petit bourgeoisie against them (Bolivia 1985-86). It will try to solve the inflationary crisis through crushing the workers and imposing savage deflationary measures-slashing of the state budgets for health, education, cuts in wages and closures of factories and mines. Inflation and deflation are both weapons of the bourgeoisie to break the revolutionary momentum of the working class. Against both we rally the masses to a programme which insists "Make the rich pay"!

 

The scourge of unemployment

 

Mass unemployment is today a permanent feature of every capitalist country. In the semi-colonies the collapse of raw material prices on the world market leads to the devastation of entire industries, while agribusiness has driven millions of landless peasants into the cities where, unable to find work, they are forced down into the ranks of the lumpen proletariat. In the imperialist heartlands capitalist restructuring has left millions on the scrap heap of unemployment. Against this scourge our programme advances the demand for work for all regardless of sex, race, age, creed or sexual orientation. This demand is only realisable on the road of militant direct action: strikes against redundancies, occupations against closures, militant protests by the organisations of the unemployed. Such struggles must set as their goal the achievement of a sliding scale of hours. Under the regime of workers' control work should be shared amongst all the workers in an enterprise, and the working week reduced to facilitate this work-sharing. Under no circumstances should wages be reduced if hours are reduced. This is a conscious generalisation and revolutionary extension of the demands spontaneously being raised by workers for the 35 hour week with no loss of pay (Britain, Germany) or "30 for 40" (USA).

 

For those whom the capitalists leave on the dole queue we fight for work or full pay. If the bosses will not provide work we demand unemployment benefit, paid by the state at the level decided by the labour movement. When capitalism fails to provide socialised care and women are prevented from taking up full time work we demand full benefits. But this demand must be combined with the struggle for social provision for children, the sick and the disabled so that women are able to work. Full benefits should be demanded for all those whom capitalism casts aside from social production as a result of age, disability or sickness. For the elderly we demand the right to retire at an age agreed by the labour movement within each country. Pensions, indexed against inflation must be paid by the state and set at a level, decided by the labour movement that will maintain the living standards of the elderly. For those above the retirement age who wish to continue to work, jobs must be made available at full union rates.

 

The unemployed themselves must not be left as bystanders in the fight against unemployment. Communists strive to build fighting unity between the unemployed and the employed. We are for the right of the unemployed to be in the unions with full rights but reduced dues. We are also for the building of democratic mass unemployed workers' movements, with substantial financial support from the labour movement, with no strings attached to such funding and with full rights of representation within the labour movement. Such organisations will play a role in preventing the unemployed falling prey to the ideology of fascism (or other reactionary ideologies and movements), criminalisation and lumpenisation. They are a vital means of pressuring employed workers to take up an active struggle in defence of their unemployed brothers and sisters. In order to integrate all the jobless into the production process and to allow them to do socially useful work, we struggle relentlessly for a programme of public works under workers' control, paid for by the capitalist state. Everywhere the need for such a programme is evident in the imperialist heartlands all manner of public amenities are in need of improvement or renovation. In the semi-colonies the masses live in squalor, deprived of the most basic of amenities, (housing, water sanitation and fuel, education and health care). The programme of public works seeks to satisfy these burning needs-building houses, hospitals schools and amenities-as well as provide jobs for millions. More, it trains the working class to run the economy in a manner that meets their needs It is a school for the planned economy itself.

 

Allied to the fight for a programme of public works is the fight for or to defend and extend, the welfare provision that goes some way to protect the working class from the worst effects of capitalist exploitation Capitalism is not only willing to sacrifice our standard of living to satiate its lust for profits, it is prepared to sacrifice our right to be educated, t( enjoy what leisure time it leaves us and to be cared for when we are sick What more eloquent testimony to the rotten bankruptcy of capitalism could be required than the fact that the USA, the richest and most' powerful country in the world, has one of the highest infant mortality rates of all the industrialised countries. To combat such iniquities we fight for free education, free public amenities and leisure facilities and a free health service for all. These rights must be guaranteed by state funding at levels determined by the masses themselves. Such provision must be directed, not by capitalist appointed managers, but though workers control of the public services.

 

The rapacious search for profit degrades and destroys individuals well beyond the factory or office. Under capitalism the use of drugs drive hundreds of thousands beyond the limits of enjoyment and stimulation to the wastelands of dependency and enslavement: alcoholism and narcotic addiction wrecks the lives of many potential class fighters against the system which breeds such dependencies. We demand the decriminalisation of drug use and the confiscation of the massive profits that the narcotic barons make from illegal import and export of drugs. We are for a state monopoly, overseen by the workers' and peasants' price commit tees, of the sale of drugs for pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical use

 

We demand scientifically based education and information on the dangers of the use of particular narcotics for non-medical purposes.

 

There will be no shortage of bosses, bourgeois politicians, economic "experts" and reformist apologists for capitalism, who will "prove" that our demands on wages, jobs and services are unrealisable and cannot be afforded. To this we answer, we cannot afford to live without the achievement of our demands. We do not start from what the capitalist system claims it can afford. Throughout history our every demand has been met with the cry that our rulers cannot afford them. Yet we have won them because what can be afforded is decided by struggle: in sum reforms are the by-product of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. If the bourgeois state rejects the demands of the masses for wages, work or social services with the argument that the budget would go into deficit, then we propose a revolutionary programme of taxation.

 

The workers in the factories and in the banks should calculate the fixed and liquid assets of the employers. On the basis of this capital and other possessions a strongly progressive wealth tax should be levied against them. With this revenue it will be possible to begin financing the needs of the masses. On the other hand, indirect taxation on the items of mass consumption and income tax for the property less masses should be scrapped. The progressive income and wealth tax on the capitalists must be controlled by the workers in order to uncover evasion and corruption by financial experts. Also, any attempt to unload the extra taxation of the capitalists onto the prices of mass consumption goods must be prevented by workers' control. If the capitalists refuse to pay their taxes, seek to evade them or claim inability to pay, then their assets must be confiscated.

 

The trade unions

 

In much of the world trade unions are durable, mass organisations of the working class. Revolutionaries must therefore have a central orientation to the unions, despite their reactionary leaderships. A correct revolutionary intervention into the unions requires a clear understanding of their nature, their limitations under capitalism, and a coherent strategy for their transformation into instruments of revolutionary struggle. 'Trade unionism on its own represents the class struggle carried on within the boundaries of capitalism. The trade unions have, generally, constituted themselves as elementary organisations for the defence of the working class against the excesses of capitalist exploitation, and of achieving the means of subsistence and improving the living standard of workers and their families. As such, pure trade unionism accepts the wages system, the system of wage slavery. As a form of consciousness remains on the terrain of bourgeois society, pure trade union consciousness is, therefore, a form of reformist, bourgeois consciousness inside the working class. However, the system of capitalist exploitation generates the class struggle, even if initially on a purely economic and fragmented basis. It does so because the bourgeoisie is driven by competition to lower it labour costs and to increase the intensity or length of the working day: This class struggle creates the objective basis for a challenge to the reformist limits of pure trade unionism. The working class resorts to class struggle methods that threaten to go beyond the bounds of reformist trade union solutions. This objective gives trade union organisation a contradictory character. On the one hand they reflect the self-limiting reformism of pure trade union consciousness. On the other they represent, intermittently, the revolutionary potential of a working cla1 compelled to use strikes, occupations and picket lines. They can the serve as "schools of war" for the working class.

 

The contradictory nature of trade union organisation reveals itself in many ways. Even with the expansion of the proletariat in the semi-colonies; world the trade unions still only organise a minority of the international working class. The established bureaucracies are characterised by conservative sluggishness in their attempts to bring in new layers of worker fearful that an influx of such workers will challenge their privileges and their quiet lives. The unions tend to organise the labour aristocracy, the skilled and more privileged sections of the class. They reflect the sectionalism and narrow craft consciousness of such layers. They demonstrate a self-defeating tendency to spurn politics, in the name of neutrality though at the same time the leaders often deliver union members' vote to reformist or liberal bourgeois parties.

 

Most importantly unions are generally dominated by a reformi1 bureaucracy. In the imperialist countries this bureaucracy arose out of the labour aristocracy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was centred on the organised skilled workers. In many semi colonies a bureaucracy has also arisen, again out of a labour aristocracy albeit one smaller and with fewer material privileges than that of the imperialist countries. This has been patronised by bourgeois nationalist or reformist forces interested in securing a base in society for themselves (as in Mexico, Argentina). In other cases, where an aristocracy of labour has either not yet developed or is not sizeable enough to influence the unions or reformist/nationalist parties, a reformist bureaucracy has constituted itself often through links with the international trade union movement and with the material aid of the bureaucracy of the imperialist countries.

 

The trade union bureaucracy is a distinct caste that owes its position and economic privileges (no matter how marginal they may be) to its role as a negotiator in the class struggle between workers and their employers. Its privileged position is often enhanced through its incorporation into the lower echelons of the capitalist state. To maintain its position the bureaucracy has an objective interest in maintaining the system of class exploitation and consequently strives to limit struggles and betray them. It acts as the labour lieutenant of capital inside the working class. It is the sworn enemy of militant class struggle and genuine working class democracy.

 

By contrast the rank and file of the unions have no objective interest in maintaining the system of capitalist exploitation. At moments of heightened or generalised class struggle the fundamental tendencies of rank and file workers stand revealed as the exact opposite of those of the bureaucracy. In the face of attacks from the bosses the rank and file repeatedly resort to direct action to defend their own interests. In the face of sectional divisions they strive to organise the unorganised and unite with rank and file workers from other industries and unions. And against the "non-political" stance of the bureaucracy there are countless examples of rank and file workers seeking to use their organisation for explicitly political objectives. The rank and file's fundamental interests are thus not merely distinct from those of the bureaucracy but in direct contradiction to them.

 

To develop the elementary class consciousness of the rank and file into revolutionary consciousness, it is necessary to fight for the revolutionary transformation of the unions. Either they will be turned into organisations for the subordination of the working class to the interests of capital; they will become instruments of revolutionary struggle against capital. There can be no such thing as trade union neutrality in the class struggle. The outcome of the struggle to transform the unions depends, in the first instance, on the organised strength of revolutionary communism within them. We strive to build communist fractions in the unions, founded by members of the revolutionary party and its sympathisers, openly challenging for leadership on the basis of the revolutionary programme.

 

To achieve our goal of ousting the bureaucracy we advocate rank and file opposition movements committed to rank and file democracy, the election and accountability of all officials and a programme of class struggle. We fight all restrictions on rank and file democracy, all bureaucratically imposed divisions, and all attempts to keep the unions "above politics" or rather, free from revolutionary influence. We oppose all witch hunts of revolutionaries and militants. We resist all efforts to sell out or sell short the struggles of the working class. We defend the right of the oppressed (women, youth, sexual and racial minorities) to their own caucuses. We are for trade union unity on a class struggle, democratic basis and for industrial unions.

 

The tactic of the rank and file opposition movement (modelled on the Minority Movement experience in Britain in the early 1920s) is not counter posed to the building of communist fractions in the union. It is a movement within which the communists constitute a fraction but seek to become a mass force, and through which they seek to gain leadership on the basis of an action programme of transitional demands. It is the form of the united front suitable to the unions where the communists constitute a minority but have the possibility of mobilising non-communist workers.

 

A history of reformist betrayal and the close integration of some unions into the state have led many sectarians to abandon the mass organisations and build purified trade unions, or "red unions", which do not comprise the masses or even significant sections of the working class. This policy of dual unionism is, in fact, a form of cowardly abstentionism. It abandons the masses to the bureaucracy. It leaves them under their influence and destined to defeat. Our policy is that we do not split from the reformist mass unions as a substitute for winning revolutionary leadership within them. We fight within them for full class independence from both the state and the bosses, organisationally and politically. Working class militants should even work within company or state controlled unions, if they group together large masses of workers, but only in order to encourage these masses to break to form a real class union. We do not fetishise trade union unity and are prepared to split with unions or confederations which become real scab organisations. It is especially the case that we should cut all links with gangster syndicates and with politicians of the openly bourgeois parties who pretend to be "friends of labour".

 

Nor are we trade union fetishists. Trade union organisations, by their very nature, must seek to unite the broadest layers. They are heterogeneous, including backward as well as advanced workers. They cannot therefore replace the politically selected vanguard-the revolutionary party. Unlike syndicalists or industrial unionists we do not see the unions as ends in themselves or as substitutes for the party and for workers' councils. Only the party can represent the strategic interests of the entire proletariat. Only the party can channel the many rivers through which the class struggle flows towards the defeat of the capitalist system itself. Trade unions, even ones led by revolutionaries, are but one of the many instruments for achieving our end-the socialist revolution. Only the triumph of the party and its programme in the unions, as in all other mass organisations of struggle, can guarantee a lasting victory for the proletariat against the profit system.

 

Workers' control and factory committees

 

The system of capitalist exploitation requires that the bosses control every aspect of the production process. The search for higher productivity and profits endangers safety, erodes health and intensifies exploitation. Increasingly, therefore, the working class is obliged to counter capitalist control with workers' control so that even basic and partial demands are met. For this reason the revolutionary vanguard places the struggle for workers' control at the centre of its propaganda and agitation. Against capitalist exploitation we fight for workers' control of production. In essence this means that we exercise the right of veto over the plans and actions of the bosses in every aspect of production, from the most basic level (speed of work, rights to breaks) to the higher level of factory administration itself (numbers employed, wages paid, production engaged in). We reject, categorically, the thousand and one schemes for worker participation that are advanced to try and incorporate the working ?ass into the machinations of capitalism. These aim to seduce the workers into taking responsibility for the failings of capitalist production. They are designed to secure agreement for attacks on jobs, wages and conditions. Workers' control at the factory level is incomplete if it is not extended to capitalist production as a whole. The capitalists keep their books and accounts a closely guarded secret from the workers (though not from each other). By these means they cheat and manipulate the working class. Against the mud of business secrecy, therefore, we fight for the opening of all the books and ledgers of the capitalist class-its firms and companies, its banks, its state-to the inspection of the workers themselves. The purpose of such control is not to concede defeat if this or that company reveals itself to be genuinely bankrupt. The pain of individual capitalists is not our fault. Nor is it our concern. No, the abolition of business secrecy is designed to expose the bankruptcy of the capitalist system as a whole, its dishonesty and mismanagement of the economy, its parasitism, its tendency to squander the wealth that workers create, and its grossly inequitable methods of distributing that wealth.

 

However, the greatly increased application of science and technology to production since 1945, demands still further-reaching forms of workers' control. Because science and technology are organised by capital the purpose and the consequences of the 'introduction of new technologies become ever more hidden from the workforce. They get to know about them only through rationalisation, work hazards, intensification of work or through their disastrous effects on the environment. The question of workers' control over technical and scientific planning of the state and business can even become a question of immediate survival, not only for the workforce but also for the surrounding community. This has been demonstrated time and again from Bhopal to Chernobyl. Workers' control over the technical and scientific apparatus, however, means the workers overcoming the division between manual and mental work. Success along this road will enable technical and scientific workers to be won to workers' control committees operating in co-operation with the factory floor workers.

 

The tendencies towards increased state regulation of industry in the epoch of imperialism have led various reformists and centrists to advance schemes for alternative production within capitalism. Workers have even been called upon to "manage" certain enterprises under the auspices of reformist or nationalist governments. Alternative planning under capitalism is a utopia. Of course in deep economic and social crises we advance a plan of action for a revolutionary workers' government as a solution to the crisis. But even the most elementary plan, if it is to make headway against capitalist chaos and sabotage, must be grounded in workers' control of production on a nationwide scale. To dislocate such a plan from a revolutionary struggle for workers' control, to advocate workers' management on the terrain of capitalist society, is to play the role of meek advisers to the bankrupt capitalist system. Workers' control is not a means to achieve the socialist planned economy by stealth. It must rather fuel the revolutionary struggle for power in society as a whole and so serve as a pre-requisite for workers' management once the revolution has triumphed.

 

Reformist led trade unions are at best only partially suited to exercising workers' control of production. Craft divisions within the factories, often reflected in, and reinforced by, craft based union organisations, limit the ability of those unions to exercise control of production. Apart from special ad hoc control commissions established for specific purposes, the best form of organisation for conducting the struggle for workers' control is the factory committee. By organising all the workers in a factory regardless of trade, shop, union affiliation or membership, the factory committee is able to unite the whole workforce, direct it towards a daily struggle for control and challenge the power of the boardroom. Moreover, it can playa role in the struggle to transform the unions themselves into class struggle industrial unions. The factory committee must be based on direct democracy, with delegates who are recallable and in daily contact with the workers elected by shop and mass meetings.

 

As "unofficial" bodies the factory committees will be attacked and sabotaged by the bosses and bureaucrats alike. The real reason for this hostility is their potential as fighting organs of the proletariat. They represent-as the factory occupation does-a challenge to management's right to manage, to the sacrosanct nature of private property and to the power of the union "officials" over the workers. They establish a regime of dual power in the factory and their presence demands an answer to the question-who rules the factory, the workers or the bosses? As such they are characteristic of intense periods of class warfare. And, just as dual Power in society cannot last for a protracted period, nor can it in the factory. The factory committee is compelled to advance, ever more consciously, in the fight for workers' control. If it does not it risks either disintegration or incorporation. In Germany and Austria after the First World War factory committees arose as organs of struggle. However, the defeat of the revolutions in those countries led to the transformation of these committees into organs collaboration with the bosses. These committees are used by the union bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie as pillars of social peace. This experience demonstrates precisely the danger of incorporation if the factory committee fails to develop in a revolutionary direction. Where they do not exist the factory committees must be built from the outset as organs of workers' control. Where they exist as organs of bureaucratic control they must be totally transformed so that they can perform this function.

 

Defend the environment through workers' control!

 

All modes of production have resulted in disturbance of the environment but the imperialist epoch of capitalism has made possible damage on a qualitatively new scale. The capitalist mode of production has created an environmental problem which embraces both physical damage (to living organisms, ecosystems, and the ozone layer) and its consequent social and psychological effects on human beings (disease, starvation, mental stress). The combination of scientific and technological advance has created the potential of abundance for all of humanity. However, continued private ownership of the means of production in the context of a world dominated by the imperialist powers has created a fourfold threat to humanity. Nuclear war threatens the complete destruction of humanity; the regenerative capacity of the natural environment is jeopardised by the reckless destruction of vital components of the ecological system; the population itself is threatened by the inadequately controlled application of dangerous substances and processes; the social consequences of imperialism's world wide division of labour starves millions and turns urbanisation into an environmental hazard in its own right.

 

In the degenerate(d) workers' states similar consequences have been created by the rule of a bureaucratic caste. This caste resorts to methods of production which are geared to maximising output in the short term. The long term impact on the environment is discounted. Like the bourgeoisie the bureaucracy has developed science but is indifferent to its consequences for the living conditions of the masses and therefore of the effects of the application of that science to production. Here too fundamental progress requires the overthrow of the ruling power.

 

Although it has been the proletariat and the peasantry that have suffered most from capitalism's destructive capacities, the present threat was recognised on a large scale first by sections of the petit bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia of the imperialist countries. Since the second half of the 1970s, for example, in the Federal Republic of Germany and in Austria, but later also in France and Italy, single issue campaigns have multiplied and finally come together into a broad ecology movement. These movements were primarily of the petit bourgeoisie. For the first time their neighbourhoods, their children, their health were put at risk and, given their social and cultural advantages, they were able to make the environment a political issue; some even highlighted the effects on the semi colonial countries. The politics of this petit bourgeois layer were limited but progressive in that they posed the problem of environmental destruction in a systematic form. They undertook mass mobilisations and as a result the ecology question had an a impact on popular consciousness for the first time. Moreover they were successful in involving significant numbers of qualified and well paid workers. The mainly utopian, even explicitly reactionary, answers that they gave do not alter the progressive role that they played, given that the reformist dominated workers' organisations stood complacently on the side of their bourgeoisies on this question.

 

At the same time the solutions proposed by the environmentalists, reflecting the social positions of the petit bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, did not challenge the rule of private property in the means of production or the bourgeois state. The strategies and tactics proposed, apart from often being ineffectual, were also diversions from the necessary task of mobilising the social and economic power of the working class. However, where these movements initiate mobilisations for objectives which defend or advance working class interests then common actions between the working class and its organisations and these petit bourgeois movements are possible. Our aim in this is to win the most advanced elements to a proletarian orientation and, thus, to split the petit bourgeois movement.

 

The working class has a vital interest in combating imperialism's endangering of the environment. Throughout its history it has fought to stop dangerous production methods and impose safety standards on the capitalists as a whole. Through forcing legislation on the ruling class it has made gains in these areas, helping to create a habitable environment in which to live. This struggle, while it continues and must intensify, cannot be irreversibly successful without the overthrow of capitalism. The most successful methods of struggle, even for immediate improvements, are the methods of the class struggle-local, national and international.

 

Despite the frequent complacency of the existing leadership of the trade unions, it is vital that the fight to impose working class solutions to the environmental question be taken into the mass organisations of the working class. This is an integral part of the struggle to wrench leadership of the trade unions away from the reformists. To ensure that workers ha' access to independent expert advice, we demand the formation of advise commissions on environmental and safety matters within the union!

 

Against dangerous processes and practices within plants we fight £ factory committees and trade unions to impose a veto and to oversee t] introduction, at the expense of profits, of safer technology or working, conditions. Where the danger extends beyond the plant we are for dire action involving the workers in the plant and the local community, with the aim of forcing the government to impose the use of safer method and materials. Wherever the bosses or their state deny danger or the economic viability in defence of dangerous plants we call for the open of all relevant accounts and records to workers' inspection. We reject the demand for the immediate closure of all nuclear power stations. That do not mean that we ignore the dangers created by nuclear power station Against the demand for immediate closure we counter pose the demand for inspection by the workers or their chosen representatives. The revolutionary party does not prejudge the decision of such a scientific enquiry. Where either a workers' enquiry or a labour movement commission recommends closure, or in the face of acute or immediate danger. We rely on the mobilisation of the working class to demand and enforce closure. In such cases we demand the defence of the living standards the workforce by the state.

 

We fight for workers' control over research and planning within the technical scientific institutions of companies and the state. This" involve revealing the full nature of research and development propos: and formulating health and safety demands in relation to them. It also mean devising other research objectives in the context of a programme of useful public works.

 

The environmental question for the working class is not only preventative struggle. Much damage has already been done and must repaired. We demand that within programmes of public works restoration of the environment be given a high priority. The provision of adequate sanitation and reliable drinking water in shanty towns is a burning need for millions. Integrated regional rehabilitation programmes in areas desertification are essential now in large areas of Africa. Resources need to be directed at the construction of river and sea defences in the monsoon regions. For all these programmes the bourgeoisie should be made to undertake the necessary repairs.

 

Many dangers cannot be counteracted at the level of plan t modification or closure. Atmospheric and marine pollution, the destruction of entire eco-systems by deforestation or by mono-culture, or the complete exhaustion of natural resources, are often international phenomena even if their effects are more noticeable in some countries before others. At the national and international level we are in favour of establishing legal safeguards for the environment-but we fight for them by the methods of proletarian class struggle and we place no trust in the imperialists' international agencies to police such standards even when established. None of these demands may be made permanent without the seizure of political and economic control by the working class from the capitalists and the establishment of democratically managed international planning. Only along this road will it be possible to move towards the eradication of the conflict between town and country and harmonise human production with nature.

 

Expropriation and nationalisation

 

The socialist programme is for the complete expropriation of the capitalist class, the destruction of their state and the establishment of workers' power. In the imperialist epoch a whole series of state capitalist nationalisations have been carried through either by "consensus" conservative and reformist governments in the imperialist nations or, in the semi colonies, by nationalist governments.

 

In the former, state capitalist nationalisations are generally favours to the capitalist class as whole. They ensure the survival of essential that are too unprofitable for individual capitalists to maintain. They usually provide products and services for other branches of the economy at cheap rates. They are also the means of bailing out bankrupt mismanagers who receive lavish compensation for their incompetence.

 

In the semi-colonies nationalisation has been a method whereby a weak or embryonic bourgeois class has gathered together the resources for capital accumulation formerly in the hands of imperialism. It has been essential for the growth of a national bourgeoisie. However, while this or that nationalisation may strike a blow against imperialism (Nasser in Egypt, the nationalisation of copper mining by Allende in Chile) and may represent concessions to the masses, it does not result in the expropriation of capitalism. Rather the rule of the capitalist class as a whole in a given sector, or sectors, of the economy is exercised by the capitalist state. Nationalisation dupes the masses into thinking that this or that part of the economy is "theirs", whereas in fact it is a deceitful method of managing capitalism, not a method of overthrowing it. At the same time the workers in the state capitalist enterprises are prevented from exercising any control over production.

 

Where the workers are called upon to co-manage, it is generally to save the skin of the enterprise or of the bourgeois regime that has carried through the nationalisation and finds itself, temporarily at least, in conflict with imperialism (Mexico in the 1930s, Bolivia in the 1950s). The same is true for worker-management "buy-outs" of ailing industries or plants. Here the workers, often in the guise of "co-operatives", engage in self exploitation; to maintain employment they are forced to ruthlessly hold back or cut wages. When these nationalised sectors are profitable again the capitalist state will have no compunction in handing back to the private capitalist the once nationalised enterprises at bargain prices (Egypt under Sadat, Britain under Thatcher) and the reformists and nationalists will not do anything serious to obstruct such handovers.

 

When the bosses engage in privatisation projects we recognise, despite our criticism of bourgeois nationalisations, that privatisation is a regressive step carried through at the expense of the working class. The working class is forced to pay for privatisations directly, through loss of jobs and often through wage cuts. General social benefits, union organisation and negotiating rights are the victims of privatisation. The working class paid for these measures indirectly too, since the taxes it has surrendered to the state paid for the nationalisations in the first place. When these firms are sold off the working class, unlike the old bosses, receives no compensation from the new private owners. And, at a more general level, the tasks of the transition to socialism are rendered more difficult by the existence of privatised companies.

 

While we do not regard nationalised industries as socialist we do recognise that their centralisation, in the hands of the state, will be a marked advantage for the workers' state during the period of transition.

 

We demand of the reformists and nationalists who claim to oppose capitalism and imperialism that, in government, they re-nationalise all privatised industries with no compensation and under workers' control.

 

Against reformist and nationalist claptrap we advance the slogan of expropriation. To destroy the economic domination of the capitalist class the working class needs political power. Nevertheless where the bosses try to close down a plant or even an industry we argue for expropriation under workers' control and with no compensation to the bosses. A nationalisation carried out on such a basis forces the bosses as a whole to pay, through the state, for the crisis of their system. Nor do we shrink from the call to expropriate whole sectors of industry and of the key utilities (transport, fuel and water production) as a means of combating the anarchy of capitalist production. Every gain made by the workers in forcing through such expropriation poses to them the need for the expropriation of further sectors of the economy, to prevent those industries seized by the workers from being sabotaged by the capitalists. To break the monopoly the big capitalists exercise over information and propaganda through their so-called free press, we advance the slogan of the nationalisation of the newspapers, the television companies and the other media, under workers' control and with no compensation to the media magnates. Far from preventing a free press, such a measure would enable the workers to end the capitalists' ability to spread lies, attack workers in struggle and make filthy propaganda perpetrating sexism, racism and heterosexism. At the same time we defend the right of the workers' organisations and their political parties to organise their own press independent of state control.

 

Although the strategic aim of the working class is the expropriation of all capital, the working class must take account of the tactical importance of neutralising certain small capitalists and petit bourgeois proprietors. For this reason this layer, often numerically very important in the semi-colonies, should be relieved of their onerous debts towards finance capital. The expropriation of capital, whether small or large, in a young workers' state is decided upon by the rhythm of the class struggle within the country and internationally, and by the degree of expropriation required at any given moment to break capitalist resistance and ensure the development of the economy. Similarly, compensation can be paid to expropriated small capitalists and petit bourgeois investors where possible, if this helps neutralise these social layers.

 

Expropriation of a branch of industry places the workers in conflict with those who control the flow of money and credit-the banks and finance houses. Against the sabotage of these parasites, whose economic regime ruins not only the workers but also section of the petit bourgeoisie and the peasantry, we advance the slogan for the expropriation of the banks and finance houses. Only thus can credit for the peasants be made cheap. Only thus can the account ledgers of society be opened to the watchful eyes of the workers. Only thus can the debts piled up in numerous oppressed countries be repudiated without the risk of immediate internal economic dislocation. And only thus can steps to end the scourge of hyper-inflation be taken by the masses. Workers' control of the banks and finance houses will ensure that the small savers, the working class home owners, the small farmers, and the peasants are not squeezed dry by rapacious financiers.

 

Expropriations of branches of industry and of the banks and finance houses is transitional to the complete economic liquidation of the capitalist class. Only then will real planning be possible, that is, production geared to the fulfilment of human need, not profit. Disproportions between branches of industry, endemic to the system of private ownership of the means of production, will be ended in progressive fashion. So too will the society in which constant over-production stands alongside unfulfilled need because useful goods must remain unsold if they cannot realise a profit. However, the expropriation of the capitalist class will provide the basis for socialist planning only if state power passes completely from the hands of the capitalists and the Stalinist bureaucrats into the hands of the workers.

 

From picket line defence to the workers' militia

 

All decisive conflicts in history have ultimately been settled by force of arms. The reformists who bleat about a peaceful road to socialism are either naive fools, unaware of how history is made, or cynical servants of the bourgeoisie. No ruling class has ever departed from the scene of history without a fight. The proletariat is the only class in history whose interests lie in the abolition of all classes. To achieve this it must establish its dictatorship over the exploiters through an armed insurrection. The preparation of the working class for that insurrection passes through a series of demands and actions, all focused on the defence of workers in struggle and the destabilisation and destruction of the forces of the capitalist state.

 

From the earliest days of capitalist society the working class has been met with violence at work when it has attempted to fight for its rights. In the face of such attacks it has developed its own means of defence the picket line. For this reason the bourgeois state tries to restrict it to an ineffective protest on the other hand workers who are serious about winning have tried to build the picket into a mass force capable of routing strike breakers, company thugs and state police alike. But no matter how large it is, the picket line is insufficient to ensure either its own total effectiveness or the proper defence of workers in struggle. The workers must organise their own defence in every struggle and, in so doing, lay the basis for the workers' militia.

 

The first step is the defence of the strike picket line, and of the factory or land occupation. Every time the workers and poor peasantry try to enforce their will they are met with repression. The agents of such repression vary according to place and circumstance. But whether the strike-breakers and their protectors are the police (Western Europe), the army (many of the semi-colonies), or paid gun-thugs and "national guardsmen" (the USA), their function is to physically smash the workers' picket line. In conditions of extreme crisis the bourgeoisie will resort to fascist gangs on the model of Mussolini’s black shirts or Hitler's brown shirts or to shadowy "death squads" linked to the armed forces in order to break the fighting strength of the working class.

 

The strike-breakers join the fray with confidence because they feel they have the full weight of the bourgeois state behind them. But their successes are in direct proportion to the lack of organisation inside the working class and poor peasantry. Special units of strikers, supported by the mass but specially drilled for the purpose of armed combat, can destroy this confidence and put the scab rabble to flight. Thus the picket line can be transformed from either a purely token gesture or a disorganised demonstration, into a disciplined and effective squadron of the working class army. Thus, too, can the first elements of a workers' militia be assembled. In all phases of this struggle we are for the mobilisation and training of proletarian women so that they can play a full part in the military organisations of the working class.

 

Of course building such organisation must be carried through with due care for the existing consciousness of the masses and their existing levels of organisation. In a strike or occupation, defence squads are required. Even in "peaceful" periods of the class struggle, using whatever means and organisations we can, we recognise the need to train young working class fighters for the battles ahead. But under no circumstances must the task be postponed. Delay will lead to defeat and defeat to the prolongation of class society.

 

For the break up of the armed might of the state

 

Alone, the workers' militia will not be able to smash the power of the bourgeois state. The armed forces of the ruling class will have to be broken from within as well as from without. As every revolutionary situation has shown, in a decisive showdown with the working class, sections of the armed forces (police, army, navy, air force) have wavered and broken with their capitalist masters.

 

The nature of the armed forces and police organisations differ in many pans of the globe. In general the police forces constitute the day to day repressive apparatus of the capitalist state. In emergencies, martial law situations and under military regimes the army will also play this direct repressive role. Everywhere, therefore, we oppose the utopian idea that these bodies of armed men/women can be democratised or transformed into a neutral force or ally of the working class. They must be smashed and replaced by a mass popular militia based on the workers and poor peasants.

 

However, the variation in composition and organisation of the armed forces (professional or conscript armies, poor peasant or proletarian recruits) requires different tactics to break them up. But all the tactics aim at destabilising and breaking the chain of command and discipline within them. To this end we prosecute the class struggle within the military. The officer corps constitutes the most irreformable and dedicated anti-working class vanguard of the ruling class. The workers must fight to organise the rank and file soldiers and the non-commissioned officers against the authority, the privileges and corruption of this caste. To guide this work we endeavour to build clandestine communist cells in the armed forces producing bulletins aimed at the rank and file.

 

As well as undermining discipline it is essential that communists support the legitimate grievances of the rank and file soldier. Only on such a basis can we hope to undermine the repressive role of the armed forces and win the rank and file to solidarise with the working class by, for example, refusing to attack demonstrations and pickets and refusing to torture prisoners. Therefore, we demand the right of rank and file soldiers and police to organise unions and political organisations, to circulate political literature and to strike.

 

Whilst it is not our duty to advocate better wages or conditions for the army or police of the capitalist state, we do support the struggles of the rank and file where these bring them into progressive conflict with the capitalist state. To this end we fight for an end to the barracks system and for the election of all officers by the rank and file. We fight for tribunals of the rank and file to try officers accused of brutality, corruption, plotting and reactionary coups. In pre-revolutionary situations we agitate for the soldiers to form councils and to send delegates to the local, regional and national workers' councils of the workers and peasants.

 

However, so long as the police, prison guards and army remain under the unbroken command of the bourgeois state there can be no question of admitting their unions or organisations into the ranks of the labour movement, including its national or local union federations.

 

In fighting for the destruction of the bourgeoisie's armed power we start from the maxim not a penny, not a person for this system. We condemn all workers' representatives who vote for military budgets or war credits under the pretext of the defence of the nation. From this it follows that we oppose the bourgeoisie's conscription of young workers into their armies. We oppose its introduction and its existence. But we do this not at all from the standpoint of pacifism. We are in favour of the right and opportunity of all to learn military skills and to bear arms. This includes the right of women to military training in bourgeois armies. Down with the capitalists' monopoly of the means of coercion! Military training should be organised in the workplace and in the working class communities, under trade union control and in conjunction with soldiers' committees.

 

We support the right of individuals to refuse to be conscripted into the armed forces, but to advocate such a step is an act of petit bourgeois pacifism. Revolutionary communists go into the armies where the workers are to be found and work for the revolution from within. Where mass movements exist against a reactionary imperialist war, but are under pacifist or reformist leadership, we give them critical support insofar as they obstruct or sabotage the war effort. But we insist that refusal to be enlisted will never deprive the bourgeoisie of its armed might.

 

Against bourgeois militarism, against imperialist war!

 

The proletariat is an international class which has no interest in defending the bourgeois nation state. In the imperialist countries workers must therefore be unswerving in their defeatism. The Leninist position developed during 1914-18 retains all its validity. Revolutionary defeatism is based on the principle that the main enemy of the working class is the bourgeoisie in it own country. The defeat of its "own" imperialist bourgeoisie, as a result of the revolutionary struggle of the working class for power, is a lesser evil than the victory of the ruling class as a result of class collaboration and the sacrificing of proletarian independence during the war. The social chauvinists, espousing social peace, will argue that during a war labour should bow to the needs of the "nation" by speeding up production and accepting legal restraints on the right to strike.

 

By contrast, we must fight for no working class participation in the war effort. The workers' organisations must turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Faced with a war against a semi-colony or a workers' state, workers must give solidarity and aid to the enemy of the imperialists. In a conflict with a workers' state, no matter how degenerated and whatever the military means involved in the conflict (nuclear, biological, chemical or conventional weapons), workers must defend them against imperialist attack.

 

Outside the imperialist countries generalised defeatism is not the correct method with regard to all conflicts. Concrete conditions will vary and the revolutionary vanguard will have to fight for defeatism or defencism depending primarily on the nature of the states conducting the war. Within a semi-colony or degenerate workers' state in conflict with imperialism the proletariat must have a defencist position. With regard to wars between semi-colonies (India-Pakistan) or between degenerate(d) workers' states (China-Vietnam), workers' should generally adopt a defeatist position on both sides unless it is the case that one combatant is a cat's-paw for imperialism and that the international proletariat will be strengthened by the victory of one side.

 

The proletariat does not defend the semi-colonies and workers' states by the same methods as the bourgeoisie or bureaucracy. The independent mobilisation of the working class is necessary to ensure international solidarity and the defeat of the imperialists. Even where an imperialist power is in a military alliance with a workers' state, the proletariat in that imperialist country retains a defeatist position and under no conditions should suspend the class struggle. Only where the continuation of a particular action in the class struggle directly hinders the war effort of the workers' state would the proletariat suspend its action. In no way, however, would such an exceptional case signal a suspension of the policy of defeatism in relation to the imperialist war and the capitalist class.

 

The existence of vast arsenals of nuclear warheads, of biological and of chemical weapons capable of destroying humanity several times over, rightly strikes fear into the hearts of millions. Posed with this threat, the reformists of Social Democracy and Stalinism preach to the working class about world disarmament and the banishing of war from the planet. The question is not an abstract one of disarmament, but who is to be disarmed and by what means? The bourgeoisie will never give up its arms, without a fight. It must be forcibly disarmed by the revolutionary proletariat. To attempt to unite the workers and sections of this same bourgeoisie in a disarmament campaign is to create illusions that the bosses can be persuaded to give up the weapons they have to defend their monopoly of the means of production. In fact the negotiated agreements between the imperialists and the degenerate(d) workers' states to reduce certain types of weapons go hand in hand with a new round of re-armament. As before the two world wars international peace conferences can be a prelude to war as each side engages in elaborate propaganda ploys to present the other as the enemy of peace.

 

However, wherever the pacifists lead sections of workers and the petit bourgeoisie into direct conflict which undermines the military programme of the ruling class revolutionaries participate in such actions, whilst making clear their complete opposition to the utopian politics of the pacifists and advancing our transitional programme of demands on war and militarism.

 

The bourgeoisie will never give up its arms, unless it is forcibly disarmed by the revolutionary proletariat. To attempt to unite the workers and sections of this same bourgeoisie in a disarmament campaign is to create illusions that the bosses can be persuaded to give up the weapons they have to defend their monopoly of the means of production.

 

In fact the negotiated agreements between the imperialists and the degenerate(d) workers' states to reduce certain types of weapons go hand in hand with a new round of re-armament. As before the two world wars international peace conferences can be a prelude to war as each side engages in elaborate propaganda ploys to present the other as the enemy of peace.

 

However, wherever the pacifists lead sections of workers and the petit bourgeoisie into direct conflict which undermines the military programme of the ruling class revolutionaries participate in such actions, whilst making clear their complete opposition to the utopian politics of the pacifists and advancing our transitional programme of demands on war and militarism.

 

The war industries are immensely profitable for the ruling class. We fight to expose their business secrets, to confiscate their military profits and to expropriate them under workers' control. As the bourgeoisie prepares for war money and people will be pumped into the armed forces. In opposition to their obscene armaments programme we demand a programme of useful public works.

 

Even in times where there is no global conflict, the imperialists construct pacts and treaties in defence of their own interests, backed by the threat of military intervention. We demand the end to imperialist pacts and treaties and an end to secret diplomacy. All treaties and agreements should be exposed and published.

 

We place demands on the reformist bourgeois workers' parties that when in government they carry through the following demands in the interests of the class they claim to represent. We demand that they withdraw from NATO, ANZUS, SEATO, oppose military budgets and refuse to use armed force against the workers or oppressed peoples.

 

They must support and encourage full democratic rights for soldiers, recognise the right to set up soldiers' committees and unions, support workers' inspection and control of barracks, abolish military conscription and recognise the right of workers to set up self-defence organisations.

 

We must use the progressive desire of the workers for peace to fight for such demands within the workers' movement, whilst constantly warning against the bankrupt strategy of pacifism. The only way of preventing the horrifying barbarism of a nuclear war is the international socialist revolution.

 

Bourgeois democracy and democratic demands

 

In the imperialist countries, as long as they can maintain social and economic stability, the favoured form of rule is bourgeois democracy. It is the specific form of rule that the bourgeoisie, in its revolutionary epoch, developed as a means of enlisting the support of the masses in the struggle against feudalism, and of consolidating itself politically against the feudal estates.

 

Through parliament a democratic façade is erected to disguise the actual dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. By means of parliamentary democracy the bourgeoisie throws sops to the working class, grants it the right to vote every so often and incorporates its leadership into the administration of the bourgeois state. Through the media and the press the capitalists have a powerful propaganda machine at their disposal capable, for whole periods, of deceiving the masses and tying them to the illusion that under this system the people rule.

 

But behind the facade lies the reality of capitalist state power--the executive, the unelected (or where it is elected the unaccountable) judiciary and bureaucracy, the police and the armed forces. When the capitalists feel that their property or their rule are challenged by the working class, the full force of the repressive apparatus is brought into play.

 

The reformists in the parliamentary talking shop look on powerlessly as the police and army smash through picket lines and as the judges imprison trade-unionists. Even when a reformist majority in parliament attempts to enact the most feeble reforms in the interests of the workers the state bureaucracy sabotages them, the economic magnates use their financial control to blackmail the reformists into meek obedience and, always, the armed and security services wait in the wings, ever prepared to act should things get out of the control of the bosses. And in every bourgeois democracy the potential instruments of Bonapartist rule are maintained in the shape of monarchies or presidents.

 

In imperialist South Africa the parliamentary form of rule exists only for the white minority. The mass of the population, the blacks, are denied the most elementary democratic rights and are ruled by a ruthless dictatorship. In circumstances such as these the struggle of the working class for democratic rights, even those associated with bourgeois democracy, can serve as the detonator for revolutionary struggle. But while such a revolution can begin as a democratic one its victory will require its transformation into a socialist revolution.

 

The strategic task of the revolutionary vanguard lies in the destruction of all forms of bourgeois rule, including the democratic form. To this end we strive to expose the parliamentary sham to the working class and build organisations of proletarian democracy. However, the legal rights extracted by the working class under bourgeois democracy have been won in struggle from the bosses and represent gains to be defended against attack from the capitalists.

 

The recurrent crises of the present period do indeed oblige the capitalists to attack the democratic rights won by the workers. In the imperialist epoch there is always a tendency towards the negation of bourgeois democracy and its replacement with Bonapartist, openly dictatorial forms of rule.

 

This tendency is becoming more acute, throughout the imperialist heartlands. Anti-union laws, the curtailment of freedom of speech, the ability to enact laws by circumventing parliament altogether, the strengthening of the repressive apparatus, all represent embryonic forms of Bonapartism. In all such cases revolutionaries fight to defend the basic rights won by the workers' movement under bourgeois democracy: the right to strike, to free speech, access to the media, the right to free assembly and to form unions.

 

Moreover, we defend parliamentary democracy when it is threatened by Bonapartism and where we are not yet capable of replacing it with proletarian democracy. We do so, not as an end in itself, but as a means of preserving the legal right of the working class to organise and prosecute its struggle against the exploiters.

 

We fight the "mini-apartheid" style restrictions on democratic rights that are placed on immigrant workers all over the world. These restrictions are a means of facilitating the super-exploitation of immigrant workers and dividing the working class of a particular country along racial or national lines.

 

Basing ourselves on the principles of revolutionary internationalism we fight for the right to the free movement of labour--against all immigration and emigration controls imposed by the imperialist states, for the right of all workers to full democratic rights, including the vote, in the country in which they live and work.

 

In the semi-colonies we oppose all immigration controls and fight for those democratic rights except in the case of colonial settlement. We are against all nationality legislation which serves as a means to persecute and oppress immigrant workers.

 

In the struggle to win or defend democratic rights the proletariat uses the methods of class struggle. The right to strike, for example, will be won or defended to the extent that the working class is prepared to use the strike action in the struggle.

 

Defiance of restrictions on our rights, a refusal to bow before capitalist class based laws, a preparedness to use all the working class' fighting organisations and methods of struggle on the political terrain, including in the struggle for suffrage--these are the methods necessary to ensure that the working class gain from struggles over democracy. As in all struggles the sacrificing of the independent interests of the working class in the interests of unity with "progressive" or "democratic" bourgeois forces will be fatal for the proletariat and its struggle for socialist revolution.

 

Under conditions of deep social crisis the bourgeoisie can use a fascist movement in order to maintain their rule against the working class. Fascism, a reactionary mass movement mainly recruited from the ranks of a petit bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat made desperate by the crisis of capitalism, has as its goal the destruction of the independent workers' movement and the establishment of the rule of finance capital unfettered by any elements of bourgeois democracy whatsoever.

 

It is a last resort for the bourgeoisie since it involves the suppression of its own parliamentary representatives. As Nazi Germany and Musolini's Italy show, it is a measure that will be taken if the situation demands it.

 

In the semi-colonial countries fascism can develop as a movement arising out of communalist conflicts or out of reactionary clerical movements. The phraseology of such movements can sometimes be anti-imperialist. But this should not blind us to the anti-communist, anti-working class nature of such movements.

 

This rhetoric is in the same mould as the demagogic "anti-capitalism" of the Nazis. With the triumph of communalism or clerical fascism in the semi-colonies the rule of imperialism wil remain intact or even strengthened.

 

From the moment that fascism emerges the working class must wage a merciless struggle to smash it. Even when it conceals its more general aims and concentrates on spreading the poisonous fumes of race hatred, the workers' united front must be organised to fight it. No democratic rights at all can be accorded to the fascists.

 

However, we do not raise the demand for them to be banned by the bourgeois state. The bourgeoisie cannot be entrusted with this task since they are the ultimate backers of the fascists. The state will in fact use bans to disarm and hamper resistance to fascism. The revolutionary vanguard mobilises the working class around the slogans: no platform for fascists, drive the fascists out of the workers' organisations.

 

We strive to physically confront their every mobilisation and organise workers' defence units to combat fascist attacks on the racially oppressed and the workers' movement.

 

The struggle to defend the democratic rights of the workers and to combat fascism does not in any way form a separate and distinct series of tasks from the transitional programme as whole. The struggle against Bonapartism and fascism will only be finally won through the realisation of the programme of transitional demands in its entirety.

 

Electoral tactics

 

Parliaments and elections cannot transfer power to the working class. It is the duty of revolutionaries to expose mercilessly all parliamentary cretinism while not yielding to the anti-electoral cretinism of the anarchists. Revolutionaries use parliaments as a tribune for addressing the masses. They give an opportunity to present the essentials of the communist action programme in a popular propaganda form.

 

The best method of doing so is to stand candidates of the revolutionary party on its programme. But if a revolutionary candidacy is impossible then it is possible to advance critical support to a reformist or centrist party that has the allegiance of a sizeable sector of the proletarian vanguard or the popular masses in general.

 

The purpose of the vote is to say to these layers--we will vote for your party, despite our total lack of confidence in its leaders and its programme, in order to help you put it to the test of action, in and out of government office. We call on you to fight to force your leaders to carry out measures clearly in the interests of the workers, to break with the bourgeoisie. This tactic requires revolutionaries to present their full criticism of reformism and centrism, of parliamentarism as well as of the record of betrayal of the given party.

 

Where only alien class parties or hopelessly insignificant reformist or centrist sects appear at the polls, we are obliged to call for a blank vote by the class conscious workers. This should not be confused with a boycott of the elections which is permissible as a tactic only when the workers' mass revolutionary struggle poses, as an immediate perspective, the overthrow of parliament.

 

The workers' and peasants' government and proletarian dictatorship

 

The strategic goal of the proletariat's struggle is the transition to communism. To effect that transition the proletariat must establish its own dictatorship. Having conquered state power the proletariat cannot immediately abandon it as the anarchists believe. On a national and international level the bourgeoisie will plot its counter-revolution.

 

To crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to protect the revolution, the working class is obliged to enforce its will over the whole of society. It openly exercises its class dictatorship on the basis of its own, distinctively proletarian, democracy (workers' councils, factory committees, the workers' militia). It centralises this democracy in a national government, a revolutionary workers' or workers' and peasants' government. The only consistently revolutionary workers' or workers' and peasants' government is that which exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

However, in the transitional epoch crises arise that pose the question of power to the proletariat before it has been won in its majority to the revolutionary party. In these situations the working class has naturally looked to its existing leaderships to enact a programme in its interests while in government.

 

It was under such circumstances that the Bolsheviks utilised, and the Commintern developed, the slogan of the workers' and the workers' and peasants' government. The essence of the Bolshevik tactic in relation to the Provisional Government was to demand of the petit bourgeois leaders of the workers (Mensheviks) and the peasants (Social Revolutionaries) that they break with the bourgeoisie and enter on the road of struggle for a real workers' and peasants' government.

 

Revolutionaries demand, not only a formal break with the bourgeois parties in government, but that the workers' leaders take immediate measures to solve the crisis at the expense of the bourgeoisie. This must involve the immediate expropriation of imperialist holdings and the big capitalists under workers' control, the seizure of the big estates, the immediate arming of the workers' organisations and the disarming of the bourgeois counter-revolution.

 

It must dismantle all of the repressive state forces used against the workers' and peasants' organisations and recognise the authority of all the organisations of workers' and peasants' democracy. On the road to such a government the working class offers its revolutionary aid against the attacks of the imperialists and the bourgeoisie, while maintaining its independence and taking no political responsibility for it as long as its majority consists of non-revolutionaries.

 

The experience of 1917 has shown that the refusal of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries to follow such a course was not an aberration. All subsequent experience confirms this. Either through the popular front or through bourgeois workers' governments, the existing leaders of the workers and peasants will do their utmost to salvage capitalism from the ruins. Events in Spain and France during the 1930s, in Bolivia in the 1950s and 1980s, and in Nicaragua today testify to this fact.

 

Modern day centrists have followed the Stalinists in opportunistically distorting the slogan of a workers' and peasants' government. While the Stalinists revived Lenin's abandoned formula of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" in the 1920s, declaring it to be a necessary bourgeois stage in the revolution, the latter day United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) does the same to Trotsky's formula of the "workers' and peasants' government".

 

In Algeria and Nicaragua petit bourgeois nationalist governments which had made no moves to break with the bourgeoisie were declared "revolutionary workers' and peasants' governments" worthy of political support.

 

The designation of governments of the workers' parties (Social Democrats and Stalinists) as "workers' governments" by various strands of centrist "Trotskyism" (the Lambertists in France and Portugal in the 1970s and 1980s) is a further deceitful and opportunist use of the slogan. Only when a government of the workers' parties is forced into a real struggle against the bourgeois order by the masses and obliged to base itself upon the mass organisations up to and including arming them, can it be regarded as a revolutionary workers' government.

 

Despite the chronic opportunist distortion of this slogan it remains a vital weapon for educating and preparing the masses for power. We use it to place demands on the workers' leaders, to expose to the rank and file their leaders' refusal to break with the bourgeoisie. It provides the possibility of splitting the reformist and petit bourgeois nationalist parties, winning the rank and file and the best leaders to a real fight against capitalism and imperialism.

 

Because each crisis situation differs and throws different leaderships to the fore, the slogan is necessarily algebraic. That is, the actual composition of such a government cannot be declared as fixed in advance of an actual struggle. If a workers' government that was other than the direct dictatorship of the proletariat came into existence, it would merely be a government of civil war against the bourgeoisie.

 

It would either have to retreat in the face of the bourgeoisie or prove itself a temporary bridge to that dictatorship. In no sense is the workers' government, in a united front form, a necessary historical stage that has to be gone through prior to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

Trotsky in his Transitional Programme posited the theoretical possibility that in an exceptional revolutionary crisis the traditional leaderships might be pushed into going further than they wished, breaking with the bourgeoisie and establishing a workers' government. History has indeed proved this possibility in practice several times, but always with a counter-revolutionary outcome. In exceptional circumstances in Eastern Europe, China, Indo-China and Cuba, the Stalinists did overthrow capitalism. The agencies of these social overturns were bureaucratic workers' governments They had nothing in common with a revolutionary workers' government which opens the road to the struggle for socialism.

 

While the bureaucratic workers' government liquidated capitalism it did so in a counter-revolutionary fashion, by at the same time strangling all independent organs of workers' democracy and establishing its caste rule.

 

The task of the proletariat in such circumstances is not to call a halt to the expropriation of the capitalists but to fight against the bureaucratic fashion in which it is being carried out. By placing to the fore the struggle for proletarian democracy, by demanding of the Stalinists that they recognise the regime of workers' control in the factories, by demanding the arming of the masses and the dissolution of the Stalinist controlled security forces, the masses can be organised to continue the process of expropriation but defeat the planned counter-revolutionary outcome: the creation of a degenerate workers' state which blocks the road to socialism.

 

Workers' councils and the struggle for working class power

 

The crowning slogan of the Transitional Programme is the slogan of soviets, or workers' councils. If the factory committee is the organ of dual power in the factory, then the workers' council, coordinated on a national basis, is the organ of dual power in society as a whole. As such real workers' councils on a local and national basis arise when society enters a revolutionary crisis, when the masses outgrow the confines of their traditional organisations and turn to revolutionary forms of struggle and organisation.

 

A revolutionary crisis exists when society reaches an impasse: the bourgeoisie is divided and stricken by governmental crises, the masses refuse to tolerate the old regime and repeatedly demonstrate their will to sacrifice all to defeat it.

 

Throughout the history of capitalism there have been a series of revolutionary periods, consisting of an extended series of economic and political crises which were resolved only when a fundamental defeat had been inflicted on one of the contending classes. Thereafter a radically new economic and political relationship of forces allowed for the stabilisation and further development of capitalism. Periods of revolutionary crisis embrace one country, a continent or the whole globe. They vary in longevity and depth, with the most severe being related to wars, successful revolutions or counter-revolutions.

 

A revolutionary period can consist of several shorter phases, or situations. A pre-revolutionary situation exists when a profound economic crisis induces massive inflation (or deflation), unemployment and bankruptcies. Through these catastrophes the moribund nature of the capitalist system is exposed to millions. A pre-revolutionary situation may also arise from military defeat, as in Russia during 1905.

 

Such situations of crisis tend to produce a political crisis, forcing the bourgeoisie to resort either to more authoritarian methods of rule, or to co-opt the workers' leaders into solving the crisis at the expense of the working class. Divisions within the ruling class over which course to take give an added impulse to the proletariat to embark on more and more militant, generalised and political forms of struggle. A revolutionary situation emerges.

 

In a pre-revolutionary situation the tasks of the revolutionary party centre on posing the most generalised slogans of political class struggle (general strike, workers' self-defence, the building of embryonic workers' councils such as councils of action, strike committees, united front committees). In a revolutionary situation it is essential to transform them into fully-formed workers' councils: the direct struggle for power can be postponed no longer.

 

Should the working class fail to make a victorious revolution then the counter-revolution will triumph either in the form of a dictatorship (fascist or bonapartist) over the working class and its allies or in the more limited form of the 'democratic counter-revolution. The latter leaves a bourgeois democratic constitution more or less in operation but subjects the revolutionary vanguard to military, police and judicial terror.

 

These counter-revolutions clearly terminate the revolutionary period. What ensues may prove to be a long counter-revolutionary period such as followed the defeat of the German workers in 1933 or the Chilean workers in 1973. On the other hand if a fundamental relaxation of the economic and political crisis occurs then a non-revolutionary period, a period of social stabilisation may occur.

 

However, where the fundamental contradictions giving rise to revolution persist and where the working class has not suffered a historic defeat then an inter-revolutionary period may open before battle is joined again between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The recognition of these changes of period can be critical to the growth or even the survival of a revolutionary party. It is essential to adopt the appropriate defensive or offensive, legal or illegal tactics and methods of organization.

 

Russia February 1917, Germany 1918, Spain in the 1930s and many other examples demonstrate that if the proletariat succeeds in establishing its own armed power but without simultaneously totally smashing the armed power of the bourgeoisie, then a situation of dual power comes into existence in which two regimes of different classes confront each other. This dual power situation is inherently unstable.

 

It can only exist for any length of time if the armed power of the workers is strong and the bourgeoisie has lost control over substantial sectors of its own armed forces and fears the final confrontation. Alternately, dual power can endure for some time if the proletariat's reformist or centrist leadership dithers and vacillates when confronted with the task of leading the struggle towards a final showdown.

 

Such forces inside the workers' movement either seek to dissolve dual power in favour of the "legitimate" (bourgeois) state or to create a permanent dual power state. This schema which seeks to create a hybrid state of parliament alongside workers' councils always ends in failure (Germany 1918-1923) since it tries to reconcile the unreconcilable. The attempts by left reformists or centrists to "combine" workers' councils with parliamentary democracy are simply ways of demobilising the revolutionary struggle of the masses.

 

A dual power situation, whilst it is a mighty step forward compared to the uncontested rule of the bourgeoisie, is not an inevitable stage nor a strategic objective in and of itself. Our objective is the total destruction of the bourgeois state, and we strive to replace dual power with the proletarian dictatorship established through the armed insurrection.

 

This goal can only be achieved if the revolutionary party wins leadership of the workers' councils. Only then can counter-revolution be defeated and the slogan of "all power to the workers' councils" actually be realised.

 

Embryonic workers' councils can emerge in many different forms--from revolutionised trade unions, from factory committees, or from action councils built around particular struggles. However, while we do not fetishise the question of form, we do insist that there is no substitute for organs of struggle that express the essence of the workers' council.

 

We seek to develop and direct the differing forms of embryonic workers' council to become actual workers' councils. Factory committees and unions, no matter how radical, cannot in themselves serve as workers' councils. The reasons for this are embedded in the very nature of workers' councils themselves.

 

Workers' councils are not factory or industry specific. Indeed they are vital means of organising and winning to the side of the proletariat sections of society such as the poor peasantry and the rank and file soldiers. All of those engaged in struggle are represented in such councils. They are made up of delegates from the factories, the unions, all the workplaces, the working class districts, the peasant committees, the workers' parties.

 

They break down sectional barriers and put fighting class-wide unity in their place. They have a territorial character drawing in all of the exploited and oppressed within a town or region. Through regular elections and recallability the most democratic form of representative organisation of the toilers in history is created. Free from pre-existing bureaucratic apparatuses they are immediately sensitive to the changes in mood, political outlook and militancy of the masses. Workers' councils are the surest means for deciding the actual will of the struggling proletariat.

 

Because of these features workers' councils are uniquely suited to revolutionary struggle. In periods of social peace the workers' council cannot be a durable organisation. It lives and breathes through daily combat with the bourgeoisie, checking its every move, organising resistance to its every attack, struggling for the interests of the masses it represents and raising the fighting confidence of the masses with every success achieved. No other form of organisation is as flexible as the workers' council in carrying through the tactical manoeuvres required in the revolutionary struggle with the bourgeoisie.

 

Last but by no means least, workers' councils are the administrative base of the future workers' state. They are organs of working class power. Likewise the workers' militia will be transformed from the tool of insurrection to a bastion for the defence of the workers' state against counter-revolution. Every revolutionary situation has proved that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the existing state machinery and use it to build socialism.

 

New proletarian organisations must take the place of the capitalist state. The workers' councils, which in a dual power situation are obliged to exercise control over production, public life and distribution, are ideally suited to the task of running the workers' state. They are both revolutionary instruments in the struggle for power and revolutionary organs of power. No one yet has invented a form of organisation superior to them for these purposes. Attempts to find substitutes for workers' councils invariably lead to opportunist errors.

 

The insurrection

 

The task of the revolutionary party in the workers' councils is to channel all struggles towards the goal of smashing the capitalist state. To realise this goal the general strike and the armed insurrection are key weapons. Insurrections have proven successful without a general strike (as in Petrograd, October 1917), but the general strike is under many circumstances a key revolutionary method of struggle since it paralyses the entire functioning of the capitalist enemy and its state.

 

It poses the question: who rules society, the bosses who own it, or the workers who run it? It places the struggle for power at the top of the agenda. But in itself a mass withdrawal of labour cannot answer the question, who rules? Therefore a general strike must prepare the way for the armed insurrection.

 

History shows that the proletariat can only deprive the bourgeoisie of state power by violent means. Of course, the amount of force needed will vary according to the balance of forces on the eve of the insurrection. It will particularly depend on the extent to which the armed forces have been won to the side of the proletariat. The working class must, however, count on meeting the maximum resistance from the bosses and must therefore maximise its own forces to counter and destroy this resistance.

 

Clearly, without a revolutionary situation in which the masses stand fully behind the revolutionary party, an insurrection led by a revolutionary minority will be an adventurist putsch and will lead to setbacks for the revolutionary struggle. The party must have won over the majority of the organised workers of the major cities and towns if the new regime established by the insurrection is to be stable and permanent.

 

Insurrections have, historically, occurred in two forms. First the "February revolution" (France 1848, Russia 1917): spontaneous mass insurrections against dictatorial regimes where no dominant conscious revolutionary party leads the masses. Here the outcome can be a democratic bourgeois regime, a dual power situation or, in rare and exceptional circumstances, a Paris Commune type triumph of the workers under a leadership that either does not wish to hold power or does not know how to consolidate or extend it.

 

The attitude of the revolutionary minority to such a spontaneous uprising is to participate fully in it, seeking to give it conscious leadership, especially through the fight for workers' councils and a revolutionary workers' and peasants' government based on them.

 

The other type of insurrection is the conscious, planned forcible transfer of state power to the proletariat on the model of the October Revolution in Russia. The carrying through of the insurrection is a technical task which demands conspiratorial planning. The workers' councils have to be won to the goal of insurrection and the workers' militia and the pro-working class regiments are the means of carrying through the rising. But the revolutionary party alone can provide the general staff to direct that rising.

 

While the party can utilise the aid of the non-commissioned officers the command of such officers must always be restricted to military actions, monitored by elected company and regimental committees. The seizure of the key installations, the organisation of the new regime's defence, the distribution of arms and the allocation of proletarian insurgents cannot be left to the spontaneity of the masses or "enlightened officers".

 

The party is decisive in coordinating this action. But on the morrow of a successful insurrection the rewards of such preparation will be clear: the smashing of the capitalist state and the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship on the basis of workers' council power.

 

 

 

Chapter 4 - Strategy and tactics in the semi-colonies

 

Since 1945 capitalism has completed its task of destroying or totally subordinating the remnants of previous modes of production. But despite this penetration of every corner of the former colonial world we have not witnessed the widespread development of strong national bourgeoisies. While imperialism has nurtured, even created, a semi-colonial bourgeoisie within formally independent states, it has not let slip its domination of the economic or political life of these states.

 

In the early part of the imperialist epoch the young and embryonic national bourgeoisies in the colonial countries experienced national oppression. Colonial, and later imperialist, powers pressed their large scale capital onto the oppressed nations and thereby destroyed many small local independent enterprises. In turn this deprived the local bourgeoisie of any serious political influence in the colonial administration.

 

Under these circumstances the colonial bourgeoisie was driven to play an important role in fighting imperialist rule. Using deceitful phrases and false promises, movements such as the Indian National Congress and the Kuomintang could mobilise a mass following of all plebeian classes in their service.

 

Yet these "national revolutionary movements", as the Comintern described them, were under the leadership of a class (the bourgeoisie) which was to show itself again and again unwilling to pursue a consistent struggle against imperialism. The bourgeoisie's fear of the revolutionary potential of the working class and of a land hungry peasantry made it a vacillating and treacherous leadership of anti-imperialist struggles. It showed itself willing at the first opportunity to compromise with, and sell out to, the imperialists, often drowning its "own" revolutionary movement in blood (Shanghai 1927).

 

After the Second World War, under the supervision of US imperialism, the old colonial empires were dismantled and gradually replaced by the semi-colonial system that prevails today. Throughout their empires the old weakened imperialist powers--Britain, France, Holland and Portugal--were forced to grant political independence to their colonies. The national bourgeoisie was unable, except episodically, to go beyond the strategy of peaceful pressure on the imperialists to withdraw.

 

In colony after colony, the petit bourgeois nationalists, often in alliance with the Stalinists, led the struggle for independence. Wherever the imperialists held on until the last moment (Algeria, Malaya, Vietnam, Aden, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe) the petit bourgeois nationalists resorted to revolutionary nationalist methods of struggle.

 

Despite promises to the masses to alleviate the crushing burden of imperialist rule, once having achieved state power these same "revolutionaries" used it to repress the proletariat and the poor peasants, to shore up and develop capitalism and protect the imperialists' interests. Both bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalists showed themselves incapable of fulfilling even the most basic bourgeois democratic tasks of the revolution against the imperialists. National independence remained a fiction as long as the countries' economies were dominated by imperialism.

 

Some of the new ruling classes--in Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Iran, Kenya--relied on open collaboration with the imperialist powers to develop their industries and agriculture. These states developed economies tied totally to the world imperialist division of labour. They offered police state controlled labour movements and furnished a labour force that could be super-exploited as an encouragement to imperialist investment.

 

At the other extreme some semi-colonies experimented with nationally isolated attempts at development, minimising or severely reducing their links with imperialism, often through relying on economic links with the Soviet bloc. These regimes often took on a left Bonapartist character, balancing between imperialism on the one hand, and tightly controlled mobilisations of the masses on the other.

 

Consciously modelling their economic development on the experience of Stalin's industrialisation policy, they pursued major "state capitalist" projects and established large state bureaucracies as an important social prop. Through these methods such regimes sought a road to "independent capitalist development", in fact a road to join the select club of imperialist nations.

 

This strategy proved an economic disaster in country after country. Stagnation and imperialist pressure forced a collapse back into the arms of imperialism. Peron's Argentina, Nasser's Egypt, Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka, Nyerere's Tanzania are just a few examples of where this strategy failed. The crises in Burma, Algeria and Angola in the late 1980s show that other state capitalist regimes are following suit. Autarchy is a utopia and it is always the masses who are obliged to foot the bill for its failure.

 

Whichever strategy the semi-colonial bourgeoisies pursued, and some, like India tried a combination of both, the result was the same--chronically dependent economies, enormous poverty for the masses, stagnation and growing indebtedness to imperialism. Only in the exceptional circumstances of South Africa did it prove possible for a semi-colonial power to break out of this cycle and join the imperialists as a junior partner.

 

The bourgeois nationalists were incapable of achieving real independence and they were equally incapable of maintaining political democracy. While the imperialists hypocritically sang the virtues of "parliamentary democracy", even bequeathing constitutions modelled on their Westminster or Washington versions, they happily connived at its overthrow immediately democratically elected governments threatened their economic interests.

 

Only a minority of the most developed semi-colonies have been able to sustain parliamentary regimes for any significant period of time. And even here, as with the case of Chile in 1973, imperialism has directly intervened to overthrow democratic regimes that it felt threatened its interests.

 

Confronted with the demands of the peasantry for a comprehensive solution to land hunger, bourgeois nationalists have been unwilling to take any radical measures which could threaten their alliance with the semi-feudal landlords or big capitalist farmers.

 

Where they have been forced to introduce major land reforms--Bolivia, Peru, the Punjab in India--it has always been to avoid a revolutionary solution to the land question. A reformist solution imposed from above, while temporarily assuaging the land hunger of the peasants, merely delivered a new class of small peasants, starved of credit and machinery, into the hands of the usurers, banks and rich farmers.

 

In order to carry out and maintain its exploitation, part of the strategy of imperialism has always been to divide and rule. In many cases such divisions were introduced by imperialist powers who deliberately favoured a particular minority of the population in its colonial apparatus, as in Sri Lanka or Cyprus.

 

In other cases, where remnants of pre-capitalist and religious divisions were still in existence, these were seized upon, cultivated and preserved in imperialism's interests. For example, the hereditary division of labour upon which the Indian caste system rests was institutionalised by British colonialism and it helped to preserve a measure of rural docility.

 

Indigenous landlordism and capitalism were able to exploit this system to their advantage. Today, the systematic discrimination and institutionalised inequalities of the caste system remain strong despite the development of modern capitalism in India. Here too the "independent" bourgeoisie has been unable to unify its nation on the basis of equality of rights.

 

Despite the claims of the "third worldists" and dependency theorists that extensive capitalist development in the imperialised world was not possible, imperialist capital has achieved just this and in the process has created millions of new wage labourers.

 

In the last two decades this semi-colonial working class has entered the road of independent class action only to run up against the limits of its own syndicalist, Stalinist and nationalist leaderships. There is a crisis of leadership within the semi-colonial working class. In most countries even the nucleus of a revolutionary communist party is absent. This has allowed petit bourgeois political formations of all kinds to come to the head of anti-imperialist mass action and inevitably betray it.

 

In the struggle against exploitation--in the factories, mines and plantations of native as well as imperialist capital--the world working class must use the full range of transitional demands and tactics. In addition it falls to the working class to lead a revolutionary struggle for the completion of the remaining bourgeois democratic tasks.

 

National unity and independence, agrarian revolution and political democracy are the burning demands of millions of workers, peasants and semi-proletarians. The working class must approach the struggle for their complete fulfilment from the standpoint of permanent revolution.

 

The national, agrarian and democratic questions are themselves historically bourgeois questions. But in the imperialist epoch it is no longer possible to fully resolve these questions under capitalism. The military, political and economic dependence of the semi-colonies, their backwardness and economic unevenness are fundamental to the imperialist world order.

 

There can be no separate stage of the revolution in which capitalist property relations are maintained while the bourgeois democratic tasks are fully achieved. The whole history of the anti-imperialist struggle after 1945 confirms this basic tenet of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. The "victories" of anti-imperialist mass movements confirm it even more graphically than the numerous defeats.

 

By refusing to expropriate the companies and banks of the national as well as the imperialist bourgeoisie, by refusing to satisfy the demands of the poor and landless peasantry, the leaders of the revolutions in Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and Iran set the seal on their continued subservience to imperialism.

 

Even where, as in Burma, Egypt and Libya, military Bonapartist regimes were forced to nationalise the economy and create a state owned infrastructure, they have failed to break the economic chains binding the country to imperialism. Stagnation born of autarchy, debt, the re-emergence of a national bourgeoisie outside the state sector: this has been the pattern for the countries where Bonapartism entrenched itself.

 

Only where capitalism has been completely uprooted (China, Cuba, Vietnam, Kampuchea) have semi-colonial revolutions had the possibility to break the grip of the imperialist world economy over their countries. But even here the Stalinists have aborted the permanent revolution and have not successfully overcome the legacy of imperialist domination. In many of these states the oppression of national minorities has intensified, e.g. the Chinese in Vietnam or the Tibetans in China.

 

The combination of bureaucratic planning and Stalinism's "national road to socialism" has strangled the potential of the post-capitalist property relations, leaving the former semi-colonies as the weakest link in the chain of degenerate(d) workers' states. They remain heavily dependent on the willingness of the Soviet bureaucracy to underwrite their economies.

 

The growing reluctance of the Moscow bureaucracy to do this will increase internal restorationist pressures, strengthening the hand of those sections of the Stalinists who wish to open up the economies to imperialist penetration under the guise of "market socialism". In these countries only a political revolution which destroys the Stalinist bureaucracy and establishes genuine soviet democracy can offer a way forward for the workers and poor peasants and enable them to finally settle accounts with imperialism.

 

The expropriation of the major industries, banks and finance houses, the imposition of a state monopoly of foreign trade and the internationalisation of the revolution must be the first steps of every victorious semi-colonial revolution.

 

But only the proletariat, mobilised in workers' councils and a workers' militia can carry out these tasks in a wholly progressive manner. In the process the working class must draw to itself the massive peasant and semi-proletarian strata around the complete fulfilment of the national, agrarian and democratic questions.

 

Agrarian revolution in the semi-colonies

 

Today in the semi-colonies, taken as a whole, and despite the growth of the industrial proletariat, the peasantry remains an absolute majority of the population. The proletariat must harness the grievances and aspirations of the poor and landless peasants if its revolution is to be a truely global one.

 

Throughout the imperialist epoch the agrarian question has proved to be one of the major, and most explosive, uncompleted tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. The fight of the peasantry for land has been the locomotive of the fight for national independence against imperialism. So it was in China in the 1930s and 1940s and in Indo-China in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition the agrarian revolution provided a mighty social force for political democracy against autocracy in Russia in 1917.

 

Since the Second World War it has been a key detonator of uprisings against hated ruling oligarchies in the semi-colonies (e.g. Nicaragua 1979, Philippines 1985). Wherever the struggle of the peasantry for land has been deliberately separated from the fight for national independence (Ireland 1880-1921) or political democracy (Spain 1931-39) none of the bourgeois democratic tasks at hand were completed.

 

In the imperialist epoch the bourgeoisie, both imperialist and semi-colonial, abandoned any pretence of revolutionary struggle against pre-capitalist landlordism.

 

The imperialists attempted to curb the proletariat and the peasantry by alliances with the feudal landowners. In this way imperialism preserved the backwardness of the semi-colonies and subjected agriculture to its rule through trade or colonial plantation.

 

With the dissolution of the colonial empires and the establishment of US world hegemony the fight against the vestiges of semi-feudalism has been joined in the colonies and semi-colonies by the struggle against the effects of finance capital's deeper penetration of agriculture. Taking as its starting point the creation of a profitable world market for agricultural goods, finance capital spurred on the concentration and centralisation of land in the semi-colonies.

 

It placed huge territories under cultivation for cash crops aimed at the export market. On the one hand, finance capital helped buy out out the semi-feudal landlords or transformed them into agrarian capitalists, while on the other, they bullied, defrauded and expelled millions of peasants from their land.

 

As a result countries which were self-sufficient in food for the internal market have been transformed into importers of the basic necessities of life while huge profits accrue to the landed oligarchies and the multinational corporations. The main dynamic of the agrarian revolution today lies in the contradiction between the mass of peasants squeezed into smaller and smaller plots of infertile land on the one side and huge capitalist plantation owners producing for export on the other.

 

In the post-war decades agrarian reform from above has attempted to avert a revolutionary solution to the land question from below by creating a stable strata of conservative middle peasants.

 

While meeting with partial success in certain countries for limited periods of time, these programmes did not, and cannot, solve the fundamental dilemma facing the semi-colonial bourgeoisie; namely, that their enslavement to imperialism ensures that they are unable either to turn the surplus, land hungry peasantry into industrial or service workers in the urban centres, or to provide sufficient aid to the smallholders to prevent their descent into poverty.

 

The surviving semi-feudal landlords collude with finance capital to subordinate the peasant economy to the needs of large scale agrarian capitalism. This dictates that the peasantry's solution to land hunger, high rents, rural debt and primitive technique can only be reached through an alliance with the working class in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and imperialism--permanent revolution.

 

Naturally, not all the rural classes will be firm allies along this road. The peasantry is not a modern class with a homogeneous relationship to the means of production. The further it has evolved from communal land ownership and working, the more it separates into rich capitalist farmers at one pole and rural proletarians at the other.

 

Where the peasantry has been able to establish a stable hold on small scale private property in the countryside it has always been capable of being mobilised as the mass base of support for reactionary Bonapartist regimes. When faced with a challenge from the proletariat these regimes demagogically portray the working class as the enemy of the small peasant.

 

Along the path of revolution the urban working class will look first to the growing agricultural proletariat who labour on the plantations, farms, ranches and the processing mills full time. Small in number but with great social power, these workers have shown themselves time and again to be the first to put down solid organisations (unions, committees) to fight for higher pay and better conditions. From the sugar workers in Cuba to the coffee workers in Nicaragua, it is this class that has often, by its action, decisively tipped the balance against hated dictators.

 

They must fight for immediate economic and transitional demands and establish a regime of workers' control and union organisation in plant and plantation alike. The history of this epoch also proves that it is vital for this layer to take the lead in defending their gains from the death squads of the landlord and planter by forming a workers' militia.

 

Next to this layer in importance comes the semi-proletariat: the seasonal farm labourer who has to scrape a living on his or her own tiny plot for the rest of the time; or the small peasant whose family cannot survive on the land and takes on work in the towns and cities. This class is large in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, often outnumbering the rural wage workers by ten to one.

 

Their contact with the plantations has raised them above a purely peasant outlook and they have embraced much of the fighting spirit and organisation of the proletariat. Their seasonal, migratory character has meant they have become, too, the key base of the guerrilla armies of Central America. For them it is essential to fight for equality of pay and conditions on the plantations; for permanent contracts for those who want them; for land to those who are forced to migrate because of land hunger.

 

The most desperate class in the countryside is the landless peasant, robbed of his or her inheritance by the oligarchy, colonial planter and "green revolution" alike. Today there are over 600 million landless peasants in the semi-colonies. In Pakistan, India and Bangladesh between a quarter and a half of the peasants are without land. In Central America over half of the rural population is landless. Most face starvation, a prospect relieved occasionally by day or seasonal labour. Many migrate to the towns in the hopeless search for work.

 

This class is a necessary ally of the proletariat and is the largest class. The continued support of this class must be won, even at the cost of the parcellisation of the larger estates. Before them the revolutionary working class must pledge itself to fight to realise the demands: land to those who work it; occupy the idle and under-used land; defend the land invasions of the plantations in the fight for subsistence; for committees and militias of landless peasants.

 

Trotskyists must stand at the head of the fight of the land hungry for land seizures, whether directed against semi-feudal or capitalist plantations. But it is essential to fight for the earliest possible formation of co-operatives as a transitional measure. To those already driven to the barrios and shanties of the big cities we must fight for a programme of public works to find them useful work and a living wage. This must go hand in hand with the organisation of the unemployed.

 

Struggling to prevent their own descent into the army of the landless are the poor peasants. Their smallholdings are either weighed down with onerous rent obligations or burdened with debt as a result of harsh purchase terms. Borrowing to buy equipment and fertilisers has added to this debt, a step forced on them because the size of the plot cannot guarantee subsistence for the poor peasant family.

 

The poor peasant may be oppressed by the big estates or by the richer peasant. Here the key immediate demands must be: abolition of rent and renunciation of all debts to the rural usurer and urban merchant; for state credits to purchase machinery and fertiliser; for incentives to encourage the subsistence farmers to voluntarily join production and marketing co-operatives.

 

Many peasants find that the only way to make a living is to cultivate crops related to the narcotics industry. They are ruthlessly exploited by the narcotic barons and persecuted by the imperialist "anti-narcotic" agencies. We demand the right of the peasants to cultivate narcotic related crops on a free and legal basis. We demand the purchase of such crops by the state at prices fixed by workers' and peasants' price committees.

 

The middle peasantry, usually a small layer that is suspicious that the proletariat plans to abolish its private property, generally has enough surplus to sell at a profit in the towns. Nevertheless, they too are often exploited by the middleman. In any clash over wages and conditions between the middle peasant and any labourers they employ the proletariat must support the latter.

 

Against the demands of the middle and small peasants for better prices for their products (a demand that arises especially in situations where the workers have forced governments to control the prices of basic goods) we put forward a different solution: make the bosses and landowners pay, not the workers! We demand the abolition of debt, extension of credit, the promotion of co-operatives and the building of joint price committees of workers and peasants, to plan and exchange the respective fruits of their labours.

 

The rich exploitative peasants will in general find themselves on the side of the bourgeoisie wherever semi-feudalism has been eradicated and imperialism, in alliance with the imperialised state, has integrated the rich peasant into the world market. Here revolutionaries will side with the poor peasants to expropriate the land of the rich peasant. But wherever semi-feudal bonds remain that also oppress the rich and the poor peasant a common struggle is possible to end that oppression.

 

The imperialist agribusiness, capitalist farmer and the absentee landlord will on the other hand find in the working class an implacable enemy. Their property stands before the workers and poor peasants as the mechanism of impoverishment.

 

We must impose upon the national bourgeoisie or petit bourgeoisie struggling against landed oligarchies the demand: nationalise their land without compensation; nationalise the imperialist plantations and place them under workers' and poor peasants' control; for a massive programme of public works to improve conditions for the masses of the countryside--electrification, irrigation of the land, provision of clean water and adequate sanitary facilities, the provision of cultural facilities.

 

Only such a programme can prevent the mass exodus of peasants, driven by sheer hunger to the cities. The transformation and planning of agricultural production will decrease the dependence on cash crops for export, improve the productivity of the land and increase the amount of food for home consumption.

 

Such measures in themselves will help ease the pressure on the rural environment. In transforming the countryside capitalism has extended the ecological crisis into ever new regions of the globe. Deforestation, destruction of traditional water systems for irrigation, pollution of rivers by industrial waste and chemical fertilisers continue to create real ecological disasters in many parts of the "third world". The proletariat and poor peasants' fight must include a programme of immediate measures to prevent ecological catastrophe--the ending of massive deforestation and the undertaking of replanting and irrigation schemes.

 

The years since 1945 have shown that the only real solution to the servitude of the poor peasantry and land hunger is the abolition of capitalism itself. The revolutionary party must lead the class struggle in the countryside to its culmination.

 

We put forward a programme for the revolutionary expropriation of all capitalist plantations and rich peasant farms without compensation by councils of workers and poor peasants. We fight for a policy of state farms together with voluntary collectivisation for the small and middle peasant as a programme of socialist transition in agriculture.

 

The national question in the semi-colonies

 

Although national unity and independence were political goals for the bourgeoisie, they had a social and economic purpose: the creation of a unified national market, protected against foreign competition, within which domestic capital could expand.

 

Today, despite formal national independence, imperialism's former colonies and mandates are in reality no nearer to this economic independence than they were at the dawn of the imperialist epoch. They remain oppressed nations. Backwardness and, at best one-sided, dependent industrialisation remain the norm in the semi-colonies. No amount of formal political independence can compensate for this.

 

The chains of economic dependence are forged from capitalist social relations and can only be smashed by the expropriation of capitalism itself. For this reason only the working class has the interest and ability to fully abolish the national oppression of the semi-colonies. It must fight for:

 

• The expulsion of all of imperialism's armed forces, the forces of its gendarmes, including the UN, and its security installations and advisers.

 

• The abolition of the standing armed forces--trained by and loyal to imperialism--and their replacement by an armed workers' and poor peasants' militia.

 

• The cancellation of all debts and interest payments to the imperialist finance houses. The imperialists do not want the debt to be paid off because this will mean an end to the super-profits it generates and the loss of one of its weapons for exercising economic, political and military control of the semi-colonies. The debt has been contracted under terms set by imperialism. But the limitations of the semi-colonial bourgeoisie's challenge to imperialist domination is evidenced by their acceptance of these terms. The practical effect of this cowardice is austerity for the masses, unemployment, restrictions on political and trade union activities, export oriented production and, as a result, starvation.

 

• Against the strategy of limiting repayments to a percentage of exports or GNP. Against the moratorium on the external debt which only means paying imperialism more later. This debt has been paid off several times already through extortionate interest rates and the looting of the semi-colonies' natural resources.

 

• The repatriation of all payments and the restoration of natural resources. For the repatriation of the priceless archaeological heritage stolen over the years by the imperialist plunderers.

 

• The nationalisation without compensation of the banks, finance houses and major industries and the cancellation of all special arrangements and joint ventures between state owned industries and finance capital.

 

As well as breaking imperialism's stranglehold on the semi-colonial economy the proletariat must fight for both national unity and the right of self-determination for the nationalities oppressed within the semi-colonies.

 

The arbitrary borders carved out by imperialism in its collective division and re-division of the world in the 1880s, 1919 and 1945 divided many nationalities and peoples, creating national minorities within the colonial and semi-colonial states. Whereas the nationalism of the developing bourgeoisie of the colonies had a relatively progressive content insofar as it was aimed against remnants of feudalism or against imperialism, on achieving political power this nationalism was often transformed into a weapon of oppression against national minorities, as in Turkey and Burma.

 

Far from solving the many national problems caused or exacerbated by imperialism's division of the world, the inability of the semi-colonial bourgeoisie to unify or economically develop the nation results in the deepening of regional economic differences, the re-emergence of old national antagonisms and the creation of new ones (e.g. in India).

 

Wherever a real national movement based in consciousness, language, culture and territory exists, the proletariat must support its right, as an oppressed nation, to self-determination. This support is unconditional: that is, we do not demand that the nationalists adopt communist methods of struggle before we give our support. However, just as we are critical of the goal of the nationalists, so we criticise their methods which frequently reduce the national struggle to the armed actions of a select few. However, no right to separate statehood exists where the exercise of self-determination is based on the national oppression of another people e.g. Israel, Northern Ireland.

 

The proletariat is an internationalist class seeking to unify, on a socialist basis, peoples and nations, through voluntary union or federation. Our general programme is not for the creation of ever more separate nation states or the breaking up of large "multi-national" states into a number of constituent parts as a means of liberating such countries from either imperialist or capitalist enslavement.

 

While arguing against these false solutions, communists recognise that once such a demand is embraced by the mass of workers and peasants, expressed for example in referenda or by mass armed struggle and civil war (Bangladesh), revolutionaries must move into the forefront of such a struggle to achieve a separate state. Both within the oppressor nation and in the secessionist area, communists raise this demand, while continuing to warn that only socialist revolution, not secession, will offer a lasting solution to the masses.

 

While the working class must champion the legitimate national rights of oppressed peoples, its internationalist strategy means that it fights all nationalist ideologies, even of those held to by the oppressed. Such nationalism will inevitably clash with the development of the working class into a conscious force, defending its own class interests, and will thus become reactionary. While we support the struggles for self-determination, up to and including secession, for example in Kurdistan, Tamil Eelam, Kashmir, Euskadi etc, we point out the utopianism of the nationalist project of developing these areas as truly independent bourgeois states.

 

The proletariat must fight for the expropriation of capitalism and the extension of democratic planning on the largest possible scale. There can be no solution to the basic economic demands of the oppressed nations through a retreat behind even more limited economic boundaries.

 

Against the imperialists' deliberate policies of "Balkanisation" aimed at dividing and ruling weak and unstable nation states, communists put forward the demand for a genuine federation of socialist states for those countries that are linked by historical ties of language, culture, trade etc. Such transitional slogans can have a powerful mobilising effect for the masses, for example in the Middle East, in Latin America and on the Indian sub-continent, cutting across both imperialist engineered divisions and bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalist prejudices.

 

The struggle against military dictatorship and Bonapartism in the semi-colonies

 

Retarded in their economic and social development by imperialism, most semi-colonial regimes have been unable to sustain a stable bourgeois democracy. Elections and parliaments have been episodic, temporary or generally attenuated by various restrictions on the right to vote, the introduction of literacy and language qualifications, and a myriad of obstacles to voter registration.

 

Consequently various forms of Bonapartism have been the norm. Such regimes, while being resolute defenders of capitalism, have achieved a degree of independence from the ruling class, normally through their control of the army and state machine. They have deprived the capitalist class of its own direct political rule, as well as containing or repressing the exploited classes.

 

Bonapartist rule in the semi-colonies has varied between "anti-imperialist" and pro-imperialist forms. The "left" variant of Bonapartism has often taken the form of nationalist officers' movements drawn from the petit bourgeois middle strata and reflecting the outlook of this class.

 

This layer, seeing its future blighted by economic stagnation, corruption and the subservience of its own bourgeoisie to imperialism, has seized power in numerous countries since the Second World War--as in Argentina, Peru, Libya, Egypt, Burma for example. Their ideologies have borrowed elements from Stalinism, occasionally from fascism, and typically have proclaimed a "third way" between capitalism and communism.

 

These regimes have attempted to overcome the failure of economic development in their countries by restricting imperialist penetration. They have staked all on promoting "independent capitalist development"--utilising trade barriers, state capitalist industrialisation and land reform. They have often combined a vicious anti-communism with attempts to develop and co-opt the trade union movement and peasant organisations as a prop of support for their regimes against imperialist pressure from without and within.

 

But nowhere have such regimes opened the road to socialism, nor could they by their very nature. In fact they have re-fortified the capitalist state and economy through attacks on the workers, not stopping at full-scale repression and even massacres.

 

In the event of a serious clash between these regimes and imperialism and its most reactionary agents the proletariat may be obliged to struggle alongside the nationalist and democratic military sectors. But throughout the workers must maintain the firmest class independence and opposition to these temporary allies. The proletariat needs no military saviours or leaders. It can seize power only through its own insurrection, not by army coups.

 

It is the gravest error to establish strategic blocs with sections of the officers or to sow illusions in their capacity to arm and lead the proletariat. It leads to class collaboration and programmatic concessions and can do nothing but weaken the proletariat's drive to establish independent workers' militias and to organise the rank and file of the army.

 

The inevitable failure of this economic and political strategy, the repeated concessions to the imperialists and the resulting disillusionment of the masses, all prepare the way for the overthrow of these regimes and their replacement by more pliant, pro-imperialist ones.

 

Millions of workers and peasants throughout the world suffer at the hands of vicious right wing Bonapartist regimes. Such regimes have often emerged either from the failure of left Bonapartism (Indonesia 1965, Argentina 1955, Peru 1975) or, as in Chile during 1973 and Bolivia after 1971, from the crushing of revolutionary situations. These regimes are marked by their subservience to imperialism, their attempts to crush the workers' and peasants' organisations, and their use of death squads, torture and widespread violation of human rights.

 

The repeated utilisation of such dictatorships by the imperialists and their agents means that the demand for political democracy remains a burning issue for millions of proletarians and non-proletarians around the globe, from Indonesia to Paraguay. Wherever the proletariat fights alongside petit bourgeois and bourgeois forces for democratic rights it must do so from the standpoint of its strategic goal: workers' council power.

 

What it defends within bourgeois democracy is essentially its organisations of struggle, those legal and constitutional concessions wrung from the bourgeoisie and those forms of bourgeois democracy (parliaments etc) that the working class uses as a tribune to mobilise and agitate among the masses. But workers' council power is the most democratic form of class rule in history and it supersedes the democratic republic as a strategic aim in the imperialist epoch.

 

Despite our rejection of the confinement of the revolution to a separate democratic stage, we cannot conclude, like the sectarians, that democratic slogans are unnecessary. Brutal dictatorships constantly give rise to democratic aspirations and to illusions in bourgeois democratic institutions.

 

Only hardened sectarians, disdainful of the necessity of relating to what is progressive in the democratic illusions of the masses can believe that it is possible to "skip over" the consciousness of the masses. If these illusions are to be broken in practice more than the demand for socialism is necessary.

 

Where the ruling classes attempt to deny the full democratic rights of the masses, we mobilise around democratic slogans including that of the sovereign constituent assembly. We must fight for an election process in which there are no prior limitations or secret agreements, one which is really democratic for the masses: universal, direct, secret and equal suffrage with no property or literacy qualifications.

 

There should be freedom of publications and assembly for all the parties of the workers and peasants, defended by an armed militia. We must also demand the proportional representation of all parties in the assembly according to votes received, without any minimum threshold.

 

However, recognising the importance of such demands does not mean embracing the opportunist methods of the centrists who have turned the fight for the constituent assembly into a democratic stage through which the masses must pass. Centrism of a Trotskyist origin (Lambertism, Morenoism, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International) has consistently tailed the Stalinists or petit bourgeois nationalists by using the constituent assembly slogan in a way which relegates the fight for workers' councils and workers' power until after such an assembly has been won.

 

At the same time the centrists have sown illusions in the "socialist" potential of such assemblies. The "anti-imperialist" left Bonapartists have shown themselves equally adept at this. Be it the Dergue in Ethiopia, Mugabe's "one party state", Ortega's powerless "popular committees", or Qadhafi's people's committees, these organisations are actually used to deprive the workers and peasants of their freedom to organise.

 

The constituent assembly, therefore, contains no inherently progressive essence. It can be, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred has been, merely a bourgeois parliament charged with drawing up a constitution. Worse, in semi-colonial countries (Brazil 1982), and even in some imperialist countries (Portugal 1975) it is only convened subject to military Bonapartist restrictions on its powers, and with a prior pact already made between the reformist parties and the military as to the constitutional outcome.

 

Often constituent assemblies have proved reactionary bodies counterposed to the revolutionary organs of struggle and power of the workers and peasants. This can happen in the semi-colonies where the huge weight of the peasantry can be used by the bourgeoisie against the working class.

 

The capitalists mobilise the equal votes of all "citizens" to act as a brake on the revolution. For this reason it is essential to fight for, and convene, the constituent assembly through the building of workers', soldiers' and poor peasants' councils. Only then can the assembly be a weapon of revolutionary democracy and not a tool of Bonapartism, only then can the assembly be pushed aside by the workers' and poor peasants' councils when its role has been exhausted.

 

Even under constitutional regimes in the semi-colonial countries, massive elements of Bonapartism exist and are repeatedly used against the working class: the presidency with its power to declare states of emergency; the senate, with its ability to check legislation; the unelected judiciary, and above all the paramilitary police and the standing army. All these offices and forces repeatedly reduce "democracy" to a completely empty shell.

 

Against these assaults on democratic rights, the working class should raise in its action programme the abolition of the presidency and the senate and the creation of a single chamber assembly elected at least biennially, with the power of the electors to recall their deputies. To this we should add the demand for the dissolution of the paramilitary squads, the police and standing army and the creation of an armed popular militia.

 

Stalinism, petit bourgeois nationalism and bourgeois democratic tasks

 

In all its forms Stalinism has remained implacably hostile to the theory and strategy of permanent revolution. The triumph of Stalinism was marked by the official adoption of the doctrine of socialism in one country by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The idea of a national road to socialism flowed from this theory.

 

In the semi-colonial and colonial countries this road involved passing through distinct and separate political stages: first the stage of fighting for political democracy and independent capitalist development in alliance with the national bourgeoisie; then the evolution towards socialism when the level of the productive forces were deemed ripe for this stage.

 

In the imperialist epoch this strategy could only mean the Stalinists sanctioned the denial of the proletariat's independent interests wherever they clashed with those of the national bourgeoisie in the democratic stage. Since the Second World War Stalinism has often abandoned any pretence that the second stage is possible for the semi-colonies, given that independent industrialisation is impossible.

 

We do not rule out that there may emerge "stages" in the living struggle for working class power. But there can never be self-contained stages, each based on a separate strategy for a separate period. The distinct tasks, bourgeois democratic and proletarian, are combined and openly fought for at every moment, with the single strategic goal of working class power.

 

But the working class must lead the urban and rural petit bourgeoisie in the fight for the democratic tasks. The whole of post-war development proves that the complete fulfilment of remaining democratic tasks will only be accomplished under the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, on the basis of the destruction of capitalist private property and its system of nation states.

 

So thoroughly committed to the "democratic stage" has Stalinism been that it has even fused with petit bourgeois nationalist formations, all the better to "tighten the noose around the proletariat's neck", as Trotsky said.

 

Wherever the working class has spontaneously broken out of the limits that Stalinism has designated for the proletariat in the revolutionary process Stalinists have become the most fervent advocates of crushing the workers and pressing them back inside those limits. The bitter consequence has often been, not the realisation of the democratic stage, but bloody counter-revolution and dictatorship (Indonesia, Chile, Iran).

 

As the imperialist epoch has progressed petit bourgeois nationalism has increasingly taken up the mantle of the "national revolutionary" struggle in the semi-colonial era. It has often taken up revolutionary methods of struggle (insurrections, guerrilla warfare) in pursuit of national independence. On some occasions petit bourgeois forces have sanctioned, even if they have not organised, class struggle methods (strikes, occupations, land seizures). Nevertheless, the goal petit bourgeois nationalism sets out to achieve is a reactionary utopia.

 

The fight for an "independent capitalism" which espouses "social justice" at home and "non-alignment" abroad is, in the epoch of imperialism, an illusion. Usually led by urban professional classes, members of the intelligentsia and disillusioned sons and daughters of the ruling oligarchies, the petit bourgeois parties cannot break with capitalism. Only in exceptional circumstances can the aid of existing Stalinist states make it possible for such parties to bureaucratically overthrow capitalism. This course of action has only taken place when it has been forced upon them as their only means of surviving in a conflict with imperialism. In the process they fuse with or are transformed into Stalinist parties.

 

Where such parties rule for any length of time without overthrowing capitalism (Nicaragua) they rob the workers and peasants of the fruits of their struggle in the attempt to conciliate a "patriotic" capitalist class. This invariably ends with a conservative counter-revolution within the regime (Egypt, Algeria, Iran) and the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie or the overthrow of the petit bourgeois regime by pro-imperialist forces (Guatemala, Grenada).

 

Since their Stalinist degeneration the official pro-Moscow Communist Parties have time and again discredited not only themselves but the very idea of proletarian leadership by supporting reactionary dictatorships in the interests of the Kremlin's diplomatic manoeuvres. Bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalism have drawn strength from these betrayals.

 

But in their turn these forces too have led the workers and peasants to defeat. This has allowed the masses to turn to religion for comfort and the inspiration to fight. Thus ideologies which at the dawn of capitalism receded in the face of a confident and rising bourgeoisie with its rationalism and secularism, now, in the reactionary epoch of capitalism are strengthened.

 

Religious institutions generally play a counter-revolutionary role in the struggles of the oppressed. For most of the time they purvey the ideology of submission or of peaceful reform. But at times they stand at the head of mass revolts with the aim of preventing the masses from attacking the capitalist order itself.

 

Most often in the guise of the leading church hierarchies they have acted to pacify resistance and poison the minds of the workers and peasants. On occasion in certain countries (e.g. Central America) the lower levels of the clergy or lay priests have helped peasants and rural workers to organise independent trade unions, encourage literacy, stimulate political consciousness and overcome passivity.

 

The reformist and class collaborationist projects that have informed this work have often in turn been cast aside by the workers and peasants; then the clergy have turned against the workers. This does not of course preclude individual members of the clergy, still less the mass of believers, becoming involved in militant or even revolutionary struggle. But the task of Marxists is resolutely to oppose the influence of all religious ideologies.

 

In Iran such a reactionary ideology hegemonised the majority of the exploited and oppressed even at the moment when the mass movement overthrew the pro-imperialist Shah. In power the full reactionary content of religious ideologies has been displayed: the denial of democratic rights, the persecution of independent proletarian organisations and the oppression of women, have all been the staple diet of semi-colonial capitalist states which have been infused with religious dogma. In the face of this revolutionaries must fight to protect proletarian democracy against religious castes and for the separation of church and state.

 

The anti-imperialist united front

 

Despite its dependence on imperialism, the semi-colonial bourgeoisie remains a national class capable of limited conflict with imperialism. The more openly imperialism solves its crises at the expense of the semi-colonial ruling class, the more the latter tends towards rhetorical and even actual resistance.

 

In no sense does this make the national bourgeoisie, or even fractions of it, revolutionary. But so long as bourgeois or petit bourgeois forces have a real mass influence in the anti-imperialist struggle it is necessary for the working class to use the tactic of the anti-imperialist united front. This involves striking tactical agreements with non-proletarian forces at both leadership and rank and file level. Such agreements might involve formal alliances or committees.

 

Where this is the case the fundamental pre-conditions for entering such blocs are: that the bourgeois or petit bourgeois forces are actually waging a struggle against imperialism, or its agents, that no limitations are placed on the political independence of the revolutionary organisation within this bloc and that there are no bureaucratic exclusions of significant forces struggling against imperialism.

 

It is even possible that this united front may have to be carried out within the base organs of a mass organisation with a popular frontist character within which distinct class parties have not yet emerged. What is vital is that this unity should be aimed at mobilising the broadest anti-imperialist forces for precise common objectives such as the introduction of democratic rights and the expulsion of the imperialists.

 

Whilst the struggles of the semi-colonial bourgeoisie are aimed at broadening their own scope for exploitation, the entry of the working class into that conflict carries the threat of ending exploitation altogether. Thus there is nothing consistently anti-imperialist or revolutionary about the semi-colonial bourgeoisie, and no permanent place for it should be reserved in an anti-imperialist united front.

 

The purpose of anti-imperialist united action must be to aid the proletariat to mobilise the masses so that they burst through the restraints of their traditional leaderships and organisations. For that reason the proletariat must advance the most audacious forms of mass direct action and organisation, strike committees, popular assemblies, mass meetings (cabildos) etc, which will aid the development of workers' and peasants' councils, workers' militias and soldiers' committees.

 

The proletariat must never give political support to "left" regimes or collude with their suppression of democratic rights. The working class vanguard should refrain from an armed insurrection against these regimes whilst democratic liberties exist and the majority of workers still support such regimes. The only support possible for these regimes is joint military co-operation against a reactionary coup, or against imperialist intervention. Thus Trotskyists can support military actions by bourgeois governments against imperialism. But we at no stage renounce our struggle to overthrow and replace these governments with a workers' and peasants' government.

 

The nationalists and reformists always want to transform the front for action against imperialism into a strategic bloc to win political power (a popular front). They seek to fuse the anti-imperialist forces into a governmental coalition that will guarantee the survival of "national capital" against the socialist revolution. Revolutionary communists fight to install governments which are based on workers' and peasants' councils and militias. Only a government of the proletariat, in alliance with the poor peasantry, can solve the unfinished tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution.

 

The class content of the government is spelt out in advance. The slogan is for a revolutionary workers' and peasants' government. Such a government will not, indeed cannot, confine the revolution to a distinct democratic stage or it will succumb to the pressures of the counter-revolution. With this perspective the Bolsheviks were able to draw behind them the radicalised movements of the petit bourgeoisie like the left SRs and the peoples' parties of Central Asia. The constitution of a strategic bloc with diverse left forces without this objective will simply obstruct the road to the proletarian dictatorship. Entry into a government or a coalition government on the basis of the maintenance of private property, its armed forces and state, constitutes the highest form of treason to the proletariat.

 

The working class and the guerrilla strategy

 

Trotskyists are opposed to the strategy of guerrilla war whether in a "foco" or "peoples war" variant. Petit bourgeois guerrillaism is opposed to the construction of a workers' party, to workers' councils and to a Bolshevik insurrection. It wants to dissolve the proletariat's interests into the cross-class programme of the petit bourgeoisie. It wants to impose bureaucratic organisations and avoid the development of workers' councils and autonomous democratic workers' militias.

 

Even where it succeeds in downing a decrepit dictatorship (Cuba, Nicaragua) it paves the way for a Bonapartist solution. Guerrilla victories, even in the exceptional form of bureaucratic social overturns or, more usually, military-Bonapartist regimes, are always accompanied by the crushing of the proletariat's independent organisations.

 

Behind an ultra-left phraseology and methodology guerrillaism in fact evinces a tremendous lack of confidence in the working class and a predisposition to make deals with sections of the bourgeoisie. It involves surrendering political leadership to the urban bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie and, in so far as it seeks a mass base for its actions (i.e. people's war), it dissolves the independent interests of the working class into that of the petit bourgeoisie. In that sense guerrillaism as a strategy always has the tendency to be an armed popular front.

 

Guerrillaism downgrades economic and political struggle in favour of episodic and often desultory military action. Individual terrorism, the destruction of factories (centres of proletarian concentration) and spectacular military actions are methods counterposed to the strategy of the working class. Against Marxism's dictum that the emancipation of the workers can only be carried out by the workers themselves, the guerrillaists proclaim that liberation will be the act of external saviours.

 

By its undemocratic and elitist attitude towards the masses they claim to represent, the guerrilla leaders can often leave the masses defenceless in the face of the state's superior military forces or of vigilante groups.

 

To withdraw the most fearless and combative fighters from the factories, the urban centres and densely populated rural districts, is to strip the workers' and peasants' organisations of their cadres and their leaders. Guerrillaists may also attack the workers' organisations themselves, as in the case of Sendero Luminoso in Peru.

 

For Trotskyists guerrilla action is a tactic that can be used in the anti-imperialist struggle. We do not reject the military united front with guerrilla armies, either in the form of separate battalions or of communist cell work within bourgeois or Stalinist led armies. But the aim of this military united front is to prepare the widespread and independent arming of the working class and poor peasantry. By these means communists fight to force the guerrilla armies and their political apparatus to expropriate plantations, back land seizures and recognise the sovereignty of workers' and peasants' councils and militias.

 

But this remains a subordinate tactic to a strategy whose principal protagonist is the working class. The programme of permanent revolution subordinates all military action to what is politically appropriate, given the level of class struggle and revolutionary consciousness of the working class and poor peasantry. In general, broad military action by armed militia in town and country should only be undertaken when the existence of dual power and generalised workers' control sharply poses the need to organise the insurrection.

 

We categorically reject all generalised military action of a non-defensive nature that leaves the masses politically passive. At all costs the working class has to maintain its independence and opposition to guerrillaism. It must criticise, and in extreme cases condemn, any actions which are opposed to its perspectives.

 

In the armed conflict between the petit bourgeois guerrillas and the bourgeois state we at all times defend them against state repression. We do not recognise the state's right to judge those fighting against it. We fight for the right of prisoner of war status for captured guerrillas and for their release. In the case of guerrillas attacking the workers' organisations we do not call for defence by the capitalist state.

 

We demand the workers' movement itself, through meetings and in its trade unions, issue a verdict by organising workers' and peasants' defence squads against the guerrilla attacks. We do not flinch from the inevitable military confrontation with the bourgeois and Stalinist commanders which flow from the divergent programmes of the proletariat and the petit bourgeoisie.

 

 

 

Chapter 5 - Against capitalist restoration! For proletarian political revolution!

 

The counter-revolutionary character of the degenerated workers' states

 

From 1945-1991 the USSR acted as one of the two central pillars of the imperialist world order. Despite the military and economic rivalry between the USSR and the USA which spanned nearly half a century the Kremlin, its satellites and indeed its Stalinist rivals repeatedly acted to divert and abort the development of a victorious world-revolutionary wave which could have isolated and eventually defeated imperialism.

 

However the limited hot wars with imperialism; Korea, Vietnam, the logistical support for various national liberation struggles, the overthrow of capitalism by Stalinist parties covered the counterrevolutionary role of Stalinist strategy. Thus the downfall of the USSR appears an unmitigated catastrophe for millions of subjective anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist fighters world-wide. Certainly, the collapse of the USSR and other degenerate workers states represents an enormous material and moral victory for imperialism.

 

But it is a contradictory one since it involves not only the near destruction of the historic economic gains of the October revolution but also of a counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism within the movements of the exploited and oppressed world-wide.

 

The counter-revolutionary consequences of this victory are immediate and obvious. The pyrrhic nature of this victory will emerge relentlessly in the decade to come. Indeed the crisis of the very restoration process contributes mightily to deepening the period of general crisis which characterises the end of the twentieth century.

 

The prestige of the Kremlin was greatly enhanced by its victory over German imperialism and its territorial expansion after the war. The essential role of the planned economy, a key conquest of the October Revolution in the achievement of this victory, its post-war survival, reconstruction and extension, were the material preconditions for the creation of a series of degenerate workers' states, the political and economic duplicates of the USSR.

 

The very existence of the USSR and the defensive manoeuvres of its bureaucracy against imperialism led to the defeat and overthrow of a number of weakened capitalist classes in Eastern Europe and later in the colonial and semi-colonial world. These overthrows of capitalism took place either through the agency of the Soviet Armed forces or by means of Stalinist parties and guerrilla forces under their leadership. In the case of Cuba a petty bourgeois nationalist movement assimilated to Stalinism and transformed the island into a degenerated workers state.

 

Under Stalinist control, however, these victories over capitalism did not result in the international spread of the proletarian revolution but, rather, in the achievement of a relatively stable balance of power between the USSR and imperialism.

 

The Stalinist parties ensured that all elements of independent working class organisation were destroyed prior to the liquidation of capitalism. For the world proletariat the overall consequences of the social overturns were thus counter-revolutionary.

 

Although the pace and circumstances of these bureaucratic social overturns necessarily varied they had a number of essential features in common; Stalinist parties, or proto-Stalinist national liberation movements, came to lead powerful armed forces in the struggle against fascism and imperialism. The armed forces of the bourgeois states were defeated and disintegrated by the Stalinist forces.

 

The bourgeoisie were deprived completely or in large measure of political power. The Stalinists crushed all independent working class organisations, preventing the creation of healthy workers' states based on workers' democracy and ensuring that the regime created was a replica of the bureaucratic tyranny established by Stalin in the USSR. Despite widespread nationalisations of industry and the expropriation of the semi-feudal landowners there was originally no systematic expropriation of the bourgeoisie as a whole.

 

True to their counter-revolutionary stages programme, the Stalinists had initially no intention of overthrowing capitalism but on the contrary sought to preserve it via a popular front, open or concealed, with the local bourgeoisie and with the imperialist powers. The "peoples democracies" were in no way intended to be "socialist" states.

 

Throughout this phase the Stalinists actively prevented any attempt by the working class to take power from the virtually prostrate bourgeoisie. The Soviet occupation authorities systematically liquidated its revolutionary vanguard and, indeed, any independent political parties, trade unions or proto-soviet bodies. It defended capitalist property relations whilst seeking via nationalisations, joint enterprises etc to exploit them for the reconstruction of the Soviet economy.

 

The armed forces of the bourgeois state were defeated and smashed by the Stalinist forces. However originally, the resultant states were not workers' states. Rather Stalinism's intention was to maintain the existence of capitalism, which it proceeded to do. Stalin's objective was to ensure these states utter subordination, forming a buffer zone, a defensive glacis, for the USSR. The Stalinist bureaucracy thus carried out a pre-emptive bureaucratic counter-revolution against the working class and the poor peasantry, aborting the nascent revolutionary situation that the collapse of Nazi power had created.

 

Whilst doing this the Stalinists could rely on the active support of the indigenous bourgeoisie and the imperialist powers. In this way a form of dual power was established with the armed power of the Stalinists (the Soviet Armed forces or guerilla armies led by them) replacing that of the bourgeoisie.

 

However, the abortion of the post-war revolutionary wave and crushing of any independent proletarian class forces necessarily encouraged imperialism and the remaining forces of the bourgeoisie in eastern Europe to return to the offensive.

 

The continued pressure of Stalinist forces in the Balkans (without Stalin's approval) and the inability of British imperialism to stem it unaided, gave the new US administration the pretext to launch a economic and military push to strengthen the bourgeois states of the continent. Truman Iaunched Marshal aid as the carrot and the return of large numbers of US troops as the stick to prevent any further successes for the Stalinists and to encourage a roll-back in central and eastern Europe.

 

But the first attempts of bourgeois forces to use the contradictions of dual power and the popular front governments to pressure the Stalinists to accept Marshal aid or relax their grip on the armed power produced a defensive reflex fatal for capitalism in Eastern Europe.

 

At this point the Stalinists, using their control of the repressive forces of the state, acted to remove the threat from imperialism and its indigenous bourgeois agents, by expelling the representatives of the bourgeoisie from government and expropriating the capitalist class as a whole. By a series of bureaucratic and military measures the capitalist system was uprooted and replaced by the nationalisation of industry and land and a system of bureaucratic command; planning-modelled on the USSR-was introduced.

 

This bureaucratic overturn destroyed capitalism but because the working class, acting as an independent and conscious force, was excluded the revolution in property relations did not result in the creation of healthy workers' states. For us the consciousness, fighting capacity and revolutionary action of the working class is decisive for the prosecution of genuine proletarian revolutions.

 

Thus, while limited united fronts with the Stalinist regimes during the bureaucratic revolutions would have been permissible, the strategic aim of Trotskyists would have been to break the control of Stalinism over the destruction of capitalism, fight for genuine organs of workers' democracy and force the withdrawal of the the Soviet Armed forces from Eastern Europe.

 

The bureaucratic social revolution, despite depriving the bourgeoisie of their property, was essentially a counter-revolutionary act in that it took place against the rhythms and flow of the class struggle. It could only take place because both the working class and the bourgeoisie had previously been disarmed and the state forces lay in the hands of the Stalinists.

 

Nevertheless the expropriation of the capitalist class and the suppression of the operation of the law of value meant that the property relations this state defended were proletarian ones, albeit ones controlled by a totalitarian bureaucracy. Thus like the USSR by whose agency, direct or indirect it was created, these states were degenerated workers states even though they, unlike the USSR, had not undergone any degenerative process themselves from being a healthy (i.e. workers council) states.

 

Throughout this phase, the Stalinist governments ensured that there were no independent working class mobilisations that could have used the impetus of the defeat of the bourgeoisie to challenge the political dictatorship and parasitic privileges of the Stalinists, thus opening a political revolutionary crisis where the state power of workers' councils was posed as an alternative to the totalitarian dictatorship.

 

They were carried out by the Stalinist forces as a defensive reaction against imperialism and as a pre-emptive measure against a proletarian social revolution. Thus, these bureaucratic social overturns were, at the same time, political counter-revolutions against the proletariat. Their outcome was a blocking of the transition to socialism, the attempt to realise the reactionary utopia of "socialism in one country" rather than the international revolution.

 

This was also counter-revolutionary from the standpoint of the historic and strategic goals of the proletariat The transitional Stalinist governments which were the agencies of these bureaucratic social overturns can best be described as "bureaucratic, anti-capitalist" variants of the "workers' government" category identified by the Comintern.

 

In Cuba the key role in an essentially similar bureaucratic overthrow of capitalism was played by the July 26 Movement centred around the caudillo figure of Fidel Castro. It was a popular front with both bourgeois nationalist and left Stalinist wings. During its march to power and its first phase in government its overall tactics and programme remained those of revolutionary petit bourgeois nationalism. US hostility to its victory and to its attacks on US investments in Cuba led to a counter-offensive by the Cuban bourgeoisie in mid 1960.

 

This forced Castro to side with the left Stalinists, to seek alliance and fusion with the Cuban CP and massive economic and military assistance from the Soviet bureaucracy.

 

The Kremlin was willing to support this development for military-strategic purposes (missile siting), as well as to increase its ideological influence. From mid-1960 to early 1962 a bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers' government expropriated the native and imperialist bourgeoisie and instituted bureaucratic planning, creating a degenerate workers' state.

 

Thus, although all the degenerate workers' states share the counterrevolutionary character of the USSR, they were not created in the same manner. In the USSR, initial bureaucratic deformations grew until a qualitative leap, the Soviet Thermidor, or political counter-revolution, transformed the state into a degenerated workers' state.

 

By contrast, the other states were established as replicas of the USSR, they were degenerate from their very creation. Consequently, the programme of political revolution raised by Trotsky against the bureaucratic dictatorship of Stalin was applicable to these states from their establishment. As with the USSR, the bureaucracies of these states have consistently acted to hold back and to divert anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles around the world. Despite their own anti-capitalist measures, their strategic but utopian goal was peaceful coexistence with imperialism.

 

Stalinism cramped the planned economies within the confines of its various "one countries". It actively prevented the spread of the proletarian revolution to the more economically developed areas, thus cutting the various economies off from all the benefits of access to the highest concentrations of the means of production, and integration into the international division of labour.

 

The state monopoly of foreign trade provides indispensable protection for the workers' state against competition from cheaper capitalist goods. But the aim of this monopoly is not to establish all possible agrarian and industrial sectors within the borders of one workers' state, such as can be found in the rest of the world. This path proved utopian (e.g. North Korea and Albania) and led to unneccesary and useless sacrifrices being made by the working class in those countries with a planned economy.

 

Only the spread of the social revolution to the centres of world capitalism will allow a decisive breakthrough to socialist construction and a world planned economy. However despite the bureaucratic stranglehold, these post-capitalist economies did achieve dramatic growth in the early stages of the creation, or reconstruction, of an industrial base. However, the more sophisticated and diverse the requirements of economic development have become the less the bureaucracy was able to fulfil them.

 

Because it suppressed proletarian democracy, it also ensured that its own planning was ill-informed and ignorant of the actual operation of the economy and the needs of society. Thus, in all respects, the narrow, nationalist programme of "socialism in one country" served to retard relatively and eventually absolutely the development of the productive forces. Bureaucratic planning scored some successes in the first decades when it was primarily a case of extensive industrial development. Increasingly however, innovation and constant technological renewal proved beyond the capacities of bureaucratic planning.

 

Having abolished the dynamic mainspring of competition the ruling caste refused to replace it with the creative, self-interested participation of the direct producers in the planning process. The result was an inevitable decline in labour productivity and a further catastrophic falling behind of imperialist democratic capitalism.

 

While the bureaucracies could marshal resources to meet their own lavish consumption needs, and to defend their tyrannical rule the further production and distribution was from these priorities the more shortages and poor quality of goods were the norm. Thus Military and defence spending, including the maintenance of a vast police apparatus, received top priority and were performed relatively efficiently.

 

But when it came to the consumption needs of the masses the bureaucratic planning mechanisms proved utterly unable to provide high quality and plentiful goods to lighten domestic labour, to both lighten and shorten productive labour and to increase the amount and quality of leisure. After some striking initial successes in the sphere of education and social welfare etc. even these fell victim to the stagnation of bureaucratic planning.

 

This experience eventually undermined the very idea of "planned" production in the consciousness of the working class, nationally and internationally. Bourgeois propaganda has spread with ever greater success the "lesson" that this was the necessary result of any attempt to plan an economy.

 

But Stalinist bureaucracy was and is not an expression of the logic of planning itself. Planning presupposes conscious control of production by the centralised and conscious will of the producers themselves. The goals of Stalinist command planning was drafted by a tiny core of planners, themselves dictated to by a bonapartist clique of top bureaucrats. The operation of the plan was thrown out of balance and disrupted by rival layers of the party and managerial bureaucracy.

 

The atomised and alienated work force who neither decided nor understood the goals of the plan increasingly treated production with apathy. A chronic stagnation moved in the 1980s into a critical situation throwing the ruling bureaucracies into ever deeper political crisis. From Moscow to Beijing, from Belgrade to Hanoi, the ruling bureaucracies divided into warring factions.

 

All attempts by the bankrupt bureaucracy to revive their system by admixtures of "market forces', so-called market socialism was doomed to failure. First in Hungary and Yugoslavia and then most spectacularly under Gorbachev in the USSR these measures disrupted and disorganised bureaucratic planning without creating a real capitalist economy. Dislocation and collapse of production, a rampant black market and corruption, gigantic state budget deficits and enterprise bankruptcy, staved off only by hyperinflation, mark the terrible final death agony of the bureaucratic planned economies

 

For the working class, the purpose of post-capitalist property relations is the transition to a classless, communist society. They make possible the planning of production to meet human need, to end oppression and progressively eradicate inequalities. To do this they need the conscious and active participation of the proletariat as producer and consumer.

 

They need the sovereignty of the direct producers themselves who, for the first time in history, have an immediate interest in, as well as the creative ability to, unleash the productive forces. The various workers' states have to follow a path of progressive economic integration and common planning in order to make the most effective use of the principle of international division of labour which remain valid even for a socialist economy.

 

The Stalinist bureaucracies were not capable of taking advantage of this principle. The first step in this direction for a healthy workers' state would be the formation of common planning bodies for important branches and common plans for two or three states together with a common currency. Such a system can only be created by the revolutionary action of the working class itself, conscious of its goals and objectives. If everywhere bureaucratic planning is in various stages of its death agony late twentieth century capitalism has shown no capacity to rapidly step in and fund the restoration process.

 

An extended period of crisis where the moribund planning system shorn of its central co-ordination obstructs the definitive triumph of the law of value creates the opportunity for the working class to shed its illusions in the market and rediscover the programme of democratic planning and workers council democracy.

 

The fracture and downfall of the Stalinist bureaucracies

 

The Stalinist bureaucracies are historically illegitimate castes with no title to their privileges. From their birth they tended to develop factions and wings in response to the long term pressure upon them both from imperialism and the working class. In the USSR, Hungary, Yugoslavia and China dominant sections of the ruling bureaucracies developed which sought to dismantle planning altogether and to determine prices, wages and production by "market mechanisms".

 

They sought to put an end to the social wage represented by subsidised foodstuffs, social services and amenities that have directly benefited the workers as a result of the abolition of capitalism.

 

These advocates of decentralisation, the free market and the opening of their economies to the imperialist multinationals became ever more openly restorationist despairing not only of the bureaucratic central plan, but eventually of their caste's ability to hold on to political power.

 

This faction was closely enmeshed with the managerial strata and hoped to emerge as direct agents, if not members, of a new capitalist class. Such conscious restorationists were, as events in the USSR/ClS after 1990-91 showed, able to shed their Stalinist skins with remarkable speed and take on a Social Democratic, Liberal, Christian democratic, and proto-fascist colours.

 

Trotsky expected a small revolutionary pole of the bureaucracy to emerge, one that would side with the working class in a political revolution. He never accorded to this faction any independent role let alone that of leading the political revolution.

 

This faction has not materialised in the death agony of Stalinism, nor is it inevitable that it should do so. In 1938 Trotsky could point to the figure of Ignace Reiss a defector to the Fourth International from the KGB in 1937. Likewise he could point to Fyodor Butenko a Soviet diplomat in the Romanian embassy who defected to Mussolini's Italy in 1938, as the representative of a proto-fascist restorationist wing of the bureaucracy. Trotsky saw the majority of the bureaucracy under Stalin as trying by ever more savage totalitarian means to avoid being crushed either by restoration or proletarian political revolution.

 

Whilst estimating that Stalin's trajectory was taking him nearer and nearer to the restorationist camp (in its fascist form) he did not rule out the possibility of Stalin and Co resisting a restorationist attack and therefore of the need to form a limited military united front in defence of the USSR. this latter perspective proved to be necessary after Trotsky's murder, in the second imperialist war.

 

The death agony of Stalinism was postponed for forty years by the victory of the USSR in the second world war. Therefore the factional line-ups within the Soviet bureaucracy and the other workers states were profoundly changed. The triumph of the imperialist democracies and the expansion of the productive forces for three decades or more gave new life and vitality to liberal, free market capitalism.

 

This in turn exerted a different pressure on the Soviet and other workers' states bureaucracies, creating a preponderantly pro-marketising faction.

 

The elapse of time and the destruction of the revolutionary generation of 1917-23, the crisis of revolutionary leadership including the destruction of Trotsky's Fourth International meant the disappearance of the "faction of Reiss". Only a profound development of independent class organisations in a political revolutionary crisis plus the recreation of a significant international revolutionary force could lead to the re-emergence of such a wing of the bureaucracy. But such a development is not, nor was it for Trotsky, an essential part of the revolutionary programme.

 

The preponderant faction of the bureaucracy in the post 1985 death agony phase was the Market-socialist wing. At the same time openly restorationist forces became increasingly stronger within and outside of the bureaucracy. Gorbachev, echoing elements of Bukharinism, did not seek the restoration of capitalism. Rather, he aimed at first to utilise market mechanisms to shore up the caste dictatorship on the basis of post-capitalist property relations.

 

This alliance eventually fractured the bureaucratic dictatorship and created a duality of power with the old bureaucracy. In his last two years Gorbachev was forced to raise himself more and more above the divided camps, giving rise to a weak form of bonapartism. Possessing only a utopian economic and political programme of its own-one incapable of realisation-this bonapartism veered between the two camps drawing strength in turn from one camp to resist the pressure of the other.

 

Finally, in August 1991 the heads of the CPSU party bureaucracy and interior security services attempted an abortive coup to forestall the rise of the open pro-imperialist and USSR disintegrationist comprador forces led by Yeltsin.

 

The abortive coup revealed the lack of a solid social base of the conservative bureaucracy in the population at large but also demonstrated a lack of belief in its own mission by the hard line elements in the bureaucracy as a whole. As a result of this failure Yeltsin inherited the Gorbachev executive and Presidential machinery, increased its powers and used them in the service of a fast track shock therapy restorationist economic policy.

 

But the failed coup and Yeltsin's seizure of the executive did not resolve the dual power between the rival sections of the bureaucracy but merely heightened it and brought it into direct confrontation with each other free from the obscuring effect of Gorbachev's bonapartism.

 

In the degenerate workers states of Eastern Europe the policies of Gorbachev after 1985 acted as a catalyst to quicken the tempo of developments in the economy and to hasten the denouement between the conservative bureaucracy and the bourgeois restorationists. By 1989 Gorbachev has signalled that the the Soviet Armed forces would not play any role in protecting the national bureaucracies from domestic protest.

 

The swift rise of amorphous "democratic" mass movements provided a solid base for the democratic intelligentsia and marketising wing of the bureaucracy-social layers far larger in Eastern Europe than in the USSR. In 1989/1990 the ruling Stalinist party apparatus in EE and armed forces crumbled in the face of mass protest.

 

Between 1989 and 1991 bourgeois elections brought to power bourgeois, bourgeois workers' or popular front governments throughout the region (including the seceding Baltic republics of the USSR)-with the exception of Serbia. Dual power in the state superstructure no where long survived, as it did in Russia. Here the protracted nature of the restoration process has been entirely due to the objective economic difficulties of converting the main means of production into capital

 

In China on the other hand Deng Xiaoping has attempted to combine radical marketisation with continued party dictatorship, resorting to bloody repression in Tiananmen Square to enforce this. The Chinese bureaucracy have a short lived historic opportunity to make this combination; police dictatorship for the workers and the urban intelligentsia and a near free market for the peasantry plus enormous concessions to capitalism in special economic zones.

 

The historic factor which created this opportunity is the enormous size of China's peasantry and its role not only on the farms but in the barracks. Deng and Co have allowed a near total market economy to develop in the countryside and have thus for a limited period won the passivity if not the support of the peasants. They thus have the historic foundation stone of bonapartism But the whole logic of the rapid growth of market forces in rural China and in the special zones will act to pressurise and fracture the Chinese bureaucracy.

 

When it splits and is forced to take its internecine warfare onto the streets (as it did in the mid-sixties and seventies and again at the end of the eighties), China too will face the alternatives of social counter-revolution or proletarian political revolution. In China too revolutionary leadership will be the deciding factor.

 

But not all the shock-treatment rapid restorationist elements within the bureaucracy are bourgeois democrats or liberalisers. Nor are most of the authoritarian bureaucratic conservatives committed to the defence of bureaucratically planned property relations.

 

In the USSR, for example, the conservative bureaucracy has evolved rapidly into Great Russian Chauvinists and anti-semites using populist and nationalist slogans to mobilise the most backward sections of society against the democratic rights of the workers and oppressed minorities fascist and proto-fascist parties have arisen with profound links to the ex-KGB and the army. Groups like Nashi and Zhirinovsky's LDP reject collaboration with western imperialism only because their programme is for the restoration of a specifically Russian imperialism.

 

The most authoritarian elements within the bureaucracy recognise in such proto-fascism a bulwark against the threat of proletarian political revolution and a potential alternative to future domination by foreign capital. The growth of fascist and semi-fascist forces was most clearly reflected in the electoral victory of Zhirinovsky in December 1993. The further development of fascism as a mass force depends partly on the degree of revival by the workers movement in the coming years.

 

If working class resistance to the economic and political attacks of the restorationists mounts the danger will become greater that the latter will turn to a mass fascist movement in order to crush this resistance.

 

On the other hand it is also possible that the weakness of the Russian embryo bourgeoisie and the stagnation of the restoration process itself could strengthen those bureaucratic forces which support a state-capitalist road to capitalism under chauvinist and fascist slogans which might then turn to mobilising the lumpenproletarian and petty-bourgeois masses to smash both rival bureaucratic factions and the threat of an explosion of working class resistance.

 

The restorationist governments all look to look to imperialism for assistance. But imperialism, though it ardently wishes the final and complete restoration of capitalism in the degenerated workers' states simply does not posses the resources to ensure a rapid transformation, one free of revolutionary crises.

 

Only in one state, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a rapid restoration possible and this has proved a tremendous strain on the strongest European imperialist power. Thus despite the installation of restorationist governments there still exists subsequent to this an extended period in which the programme of political revolution has to be combined with an anti-capitalist programme against restoration.

 

The remaining gains of the workers states must be fought for to the bitter end. Only those who can defend old gains will be able to make new ones. Not only the working class of the degenerated workers' states, but that of the entire world would suffer as a result of their wholesale destruction. On a global scale this would leave the working class at !east for a certain period, disoriented and ideologically disarmed. In addition, the anti-imperialist struggles of the semi-colonies would lose an important, if ultimately inadequate, source of weapons and aid.

 

Imperialist access to the raw materials, cheap labour and markets of the degenerate(d) workers' states could open the way to a new if limited expansion period in the imperialist epoch. Nevertheless this itself could heighten inter-imperialist rivalry and promote such a conflict-ridden new division of the world as would re-raise the spectre of war and revolution.

 

As bureaucratic planning disintegrates, only proletarian political revolution can defend, restore and then extend the planned property relations and, thereby, prevent the revitalisation of imperialism. The world proletariat, therefore, must stand with its brothers and sisters in the degenerated workers' states in defence of the remaining planned property relations.

 

The state monopoly of foreign trade, the nationalisation of industry, the principle of planning must be defended against internal restoration and imperialist attack. In defending these economic conquests we are defending the pre-requisites for the transition to socialism, not the bureaucracy that presides over them.

 

At present the imperialists are relying primarily on economic levers to engineer the restoration of capitalism. But any halt, any serious reverse to the process of social counterrevolution could lead to direct military intervention to complete the restoration of capitalism in the face of working class resistance. The world proletariat must continue to stand for the unconditional defence of the workers' states against imperialism and its agents. Therefore, we oppose any reductions in the military capabilities, of the degenerate workers' states, nuclear or conventional, that would open up these states to military or diplomatic coercion.

 

5For the working class, however, the best defence of planned property in the degenerated workers' states is an attack on the Stalinist bureaucracies who have led and are leading them to ruin. The proletarian programme for the degenerate workers' states, as well as for the struggle against imperialism, is not one of mere "democratisation" of the existing state and cannot be reduced to non-class specific demands for "people's power".

 

It is a programme of revolution, a programme for the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship against both bureaucrats, restorationist "democrats" and imperialists.

 

For a political revolution! For workers' council democracy!

 

The essence of the programme of political revolution, like that of the programme of social revolution in the capitalist states, lies in linking the ongoing struggles for the immediate needs of the working class to the fight for political power.

 

By combining intransigent defence of working class interests with the tactics of mass mobilisation, independent political organisation and the imposition of workers' control, revolutionaries can prepare the working class for the seizure of power. In all spheres of struggle, the proletariat must become conscious of its separate interests and identity, must become a class for itself.

 

For independent workplace organisation!

 

Because of the nature of the degenerated workers' states, any independent mobilisations of the working class immediately collide with the power of the bureaucratic state machine. Whatever the issue that led to the mobilisation, this collision poses the need for the working class to win the right to organise itself. Independent class organisations and consciousness is a pre-condition for acting as an independent force within the broad mass movements of opposition to Stalinism.

 

The social power of the proletariat is rooted in production and the class must be organised at the point of production. Within every workplace, democratic mass meetings must become the highest authority. Workers' committees, elected and recallable by mass meetings must fight to impose workers' control on every aspect of life in the plant, including the right to strike and the right to veto management and state plans.

 

For free trade unions!

 

Beyond the workplace, the proletariat must have trade unions independent of the Stalinists as a central element in its organisation as a class. Whether these are formed as the result of a thorough purging of the existing "state" unions or are created anew in struggle, they must be accountable to, and controllable by, their members. All officials of the unions must be elected and recallable, free from the, "leading role of the party", and be paid the average wage of their members.

 

From democratic rights to a real workers' democracy

 

In the struggles that announced the death agony of Stalinism the masses have primarily been drawn into battle against the bureaucracy behind demands for key democratic rights. The task of constructing the revolutionary party involves pushing the working class to the head of this struggle, to lead it and use revolutionary and working class forms of organisation to achieve them. In this fight the workers must not allow the bureaucracy or any section of it to decide who can and cannot be allowed to take advantage of any democratic rights.

 

The bureaucracy-in part or in whole-has proven itself to be the chief agent of restoration and in no wise can be trusted to be the guardian of the post-capitalist property relations.

 

Precisely because the bureaucracy is interested only in conceding as much democracy as will allow it to strike coalitions with other forces to become a new exploiting class the working class has every interest in the fullest and most revolutionary expansion of democratic rights in order to forestall this and to hasten the development of its own class consciousness, that is, recognise who is and who is not its enemy

 

Where the CP still monopolises the media and electoral process we fight to end this. Down with the bureaucracy's censorship laws! The workers themselves must decide what is to be published or broadcast. For access to the press, radio and television for all working class organisations under workers' control. Workers must enforce their own ban on fascist, pogromist, racist propaganda.

 

Likewise they will allow no freedom of the press or access to the media for pro-restorationist forces that are organising to overthrow the workers state by force. All candidates in elections must clearly account for their electoral funding. The masses should fight for a veto over any candidate receiving clandestine financial support from the regime or from counter-revolutionary agencies such as the CIA, the churches, or reactionary NGOs (non-governmental organisations). Any new legal code that the "reformist" wing of the bureaucracy proposes must be freely discussed by workers.

 

Any code must place elected workers' courts at the centre of the legal machinery. For the release of all political prisoners to workers' courts who shall decide on their future.

 

For the freedom to form political parties, except for fascists, pogromists, racists, for those restorationists (including those originating from within the bureaucracy) who are actively organising for civil war, and those which for other reasons have received the veto of the workers movement.

 

Whilst we will not defend these parties from repression by the conservative Stalinist regimes or from bourgeois restorationist governments, we recognise no government's right to judge who is a counter-revolutionary other than a revolutionary workers' government. The workers themselves, not the bureaucracy, must decide which parties they recognise as loyal to their own state power.

 

We fight to expose the anti-working class programme of confused or covertly restorationist parties and by political struggle to deprive them of mass support. We would advocate careful surveillance of their activities and severe measures against any attempts to overthrow the proletarian dictatorship. For the right of any group of workers and small peasants to put forward candidates in any elections.

 

For the smashing of the bureaucracy's repressive state apparatus, the instrument of tyranny against the working class and the instrument used by the Stalinists for capitalist restoration. This apparatus has been fashioned by the bureaucracy in the image of the capitalist state machine.

 

The political revolution must smash it on the road to the creation of healthy workers' state. For full political rights for soldiers, the right to hold meetings in the barracks to elect soldiers' councils free of all control by the officers and commanders, for the right to publish newspapers and have access to the media.

 

We fight for the right of rank and file soldiers, sailors etc to elect their own officers. For the right of all returning soldiers stationed abroad to have decent affordable housing for themselves and their families and the right to retraining and a new job after being demobilised. For the dissolution of the secret police and the punishment of all those guilty of crimes against the workers. A democratic workers state needs no secret police.

 

The plots of counter-revolutionary forces can be countered by workers' security commissions on the lines of the revolutionary Cheka of 1917. Dissolve the standing army of the bureaucracy and replace it with a revolutionary workers army linked to workers' territorial militias.

 

Down with privilege and inequality!

 

One of the earliest indications of the victory of the Stalinist political counterrevolution in the USSR was the arrogant condemnation of egalitarianism as a petit bourgeois deviation. But, as Trotsky predicted, the desire for equality and the hatred of privilege are instinctive and fundamental elements of proletarian class consciousness. On the road to the elimination of the bureaucracy's rule altogether the workers must fight to end abuses now.

 

They must mobilise to end the grotesquely privileged lifestyle of the bureaucracy. The special shops must be closed and the sanatoria, health resorts and leisure facilities currently reserved for the bureaucracy must be thrown open to the workers and poor peasants.

 

The role of a party or state official must cease to be a route to privilege and luxury. No party or state official should earn more than the average wage of a skilled worker.

 

In the workplaces a fight must be launched for the right of the workers to dismiss all officials/managers known to have profited from corruption or to have persecuted workers.

 

Workers' control of production and the plan

 

Economic decisions in a planned economy are not hidden behind a smokescreen of "market forces" as they are under capitalism. They are political decisions taken by the bureaucracy. Consequently any fight against the bureaucracy's decisions, in whatever sphere, are inherently challenges to the right of the bureaucracy to control the economic plan.

 

As that control breeds stagnation and decline, so the marketising wing of the bureaucracy and other restorationist forces attempt to divert working class struggle away from the state by encouraging workers to demand "self management" of their enterprises, free from the bureaucratic interference of the central plan. This doctrine of "market socialism" is a reactionary diversion designed to strengthen the most narrow forms of factory isolationism, to divide the proletariat as a class force and to break up the central plan itself.

 

Against it revolutionaries must fight to make every working class struggle a conscious challenge to bureaucratic power by raising the demand for workers' control of the plan. At the level of the workplace, this must include opening the books to workers' inspection and, at local, regional and national levels, a fight, drawing in the workers of the planning ministries, to expose the real priorities-and the swindles, the corruption and the sheer incompetence-of the bureaucracy's leaders.

 

Through its fight to defend itself against the bureaucracy's plan and to impose its class priorities on planning, the working class will not only safeguard its living standards and conditions but create the organisations which will be the very foundations of a revolutionary workers' state. These organisations will be the mechanism through which the workers' state will achieve a democratically centralised planned economy.

 

An isolated revolutionary workers' state will have to co-exist with, and utilise, market forces at the same time as seeking to overcome them. Without a doubt elements of the Stalinist bureaucratic elimination of the market have actually served to retard the development of sectors of the Soviet economy. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in agriculture and the meeting of the consumption needs of the masses. In these sectors our programme must be based on the following elements:

 

• Down with the serfdom of workers on the state and collectivised farms. For collective farms run by the toilers themselves. Down with any return to private family farming .

 

• For the democratic re-organisation of the farms, based on the democracy of the rural toilers, not on the whims of the functionaries. For councils of agricultural workers comprised of farm workers representing working units, and directly accountable to them. Agricultural production must be integrated into the national plan of production.

 

• For a massive injection of funds to raise the material and cultural level of the countryside to that of the cities, thereby overcoming the glaring inequalities in the conditions of life between town and country.

 

• Against all reforms which increase the influence of imperialist finance capital on the economies of the workers' states; against the abandonment of the state monopoly of foreign trade, against joint ventures in which workers' rights are reduced in comparison to those obtaining in state run plants. We oppose the bureaucracy's policy of subordination to the IMF. The disastrous consequences of this for the working class are already most clearly visible in Yugoslavia, Poland and Hungary.

 

• We demand that the bureaucracy repudiates the debts it has incurred towards international finance capital. A revolutionary workers' government will judge what obligations to honour from the point of view of revolutionary expediency. A workers council state will call on the exploited masses worldwide to mobilise for the total renunciation of the external debt and the expropriation of the imperialist multinationals.

 

Illusions in parliamentary elections and assemblies

 

The consequence of decades of political repression and economic failures of the bureaucracy have created widespread illusions in bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Both the bureaucracy and the pro-bourgeois opposition have used these illusions to block the self-organisation of the working class, to obstruct the creation of such workers' councils as arose most clearly in the Hungarian revolution of 1956 but also existed in less developed forms in Poland and in Czechoslovakia during the political-revolutionary situations of the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1980-81 Solidarnosc upheaval.

 

But only in Romania during the 1989-90 uprising did the embryos of workers committees develop and play an important role in the strikes which helped bring down the Ceaucescu regime. Elsewhere multi-party parliamentary elections were hastily improvised to block the road to working class self-organisation, direct democracy and mass participation in politics.

 

Our programme is not for the creation of bourgeois parliaments in workers' states. Elected by an atomised electorate, incapable of holding their representatives to account, and separated from the executive power parliaments can never be an adequate expression of workers' power. These institutions directly aid the restoration plans of the bureaucracy or the nascent bourgeoisie.

 

Parliamentary representatives, not recallable by their electors are eminently corruptible by those who have wealth and power. When the ruling bureaucracy attempts to stabilise its rule through the organisation of parliamentary elections we counterpose to this the proletarian democracy of workers' councils. We fight for their formation as organs of struggle against the bureaucracy and as the organs of the democracy of a revolutionary workers' state.

 

But where such revolutionary slogans find as yet no echo in the consciousness or experience of the masses it would be utterly sectarian bankruptcy to rest content with this. We must seek out every way of organising the working class to actively intervene as a politically independent force in the existing political situation. If contrary to our wishes this is the terrain of parliamentary elections then it is there we must fight.

 

We oppose every attempt of the bureaucracy to manipulate or restrict the electoral process by imposing its vetoes on the lists of candidates or of eligible parties. Against bureaucratically rigged elections we we fight to impose the principles and certain of the forms of proletarian democracy. We fight for workers to stand their own candidates, elected by workers' assemblies in the workplaces and the workers districts.

 

We fight for them to stand on a workers' programme against bureaucratic rule and privilege and restoration in all its forms, for the defence of the rights of national minorities, for a fighting action programme to defend all the workers rights and gains. We fight for all candidates to be directly responsible to workers' assemblies and to be paid no more than the average wage of a skilled worker.

 

We take no responsibility for the existence of the form of a bourgeois parliament in a workers state (the Volkskammer, the Supreme Soviet etc)

 

These were the creation of the Stalinists who destroyed or dared not create soviets. But we have to seriously address the democratic illusions of the masses, when the nascent bourgeois forces seek to utilise the "democratisation" of such parliaments to create a permanent and stable instrument for the restoration of capitalism.

 

Our aim is to prevent the creation of such a stable parliamentary regime. When the restorationists try to create a legal and institutional basis for the capitalist regime, by means of bonapartist plebiscites or the votes of existing undemocratic assemblies, but where the workers still have no experience of soviets or where their memory has been obliterated, revolutionaries can and should return to the revolutionary democratic demand for a sovereign constituent assembly.

 

This is not to call for a parliament (i.e. a permanent legislative body, part of a division of powers within a bourgeois regime), but rather to create an arena within which representatives of the conflicting classes will meet and fight over the political form and the very class basis of the state-embodied in its constitution. Of course we do not believe that the fight between restoration and proletarian power will be decided in any assembly. But the disguised and open agents of restoration can be exposed to the masses there.

 

The task in such conjunctures is for revolutionaries to become the vanguard of the revolutionary democratic struggle, in order if possible to tear the very weapon of political democracy out of the hands of the inconsistent (semi-bonapartist) bourgeois democrats.

 

We should advance the slogan of the CA in order to outflank the restorationists who will try and monopolise democratic slogans while in reality seeking to heavily restrict the powers of the parliament and surround it with bonapartist safeguards in case it falls too closely under the pressure of the masses. We can do this by fighting for the revolutionary democratic right of re-call. Every deputy must be subject to immediate recall by a majority of their electors.

 

We must fight to ensure that as much of the electoral campaign takes place before mass meetings in the work places where candidates can be cross-examined in detail on their programmes. We must fight for free and equal access to the media for all candidates except those of fascists or those seeking to overthrow planned property by force.

 

Of course, any actual constituent assembly can prove to be a force for counter-revolution, for the destruction of the workers' state's property relations. As such we must seek to expose it to the masses and mobilise the workers to dissolve it.

 

For workers' council democracy

 

For the working class to overthrow the dictatorship of the bureaucracy it must forge its own means of exercising state power. The independent organisations generated in the struggles against the bureaucracy must be welded together into genuine workers' councils. It will be these councils which will organise the mass insurrection of the working class, and their allies amongst the rural poor to smash the whole repressive machine of the Stalinist state apparatus which is the means of maintaining the political dictatorship of the bureaucracy over the proletariat.

 

Like the bourgeois state, upon which it is modelled, the essential elements of the Stalinist state machine are the "specialised bodies of armed men" and their apparatus of spies, gaolers and torturers. As the massacre of Tiananmen Square once again confirmed, even where the bureaucratic caste is internally divided, so long as the dominant faction has control of this apparatus they will use it to defend themselves against the insurgent masses. The spearhead of the programme of political revolution, then, is the formation of workers' councils and the arming of the proletariat.

 

As the Russian Revolution demonstrated, the workers' council is the form through which the working class exercises state power in a healthy workers' state. Rooted in the factories, the working class communities and the oppressed layers of society, they organise the great mass of the once-exploited to become rulers of their own state. Workers' council deputies will be directly elected by mass workers' meetings.

 

They are responsible to their electorates and, therefore, permanently recallable by them. Workers' councils are organs of class power, i.e. capitalists are excluded from the elections. The ruling sections of the bureaucracy must be also denied the right to vote. We fight politically against those representatives of the bureaucracy in whom the working masses still have illusions. The political revolution will only be successful if the bureaucrats are driven out of the workers' councils.

 

The workers' council combines in itself both executive and legislative functions which means that a living workers' council democracy will control the state bureaucracy, reduce it and, in the long term, replace it altogether with the self-administration of society. Such bodies have nothing in common either with the present soviets in the USSR which have a mock parliamentary form, or the "popular committees" of Cuba, which exist to rubber stamp the decisions of the bureaucracy.

 

Down with all forms of social oppression!

 

Thermidor, in the USSR, marked not only the establishment of bureaucratic tyranny over the economy and the state but also the reversal of many of the reforms introduced after 1917 to counter social oppression. This re-introduction of reactionary legislation and moral norms has since served as a model for the other degenerate workers' states.

 

The victorious bureaucracies have all sought to strengthen the bourgeois family and to determine its size in accordance with their immediate economic and military requirements. Bureaucratic planning abandoned the goal of the socialisation of child care and domestic labour. Women remained subordinated to the double and triple burden of job, household and child-rearing. Nor do the "reformers" intend to reverse the effects of Stalin's Thermidor on the family.

 

On the contrary, Gorbachev's policy of perestroika, for example, strengthens a reactionary image of women which will be used to reduce women's principal roles to those of wives and mothers and to force them out of certain branches of production.

 

Youth are taught their "rightful place" in the educational establishments, they are stultified by the reactionary morality of Stalinism, they are denied free cultural expression. Likewise the great gains made by the October Revolution in legally defending the rights of homosexuals have long since been smashed and the daily diet of lesbians and gay men from Cuba and Asia through to Eastern Europe and the USSR is repression and even persecution. Against oppression on the grounds of sex or sexuality we fight:

 

• Against the oppression of women-for real socialisation of housework. For the plan to provide the crèche facilities that can make this possible. For a massive programme to build restaurants, canteens and social amenities in order to lift the burden that women bear.

 

• For a woman's right to work and equal access to jobs not subject to protective legislation. In order to fight the legacy of male chauvinism and oppression, a legacy preserved by the bureaucracy, we fight for an independent working class based women's movement.

 

• No limitation on abortion right, but for the provision of free contraceptive devices for all to give women real control over their fertility. No to any enforced family size imposed by the bureaucracy.

 

• Abolish the reactionary laws against homosexuality and release all those imprisoned or condemned to psychiatric "hospitals" on this basis. For an end to all forms of discrimination against lesbians and gay men. For open recognition that AIDS exists in these states; for a state funded programme of research, treatment and education about the virus.

 

• Down with the oppression of youth. For student, parent and education workers' control of the schools and for committees of the youth to control their own entertainment, sporting and cultural facilities, clubs etc. Down with censorship which, far from protecting youth from reactionary ideas, cripples their intellect and fighting spirit and thus leaves them prey to such ideas. Abolish all laws that discriminate at work or in society against youth.

 

Political revolution and the national question

 

From its foundation, the revolutionary Soviet state had a federal character. As with every other aspect of Bolshevik political practice, Stalinism retained the form but emptied it of revolutionary content. Far from being a voluntary federation of peoples the USSR became a prison house of nations.

 

The pattern of denial of the rights of minority nationalities has been repeated in other degenerated workers' states, whether they have a federal character (as in Yugoslavia), are unitary states with supposed "autonomous regions" (as in China) or give no constitutional recognition to the existence of minorities (as in Rumania). The Kremlin has also oppressed nations outside the borders of the USSR and launched invasions to crush proletarian revolts against bureaucratic rule.

 

Opposition to the ruling bureaucracies has thus frequently taken on a nationalist character. Amongst these oppressed peoples revolutionaries champion and fight for the democratic rights of the oppressed nationalities as part of their struggle for the political revolution. We oppose every manifestation of Great Russian, Chinese and Serbian oppressor nationalism.

 

We support the right to the full cultural self-expression for all oppressed nationalities. This means full support for their right to use their own language in all public and state business as well as the right to be educated in their own language We fight against any discrimination in jobs and for the right of oppressed nationalities to veto immigration policies determined by the bureaucracies of the oppressor nationalities. Likewise we are against any reverse discrimination of former national majorities now turned minorities in newly independent states (e.g. Russians in Lithuania).

 

We fight for all multinational workers' states to be free federations of workers' republics. In general we do not seek the fragmentation of the degenerated workers' states into their component nationalities both because we are in favour of the largest integrated territories in order to advance the development of the productive forces, and because nationalism threatens to divide the working class and blind it to the need to destroy the bureaucracy and imperialism.

 

It can lead workers to side with "their own" national bureaucracy or to a belief that it is possible to achieve "independence" through capitalist restoration and with the aid of imperialism.

 

The capitalist offensive is attempting to disintegrate every element of class identity and collectivist consciousness, and develop in their place individualistic, religious and nationalist-ethnic ideas. In various republics, regions, small areas and even enterprises the restorationists are trying to spread the idea that only total independence from the official state will give them better access to the international market, better prices for their exports and better conditions for purchasing imports and attracting investments.

 

The USSR has disintegrated into fifteen independent republics and there are many further autonomous republics and regions within them which have serious separatist tendencies The bureaucrats and nationalists that are behind these independence movements are trying to create miniature bourgeois semi-colonies. In most of them other ethnic minorities suffer discrimination and oppression.

 

In the Baltic states,, for example, the Slavic minorities are not recognized as citizens and suffer a new apartheid. In former Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus, Moldava, Central Asia and other former "socialist block" states bloody and non-progressive inter-ethnic wars are under way.

 

In fact genuine independence for any of the presently oppressed nationalities in the workers' states is only achievable on the basis of democratically planned proletarian property relations. "Independence" under the leadership of restorationists can only lead to the subordination of any newly established states to imperialism, to their becoming semi-colonies.

 

This would see the working class ever more directly exploited by international capitalism and their democratic aspirations brutally suppressed in the interests of profit. We do not advocate secession because it weakens the workers state and hampers the development of the productive forces. But, in the concrete case where within a particular oppressed nation the great majority of its working class has illusions in separation we should raise the slogan for an independent workers council republic.

 

Which side we take in the case of a military conflict between an oppressed nation's pro-independence movement and the centralised Stalinist apparatus must depend on all the concrete circumstances. Should this movement be carrying out pogroms against other national minorities or be in an armed alliance with imperialism, it would be possible to side with the Stalinist central apparatus whilst not supporting it politically.

 

We could do this whilst simultaneously raising the slogan for an independent or autonomous workers council republic (as in Azerbaijan in 1990). On the other hand where it is a legitimate movement based on the working people we could take sides with the independence movement (without supporting its aims or the popular front) against military repression (as in Lithuania in 1990/91).

 

However, the alienation of so many nationalities from the degenerate workers' states is the product of decades of vicious national oppression. The vanguard of the political revolution must seek by the most vigorous means to allay the fears of these peoples and win them to the side of the preservation of their own planned property by unconditionally supporting their right to self determination, including to secession.

 

Where the majority of the people concerned call for independence, in mass demonstrations or workers' assemblies, in elections or plebiscites we will support by all means the winning of such independence. To do otherwise would be to cut ourselves off from the democratically expressed will of masses of workers and, therefore, to ensure they will fall under the leadership of reactionary forces.

 

However, only proletarian political power and proletarian property relations can guarantee the independence to which such mobilisations aspire. Therefore our positive slogan in these conditions is for an independent workers' council state

 

Even where existing separatist movements have espoused an overt social counter-revolutionary platform we will still defend the right to state independence whilst continuing the struggle against restoration. National independence is not simultaneous with the restoration of capitalism and the ending of national oppression will begin to untie the bonds between the representatives of opposing class interests.

 

We will continue to organise the workers for armed defence of the post-capitalist property relations. However, in conditions of war (external or civil) in any given workers state we may be obliged temporarily to subordinate the right of secession to the defence of workers' states under attack from the forces of imperialism and counter-revolution.

 

As an expression of our opposition to the reactionary utopia of building socialism in one country we stand for the widest federation possible of workers states, starting with regional federations. Thus the victorious political revolution will re-unite on a voluntary and equal basis the republics of the former USSR, Eastern Europe and beyond. In the regions where Stalinism and its successors have sown national antagonisms and wars we fight for workers state federations (e.g. in the Balkans and Indo-China) as a step toward their integration within the World Socialist Republic.

 

For a return to the proletarian internationalism of Lenin and Trotsky!

 

The Stalinists sullied the slogan of proletarian internationalism by identifying it with submission to the Soviet bureaucracies state interests. The foreign policy of a revolutionary workers' state has as its aim not primarily its own defence nor even the defence and support of other workers' states but the interests all those struggling against capitalism and imperialism.

 

The defence of any single workers states or any grouping thereof is a part of and therefore subordinated to the World Revolution. This is the unfalsified programme of proletarian internationalism. It is the polar opposite of the foreign policy of the degenerated workers' states over the last half century which were geared to their attempts to achieve peaceful coexistence with imperialism.

 

The Stalinists cynically manipulated and betrayed the struggles of the working class and colonial peoples around the world. Side by side with strengthening market mechanisms and capitalist forces inside the workers' states, the remaining ruling bureaucracies are globally in retreat in the face of imperialism. Stalinism has always pursued an essentially counter-revolutionary policy at home and abroad. In Afghanistan, Kampuchea, Central America and Southern Africa the USSR over the last decade played a counterrevolutionary role, both in the manner of its support for progressive forces and in its shameful desertion of those forces in pursuit of a deal with imperialism.

 

The secret diplomacy operated by the Stalinist bureaucracies must to be abandoned completely. This policy was part of the bureaucratic monopoly of information in the degenerated workers' states and only served to misinform and deceive the working class.

 

Negotiations between workers' states and capitalist states or other workers' states have to be carried out in view of the working class. The demands from both sides should be made public. Negotiations have to be used in order to make revolutionary propaganda. The nature of the negotiations have to be revealed to the masses.

 

Relations with capitalist states also have to be used by a workers state as a weapon. Diplomatic ties and trade relations with each country have to be examined carefully. Stalinists used diplomatic ties with capitalist countries to excuse the drowning of workers' movements in these countries in blood and also caused the Stalinists to raise the prestige of these butchers (e.g. China's relations with Pinochet). This was a common practice among Stalinists. Diplomatic and trade relations have to be useful for the building of a workers' state and must not limit or harm the formation of a revolutionary movement

 

In a situation of direct military attack on a workers' state, in or out of a political revolutionary crisis, it is legitimate to seek an armed united front with the armed forces of another workers' state.

 

In that united front the working class must not allow its forces to be subordinated to those of its allies, but must struggle for arms and assistance to be put under the control of its organisations and argue amongst the allied forces of the degenerated workers' state for internationalist political revolution.

 

We defend the right of the degenerate workers' states to possess nuclear weapons and, in wars with imperialism, use them when militarily necessary for the defence of the workers' states. But we oppose the bureaucracy's overall defence and military policy which has as its aim the realisation of the utopian goal of peaceful co-existence with world imperialism.

 

The foreign policy of a workers' state has to be subordinated to a revolutionary international. A genuine international can place the foreign policy of a workers' state in its rightful context within the pursuit of the world revolution. Only an international can effectively defend workers' states against imperialist intervention by co-ordinating the mobilisation of the working class across various imperialist countries.

 

For a Leninist-Trotskyist party!

 

The programme of political revolution, understood both as a linked system of demands and all the strategic and tactical means of achieving them, will not be arrived at by the spontaneous struggles of the working classes of the degenerate(d) workers' states. The experience of Hungary, Poland and China tragically shows that, as under capitalism, spontaneity must be harnessed to scientific class consciousness in the organisational form of a revolutionary party.

 

Although the first small nuclei of such a party may originate amongst the intelligentsia, the test of their 'communism" will be their recognition of the need to win and organise the working class leaders thrown up by the anti-bureaucratic struggle. All the norms of membership, organisation, internal life and external activity developed by the Leninist Bolshevik Party and, later, by the Left Oppositionists and the Trotskyists, will be applicable.

 

We reject the "leading role" of the Stalinist parties. They are the parties of the bureaucracy. The experience of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1968 and of the "horizontal movement" within the Polish Workers' Party during the height of Solidarnosc's struggle, suggests that proletarian mobilisations will find a reflection in the ruling Communist Parties. This is so because a large number of workers are captive members of these parties.

 

We reject the idea that the ruling parties can be reformed or can peacefully evolve into centrist formations. These parties must be broken up as instruments of mass mobilisation in support of the repressive and privileged bureaucracy. Nevertheless, we do not ignore the fact that in an escalating political revolutionary situation, the bureaucracy may come under challenge from sections of the party membership or the proletariat.

 

The united front tactic, levelled at these forces and opposition groups outside the party, will be vital in breaking the masses from these mis-leaders, new or old. Where we cannot directly win rank and file working class elements to the ranks of Trotskyism, and recognising that such opposition will often be the first expression of political independence by such workers, we should encourage them to put the Communist Party, which they remain within, to the test by demanding:

 

Elections at every level, elections based on open platforms and political competition in open debate. For the lifting of the ban on the formation of factions and on the circulation of platforms, which was imposed as a purely temporary measure in the Russian Communist Party of Lenin and Trotsky in 1921, but which was turned into a repressive norm under Stalin.

 

The revolutionary party, forged anew in struggle must inscribe onto its banner the overthrow of the Stalinist dictatorships, the creation of a democracy of workers' councils, the installation of a democratic plan and above all the extension of the revolution internationally. If the workers' states undergo revolutionary regeneration then the death knell of imperialism and class rule will sound across the globe. Turn the bureaucratic prison houses once more into fortresses of the world revolution!

 

The programme during the restoration process

 

Due to the accumulated betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the prolonged crisis of revolutionary leadership a new form of transitional period has opened up-the transition from degenerated workers state to capitalism. The task of revolutionaries is to re-orient their programme to guide a struggle against the remains of bureaucratic tyranny and disorganisation and against the restoration of capitalism.

 

The road to restoration has most frequently been opened by the rise to power of a faction of the bureaucracy that set in train a series of concessions to the market. These had been advocated with ever greater insistence from economic experts from within the bureaucracy from the 1960s onwards; (Liberman, Ota Sik etc). They were carried out first on a significant scale in Hungary.

 

They centred on the stage by stage weakening and narrowing of the scope of the central plan, the creation of real or simulated market mechanisms between the enterprises, the puncturing of the state monopoly of foreign trade, the entry into the economic institutions of world capitalism, the IMF etc.

 

The utopian aspect of this programme for the bureaucracy was the idea that it would increase the efficiency, the level of technical innovation or the responsiveness of the economy to the needs of the consumers. Instead it hampered and disrupted the working of the planned economy whilst the continued existence of the latter obstructed the development of a real market, creating instead a massive "black economy", it created a criminal class before it created a bourgeoisie.

 

Both in those states where the marketising faction of the bureaucracy tried to carry out this programme with democratic reforms and in those where it tried to maintain its political dictatorship intact the result was the same-a severe political crisis where three fundamental alternatives were posed;

 

(a) restoration of the bureaucratic dictatorship and a halting or slowing of market reforms,

 

(b) the seizure of power by an openly restorationist regime that would set about the destruction of the central planning system and the rapid transition to the operation of law of value as the dominant force within the economy or,

 

(c) a proletarian political revolution introducing workers democracy and a democratically planned economy. Only the latter two alternatives were and are fundamentally viable. Bureaucratic-dictatorship however bloodily restored or maintained can never solve the death agony of bureaucratic planning and it alienates the masses hurling them into the arms of the democratic restorationists. Whilst in China, Korea, Vietnam and Cuba the bureaucracy tries by repressive means to avoid the fate of Gorbachev the development of pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations are inevitable.

 

A greater or lesser degree and duration of dual power creates a situation where the forces of the old bureaucracy, the proletarian political revolution or the bourgeois counterrevolution must engage in a life or death struggle. If the forces of political revolution fail to develop then sooner or later, with this or that violent backward or forward lurch, restoration is possible and indeed inevitable.

 

Thus far the weaknesses of the forces consciously seeking to defend the planned economy and the other proletarian gains has resulted in the seizure of power by a series of bourgeois restorationist governments. These have set out first of all to resolve any remaining duality of power with the old bureaucracy via the purging of the state machine.

 

This purgation will vary according to the degree of political homogeneity of the armed forces. Where an important part remains convinced of the viability of bureaucratic rule, the purging may take on a violent form, even leading to civil war. At the end of this process the degenerate workers state will have been smashed. The resolution of this dual power, the simultaneous prevention of the working class from intervening to establish its own organs of power, is vital to the successful restoration process.

 

But even the establishment of a reliable state machine, bourgeois not only in its class form but in its class character in that it actively defends the growing elements of capitalism and attacks the disintegrating remnants of the planned economy, is not the end. Only when the laws of the former predominate over those of the latter, only when the economic base of the workers state has been destroyed can we say that the process is complete and capitalism restored.

 

The economic programmes of capitalist restoration striven for are extremely varied. The one immediate "success" was the integration of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the West German imperialist state, via a prolonged combination of state capitalist and privatisation measures after the central organs of the planned economy were abolished. In the other states where the resources of a major imperialism are not available the neo-liberal shock therapy has been applied.

 

This means freeing prices, dissolving the central planning and resource-allocation institutions, the abolition of the old state bank monopoly and its replacement with a fully commercial credit system under which loss making enterprises can and must go bankrupt, the transformation of the enterprises into private and/or state capitalist trusts.

 

The massive economic slump which is the result of the implementation of this policy itself creates repeated political crises, pre-revolutionary situations which a deepening class consciousness and militancy of the proletariat and the emergence of anti-restorationist defenders of workers democracy can turn into a fully developed revolution. This revolution will have a combined character.

 

It will be a political revolution in the sense that the expropriation of the bourgeoisie is not its central task but with enormous social, i.e. anti-capitalist tasks. If it remains a political revolution it is nevertheless aimed at a bourgeois regime which holds all or part of the state power. It will have the task of seizing state power and creating a workers state based on soviets.

 

The Action Programme Against Restoration

 

In the moribund degenerate workers states, where restorationist governments are in the process of carrying out the restoration of capitalism we must fight for a programme of immediate and transitional demands to halt and reverse the social counter-revolution; a programme which in its totality can only be the programme of a revolutionary workers government.

 

• For a basic living wage that guarantee a shopping basket of goods as determined by the rank and file workers' organisations

 

• For a sliding scale of wages-an automatic, equivalent rise in wages for every rise in prices determined by elected committees of workers, particularly women and pensioners-to fully compensate for every increase in prices.

 

• Stop all price rises. Prices of food, clothing, transportation, rents and fuel should be prevented from rising. Only a workers' government can reform the currency in the interests of the toilers rather than that of the speculators.

 

• Put all private and state warehouses and food storage under the control of armed workers' detachments, under workers inspection and distribution. Confiscate all goods hoarded by the bureaucrats, the black marketeers, or private businesses. Workers must control and distribute any aid received from imperialist countries.

 

• Elected committees of workers must inspect the accounts of the enterprises and the planning ministries, the bureaucracies special shops and the accounts of the new speculators. Only then will the scale of corruption, siphoning off and theft of the produce of the workers state be known, the culprits punished and a new plan of production and distribution be possible.

 

• Organise direct exchange between the cities and the countryside. The rural and urban workers should together work out fair exchange ratios and even prices between the products of industry and agriculture.

 

• Restore the right and opportunity to work. The existing unemployed must be offered work or paid at the average industrial wage. No to all redundancies without equivalent work at equivalent pay. Occupy all factories, mines, shops or offices declaring redundancies or attempting closure. Demand that the idle members of the bureaucracy, the enterprise managers and the parasitic speculators perform useful work in the factories and on the land at the average wage of a worker.

 

• For workers' management in every enterprise. No to privatisation even in the form of alienable shares distributed in whole or in part to the workers themselves. In a workers' state the factories already belong to the workers. No to expropriation of the workers' property.

 

• No cuts in the social services. For a massive programme of housing repairs and construction of new dwellings, crèches, schools and clinics. No one should be unemployed and no one should be idle whilst people lack these elementary necessities.

 

• For a minimum living wage for all and for all pensions to be no lower than this and to be protected by a sliding scale

 

• For emergency action to alleviate the housing shortage. Seize the dachas and the big apartments of the former bureaucrats and the new rich. Occupy all state buildings that are not serving the collective good of the working class and convert them to accommodation for young families, the unemployed.

 

• Workers committees must draw up an inventory of all state property as it stood before the restorationist governments came to power. The misappropriation and hoarding of the former bureaucracy must be brought to light and all the resources of the workers state restored to collective ownership. All the "expropriation" of state property must be reversed.

 

• Down with national chauvinism. Summary execution for the organisers of pogroms and "ethnic cleansing". Merciless repression of the fascists and anti-semites, racists, chauvinists that organise attacks on national minorities, on women, gays and on the workers organisations. No platform, no "democratic rights" for these vermin.

 

• Respect the decisions of minority nationalities to independence if that was their choice. Unconditionally defend the democratic rights of all the nationalities against old style Stalinist or new style nationalist or religious repression. But just as we defend the democratic rights of all the minorities inside Yugoslavia, China or USSR, we should defend the democratic rights of all the Great Russian, Serb and Han Chinese workers in areas in which now they are minorities and may suffer oppression.

 

• For a workers' militia to protect the workers' struggles, to crush the fascists and pogrom organisers and to smash the armed insurrections of the counterrevolutionaries.

 

But to prevent the restoration of capitalism the workers face a combined task, a struggle against a bourgeois executive power and a struggle to save the remains of the planned state-owned means of production and distribution. To do the latter they must take up the struggle to overthrow the restorationist governments and put into power workers' governments based on workers' councils.

 

The restorationist forces cannot be removed by peaceful means alone though the more decisively and the more strongly the workers mobilise the less costly will such a victory be. They can organise a workers militia which in turn must win over the rank and file soldiers.

 

There is no shortage of arms or the opportunity to acquire them. Most workers have undergone military service. The workers can and must arm themselves. Arms in hand workers can snuff out the flames of national hatred, protect all minorities, protect the strikes and occupations and as soon as the opportunity of seizing power arises armed units attached to the soviets can carry this through and establish a workers' government.

 

The workers government would have to organise the election of workers tribunals to try all those who have committed crimes against the working people either under the Stalinist dictatorship or under the restorationist regimes.

 

The central tasks of a workers' council government will be the crushing of the restorationists' plans and the rallying of the world working class movement to its defence against the inevitable imperialist pressure and blockade. In the economy the workers' government will have to develop and implement an emergency plan to save the economy from total disintegration. This [word missing?] an emergency plan drawn up by the workers representatives and put into action by the working class itself. The most urgent measures for such a plan should be:

 

• Restore the state monopoly of foreign trade with control of all international commerce by elected organs of workers' inspection. The seaport, airport, communications and banking workers can rapidly decide on what trade is in the interests of the workers' state and what is speculation or harmful profiteering. Urge the workers' movements of the capitalist countries to force their governments into undertaking trade agreements that will benefit the workers' government's emergency plan.

 

• Stop all de-nationalisation of the large scale means of production and renationalise all sectors already sold-off. Close down the stock exchanges and the commodity exchanges that have been set up. Inspect all previous dealings and punish those guilty of anti-working class profiteering.

 

• Restore a state monopoly of banking. Nationalise all private banks installing workers 'control and inspection. The dollar hoards of the speculators, the joint ventures, the pseudo-cooperatives and the private accounts of the bureaucrats must be confiscated for the workers state.

 

• Refuse to recognise the foreign debt, stop all payments and break all the chains to the IMF, the World Bank and the European Bank of Restoration! Kick out all the imperialist "economic advisers".

 

• Carry out a monetary reform in the interests of the toilers. Money as a measure of value must as accurately as possible gage the labour time embedded in the products of industry and agriculture. The inflation of the last years of bureaucratic mismanagement must be brought to an end so that workers can undertake rational accounting without which planning is impossible.

 

• Transform the collective farms into genuine democratic co-operatives on a one worker one vote basis. Establish workers control in the state farms. Aid the small farms towards co-operation by the provision of collective resources.

 

• Small sized private businesses, industrial production, distribution, retail trade and services should be left to operate and even to expand in number as in spheres where the state and the cooperatives cannot meet demand. This sector of private small capitalists and petty bourgeois can even be useful to the workers' state providing their workers are all unionised and have their working conditions and hours regulated by the local soviets, providing their accounts are subject to inspection and taxation is levied for the benefit of the workers' state.

 

• Re-organise a Central Commission for the Co-ordination of the Plan and create similar commissions at local, regional and city levels. The skilled statisticians, economists and administrators must be assembled and put to work under the control of elected workers representatives. There must be no re-emergence of bureaucratic privilege. No expert should earn more than the wage of a skilled worker and all planning organs must carry out the decisions of the appropriate organs of worker's democracy.

 

• The Emergency Plan must provide for a massive construction programme to improve the social infrastructure; house building and repairs, clinic and hospital building, and expansion of the nurseries, schools and further and higher education.

 

• The Emergency Plan must rapidly improve the communication, distribution and transport system. Military vehicles and aircraft must be drafted into an improved freight system so that food does not rot before it can reach the consumers. A longer term programme of road and railway construction, upgrading the telecommunication systems, creating a nationwide network of warehousing, cold storage, and freezer plants can ensure that the labour of the farmers is not shamefully wasted.

 

• The Emergency Plan must set as one of its central goals a series of measures that improve the condition of women. Improvements in the quality of goods, distribution and retailing must remove from women the crushing burden of the search for food and the endless queuing. Improvements in housing, in crèche and childcare facilities, in care for the sick and the elderly should take up the struggle to socialise domestic toil and liberate women so they can at last play a fully equal role in social and public life.

 

• For a woman's right to work, with equal pay for work of equal value; defend maternity leave and pay and the protection of women from harmful work. Resist moves to force women to work part time with lower pay and poor working conditions-reduce the working week for all workers. Defend the rights of women to abortion, and extend the availability of contraception.

 

• The churches and the mosques have begun to make claims to organise schools and to censor culture and education. They must have no control over the schools, the hospitals or the media. For scientific and rational education on sexuality free from clerical superstition and taboos.

 

The Workers' Government must offer international solidarity

 

The workers' government must break resolutely from the counter-revolutionary policies of the Walesas, the Yeltsins or the Havels. The allies of a workers' state cannot be the imperialist world devourers and the exploiters of the proletariat of the capitalist countries.

 

The victorious political revolution must appeal for direct aid and support to the workers' movements of the entire world and particularly to the rank and file. The victorious Russian Revolution in 1917 rallied massive support in Europe, Asia and the Americas such that the heroic resistance of the Russian workers could beat off the imperialist intervention. The international policy of the victorious political revolution must in return offer economic and military support to the struggles of the world's workers and oppressed peoples.

 

• Imperialist hands off Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and the other bureaucratically ruled workers states. Military and economic assistance against the US blockade or intervention. For a socialist reunification of Korea, no to a capitalist reunification!

 

• Aid to the workers of these states to make a political revolution. Only revolutionary workers and peasants council governments will be able to save these states. For a world-wide alliance and ultimately a federation of workers states. For economic co-ordination of the plans of all the workers' states.

 

• Support for all national liberation struggles against imperialism. Support for all workers and oppressed peoples who are fighting austerity and privatisation plans dictated by the IMF.

 

• Opposition to the sell-outs deals and betrayals in the Middle East, Southern Africa, South-East Asia, Afghanistan and Central America.

 

• Support for the struggles of the workers of Eastern Europe against capitalist restoration.

 

• Support for both the immediate and the revolutionary class struggles of the workers of the entire capitalist world.

 

• For a new voluntary federation of socialist republics of the ex-USSR; for a new voluntary federation of the socialist republics in the Balkans.

 

• For a world socialist federation of workers council republics.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6 - The fight against social oppression

 

All exploited classes face oppression. The systematic denial of real political and economic equality and personal freedoms is both an expression and a reinforcer of the exploitative relationship between the ruling class and the direct producers. But in addition to this class oppression, there are other systematic economic, social, legal and political inequalities which specifically affect women, youth, different racial and national groups, lesbians and gay men.

 

These specific forms of social oppression are a fundamental feature of class society. They are rooted in the social structures of the family and the nation state. The oppression of women was the first form of systematic oppression and originated alongside the emergence of classes.

 

Women's oppression remains the most fundamental form of social oppression. But all the special forms of social oppression have been transformed with each mode of production. They have reached their most developed, and in many ways most naked, form in the imperialist epoch.

 

The social structures upon which social oppression is based are essential to capitalism. Their functions are intimately and inseparably connected to the process of exploitation, but they create an oppression which is not confined to the working class.

 

Women of all classes face discrimination and disadvantage as a result of the particular role they have within the family of their class. But it is working class women, and likewise working class youth, blacks, lesbians and gay men, who face the most intense social oppression.

 

The working class is the only class with the decisive interest and capacity to overthrow the system which maintains all forms of oppression. Only under the leadership of the working class can oppressed sections of the exploited classes be drawn into the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, which is a precondition for the ending of all oppression. The working class, therefore, must at all times be in the forefront of the struggle against all inequalities, oppression and exploitation.

 

However, the existing workers' organisations often fail to take up the battle against social oppression. Indeed, it is frequently the case that the reformist bureaucrats who dominate the labour movement actively encourage attitudes of hostility amongst the masses to the needs and plight of the oppressed.

 

The oppressed are subject to sexism, racism and heterosexism in such a way as to block their participation in trade union and political life. The task of the revolutionary vanguard lies in combating these prejudices and putting the mass organisations of the working class in the forefront of the struggle against oppression.

 

The oppressed themselves are not necessarily in the vanguard of struggles simply as a result of being the most down-trodden sections of society. Capitalist exploitation and oppression produce not only revolutionary fighters, but also backward and submissive layers.

 

Many may embrace reactionary ideas or retreat into private life. The most class conscious elements of the oppressed will be in the vanguard of the struggle for their own liberation. This vanguard's participation within the overall class struggle can ensure that their interests are actively taken up by the working class.

 

Special methods of agitation, propaganda and forms of work need to be used to win the socially oppressed to the communist programme, and as a result special forms of organisation may be necessary both to mobilise them to fight their own oppression, and to enable them to enter the ranks of the organised workers' movement on an equal basis with all other workers.

 

Within the working class movement revolutionaries must defend the right of the oppressed to organise and caucus in order to press for their demands to be taken up by the whole of the class. In certain conditions, working class movements of the oppressed have also proved necessary to achieve these goals.

 

Such special methods and organisational forms have nothing in common with separatism. They are a means of facilitating fighting unity inside the working class and ensuring that the workers' movement as a whole champions the struggles of the oppressed.

 

In the first place the revolutionary party has a duty to ensure that in its daily work and in its internal organisation it is responsive to the needs of the oppressed. Where mass revolutionary parties exist party sections, or party-led movements can be formed. These sections will organise the oppressed for communist struggle as party members and take the struggle against oppression into the heart of the workers' movement.

 

However, revolutionary communists are as yet a tiny minority inside the workers' movement, so the building of mass sections of the party organised to carry out special forms of work has to be approached by other forms of the united front.

 

In many countries, the common experience of the oppressed has led to the development of movements and campaigns amongst women, lesbians and gays, youth and the racially oppressed. The party cannot leave the leadership of these movements to the petit bourgeois utopians, the Social Democrats or the Stalinists.

 

We support the building of fighting united fronts against oppression, and argue that they must be based on, and led by, the proletariat utilising class struggle methods. In certain cases these united fronts may take the form of fully fledged movements, with branches, congresses and executive committees. But in each case the organisational form must be related to the concrete circumstances.

 

The length of time that such organisation may be needed depends upon the degree to which we are successful in winning the labour movement as a whole to our programme. Furthermore, if our temporary allies seek to split or sell out the struggle of the oppressed we will not flinch from splitting them.

 

We counterpose this tactic to all forms of autonomous or class collaborationist movements of the oppressed. Where bourgeois forces are involved in movements of the oppressed the revolutionary vanguard seeks to break the working class and other oppressed classes away from any alliance with them.

 

Indeed, by building proletarian movements of the oppressed and by fighting relentlessly for communist leadership within them, we are combating the tendencies to separatism and popular frontism that arise amongst the oppressed. Our aim is to build communist movements of the oppressed, although not all participants in such movements will be members of, and therefore under the discipline of, the revolutionary communist party.

 

The fight against discrimination

 

Other sections of society, who are not socially oppressed, face discrimination under capitalism. The elderly, the disabled and the sick, who do not fulfil the requirements of capitalism for wage labour, are discarded and treated as a burden on society. Important sections of the poor are stigmatised and criminalised for actions they take in order to survive. Others are defined as mentally ill and excluded from society. Bourgeois society utilises the marginalisation of these groups in order to impose its concepts of "normality" and its moral code upon the whole working class and to pursue its strategy of divide and rule.

 

For instance the enforced isolation of the elderly makes them prey to conservatism, the restrictions imposed on people with disabilities allow them to be used as non-union cheap labour. Revolutionaries must support the struggles of the elderly, the sick and people with disabilities against the discrimination they face.

 

This will facilitate their integration into the working class and thereby strengthen the fight against the common enemy. They should fight to ensure that the workers' movement allows the fullest possible access for all members of the working class to its organisations, meetings and social life. The revolutionary party should ensure that it sets an example to the rest of the workers' movement.

 

Revolutionaries seek to win the militant fighters from within the ranks of those who suffer discrimination. While supporting all struggles for reforms and improvements under capitalism, communists explain that the profit motive makes it impossible for capitalism to meet the needs of those it puts on the scrap heap. Furthermore, its rapacious nature creates sickness and disability. Only socialised and planned production can release the necessary resources to fully integrate these groups into society and lay the basis for liberation.

 

Women

 

The epoch of imperialism condemns millions of women all over the world to suffer the misery of raising children and running homes in conditions of enormous deprivation. Women bear the full brunt of inadequate housing, insufficient food and the struggle to stave off or cope with the effects of disease. Super-exploitation in the factory and on the capitalist or small peasant farm are likewise the norm for the majority of women in the world.

 

Women of all classes are denied economic, social, legal and political equality with men. The universal nature of women's subordination makes it appear as a natural result of their role in child-bearing. But the systematic social oppression of women only began with the birth of class society and the creation of the patriarchal family as the basic unit within which reproduction, child-care and day to day survival occur.

 

Throughout the different forms of class society the particular features of women's oppression have changed. But they all contain at their kernel, privatised domestic labour, a sphere of life which is the prime or exclusive responsibility of women.

 

In the imperialist epoch women perform much of the work on the land and in the factories, but their first responsibility remains to their household and family. This means that the two sexes have an unequal relationship to paid employment, which is at the root of women's continued oppression.

 

In many semi-colonies the family continues to function as a productive unit, with women and children integral to collective production. But women are still primarily responsible for domestic labour and child rearing, occupying a subordinate position to the male heads of household.

 

Capitalism has proved unable and unwilling to systematically socialise the labour done in the home and thereby is incapable of ending the oppression of women. The provision of socialised laundries, child-care and canteens has proved to be too much of a drain on surplus value for the bosses to provide them, other than partially in the exceptional situation of war.

 

For non-working class women oppression takes on a very different form. Even amongst some ruling classes women are denied full rights over property and inheritance and are kept as decorative assets and producers of heirs by their husbands. Their continued oppression, whilst a million miles away from the drudgery and misery of the working women of the world, is also due to their role in the family.

 

The production of heirs requires the strictest adherence to monogamy by the wives. However, ruling class women can offset many of the worst aspects of their oppression through the employment of working class women to perform their domestic labour and raise their children. Moreover they can be never be real allies of working class women since their stake in bourgeois society means they are completely wedded to the very society that is the material basis for women's oppression.

 

In the imperialist countries the numbers of women employed in wage labour has massively increased since the Second World War. In many countries the majority of married women now have paid employment. Whilst this development has tendencies towards undermining the economic and social dependence of women, the circumstances under which it has happened have proved a mixed blessing for women. Now most women have to combine their hours worked in the factory or office with their hours of domestic labour in the home.

 

There has been little increase in the amount of household work done by men, so women now have even longer hours to work to balance against the gain of receiving a wage. But since women still receive substantially lower wages than men, their economic independence is largely fictional. Legal restrictions reinforce continuing dependence of women on their husbands or fathers in most imperialist countries.

 

In addition to its role in the reproduction of labour power, the family also plays an important role in maintaining the social order of capitalist society. The family acts to reinforce the dominant ideas of the ruling class, maintaining the respective roles of men, women and children, inculcating obedience and servility.

 

Even when the nuclear family has ceased to be the most numerically common form of the household, as is now the case in many imperialist countries, the strength of it as the "ideal" is such that it continues to influence every aspect of women's lives. From the type of education girls receive, through the jobs women do, to the relationships they seek - all these are shaped by this bourgeois family "norm". This family is based on monogamy and heterosexuality, with intense pressure being exerted upon women and girls to conform. The roles of men and women in the family restrict the development of both sexes, but have a particularly repressive effect on women.

 

The family leads to a division within the working class which is maintained by the ideology of sexism. In the labour movement this is not just a question of backward ideas about women's role. It involves condoning or participating in the exclusion of women from many unions. Such sexism leads to a failure to fight for equal pay and refusal to support women in struggle. Whilst women's oppression is not caused by the attitudes of male workers, their sexism continually reinforces it. Often, through domestic violence and abuse, this happens in the most brutal way.

 

Male workers do enjoy real material benefits as a result of the oppression of women. They have a higher status within the household and social life. They secure better jobs and wages and have a lighter burden of domestic chores. These privileges help to reinforce sexist ideas and behaviour within the working class.

 

However, working class men will receive far more important gains from the final liberation of women--the collective responsibility for welfare, freedom in relationships, sexual liberation and the economic gains of socialism. All this means that viewed historically, working class men do not benefit decisively from the oppression of women, but are hindered in the realisation of their fundamental class interests. It is the ruling class, aided by their agents in the labour bureaucracy, who benefit from the division created between male and female workers.

 

The struggle against women's oppression in the semi-colonies

 

Proletarian women are, from earliest childhood, forced to work for pitiful wages and, after the extremely long working day, have to do the housework or take on extra work to ensure subsistence for the family. Things are no better for peasant women who often, on top of the housework, must also work the land because their men have to work in the cities. Poverty, miserable working conditions and unemployment force many women into prostitution.

 

Although imperialism undermines the economic basis for traditional patriarchal systems in these countries, nonetheless, old forms of women's oppression, such as dowries, bride price, clitorodectomy and polygamy, are retained. Widow burning in India is a brutal example of this. Among the women in the semi-colonies illiteracy is even higher than among the men.

 

Despite medical advances the mass of women in the semi-colonies have no control over their fertility and in Africa and Asia half a million babies die at birth each year. Only a very thin upper layer of society benefits from the advantages that capitalism brings, for example, in education and health services.

 

Under these conditions of oppression it is no wonder that thousands of women have taken part in the anti-imperialist struggles in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Palestine, the Philippines and paid a heavy price with their lives. But their interests have always been betrayed. The petit bourgeois and Stalinist movements have proven themselves completely incapable of carrying through the liberation of women. The PDPA in Afghanistan, for example, was prepared to halt the literacy campaign amongst women to win a compromise with the Islamic tribal leaders.

 

Against such betrayals we pose the struggle for the liberation of women as an inseparable component of any proletarian revolutionary strategy. Working class and peasant women must be organised around economic demands and for protective measures against rape, forced sterilisation, trade in women, and enforced confinement for sex tourism.

 

Even when semi-colonial women escape these miseries millions of immigrant and migrant women are drawn into the workforce within the imperialist heartland. There they perform the most menial tasks for very low pay, in apalling working conditions.

 

Immigration controls and restrictions on visas or work permits constantly menace migrant women. In particular they are denied access to many jobs and so are forced into working conditions that isolate them from other workers, the trade unions and labour movement. They are often employed in domestic service to rich families, where they remain unorganised and highly exploited.

 

They frequently have no right to unemployment benefits or protection from arbitrary dismissal. In addition they are denied political rights and social welfare provisions. In all countries we demand the right of domestic and home workers to be unionised, for an eight hour day, a minimum living wage and the right to social welfare. We demand of the trade union and labour movement special measures to organise this section of workers.

 

For a working class women's movement!

 

To end the oppression of women the fundamental separation of domestic labour from the totality of social production must be abolished. Only with women drawn fully and equally into production, with domestic work being organised collectively in a planned socialist economy, can women be free from oppression.

 

The socialist programme alone can guarantee the socialisation of housework and child care. But even under capitalism we can march towards this goal by struggling for women's rights to waged labour. Where the bosses say that there is no work available for women we argue for the sliding scale of hours, to share all available work with no loss of pay. Part time jobs for women have been used by the bosses to increase the exploitation of women workers through low pay and no employment protection, while providing a flexible workforce.

 

We demand full employment protection for part time work combined with the fight for reductions in the hours of all workers, with no loss of pay. We demand the provision of socialised care for children and other dependants to allow women to participate in social production equally with men.

 

Even where women have been drawn into waged labour on a large scale they have not become economically independent. Women must be granted equal pay for work of equal value to guard against the super-exploitation they currently suffer. This is in the interests of the whole working class.

 

The low wages of women, far from protecting male wage rates as many reformist union leaders have maintained, have a tendency to undermine male wage rates and therefore the living standards of the whole class. For an equal minimum wage for men and women at a level to be decided by the working class.

 

Women's earnings must be protected by the sliding scale of wages, where rising prices are matched by rising wages. Working class women will be essential participants in committees that determine price rises and set wage claims. For women in the semi-colonies there is an additional urgent need for equal rights to land holding and ownership.

 

The inequalities that women and girls experience in education and training make them unable to gain the same employment as men. Women must be given equal opportunities through education and re-training, paid for by the bosses and under the control of the unions, women workers and apprentices. Girls must have equal access to education. Literacy programmes must be instituted for women in countries where there are high levels of female illiteracy.

 

Since women still have primary responsibility for the raising of children, to have an equal ability to take up paid work there must be free child-care for all, under the control of women workers and the unions, with full pay for maternity leave. Paternity leave should be made available for fathers.

 

For women who are unable to get paid employment as a result of the inability of capitalism to provide social support for dependent children or other relatives, we demand that the state provides full unemployment benefits, at a level to be decided by the labour movement in each country. This demand must be combined with a struggle of the working class for precisely the social provision which would enable women with children or sick or disabled relatives to be able to work. We are for the collective provision of laundries and restaurants, subsidised by the state, under working class control.

 

A woman's reproductive role also means that there are certain types of work which may be dangerous to her health or that of her children. Protective legislation must be enacted to prevent the harm which may be done by certain types of work.

 

Where this has already been enacted by the bosses' state it has been due to a combination of working class pressure and the realisation by some sections of the ruling class that unbridled exploitation in pursuit of short term gains threatened the reproduction of the working class in the long term, and therefore the very basis of the profit system itself. In addition big capitalists also realised that such legislation would help to drive the smaller capitalists out of business.

 

However, the working class must oversee the implementation of protective legislation, as the bosses will cheat and always find ways to avoid the law so that they can maximise their exploitation of women. The labour aristocracy and trade union leaders have used the notion of protective legislation to exclude women from certain skilled trades in order to protect their sectional craft interests.

 

Women must not be excluded from any trade or industry. Committees of women workers, not union bureaucrats, must decide what tasks, if any, within a trade may be harmful to women's health.

 

Women are systematically denied control of their own bodies and are forced into having unwanted children, or prevented from having children they do want. Women are also forced into arranged marriages and obstructed from getting divorced. In short, women are denied control over their own fertility. Child-bearing must be a choice for women if they are to participate equally with men in production, social and political life.

 

The provision of free contraception and abortion on demand for all women is essential. In many parts of the semi-colonial world women suffer oppression stemming from previous modes of production and the attendant religious ideologies. We are against the forcible circumcision of women, which is part of that oppression. The semi-colonies also suffer from the pressure of imperialism to solve their so-called "population problem" at the expense of women's rights.

 

No woman should be forcibly sterilised. Women are restrained from participating in social life by legal, social and religious codes and frequently face psychological and physical abuse. Enforced marriage and the sale and trade of women must be legally outlawed and these laws enforced by the working class. Full legal rights and benefits must be available to all women regardless of their age or marital status. Down with the compulsory veiling of women or their exclusion from any aspect of public life.

 

Women cannot be liberated unless these demands for the immediate interests of women form part of a programme for working class power. But the fight for immediate and transitional demands can draw working class and peasant women into the united fight of the workers for that goal.

 

Unless women are won to such a united working class struggle they can remain a passive or even backward section of the class, subject as they are to the impact of bourgeois propaganda, particularly religion. But won to such action women can break working class men from the sexist ideology that splits and weakens the labour movement, as well as secure real gains for themselves as they advance towards the goals of socialist revolution and women's liberation.

 

Women must be recruited to the unions, and organised to press their demands on the union leaders. Where women work alongside men in industry we oppose the call for separate women's unions, even where the sexism of the union bureaucrats makes participation of women very difficult.

 

The struggle must be waged to unite male and female workers, whilst defending the right of women to caucus and organise within the unions and at all levels of the labour movement. We must demand that the union leaders fund and support campaigns for the recruitment of women, including part time workers who should be given full rights and reduced rates of dues.

 

We recognise that the legacy of women's role under capitalism as the prime carers and child rearers will mean that many women will be drawn into struggle around the organisation of welfare in times of heightened class struggle and revolutionary crises. However, the revolutionary party must agitate for special measures to ensure that women play a full a role in all aspects of the class struggle, and are not held back from any form of political activity due to their welfare role.

 

A proletarian women's movement, led by revolutionaries armed with a programme for the dictatorship of the proletariat, is essential if women are to play a positive and vital role in the revolutionary struggle. A movement which draws in wide layers of working class women is an essential way of organising those women who are excluded from production, i.e. housewives, unemployed and disabled women.

 

Such a movement, based on women organised in the factories, offices, on the farms, in the communities and in the unions can, at one and the same time, fight for the interests of women, against the prejudices of male workers, and for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

 

In key battles of the working class, women frequently organise their own committees and groups. Whatever form these initial organisations of women take, revolutionaries must argue for their transformation into a proletarian movement which draws in all layers of women workers, poor peasants and oppressed sections of the petit bourgeoisie.

 

In the present period, where revolutionaries are not in the leadership of the mass of working class women, the tasks of organising such a movement still exist. We demand of the Social Democratic and Stalinist leaders of the working class that they provide resources and support for the building of such a movement. In this way we can enter in to a united front with the most militant sections of working class women and, through joint actions and communist propaganda, seek to win them away from their misleaders.

 

Women of other classes, most importantly peasant women but also urban petit bourgeois women, especially in the imperialised countries, will be drawn into this struggle, behind the leadership of proletarian women. To follow the feminist line of an all-class women's movement would be to surrender the interests of working class women.

 

The possibility exists of a temporary alliance with parts of the bourgeois women's movement in some semi-colonial countries. But such movements must fight and mobilise for at least bourgeois democratic demands (for instance the fight of the Congress Party in India against the burning of widows). United action also depends on freedom of propaganda and organisation for all tendencies that are prepared to fight. There must be no restrictions on Trotskyists in their revolutionary work.

 

We oppose the idea of an "autonomous" movement because it excludes the possibility of the women's movement being won to the revolutionary programme, and seeks to prevent communist women from intervening as disciplined members of their organisation. Communist women seek to win the majority of a proletarian women's movement to supporting the revolutionary programme and electing communists to its leadership.

 

The slogan of "autonomy" also involves the exclusion of men from the organisations, and often meetings, of women. Working class women cannot destroy capitalism and end their own oppression without uniting in struggle with the rest of their class, namely, men. The exclusion of men from the activities of a women's movement places an unnecessary barrier in the path of the fight against sexism. This fight must involve the education of male workers in the process of common struggle with women.

 

Youth and children

 

The sons and daughters of workers and peasants experience the most intense forms of capitalist exploitation and abuse. Youth are denied the most elementary rights to independence. Youth have no legal right to dispose of their own wages, no independent access to state benefits and, indeed, no right to choose where and how to live their lives. Despite this youth are deemed mature enough to be forcibly drafted into the armed forces where they will be sacrificed by the million in the military defence of the bourgeois order.

 

The social structure which creates and sustains the oppression of youth is the family. As with women, this subordination is not an eternal feature of human life but a product of class society. The individual family is where infants and children are raised and where the basic skills are learned. In addition it serves to instil into youth the rules by which they are expected to abide in adult life.

 

Working class children are raised to be obedient workers, and likewise the male children of the bourgeoisie are taught to be efficient captains of industry and generals of the armed forces, and girls, obedient wives and producers of future heirs.

 

Youth of the working class and poor peasantry are subject to the most intense oppression: oppression in the family co-exists with super-exploitation in production and poor levels of education. Such youth are the backbone of low waged industries. This reflects the position of youth in the family: their wage levels generally assume that they are part of a larger economic unit.

 

This in turn reinforces youth dependence on parents. As students in schools and colleges working class youth are given little or no income, poor quality training and an education designed to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie.

 

In its most extreme form the position of youth and child labour is a form of slavery, with all wages being paid to the head of the family, usually the father. Where child labour is common, as in many semi-colonies, the welfare of the growing child is of no concern to the bosses who grind these children into ill health and an early grave.

 

For the parents such is their own desperate poverty that they feel there is no alternative but to send their children into the hell of super-exploitation. Child protection laws are ignored by bosses and parents alike, proving the truth of Marx's dictum that right can never be higher than the economic foundation of society.

 

Another consequence of this economic and legal dependence is the repression of young peoples' sex lives. In class society this is an essential starting point for instilling conformity and obedience. Children are not allowed to achieve a rational understanding of their sexual feelings or the interaction of their sexual feelings with social responsibilities.

 

In fact their sexuality is denied any frank expression; even those feelings that conform to the heterosexual norm prescribed by bourgeois society are repressed. Instead young people are subjected to moral and religious taboos. These serve to cloud their consciousness with irrational fears. The child's whole emotional life is obliged to be centred and fixed on their parents. By these means bourgeois notions of the individual and the private are nurtured as against any co-operative or collective ideal.

 

To liberate youth from their economic, social, legal and sexual subordination requires the transformation of society to ensure that the individual family household is no longer the exclusive place for the performance of domestic labour and the raising of children.

 

Along with creating the conditions for the liberation of women, this would also free youth to be independent of their parents, with as much or as little contact with them as they wished, but with the social provision of housing, food, cleaning, clothing and leisure facilities, and childcare available to all.

 

Economic independence, proper education and freedom from super-exploitation are the key demands for youth. For those in paid employment, equal pay for work of equal value must be achieved under workers' control to overcome the gross pay differentials which exist between youth and adult workers.

 

Reduced hours should be worked by youth when they first enter employment, and they should have the right to longer holidays than adult workers. For youth and children under the school leaving age hours of work must be strictly limited and conditions of work overseen by the working class and committees of young workers. Protective legislation is necessary to forbid night work, long hours, and other work which may be injurious to the health and development of youth. This must be under the control of the workers and youth themselves.

 

Education and training for children and youth must be fought for by the whole class. The bosses must be forced to provide full time schooling with financial support for families and later for the students. Education should be free with all expenses paid by the state. It should be comprehensive and available to all, being compulsory up to an age agreed by the labour movement.

 

We fight for the abolition of tests or exams designed to restrict entry into educational institutions. A living grant must be paid to those staying in education beyond the school leaving age, at a level set by committees of students, workers and teachers and protected against inflation.

 

Education should be equally available for girls and boys and the workers' movement should strive to integrate boys' and girls' schooling. It must be secular--no religious propaganda in schools, no state funds to religious schools. We fight against the bourgeois class bias of the curriculum, for instruction in the history of the workers' movement and in the nature of capitalist exploitation.

 

In schools and colleges we fight for the integration of education and training with the experience of production, aiming to overcome the distinction between mental and manual labour which is a feature of all bourgeois education. At the same time, the workers' movement must fight to prevent the capitalists using students, apprentices and trainees as cheap labour. We fight for adequate cultural and sporting facilities, for free discussion of sexual, social and political questions in schools. We demand instruction for the youth in the use of weapons, while opposing any presence of the police or army in the schools, colleges and campuses.

 

We fight to place all educational facilities under the control of the working class and students. While fighting against private educational institutions and for the nationalisation of the universities, we fight for the autonomy of educational institutions from the capitalist state. The running of all educational institutions should be under the direct control of the workers, students and teachers involved and representatives of the labour movements.

 

The representatives must be elected from the mass meetings of all involved on the basis of one vote per person. For the right of school and college students to form unions and political organisations, for the right of access to the schools and colleges for the workers' representatives. Drive the fascists from the schools, colleges and campuses. Worker and student control bodies must fight for the right to veto the appointment of reactionary teachers.

 

Students as a whole are not automatically a natural ally of the working class. Many students are drawn from the upper and middle classes. Full time students are in a privileged position because they are not subject to the daily routine of the working class. Moreover, many students can and do receive privileges as a result of their education. Nevertheless many students--future scientists, technologists, lawyers and artists--can and must be won to the side of the revolutionary workers' movement, thereby strengthening it. Since the time of Marx and Engels the best elements of the intelligentsia in each generation have been won to the proletarian cause.

 

Mass student struggles--in the degenerated workers' states as well as the capitalist countries--show that students have a vital role to play, shoulder to shoulder with the proletarian vanguard, in the struggle for socialism.

 

We therefore fight for worker and student unity expressed in permanent links between the workers' movement and the student organisations, where students can be won to the side of the working class and where the enthusiasm and idealism of the students can help rank and file workers overcome their bureaucratic and conservative leaders. Students should take up class struggle tactics--strikes and occupations--to win their demands.

 

They should fight for rank and file control over the student unions, against state interference and control. In some countries a layer of student bureaucrats exists which, while not being part of the trade union bureaucracy, actively propagates the same ideology and methods of operation. These leaders must be challenged and the student organisations won to the support of workers' real struggles.

 

Unemployed youth must fight for genuine training and education with full economic support, plus the sliding scale of hours to share out available work under workers' control. For those not in work, full benefits must be available as soon as young people leave full time education, to ensure that unemployment does not result in complete economic dependence on the family.

 

Within the family the parents are the people immediately responsible for implementing the oppression of their children. This is true even where parents hold progressive ideas. More often parents oppress their children in a brutal way, treating disobedience with violence and abuse. Youth must therefore be given full legal and political rights within the family, as elsewhere, in order to help break the domination and power that parents exert over them.

 

Social restrictions that the family places on youth, often related to religion, are unbearably oppressive for many young women and men. Since the family denies them the right to pursue their chosen social and sexual activities, social centres must be provided where all the facilities for these activities are freely available. Information and education about sex should be available at the social centres, together with free contraception and abortion referrals.

 

Age of consent laws do nothing to protect youth in the family from sexual abuse. They do punish consensual sexual relations for individuals below a certain age. Abolish the age of consent!

 

Youth must also be given full political and legal rights in the public sphere. If youth are mature enough to be drafted into the bosses' army to defend their system of exploitation then they are mature enough to make responsible decisions in peacetime. The right to vote should be fixed at a legal minimum no higher than 16, and to be determined by each national labour movement. The right to make legally binding decisions in financial and civil matters must be guarateed at the same age.

 

Youth, mainly male, are the cannon fodder of bourgeois armies. Whether it be in the service of US imperialism in Vietnam or pursuing a diversionary war in Iran, hundreds of thousands of youth, of both genders, have been cynically sacrificed in the service of reaction.

 

It is necessary to educate the youth in the spirit of proletarian anti-imperialism and anti-militarism. Pacifism only dulls the mind and prepares the way for future slaughter. The youth must be trained in military techniques under the guidance of the labour movement. Youth will provide the backbone of the picket line defence squads and the core of the future workers' militia.

 

In times of acute crisis and class struggle, young unemployed workers who have no experience of production and solidarity can be mobilised as supporters for fascist gangs, or used to break strikes. In order to overcome these dangers the organised working class must draw youth into the unions. Reduced dues must be available for young workers joining unions, but with full membership rights. Youth must organise sections within the unions in order to press for their demands, educate themselves and recruit other young workers.

 

Great opportunities exist to win youth to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. Naturally more concerned about the future than any other generation they can be quickly won to a revolutionary and socialist outlook. Youth generally lack the conservatism which has broken the spirit of so many older workers.They have not been worn down by experiencing years of reformist misleadership and betrayal.

 

A revolutionary youth movement must therefore be built as a key organisation in the struggle for working class power and youth liberation. Armed with the revolutionary transitional programme this movement will draw in youth from other classes, notably the poor peasants and urban petit bourgeoisie.

 

It should be represented at every level of the labour movement. This principle applies with redoubled force in the revolutionary party which should set an example to the whole of the labour movement.

 

Lesbians and gay men

 

Sexual oppression has been a feature of all class societies. The imposition of monogamy on women accompanied, and was integrally linked with, the rise of private property and classes. Under capitalism general sexual oppression still exists, especially for women and youth.

 

Capitalism has also given rise to the systematic oppression of lesbians and gay men. Capitalist society, whatever liberal gestures it has proved capable of in periods of prosperity, is inherently anti-homosexual.

 

The ideological and economic centrality of the family for capitalism means that any groups who undermine the monogamous, heterosexual "norm" of the bourgeois family are regarded as a dire threat to society and stigmatised accordingly. Lesbians and gay men pose a threat to the ideological underpinnings of the family and to its ideal nuclear structure, by demonstrating that sex is neither a purely functional activity related to reproduction nor a means of cementing the monogamous heterosexual marriage.

 

They testify to the fact that sex is a pleasurable pursuit in its own right. The fact that lesbian and gay sex is openly non-reproductive is a threat to the legitimacy of the bourgeois family.

 

Under capitalism lesbians and gay men have been systematically denounced, abused and criminalised. This has led to sexual misery for millions of individuals and fomented harmful divisions within the working class. The bourgeoisie through the manipulation of education, the media, religion and the legal system , and with the connivance of the trade union bureaucracy, promotes the idea that homosexuality is "unnatural".

 

In the 1980s the bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries used the development of the AIDS epidemic to step up the persecution of homosexuals, especially gay men, who were blamed as the perpetrators of the disease. Inside the working class these arguments have generally been accepted and a deep rooted fear of homosexuality (homophobia) is the norm.

 

This homophobia often creates the basis for active, and frequently violent, anti-lesbian and gay bigotry in the working class. However, the proletariat as a whole has no material or fundamental interest in maintaining lesbian or gay oppression or in perpetuating anti-lesbian and gay bigotry.

 

Lesbians and gay men suffer discrimination in all spheres, including legal sanctions. Whilst this oppression affects lesbians and gay men of all classes, it is again working class lesbians and gay men who are most acutely affected. Oppression affects employment opportunities. Men and women who are openly homosexual are less likely to get work, will be isolated and abused at work, and are more likely to lose their jobs, their homes and their children.

 

Unlike oppressed members of the ruling class, working class lesbians and gay men have no alternative but to seek work. Consequently they are frequently forced to deny their sexuality, suffering the psychological damage that such denial and suppression produces.

 

The working class must fight for an end to all legal discrimination against lesbians and gay men. This is a basic democratic right. The state should have no rights to interfere in people's sexuality where consenting individuals are concerned. Abolition of the age of consent is necessary to deprive the police and the courts of another weapon to harass and abuse young lesbians and gay men.

 

Discrimination in every sphere--including employment, housing and custody of children--must be fought. Legal rights should be campaigned for and defended by the working class. The state must be made to provide information about sexuality in schools without proscribing homosexuality as generally happens today. Religious anti-gay bigotry must be swept out of the classroom.

 

Millions of lesbians and gay men form part of the working class. The great majority do not acknowledge their sexuality through fear of victimisation or persecution. Those who have done so have suffered as a consequence.

 

The organisations of the working class must be won to supporting the right of all homosexuals to be open about their sexuality, to resist police or fascist harassment, to defend the right to work and to earn a living wage. An atmosphere of mutual respect for people with different sexual orientations must replace the atmosphere of sexist and heterosexist bigotry that currently pervades the world workers' movement.

 

Working class lesbians and gay men must have the right to caucus within the organisations of the working class in order to fight against homophobia and for full political and social equality. In order to take the struggle beyond specific sectional or local issues, such caucuses need to be linked up with specific united fronts and campaigns which could form part of a proletarian movement for lesbian and gay liberation.

 

Revolutionaries will fight for political leadership in such united front organisations to win lesbians and gay men to the programme of lesbian and gay liberation and revolutionary socialism.

 

The systematic oppression of lesbians and gay men will not be ended whilst the bourgeois family is promoted and defended as the model for social life. That is why the struggle to end this form of oppression must be linked to the programme for working class power.

 

Such a revolution will be able to free lesbian and gay proletarians from the material deprivations that are inflicted on them as a direct result of their oppression and exploitation by capitalism, and end the regime of sexual misery that blights the lives of millions throughout the world.

 

Racial oppression

 

Modern nations cannot be identified with so-called races. Racial oppression is the product of the emergence of the bourgeois nation. In the mercantilist period of early capitalism slavery was fundamental to the primitive accumulation of capital in certain countries. The extension of capitalist colonial empires brought with it the systematic denial of basic human rights and even genocide for the indigenous populations.

 

Racism has taken its most virulent form in the imperialist epoch: economic catastrophes, revolutions and wars have given birth to a modern pseudo-scientific racism. It exists as both a feverish fantasy of the petit bourgeoisie and a conscious tool of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

 

The "race" problem in our century is not one of supposed racial differences but is a function of racism: the oppression of people because of their (supposed) race. The victims of this systematic racism are many.

 

In the forefront stand the Jews, who suffered genocide during World War Two, and the black people of Africa, the Caribbean, the USA and those who have emigrated to Europe.

 

In South Africa the black majority has long laboured under the savage oppression of apartheid. In addition, the post-war boom sucked millions of workers from the semi colonies to the imperialist heartlands, from one semi-colony to another and from less developed to more highly developed imperialist countries. These migrant and immigrant workers are also racially oppressed.

 

The victims of racial oppression are systematically denied democratic rights. Police and state racism pour down on them. This further serves to encourage violent attacks by individual racists, gangs and organised fascists. The racially oppressed suffer discrimination in education and all spheres of welfare provision. They are subject to super-exploitation at work. Whenever capitalism enters recession racial minorities suffer most from unemployment and low pay.

 

For the working masses of the racially oppressed there is no capitalist solution to their oppression. Capitalism's tendency to integrate and stratify immigrant communities always benefits the petit bourgeois and bourgeois strata at the expense of the poorest masses. Even this tendency is repeatedly thrown into reverse as capitalism resorts to crude racism and national chauvinism in its periods of crisis.

 

The slaughter of over six million Jews under Hitler demonstrates the epoch's barbaric potential. No matter what level of "equal opportunity" or "affirmative action" is reached, imperialism's sharp turns in politics and economics will always leave the oppressed prey to the genocidal "final solution" of desperate finance capital.

 

Revolutionary communists conduct agitation and propaganda within the oppressed communities for the strictest separation of the class interests of the workers from the bourgeoisie, petit bourgeoisie and clergy. For this purpose the revolutionary party may set up special forms of organisation, but it resolutely opposes the call for a separate political party of any racial group, no matter what ultra-radical political content this is given. Separatism, nationalism and all lead to a dead end from the point of view of the struggle to end oppression and super-exploitation.

 

The experience of the black struggles in the USA demonstrates both the pitfalls and the revolutionary potential of the struggles against racial oppression. During the long post-war boom blacks lived under a "democratic" constitution and the formal abolition of slavery was a century behind them.

 

Yet even in these decades of "prosperity" blacks in the USA were still massively disenfranchised, super-exploited and subject to a form of apartheid in the southern states. Beginning with passive protest, led by the black clergy and the intelligentsia, the black resistance developed into mass revolt and armed clashes with the police and national guard.

 

But it was faced with a massive crisis of leadership. On the one side the integrationist petit bourgeoisie were ready to demobilise mass revolt for the sake of reforms and greater access to local and state government. The radical opposition to these sell-outs--the Black Panthers, Malcolm X--was unable to make a complete break with separatism and guerrillaism.

 

Cut off from the mass of white workers and from the masses of the black community the vanguard was crushed by the US state. After inflicting this defeat US imperialism incorporated a black bourgeoisie and a caste of professional politicians, leaving the overwhelming majority to rot in America's disintegrating inner-cities.

 

Only the overthrow of imperialism, the freeing of the productive forces from the chains of national capitalism, can remove the material roots of racial oppression. The struggle against racism must form an integral part of the programme and activity of the revolutionary party in every period.

 

It must focus its transitional action programme around the day to day struggles of the racially oppressed which hit at discrimination in education, wages, employment and working conditions. The party can and must find masses of heroic fighters amongst the men, women and youth of the racially oppressed to rally around this programme.

 

Because they are led by class collaborators and social chauvinists, the official labour movements of the imperialist heartlands reflect the racism and chauvinism of the ruling class, and are frequently instruments of it. But there is no road to liberation for the oppressed other than through a struggle to win the majority of the working class to united action against racism.

 

Revolutionary communists fight within the workers' movement for united action against all racist attacks and laws and for workers' defence squads against racist and fascist attack. We struggle for full citizenship and democratic rights for all racial and national minorities, immigrant and migrant workers.

 

We fight to abolish all immigration controls in the imperialist countries. In the semi-colonies we stand against colonial settlement and support the imposition of time limits and other restrictions on citizenship on white settlers. We are against all new colonial settlements by capitalists and rich farmers. This is the only exception we make to our generalised opposition to immigration controls in semi-colonial countries.

 

It is scandalous to suggest that the racially oppressed should remain passive or patiently endure racism until the mass of white workers and their organisations have been won to an anti-racist perspective. We demand workers' movement support for self-defence against racist attacks.

 

To help the racially oppressed to organise against racism within the labour movement and to participate fully within the struggles of the whole working class, we stand for the right of the oppressed to caucus and be represented at every level of the workers' movement, including within the revolutionary party.

 

The class struggle and the full system of transitional demands are not suspended within the oppressed communities, whatever the acute common oppression they may suffer. Whilst it is possible to conclude limited tactical agreements with non-proletarian organisations within the communities, these must be based on united action and the strictest separation of programmes. At all times the working class of the oppressed communities must be mobilised against its own exploiters of whatever race, and for the liberation of women, youth, lesbians and gay men.

 

 

 

Chapter 7 - For a revolutionary communist international

 

The working class needs a revolutionary party in order to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Only a revolutionary party, which wins over the majority of the organised working class in the revolutionised unions, the factory committees, workers' militias and workers' councils, can take power.

 

Only a party can hold onto power against counter-revolution, protect it against bureaucratic degeneration and extend the revolution internationally. The building of a Leninist party in each country is the fundamental task of revolutionaries.

 

The revolutionary party must separate itself from all reformist or centrist elements while at the same time offering the firmest fighting unity to all layers of the working class. Any tendency to subordinate the party to united front bodies, or dissolve it into a permanent front which only addresses the masses on the basis of the lowest common denominator will lead the revolutionary party into centrist degeneration. The Argentinian MAS in the 1980s provides a classic example of this danger.

 

The Leninist vanguard party functions on the basis of democratic centralism. Democracy in the choice of leaders and the determination of strategy and tactics trains critical, self reliant cadres. Free expression of differences is thus essential.

 

Bureaucratism trains pliant tools not militant fighters. When serious and prolonged differences emerge in the party the formation of organised tendencies and even factions may be a "necessary evil". Therefore the right to form tendencies and factions must be jealously safeguarded. Just as Stalinism has corrupted and devalued the word "communism", so to it has turned Leninist party organisation into a bureaucratic caricature, based on a dead monolithism.

 

Centralised discipline is an essential means of concentrating all the force of the revolutionary vanguard on the bourgeoisie and its state. It renders each action of the party more effective. Discipline can be a life and death question when carrying on work in conditions of illegality, or in the face of brutal repression. Consequently, the revolutionary organisation is not a discussion club.

 

When political disputes are resolved by a vote inside the organisation then it is the duty of all members to carry out all decisions and actions that flow from such a vote, in a loyal and systematic fashion. After the carrying out of such decisions and actions it is entirely permissible to review the policy under dispute and attempt to change it. Such genuine democratic centralism is essential at all stages of party building.

 

Very often the initial stages of party building will be devoted primarily to propaganda. Where there are only a handful of revolutionaries in a given country the main task will be to clarify the most fundamental questions of programme.

 

Nevertheless, we always aim to test and apply our programme through intervention into the class struggle wherever possible. As the organisation grows to become a fighting propaganda group it will increasingly take part in mass struggles, fighting for leadership, making practical proposals for how struggles can be won and drawing the lessons of them in order to win over the most advanced elements of the class to the revolutionary programme.

 

The passage from the fighting propaganda group to the Leninist combat party cannot be achieved by launching a handful of cadre into shallow "mass work", or by making opportunist adaptations in situations of heightened class struggle. Where important leftward moving centrist forces exist within centrist or reformist parties it may be necessary to enter such organisations, with the twin objective of a united struggle against the right wing party leaders and the construction of a revolutionary tendency.

 

In this way the best class fighters can be rallied to the perspective of building a revolutionary party. This tactic is in no way an inevitable stage in party building. Nor does it have anything in common with the strategic "deep entry" practiced by various right centrist "Trotskyist" organisations since the late 1940s. These have become buried deep within the reformist parties and long ago abandoned the struggle for the revolutionary programme.

 

A genuine revolutionary party exercises a strong influence on the vanguard of the class. It is composed of communist cadres, has a sizeable national implantation in the advanced sectors of the proletariat, and is able to organise mass struggles. In revolutionary and pre-revolutionary situations the party must develop into a mass party in order to organise the masses for the seizure of power.

 

For a mass revolutionary workers' party

 

In many countries in the imperialised world, and even in certain imperialist countries, decades of capitalist growth have seen a massive expansion of the proletariat and its trade unions, without a corresponding growth in its political parties. The workers and the unions frequently remain loyal to bourgeois or petit bourgeois nationalist parties, or even to forms of Bonapartism. Under such conditions the fight to build a revolutionary party will be closely intertwined with the struggle for the political independence of the working class.

 

In the 1930s in the USA, Trotsky advanced the slogan of a workers' party based on the trade unions as a way of overcoming the political backwardness of the US workers and of answering the felt need for political organisation in the wake of the massive class struggles of the mid-1930s. This was in no way a call for a reformist, Social Democratic party, but a tactic advanced by Trotsky in the fight for a revolutionary party.

 

Generally an important device for making propaganda for class independence and to expose the bureaucrats' subservience to the bosses, the workers' party slogan can become on occasion a sharp agitational weapon. The call for a workers' party is a call for the trade unions to break with the open parties of the bourgeoisie and to fight for the construction of a party of the whole working class.

 

They should cease to pledge the loyalty of the working class to its class enemies. The unions are central to this call, precisely because it will generally become operative under conditions of heightened class struggle in which a massive influx of radicalised workers into the unions has taken place (USA in the 1930s, South Africa and Brazil in the 1980s).

 

In such circumstances the danger exists that if revolutionaries do not utilise the workers' party tactic and intervene in the process of its creation then the reformists themselves may well direct the radicalised workers towards the creation of a reformist party, or a renegotiated pact with the bourgeois or petit bourgeois parties.

 

The workers' party tactic is not an inevitable stage in the political development of the working class. Its agitational use will depend upon the concrete circumstances in each country. However, we are quite clear that in fighting for the creation of a workers' party, we propose that it should be based on the revolutionary programme.

 

We fight to prevent a reformist or centrist noose being placed around the neck of the proletariat. But the nature of this party cannot be laid down in advance as an ultimatum. Its nature will be determined by the struggle between revolutionaries and the misleaders.

 

Where there is no tradition of mass political organisation of the working class, the political struggle inside the workers' party to defend the interests of the workers allows for the polarisation of the existing political tendencies within the working class. This is shown by the development of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT) during the 1980s.

 

The revolutionary International

 

The imperialists and their henchmen in the semi-colonies and the workers' states co-ordinate their actions against the proletariat on an international scale through the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, Comecon, and military blocs such as NATO, the Warsaw Pact. Against their "Internationals", we have to build a working class mass revolutionary International, in order to overcome the chauvinism and racism that bourgeois society imposes on the ranks of the world working class.

 

The goal of this international will be the revolutionary destruction of capitalist and Stalinist rule throughout the world. It will take the lead in the liberation of the whole of humanity from the twin yokes of exploitation and oppression. The international dictatorship of the proletariat will lay the basis for a world socialist system and move to eradicate all traces of the old order in the march to world communism.

 

Before and after the revolution, the task of creating a revolutionary programme and party is an international one. There can be no question of fighting to build large national parties first and then linking them together in a mass international. National parties built in isolation will succumb to national narrowness and one-sidedness.

 

In the imperialist countries this will involve a tendency to accommodate to economism and social chauvinism. In the semi-colonies it will lead to yielding to petit bourgeois nationalism and to blunting the class independence of the proletariat.

 

In the Stalinist states it will result in accommodation to the "reforming" wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy. If the national pressures of each country are to be overcome it is vital to develop a global perspective and intervene in the international class struggle. At all times it is essential to forge practical solidarity between workers in different countries.

 

No proletarian revolutionary International exists today. The Socialist International collapsed into reformism in 1914 when its major sections supported their "own" bourgeoisie in the First World War. Today it acts as a co-ordinating centre for Social Democratic reformists and their anti-working class plans.

 

The Comintern, under the crushing weight of Stalinism, collapsed politically in 1933 when its policy facilitated Hitler's coming to power. In 1943 Stalin cynically dissolved it. Nevertheless, the links between Communist Parties and the ruling castes in the degenerate(d) workers' states are still strong.

 

A hidden bureaucratic international links a majority of the world's Communist Parties to Moscow. But the Kremlin no longer commands a monopoly of loyalty. Eurocommunism put distance between Moscow and the western CPs and for others Cuba and China provide an alternative source of inspiration and funds. All this testifies to the continued process of disintegration of the world Stalinist movement.

 

The last revolutionary International, the Fourth International (FI), founded by Trotsky in 1938, no longer exists. The FI was founded on the perspective that it would rapidly come to lead millions during the revolutionary crises provoked by the Second World War. This did not take place, as Stalinism and Social Democracy emerged strengthened from the conflict.

 

The FI, however, continued to operate with its pre-war perspectives of imminent war and revolution. Weakened by Stalinist and imperialist repression, and having suffered political and organisational dislocation and disarray during the war, the FI was unable to chart a course for the world working class in the new conditions which opened up after the end of the Second World War.

 

Between 1948 and 1951 the Fourth International moved further and further away from the Marxist method as it made a series of political adaptations, ceding the leading role in the class struggle to supposedly "centrist" forces of Stalinist, Social Democratic or petit bourgeois nationalist origin. The first and most dramatic example was that of Yugoslavia. Following the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, the FI declared that Tito was no longer a Stalinist and opposed the slogan of political revolution in Yugoslavia.

 

Underpinning this degeneration was a perspective of an impending world war which would be rapidly transformed into an international civil war. The failure to re-elaborate programme and perspectives led to the adoption of a systematic centrist method by the 1951 World Congress of the Fourth International; the FI was politically destroyed. In the Bolivian revolution of 1952 the centrist FI supported a bourgeois government of the nationalist MNR and criminally squandered the potential for proletarian power.

 

In 1951 the FI ceased to exist as a revolutionary organisation. In 1953 it ceased to exist as a united organisation when it split into warring centrist factions, none of which represented a political continuity with the revolutionary Fourth International of 1938-48.

 

After 1953 the International Secretariat (IS) side of the split pioneered the right centrist deviation of the FI. In its subsequent incarnation after 1963, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), this trend has consistently adapted to various Stalinist, petit bourgeois nationalist and social democratic trends. The main opposition to the IS after 1953 was the International Committee (IC).

 

Despite certain partially correct criticisms of the IS, the IC fundamentally continued to apply the method of the centrist FI. Its British section's deep entry work into the Labour Party was thoroughly opportunist. It bent the knee to petit bourgeois nationalism and Maoism. Its hallmark was a catastrophist perspective woodenly lifted from the 1938 Transitional Programme.

 

As with the "Socialist" and "Communist" Internationals, the legacy of the political and organisational degeneration of the Fourth International persists today. There exist several international centrist currents which claim its heritage and with which we are in political combat. Yet all of them share the same incapacity to use the method of Lenin and Trotsky to guide the world working class to victory. The task of the day is clear: the construction of a new Revolutionary Communist International.

 

The LRCI is the instrument for the creation of a new Leninist-Trotskyist mass revolutionary international. We do not start this struggle from scratch. We stand in the political tradition of Marx and Engels' First International, the struggle of the revolutionary internationalists inside the Second International, the first four congresses of Lenin's Communist (Third) International, Trotsky's struggle for the defence and re-elaboration of the revolutionary programme, and the revolutionary positions of the Fourth International from 1938-48. We therefore begin our work on the basis of the struggles and programmatic gains of the last century and a half.

 

The struggle against centrism

 

Centrism occupies a middle position between revolutionary communism and reformism, eclectically combining theory stolen from the former and adapting to the "practical politics" of the latter. It is not a new phenomenon. Right from the outset of the Marxist movement, a century and a half ago, centrism has developed in the form of organisations moving rightwards away from revolutionary politics (the Socialist International pre-1914, the Stalinist Comintern in the 1920s and early 1930s, the Fourth International in the late 1940s and early 1950s). But as with the Pivertists in the French SFIO in the mid-1930s and tendencies within the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, we have also witnessed centrist tendencies moving leftwards away from reformism.

 

Centrism is congenitally incapable of leading the working class to victory. It makes fine sounding "revolutionary" declarations whilst refusing to commit itself to a definite strategy or a concrete programme. Unable to unite theory and practice, centrism's theoretical method is fundamentally based on impressionism: a light-minded development of "new theories" for an ever "new" reality which tramples on the doctrine and method of Marxism.

 

In the rapids of revolution centrism's wild zig-zags allow vital opportunities to pass and hand the initiative back to the consciously counter-revolutionary forces of Social Democracy and Stalinism. Hence its danger for the working class. Each time centrism has led the workers in a decisive conflict (Germany 1919, Italy 1920, China 1927, Spain 1937, Bolivia 1952, 1971 and 1976, to name but a few), the result has been disastrous.

 

The example of the POUM in the Spanish Civil War shows how a centrist organisation can obstruct the building of the revolutionary party. Far from leading the masses to victory, the centrist POUM provided left cover for the Stalinists' counter-revolutionary popular front and covered up for the betrayals of the anarchists, thus helping to pave the way for the crushing of the Spanish working class by Franco.

 

Centrism is above all a phenomenon of movement--of development or degeneration--to the left or the right. But in the absence of both mass revolutionary events and of a powerful revolutionary pole of attraction, centrism may be able to maintain itself for extended periods, taking on an ossified existence. This was the nature of the developing centrism of Karl Kautsky inside the Socialist International before 1914. Such right-centrism is consistently reformist in practice, but is prepared to use pseudo-revolutionary phraseology until its passage into the camp of reformism. This is the nature of many organisations around the world which claim to be "Trotskyist".

 

Sectarianism fears the living struggles of the working class. It justifies its inactivity in the name of the "preservation of principles". Sectarianism abstains from the mass organisations of the workers and prefers to hide in fake "revolutionary" bodies. In short, it has nothing in common with revolutionary Marxism and everything in common with centrism.

 

Despite what wooden sectarians might wish to imagine, sectarianism and opportunism are not opposites, but are the product of the same political method: both have no confidence in the ability of the working class to mobilise around the revolutionary programme. The opportunist seeks to dilute the programme, the sectarian abstains from decisive intervention in the class on the basis of that programme.

 

The essential identity of the two methods is shown by the sectarian lurch of the centrist Communist International between 1928-33, and the ultra-leftism of the USFI (1967-74).

 

The struggle against centrism of all sorts has been a decisive feature of the construction of every revolutionary international. Marx and Engels fought against the anarchists; Lenin and Luxemburg led the fight against the centrist leadership of the Socialist International. The Comintern won over the left centrist syndicalists in France and the German USPD, and broke the left wing from the Italian PSI.

 

In the fight to build the Fourth International, Trotsky directed his polemics against the centrist forces emerging from the Comintern (e.g. Bordiga, Treint, Souvarine) and from the Social Democracy (e.g. the Independent Labour Party--ILP--in Britain and Pivert in France). At the same time he proposed unity in action with centrists wherever possible. This is the way we orient to today's centrist forces.

 

The transition from centrism to revolutionary politics involves not merely a development but a decisive break. It is not a gradual or inevitable process. The great majority of centrist organisations have not become revolutionary.

 

Either they have disintegrated (like the ILP and the POUM in the 1930s) or they have degenerated into reformism (the MIRs of Latin America). Where centrist parties have become sizeable mass formations they cannot long balance between reform or revolution. Thus the PUM of Peru and Democrazia Proletaria in Italy are developing ever more pronouncedly reformist wings.

 

Forms of unstable centrism have also appeared during the last forty years under the impact of Maoism and of the Cuban Revolution, notably in the semi-colonies. Although the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1964-69) was in reality a bureaucratic faction fight, the radical phrase-mongering of the Maoist wing struck a sympathetic chord amongst both opponents of the Moscow Stalinists and anti-imperialist forces. Maoist groups in West Germany, Italy and a number of semi-colonies were founded upon radicalised, generally youthful forces, and many briefly passed though a period of centrist development.

 

The reactionary reality of Maoism, as expressed in the massacres of proletarian forces in Wuhan and Guangdong during the Cultural Revolution, and the rapprochement with Nixon and Pinochet, coupled with the rise in European Social Democracy, brought this period to an end in the early 1970s.

 

In the semi-colonial world the MIR groups, born under the influence of Guevarism and the Cuban Revolution, rapidly declined into Social Democratic, petit bourgeois nationalist or even outright bourgeois parties. Different in origin again, centrist tendencies inside the degenerate(d) workers' states have developed, faced with the crisis of Stalinism. They combine revolutionary hostility to the regime with confused, often Social Democratic influenced, programmes.

 

The main form of centrism which currently exists on an international scale is that which has its roots in the degeneration of the Fourth International. Organisations which have developed from this root have put forward partial critiques of Social Democracy, of Stalinism or of the degenerate fragments of the Fourth International.

 

Many have tried to re-establish a revolutionary continuity and yet in every case we know of this attempt has failed. None of these groups have been able to consistently put forward a revolutionary programme for the masses, nor to implement it in struggle on either a day to day basis or in the major revolutionary situations of the last forty years.

 

In general, their errors have been of little immediate consequence to the outcome of the struggles of the world proletariat due to their lack of implantation in it. Nevertheless, centrists who claimed to be Trotskyists have played important roles in the failure of the 1952 revolution in Bolivia and in the throwing away of a mass movement in Sri Lanka in 1964 and Peru 1978-80.

 

Corrupted by opportunist adaptation, these organisations have all repeated the mistake of the centrist Fourth International by placing their faith in the "revolutionary process", in tailing this or that "left" tendency within reformism or petit bourgeois nationalism in the hope that they will prove the new vehicle for the disembodied "world revolution".

 

This is true of the systematic adaptation of the USFI. They consider Nicaragua to be a healthy workers' state and do not fight to overthrow the bureaucratic Castro regime in Cuba. It is also the case for the International Workers League, founded by Nahuel Moreno, which first adapted first to Peronism and then to Stalinism in its home country, Argentina.

 

It is to be found no less obviously in the tailing of petit bourgeois nationalists and reformists which led the Lambertist current which founded the Fourth International (International Centre of Reconstruction) to hail Algerian nationalists as "Bolsheviks", and today leads them to propose the construction of a "workers' international" around a reformist programme centred on bourgeois democratic demands. The international tendency around the British "Militant" group, which hides its origins in the Fourth International, aims to transform Social Democratic parties.

 

The groupings around the British Socialist Workers Party and the French organisation Lutte Ouvrière tail the spontaneous working class struggle and make no operative use of a transitional programme. The fact that these organisations have continued to exist, in one form or another, for forty years, is a testimony to their isolation from the international working class, not to the strength or validity of their politics.

 

The forces for a new International will include many of the best class fighters who currently find themselves trapped within the centrist organisations. The sections of our own international organisation all have their origins in breaks with centrism. Splits, fusions and regroupments will prove necessary and for the LRCI it is particularly important to engage in polemic and joint action with those centrists who falsely lay claim to be Trotskyists. In this we start with Trotsky's injunction "programme first!".

 

Build the LRCI, build a Revolutionary Communist International!

 

Imperialism is a formidable enemy. It has rich resources which it uses to corrupt and coerce the proletariat's reformist leaders; it deploys a huge state apparatus to oppress and kill workers all over the world. But it cannot stop the class struggle that erupts ceaselessly out of capitalism's fundamental contradictions. Every cycle of expansion and prosperity brings confidence to the struggle. In every crisis it rouses the exploited to further assaults against the rulers of the world.

 

Whether the opportunity comes sooner or later to cast all the agents of capitalism into the abyss, the world working class needs an international revolutionary party. The LRCI is setting out to build such a world party of communist revolution. We have begun with the elaboration of a series of revolutionary positions on key international struggles, and with the re-elaboration of the international revolutionary programme.

 

This task is nearly fifty years overdue but in tackling it we base our programme on the politics and the method of unfalsified Trotskyism, of revolutionary Marxism. Our objective is the construction of a new world party of communist revolution, a refounded Leninist Trotskyist International.

 

Is the LRCI far from this goal? Are its forces too small faced with a challenge of this magnitude? It is certainly true that our forces are weak, weaker by far than Trotsky's Fourth International at its foundation in 1938. We have as yet but a handful of cadres in a handful of countries. But we have no right to let this fact daunt us, or deter us from taking up the struggle.

 

Despite a long mid-century period of imperialist stability, the imperialist epoch remains one of wars and revolutions. Yet events do not move at an even pace nor are parties built simply by a slow accumulation of cadres. There come periods of crisis and revolution when the tasks of years or decades can be accomplished in weeks or months. But for the proletariat to take advantage of such periods we must have a programme to build on and cadres to give leadership.

 

That is why there is no time to lose. We must lay the foundations now. We appeal to all militants who lay claim to the revolutionary traditions of the international proletariat, repulsed by centrist vacillations; we appeal to all working class fighters, revolted at the betrayals of reformism, petit bourgeois nationalism and the trade union bureaucracy: join us!

The Iran-Iraq war: Generalised Defeatism - not the Marxist method (1980)

 

Originally published by Workers Power (Britain) in 1980

 

Note from the Editor: Workers Power (Britain) and its international organization, the LRCI, were the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency.

 

 

 

“We Marxists differ from both pacifists and anarchists in that we deem it necessary to study each war historically (from the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism) and separately.” (Lenin-Socialism and War). The war between Iran and Iraq, a war between two non-imperialist but capitalist states has thrown Lenin’s injunction to study particular wars and their historical implications, into sharp relief.

 

Marxists have always understood that, despite their brutal nature, wars can play historically progressive roles. Marxists have never been against war ‘in general’. Wars of National liberation against imperialism for example are wars that we would regard as progressive. It was an understanding of this aspect of war that led Marx and Engels during the nineteenth century, to take sides in various wars between capitalist states They recognised that, in the era of the development of nation states in Europe, it was possible for capitalist states to play a Progressive role by destroying remnants of feudalism and establishing integrated national states and economies. This facilitated the development of a unified proletariat. Class Struggle against the bourgeoisie could take solace free from the need to struggle for national unity and independence alongside the bourgeoisie. It was legitimate for defence to support certain wars of national

 

Marx and Engels recognised the first phase of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 as a justified war of defence on Germany’s part. They saw the war as a potential vehicle for the defeat of Bonapartism in France and for the national unification of Germany. They argued this in spite of the fact that Prussia was governed by the reactionary Junker Bismarck. The nature of the regime did not determine their attitude to the war, whilst that war was a purely defensive one: “That Lehmann (a nicknames for William I of Prussia -WP) Bismarck and Co., are in command and that it must minister to their temporary glorification if they conduct it successfully, we have to thank the miserable state of the German bourgeoisie, it is certainly very unpleasant, but it cannot be altered... In the first place, Bismarck, as in 1866 (the Austro-Prussian War - WP) so at present is doing a bit of our own work in his own way, and without meaning to, but all the same he is doing it.” Engels to Marx, August 15th, 1870)

 

The Social Chauvinistic

 

Marx and Engels’ support for Germany did not mean cessation of the class struggle. They opposed German chauvinism, and the annexations Bismarck planned. They argued against a war on the French people and they supported Bebel and Liebknecht who abstained on the vote for war credits in the German Reichstag. However, viewed from a historical standpoint, despite Bismarck, a successful defence of Germany was the most progressive outcome. The social chauvinists of the Second International, Kautsky, Plekhanov, Hyndman and Co sought to use Marx and Engels’ position on the Franco-Prussian war to justify their position of ‘defence of the fatherland’ in the imperialist war of 1914-18, This treachery was justified by a generalisation of Marx and Engels’ position on a specific ‘national’ war, to war ‘in general’. Lenin attacked the social chauvinists, who look no heed of the fact that since the 1890’s capitalism had entered into the imperialist epoch-an epoch of decline, with capitalism having outlived its progressive role. It was left to Lenin to designate the precise nature of the war and develop the only consistently revolutionary slogan with regard to it – ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war’. For Lenin, in this war the ‘continuation of politics’ was the continuation of imperialist predatory politics. It was a war for the redivision of colonial slaves not a ‘national’ war of defence by either side. To side as the social chauvinists were doing with their own imperialist bourgeoisies, meant suspending the class struggle, abandoning a revolutionary perspective and sacrificing the interests and lives of the working class to the profit lusts of the monarchs, ministers and magnates of Europe and the USA. The position of revolutionary defeatism, that is arguing that the defeat of one’s own army is a lesser evil as compared with its victory as a result of the suspension of class struggle, flowed from Lenin’s assessment of the imperialist nature of this specific war. Lenin’s position did not flow from the fact that it was capitalist states that were doing the fighting. He argued that in general the age of justified national wars in advanced Europe was past, as most of these nations were clearly imperialist. However, he was also clear that national wars could still take place and that they would be justified ones deserving of the support of Marxists. This was most likely to be the case in areas such as the Balkans or Ireland, where the national question was unresolved, or in the ‘backward’ countries of Asia and Africa. Outside of the context of a generalised imperialist conflagration (i.e. one clearly aimed at the redivision of the world by the imperialists, in their interests and against the oppressed nationalities) a national war was possible even between two advanced capitalist powers: “In my view, admission of, ‘Defence of the Fatherland’ in a national war fully answers the requirements of Marxism. In 1891 the German Social Democrats really should have defended their fatherland in a war against Boulanger and Alexander (former French Minister of War and the Russian Tsar - WP), This would have been a peculiar variety of national war,” (Letter to Inessa Armand, November 30th, 1916).

 

Peculiar because it would have pitted Kaiser Wilhelm (William II) against Tsarist Russia and republican France. Justifiable because the French and Russian aim was to dismember the recently unified German nation. Lenin emphasised this possibility against those within his own ranks who played into the hands of the social chauvinists by renouncing national wars and ‘defence of the fatherland’ in general. For Lenin this error revealed a failure to understand that within an epoch there are varied phenomena: “in which in addition to the typical there is always something else.” (Letter to Zinoviev August 1914). In the same letter he went on to argue: “And you [Zinoviev] repeat this error, when you write in your remarks, ‘small countries cannot in the present epoch defend their fatherland,’ Untrue!! ... One should say, ‘Small countries, too, cannot in imperialist wars, which are most typical of the current imperialist epoch, defend their fatherland,’ That is quite different ... We are not at all against, ‘defence of the fatherland’ in general. You will never find that nonsense in a single resolution (cc in any of my articles). We are against defence of the fatherland and a defensive position in the imperialist, typical of the imperialist epoch. But, in the imperialist epoch there may he also ‘just’, ‘defensive’, revolutionary wars (namely, i) national, ii) civil, iii) socialist wars and suchlike),” (Collected Works Vol. 35 pp228-9, all emphases in original).

 

A ridiculous distortion

 

There is no doubt that for Lenin the position of revolutionary defeatism was only automatically the correct position with regard to wars that were definitively imperialist. To apply it to wars in general, even when those wars are conducted by capitalist states, is a ridiculous distortion of the Marxist position on war. The crucial thing is always to: “examine the policy pursued prior to the war, the policy that led to and brought about the war.” (Lenin-A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism).

 

It is with this in mind that we must analyse the war between Iran and Iraq.

 

The Middle East, of which Iran and Iraq are a part, is an area where the borders have been drawn, not as a result of genuine national development, but according to the dictates of imperialism. The area is a ‘balkanised’ one. That is, its nationalities have been divided by states created by imperialism. The clearest example of this, although by no means the only one, is the Kurdish nation. The Kurd’s homeland is divided between five states, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and the USSR. The states that were created out of the break up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, into ‘mandates’ of French and British imperialists were turned into arms colonies with puppet rulers when these powers relaxed their direct control, to check the development of any anti-imperialist or socialist sentiments and activities amongst the masses. Thus when the British granted Iraq independence in 1932 they had already installed the Hashemite Emir Feisal I on the throne. Likewise in Iran, the British helped Reza Khan to the peacock throne in 1925. After the Second World War, following the consolidation of US imperialist hegemony the CIA toppled the bourgeois nationalist Mossadeq regime in 1953, thereby bringing the last Shah to power. In the various other countries of the oil rich region existing semi feudal regimes were bolstered (notably in the Arabian Peninsula) in order to guarantee that the West’s vital interests would be served. The Shah of Iran from 1953 to 1979 acted as a faithful gendarme for imperialism, guarding the West’s ‘jugular vein’ as he himself described the Straits of Hormuz.

 

The unresolved national questions and the maintenance of fiercely conservative regimes dominate the politics of the Middle East. In the West the existence of Israel and the denial of Palestinian national rights adds further dimension to this highly unstable region. Within this area the interests of the various imperialist powers meet and interlock and are confronted with the Soviet Union. The USSR shares borders with Iran and Turkey and has friendship treaties with Syria and Iraq (although as we shall see friendship with the latter is wearing a bit thin). This ‘arc of crisis’ by its very nature, is riddled with contradictions and will inevitably be dragged into wars and social upheavals. It is the modern equivalent to the Balkans. The imperialists have a direct interest in every move made in the area. It is in this context that the war between Iran and Iraq must be understood.

 

Iraq, until recently, was regarded as hostile to imperialism. It overthrew its monarchy in 1958 and since 1968 it has been ruled by the Ba’thist Socialist Party. It was friendly to the USSR and was a vocal supporter of the PLO. However, beneath this picture of apparent radicalism, there exists a repressive Bonapartism, embodied in Saddam Hussein, jealous of its power, savage to its opponents (the Kurds) and to the Iraqi Communist Party

 

Millions of US dollars

 

Hussein and his Tikrit clique (the place many of them come from) are keen to establish Baghdad as the qala’a -the citadel of the Arab revolution. In practice this means impressing the neighbouring monarchies, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the others that Iraq can fill the gap left by the departure of the Shah, as the power in the Gulf. To do this, however, Hussein needs to win the support, not only of Khaled and Hussein (of Jordan) but also of US, French and British Imperialism. His eagerness to achieve this was demonstrated by his murderous repression of the Iraqi CP, his condemnation of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan and, most importantly, his escalation of oil production to meet the Wests’ needs, which has made Iraq the second largest exporter in the world. Iraq has tried to become less dependent on Moscow by turning to France, in particular for weapons and technology.

 

In 1972 Iraq got 95% of its weaponry from the USSR and nearly all of its non-military imports. Now only 70% of its arms are from Moscow and the Soviet Union ranks fourteenth in the list of Iraq’s trading partners, behind Japan, West Germany, France, Italy and Britain. France has financed the building of nuclear reactors in Iraq. The USA, which had until recently extremely cool relations with Baghdad, has been making extensive diplomatic and commercial overtures. Millions of US dollars are being pumped into a number of computer projects while Carter’s National Security Adviser Brzezinski declared on television that: “We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq. We do not feel that American/Iraqi relations need to be frozen in antagonism,” (Newsweek 6.10.1980).

 

These sentiments were also expressed by the American bosses’ ‘Wall Street Journal’: “With revolutionary Iran creating so much tension in the Middle East Washington would clearly welcome any role that the Iraqis “will play in stabilising the Persian Gulf.” (6.4.1980). Hussein has not been slow to respond to such come-ons from the west: “We do not drink oil, we sell it, and we know that our major markets are in the West and in Japan.” he declared. (Time Magazine 6.10.1980). His bid to gain the favour of the West, prove himself to be a force to be reckoned with and fill the power vacuum left by the Shah, could well be clinched if he were to strike a death blow to Iran, whose revolutionary turmoil has been a source of instability to Imperialism’s clients in the Gulf region since February 1979. In looking at the politics being continued on Iraq’s part it is clear that it is an objectively pro-imperialist course that is being followed-one designed to allow imperialism to re-establish its control in a crucial region.

 

The mass movement that overthrew the Shah was objectively anti-imperialist i.e. it brought down the CIA’s chosen client who ran Iran as a semi-colony for US capital for a quarter of a century. Subjectively i.e. in terms of the consciousness of the masses, it was profoundly contradictory. The masses of the urban poor, the intellectuals and the working class were consciously anti-Imperialist, i.e. they saw that no improvement in their lives was possible without the destruction of the economic and military stranglehold of the United States. Furthermore differing sections participated in the revolution to achieve their own social and political goals-the workers to win freedom of organisation, to throw off the Savak guards and informers, the despotic managers and their American overseers. The nationalities fought to win their autonomy within a more democratic Iran. The peasants fought to get their land back from the Pahlavi court clique, the agribusinesses etc.

 

An Islamic safeguard

 

But they fought with profound religious prejudices. Khomeini’s intransigence and the bazaari-mullah organisation demagogically convinced them that an Islamic Republic would safeguard all their interests. In fact Bazargan, Bani Sadr, Khomeini and the Islamic Republican party have been able to use these prejudices to confuse and obscure the proletariat’s class consciousness and limit their shoras to the most elementary stage of workers control - a veto over local management and central government directives. The regime has been able to partially negate democratic rights-of speech, assembly, right to self-determination etc. It has inflicted ‘Islamic dress’ on women and Islamic law on the populace in general. It has launched vicious full-scale war on the Kurds and a dictatorial police regime in Khuzestan. Yet this repression is, we repeat, partial. Why? Because large sections of the population are armed and have resisted and even rolled back Khomeini’s attacks. The Kurds, the Left, the working class defend their gains against Khomeini. The question is, is the present war predominantly a continuation of the Khomeini regime’s brutal attacks on these gains or is it a continuation (by other means) of the masses’ struggle against Imperialist-Pahlavi oppression? Are the masses via their Islamic false consciousness being mobilised against Iraq to further crush democratic rights or smash the working class, or are the masses in spite of Islamic consciousness defending an invasion whose success would directly serve the interests of imperialism? We would argue that it is the latter that is dominant. The Khuzestani Arabs are fighting the Iraqis in Abadan and Khorramshahr not in the name of Persian chauvinism, but because they know that behind the Iraqi lines are the pro-Shah émigrés like Bakhtiar and General Oveissi, the notorious architect of the Black Friday massacre in Teheran. They know that the 5000 strong force of pro-Shah shock troops have been welded together, under the protection and encouragement of Hussein, the ‘butcher of Baghdad’. To deny the progressive aspect of the masses struggle against such elements in this war, and to see only that they are defending Khomeini and his counter-revolutionary aims, must logically lead to denying that the Iranian revolution had any progressive content.

 

Sectarian abstraction

 

Every revolution against Imperialism, to the extent that bourgeois forces participate in it and lead it, has forces of counter-revolution within it. Bourgeois (and pre-bourgeois forces) can only be episodically, tactically, in conflict with Imperialism. They can and will turn with bloody repression on the workers and peasants as did Chang Kai-Shek in China, as did Nasser in Egypt, Kassem in Iraq etc. But to draw from this the conclusion that ‘at night all ants are black’ is merely to testify that one has the bandage of sectarian-abstraction bound tight about your eyes. To see no difference between Restoration in arms against the gains of a revolution and that revolution’s internal foes, temporarily forced to defend it to save their own skins, is a frank confession of political bankruptcy. For those like the International Spartacist Tendency who never saw anything progressive in the overthrow of the Shah it is at least consistent. For those like Workers Action/Socialist Organiser and the Workers Socialist League it is a signal that they have given up on the Iranian Revolution-besmirched and disfigured as it now is by clerical reaction. Trotsky however did not assess revolutions on the basis of how pleasant or unpleasant it was to be associated with them: “a revolutionary cannot recognise the revolution as finished until objective indication leave no room for doubt?’ (The Spanish Kornilov’s and the Spanish Stalinists).

 

We argue that Iraq’s invasion is an attempt, from the outside, to finish off decisively the Iranian revolution, on behalf of Imperialism, the reactionary feudal states of the Gulf, and counter-revolution inside Iran. The fact that there are counter-revolutionary elements within Iran (Khomeini and Bani Sadr) who in the present situation pursuing an objectively progressive goal (the successful defence of Iran) is no mystery to those who have learnt anything from Marx and Engles assessment of Bismarck’s role in the Franco-Prussian war.

 

But the United States and all the other Imperialist powers are neutral in the present conflict. We know this because every bourgeois diplomat, and their camp followers in the press, repeatedly tell us that this is the case. This in itself is an immediate cause for Marxists to look beyond United Nations speeches. In an area so central for the imperialists, to think that they are not implicated in the events now talking place is ludicrous. As Lenin pointed out when the imperialists were busy pretending neutrality in the squabbles in the Balkans and Ottoman empire: - “Indeed it would be childish to believe the words of the diplomats and disregard their deeds, the collective action of the power against revolutionary Turkey (NB the revolution in Turkey at that time was a bourgeois nationalist one being led by the Young Turk movement-WP). The very fact that the present developments were preceded by meetings and conversations of the Foreign Ministers and Heads of State of several countries, is enough to dispel this naive faith in diplomatic statements,” (Events in the Balkans and in Persia October 16th 1908),

 

Like Lenin we prefer to look at the deeds that imperialism is performing in the Gulf. There can be no doubt that, via the channels of secret diplomacy and their satellite surveillance systems, the USA knew that the Iraqi invasion was in preparation. Indeed the US State Department admitted as much when it commented that Washington was “neither forewarned nor surprised by the fighting,” (8 Days October 4th 1980). The imperialists have acted, not to check the attack or discourage Iraq, but to prevent the war from spreading and further disrupting oil supplies. They are not bothered that Iran was attacked but merely that Iraq has not been able to finish the job off quickly enough. The Economist lucidly explained: “If Iran had cracked at the first tap of Iraq’s hammer, Mr Saddam Hussein, without much cost would have demonstrated his muscle, short circuited the spread of Shiite fundamentalism and, maybe, basked in the thanks of a grateful world.” (October 11th 1980).

 

Reinforcing the fleet

 

The US has supplied Saudi Arabia, whose King telephoned Baghdad at the start of the war to wish Hussein good luck in his adventure, and whose airfields have been used by Iraqi planes, with four AWACs. The US only has 19 of these specialised reconnaissance planes in its entire armoury. It has also reinforced its fleet in the Gulf with the guided missile destroyer the ‘Leahy’. The other imperialist powers have joined in, publicly renouncing the idea of a naval task force, hot to practice creating one. There are 150w 58 warships in the region-British, French, Australian and American. Since it is hardly likely that Iran is about to invade other Gulf States these gunboats have one express purpose-to intimidate Iran and prevent it from taking any action against Saudi Arabia or Oman should they enter the war. The US pretext was a supposed Iranian threat to the Straits of Hormuz, through which the oil tankers bound for the west pass. As the American magazine Newsweek put it: “These actions were designed, in part to reassure the Saudis and other Gulf states of US protection. But their primary goal was to counter any Iranian threat to the Persian Gulf oil supplies”. (October 13th 1980-our emphasis WP). Yet the recovery of the Tunb islands in the Straits was an Iraqi war aim and the only troops reported moving there were Iraqi ones. Success for Iraq would benefit the imperialists by putting an end to the destabilising effects that the Iranian revolution has been having. It would also pave the way for a new power bloc of Iraq/ Saudi Arabia/Jordan (two of whom are already armed by the US, the other increasingly so by France) which could replace the deposed Shah as gendarme. Hussein’s failure to win a swift and decisive victory, due mainly to the dogged resistance of the local population and the Islamic and left militias is already losing him friends. Sadat-the US’s staunch ally has done an about face and condemned Iraq. Hussein will discover that there is no honour amongst thieves. Faced with his failure the US may well move to apply pressure to terminate the war.

 

The reason cited for adopting a defeatist position by both the Socialist Organiser and the Socialist Press (paper of the Workers Socialist League), is that both regimes are capitalist and nasty. Socialist Press has perceptively noted that: “Though neither is a direct client sate of imperialism, their anti-imperialist rhetoric cannot hide the fact that both are reactionary governments administered by petty bourgeois demagogues within the framework of domestic and world capitalism.” (Socialist Press October 1980). Socialist Organiser doesn’t go any further: “The war between Iran and Iraq is a war between two reactionary regimes. The outcome can only be further misery for the masses and the national minorities in both countries.” (27th September 1980).

 

Both of these tendencies are guilty of seeing the Iranian revolution as over. They have both seemingly forgotten that the Iranian revolution did not topple capitalism, but was a revolution nevertheless which revolutionaries would have defended against Iraq if it had invaded in March, April, and May 1979 despite the then reactionary capitalist nature of the regime. It is not the nature of the regime that determines our attitude, precisely because it is not the regime that we are defending-it is specified gains of the revolution that the masses have won for themselves that we defend. We know the regime of Khomeini is ‘reactionary’, that it attacks the Kurds, women, the left. We know that even during the war the regime has slaughtered 80 Kurds and that Khomeiniite guards ordered the Fedayeen fighters to remove their red arm bands. Do we support or defend this? Of course not! We stand with the Kurds against Khomeini. We stand for total and uninterrupted political opposition to Khomeini. We favour his overthrow and the replacement of his Islamic -Republic by a workers State. We take every opportunity to denounce him and Bani Sadr, who is busily rebuilding the regular Iranian army for reactionary purposes. We would fight to build independent workers organisations-shoras and workers militia. But if revolutionary politics consisted merely in the repetition of such truths then life would be simple indeed-so it is the simple life that Socialist Organiser and Socialist Press, with their blissful disregard of the concrete circumstances obviously long for.

 

Childish in the extreme

 

Is the Iranian revolution over? We would argue that the fact that Khomeini has not been able to consolidate a reactionary regime and has had to rely on the mobilised strength of the armed masses to defend Iran is precisely the difference, not between Khomeini and Hussein’s intentions, but between the countries they rein over. Like Chiang Kai-Shek, who the left opposition and Fourth International tirelessly opposed, the Iranian regime can be forced, because it was installed by an anti-imperialist revolution in which the masses played an overwhelming part, into a role they abhor. We do not support them in any way, but while we cannot take the power ourselves, we will fight alongside them, independently and under our own slogans. We would not, if we had revolutionary deputies in the Majlis, give any vote of confidence to the Islamic government-we would not vote them war credits, or any other aid for their war effort. But, at the front, recognising the war as not simply one of capitalism versus capitalism, which is childish in the extreme, we would engage in a military united front against a common enemy, whilst in no way supporting the people that history has chosen, unfortunately, to put alongside us. As Trotsky explained with regard to Spain during a war between two capitalist governments (the one he was arguing for a military united front which was at the time killing Trotskyists and left centrists of the Poum):

 

‘‘We have not the slightest confidence in the capacity of this government to conduct the war and assure victory. We accuse this government of protecting the rich and starving the poor. This government must be smashed. So long as we are not strong enough to replace it, we are fighting under its command. But on every occasion we express openly our nonconfidence in it; it is the only possible way to mobilize the masses politically against this government and to prepare its overthrow. Any other politics would be a betrayal of the revolution.’’ (Trotsky – Answers to Questions on the Spanish situation)

 

The Socialist Organiser and Socialist Press are defeatist in more than one sense of that word. They are defeatist with regard to the uncompleted Iranian revolution. Its meandering course has led them to give up on developing precise tactics and a definite strategy in circumstances of war and revolution. In the imperialist Britain they will be punished for this only by polemic. In the battle for Abadan – objectively a battle to defend the Iranian revolution – there will be little room for the hollow phrasemongering of the WSL and Socialist Organiser.

 

 

 

Trotsky, Lenin and the communist attitude to war (1984)

 

Originally published by Workers Power (Britain) in 1984

 

Note from the Editor: Workers Power (Britain) and its international organization, the LRCI, were the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency.

 

 

Leon Trotsky's article "The Programme for Peace" , written during 1915-16 is a landmark in the development of Trotsky's political method.

 

The First World War demonstrated starkly that capitalism had outplayed its historically progressive role. "Permanent war or permanent revolution" were the choices that Trotsky saw as facing humanity.

 

The major tasks that had been inscribed on the banner of the bourgeois revolutions - national independence, the breaking up of the big estates, and equality under the law - remained unfulfilled for the great majority of mankind and unfulfillable on the basis of capitalist property relations in the new imperialist epoch.

 

In their turn, capitalist property relations and the political forms of bourgeois rule were themselves becoming ever greater impediments to the development of the productive forces. The national state, for example, served as a fetter on the rational international organisation of production required by the level of development of the productive forces.

 

It was Trotsky, more than any other Marxist, who most sharply understood the major programmatic consequences of imperialism's crisis and decay. For him it necessarily fell to the proletariat to take up as its own the unfulfilled democratic struggles of the oppressed and exploited, as part of its permanent revolution against capitalism. Only the proletariat was capable of giving effective leadership in those struggles: their realisation could only take the form of a proletarian revolution, no longer of partial struggles for a minimum democratic programme within capitalism. Only the international proletariat could sweep aside the nation states and mechanisms of exploitation that threatened mankind's productive forces with stagnation and decay. The only answer to imperialism's war and crisis, the only answer to the exploitation, oppression and misery of the masses, lay in the international proletarian revolution.

 

In this way, as we shall further see the Peace Programme projects onto an international scale the programme of permanent revolution that Trotsky had first systematically elaborated for Russia in his book Results and Prospects in 1906.

 

Although cramped in style because of its publication under the stern eye of the censor, Trotsky's Peace Programme is the most codified and developed version of his attempts to develop a programme of proletarian struggle against the First World War. As such it must be discussed in comparison with the abject surrender in 1914 of the majority of the leaders of European socialism to their "own" national bourgeoisies, and also with the programme advanced by Lenin, Zinoviev and the Bolsheviks. In this respect, the article shows the development of Trotsky's political method and the difficulties associated with some of his positions - and those of the Bolsheviks - in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

 

SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

 

At the time that the Peace Programme was written, Trotsky was not a member of Lenin's Bolshevik Party. He did not finally join until July 1917. During the early years of the war, his writings were the subject of much hostile debate with the Bolsheviks. Their disputes, and the problems specifically associated with this article most notably those around the slogans of "The United States of Europe" and "Defeatism" - can make clear to us the struggle waged by both revolutionary tendencies to elaborate a new programme for the new epoch, and to build a new International. The disputes also show the kind of rigorous and scientific approach that we need to employ today in the struggle to re elaborate the communist programme and to build a new revolutionary international.

 

THE COLLAPSE OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL

 

The major parties of the Second (Socialist) International backed their respective bourgeoisies at the declaration of hostilities in August 1914. In the name of "national defence", the massive French and German socialist parties became recruiting sergeants for the carnage created by their "own" bosses. The International was in tatters. Its leading sections were calling on their members to slaughter fellow workers in the name of the "national interest".

 

Only a minority of European socialists stood against this stream of chauvinism and capitulation. A small left wing in the German party around Liebknecht and Luxemburg stood out against the war, as did others in Bulgaria and Russia.

 

Russian social democracy had experienced its division into revolutionary (Bolshevik) and opportunist (Menshevik) parties prior to the war. Trotsky adopted an ambiguous centrist stance with regard to that division. He sought to unify the two parties through the intervention of the Second International. Trotsky's initial response to the war was to reflect his stance towards the divisions in Russian social democracy.

 

Lenin and the Bolsheviks responded to the war in the theses "The Tasks of Revolutionary Social-Democracy in the European War" (September 1914). After denouncing the imperialist war and the social democratic traitors, the theses called for "all-embracing propaganda, involving the army and the theatre of hostilities as well, for the socialist revolution and the need to use weapons, not against their brothers, the wage slaves in other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all countries". 1

 

They raised "as an immediate slogan" the call for republics in Germany, Poland and Russia, and "the transforming of all the separate states of Europe into a republican United States of Europe". 2

 

DEFEATISM

 

By early 1915, Lenin had elaborated the consequences of this call for soldiers to turn their arms on the bourgeoisie, to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. In theses prepared for a conference of Russian social democratic groups abroad, Lenin advanced the following position: "In each country, the struggle against a government that is waging an imperialist war should not falter at the possibility of that country's defeat as a result of revolutionary propaganda. The defeat of the government's army weakens the government, promotes the liberation of the nationalities it oppresses, and facilitates the civil war against the ruling class. This holds particularly true in respect of Russia. A victory for Russia will bring in its train a strengthening of reaction, both throughout the world and within the country, and will be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the peoples living in areas already seized. In view of this, we consider the defeat of Russia the lesser evil in all conditions" 3

 

For Lenin, the call for civil war against the ruling class necessarily meant that a defeat for the government and its army due to proletarian struggle was a "lesser evil" than an abstention from that struggle in the name of "defence" of the "nation".

 

Bolshevism also stood unequivocally for the need for a definitive break, not only with the Second International, not only with the outright traitors in its rank, but also with the opportunism which had marked its life prior to the great betrayal of 1914. "The Second International is dead, overcome by opportunism. Down with opportunism and long live the Third International purged not only of "turncoats"...but of opportunism as weIl".4

 

If Bolshevism stood firm on a programme of international civil war, Menshevism splintered and divided under the impact of the war. Plekhanov, "the father of Russian Marxism", enthusiastically embraced the Romanov war effort. Inside Russia, the Mensheviks advocated and organised workers' participation in industrial war committees set up to increase productivity in war industries.

 

In exile in Paris, however, Menshevism's historic leader - Martov - edited the anti-war newspaper Galas ("Voice").

 

It was in Galas that Trotsky first published his articles against the war.

 

WAR AND THE INTERNATIONAL

 

At the outbreak of war, Trotsky fled from exile in Vienna, where he was under immediate threat of internment, to neutral Switzerland - at that time also the home of Lenin, Zinoviev and their closest co-thinkers. In September and October 1914, during his stay in Zurich, Trotsky wrote a series of articles which were first published in Galas and shortly thereafter collected into a pamphlet War and the International.

 

The articles contain the analysis of the roots of the war which was later to inform the Peace Programme:

 

"The forces of production which capitalism has evolved have outgrown the limits of nation and state. The national state, the present political form, is too narrow for the exploitation of these productive forces...The present war is at bottom a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state. It means the collapse of the national state as an independent economic unit".5

 

This understanding, whilst inferior to the theory of Imperialism which Lenin was to develop over the next years, was nevertheless clearly that of a revolutionary struggling to come to terms with the new epoch of wars and revolutions, to provide a scientific analysis which could guide the world working class to victory.

 

It was this view of the contradiction between the internationalisation of the capitalist economy and the maintenance and reinforcement of national state structures - a global application of the perspective of permanent revolution which he and Parvus had developed during and after the 1905 revolution which was to eventually lead Trotsky to heavily emphasise the slogan of "The United States of Europe".

 

TROTSKY'S PROGRAMME

 

Both the analysis and the programme of War and the International contrasted sharply with that advanced by Lenin. Trotsky argued:

 

"'Immediate cessation of the war' is the watchword under which the social democracy can reassemble its scattered ranks, both within the national parties, and the whole International". 6

 

The struggle for peace was not, at this time, posed as an explicit call to struggle for proletarian revolution and class war against the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is posed as a means of reassembling the International's "scattered ranks" and "a fight to preserve the revolutionary energy of the proletariat" 7 around the slogans:

 

"No reparations

 

The right to every nation to self determination.

 

The united states of Europe - without monarchies, without standing armies, without feudal ruling castes, without secret diplomacy". 8

 

Despite Trotsky's denunciation of imperialism and the social democratic. traitors, this programme lacks the explicitly proletarian revolutionary character of the call issued by the Bolsheviks, and also did not raise the call for the building of a new international. (It should be noted, however, that by the fifth issue of Golos - 8th January 1915 - Trotsky was raising the call to "gather the forces of the Third International" 9).

 

As the war proceeded, Martov and the "Menshevik-Internationalists" - as they called themselves - were increasingly cramped and restrained by their co existence with the opportunist majority of Menshevism's leaders, and their consequent inability to fight opportunism. The hopes expressed by many, including Lenin, that the old divisions within Russian social democracy had been overcome and that the possibility existed for a re-alignment of the Russian internationalist left were repeatedly dashed by Martov's refusal to break with the opportunists.

 

However, in February 1915, Trotsky for the first time publicly broke with the Mensheviks. But he still refused to apply the logic of his position, and sought to occupy and a point midway between the two camps. His developing position on the war needs to be understood in this context.

 

NASHE SLOVO

 

The articles that make up the Peace Programme were published in the Paris based Russian paper Nashe Slovo ("Our Word"), which began publication after Galas closed down under the harassment of the censor, in January 1915.

 

Nashe Slovo was published in editions of between 2 and 4 pages, and was heavily subject to the censors' pencil, with white spaces where an article was disapproved of. Amongst its contributors were many who, like Trotsky, were not yet Bolsheviks, but who in the years to come were to play major roles in the Russian Revolution as members of that party. There were Menshevik Internationalists such as Antonov Ovseenko and pro-Bolsheviks like Lunacharsky and Manuilsky. Other contributors included Riazanov, to be a leading historian of the Bolshevik Party, Sokolnikov, future Commissar of Finance, and Karl Radek, Angelica Balabanov and Christian Rakovsky who were all leading members of the Communist International in the early 1920s.

 

Despite this wealth of talent, Nashe Slovo could not adopt a consistent and principled attitude towards the programme being advanced by the Bolsheviks. Enormous strains developed within this group as Martov continued to refuse to break with Menshevik opportunism, and as Bolshevism exerted ever stronger pressure by virtue of the clarity and intransigence of its stance. Throughout 1915 - within international left circles and within the Russian émigrés Trotsky continued to attempt to act as broker between the two camps.

 

ZIMMERWALD

 

This was made amply evident during the Zimmerwald conference. On September 5th 1915, 38 delegates met in the Swiss mountain village of Zimmerwald in an attempt to organise the international forces of anti-war socialism. On the right were the German delegates such as Haase who refused to countenance issuing a declaration that denounced the social chauvinists as traitors. They refused to even issue an unequivocal call for voting against war credits. The Bolsheviks constituted a left minority at the conference, and presented their antiwar policy in the form of a call for no restriction of the fight against the war "from considerations of the defeat of their own country", for turning "the imperialist war between the peoples into a civil war of the oppressed classes against their oppressors, a war for the expropriation of the class of capitalists, for the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the realisation of socialism". 10 They also argued for a remorseless struggle against social chauvinism and the "centre" that would not fight it.

 

At Zimmerwald, Trotsky demonstrated that he had still not broken with his centrist waverings between Bolshevism and opportunism. His draft manifesto which was eventually accepted - attacked the social democratic leaders but did not call for a break with them. It denounced the war in strident tones but in the name of "socialism", advanced the "fight for peace - for a peace without annexations or war indemnities". Against Lenin's call for civil war and defeat as a "lesser evil", Trotsky remained an advocate of a peace "without victors or vanquished". 11

 

PEACE WITHOUT ANNEXATIONS

 

Trotsky's calls were far more evasive and ambiguous than those of the Bolsheviks at this time. "Peace without annexations" is, in essence, not a position that is clearly counter posed to those these social democrats who like Kautsky, supported "national defence" and the war waged by their own bourgeoisie, as long as it was a defensive war with no annexations..

 

Much of the dispute between Trotsky and the Bolsheviks at this time centred on the question of "defeatism". We have already seen the early application by Lenin of the "defeat is a lesser evil" slogan. Throughout 1915-16, Trotsky stood firmly opposed to the slogan. Yet his arguments against it suggest that he did not really grasp the nature of Lenin's position.

 

CONTRADICTIONS

 

In 1915, Trotsky argued against Lenin in the following manner in the pages of Nashe Slovo:

 

"To the same extent that defeat, all other things being equal, shatters a given state structure, so does the victory of the other side which is implied by this defeat strengthen the state organisation of that other side. And we do not know of any European social and state organism which it is in the interest of the European proletariat to strengthen, nor do we assign to Russia the role of the state chosen to have its interests subordinated to those of the development of other European peoples.

 

But war is too contradictory, too double-edged a factor of historical development for a revolutionary party which feels firm class ground beneath its feet, and is sure of its future, to see in the road of defeat the road of political success. Defeat disorganises and demoralises the ruling reaction, but at the same time war disorganises the whole of social life, and above all, the working class...

 

Finally, a revolution which grows out of a defeat inherits an economy disordered to the utmost by war, exhausted state finances, and extremely strained international relations". 12 Trotsky plainly fails to grasp that Lenin was not advocating Russia's defeat at the hands of the German army, but rather at the hands of the Russian proletariat. Further, to hold back working class struggle for fear of the possible consequences of defeat, in the way that Trotsky outlines he, would be to necessarily encourage a "greater evil" the consolidation of the power of the imperialists against the world working class, and the respective national bourgeoisies against their national working classes. The question of "defeatism" remained a central point of difference between Lenin and Trotsky at this time, and Trotsky was not able to resolve this problem in the Peace Programme.

 

The basic analysis of the war put forward in the Peace Programme represents that developed in War and the International. Just as small and medium sized enterprises are systematically annihilated in capitalism's domestic markets, so too the independence of the small and medium size states was undermined by the workings of international capitalism:

 

"The fact remains that there can no longer be a return to independence for the small states. Whether Germany or England wins. in either case the question to be determined is who will be the direct master over the small nations". The development of capitalism itself rendered the re-creation of the pre-war world (status quo ante bellum) impossible. In this way Trotsky continues to show a profound grasp of the international nature of the imperialist economy, and the internationalist programme needed to combat it.

 

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

 

For Trotsky it follows that the "peace without annexations" which he, and others, had advocated, could only be secured at the hands of the proletariat. Here, in the second section of the Peace Programme, he openly addresses the fact that only a proletarian offensive - a revolutionary force - can achieve that objective:

 

"In order to wrest annexations from the hands of the victorious party, which is armed to the teeth, the proletariat would naturally, regardless of its desires, be in need of a revolutionary force, which it will have to be ready to use openly".

 

This marks a definite step in the direction of Bolshevism's call for civil war and one which becomes clearer as the article proceeds.

 

Two burning tasks immediately confronted humanity in the midst of the war, according to Trotsky. On the one hand, the old nation states and tariff barriers had to be destroyed if the productive forces were to be freed from their fetters. On the other hand, there remained the task of safeguarding "to the national community its freedom of development (or dissolution) in the interests of material and spiritual culture." Imperialism is capable of achieving neither. Peace, the international organisation of production and the defence of the rights of national communities are only achievable as a result of proletarian revolution. "It is possible to overcome this regime only by means of a proletarian revolution. Thus, the centre of gravity lies in the union of the peace programme of the proletariat with that of the social revolution".

 

By this point, Trotsky was posing the struggle against imperialist war - its roots and its consequences - within the perspective of permanent revolution. He is explicitly combining the struggle against war and for key democratic slogans with the programme of social revolution in a manner which had not been apparent in War and the International or in the Zimmerwald draft.

 

Presuming that the international proletarian revolution must have as its object the international reorganisation of production so as to revolutionise the productive forces, it followed for Trotsky that the programme of social revolution must itself advance the necessary slogans to achieve that goal. It is because of this desire that in the Peace Programme, pride of place is given to the slogan of The United States of Europe, as "the most integral part of the proletarian'-peace programme".

 

KAUTSKY AND LEDEBOUR'S USE OF THE SLOGAN

 

The slogan first seems to have been raised within German social democracy in the face of the mounting war threat. Ledebour for example had argued:

 

"We put ...to capitalist society...the demand...that they (the statesmen) prepare to unite Europe in a United States of Europe in the interests of Europe's capitalist development, in order that later on Europe shall not be completely ruined in world competition." l3

 

Kautsky had also advanced the slogan, in 1911 in his own particular way: "Nevertheless the effort to peacefully unite the European states in a federative community is by no means hopeless. Its prospects are bound up with those of the revolution". 14

 

Kautsky, with his theory of "ultra imperialism", was later to argue that this form of rationalisation of European capital was perfectly possible in the "post imperialist" phase of capitalist development. He thus advocated it as a pacifist slogan for a non-imperialist capitalism.

 

As we have seen, at the outbreak of war, both Lenin and Trotsky raised the slogan, despite this murky pre-history. In "War and Russian Social Democracy" (October 1914), Lenin was to repeat the call: "The formation of a republican United States of Europe should be the immediate slogan of Europe's Social Democrats".15 Lenin wanted to raise the slogan as part of a democratic programme which would be false and meaningless", without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, the Austrian and the Russian monarchies". 16

 

UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

 

But Lenin soon dropped the slogan and polemicised against it at the time that Trotsky was placing increasing emphasis on it in his Nashe Slovo articles. Trotsky however stuck to his position. In December 1917, for example, in the first English language preface to The Peace Programme, Trotsky explained: "Into the peace-programme we include also the 'United States of Europe'. This motto does not belong to the official programme of the government of workmens' and soldiers' councils, nor has it as yet received recognition from our party. Nevertheless we believe that the programme of democratic peace leads to a republican World Federation beyond a European one (and a considerable part of the pamphlet is devoted to the statement of this opinion). This question is practically put to the European proletariat by the further development of the revolution". 17

 

Lenin's antagonism towards the slogan seems to have been prompted firstly by a fear of the economic consequences of the slogan, and also by hostility to the political practice of those including Trotsky - who placed such emphasis on the slogan. At heart, however, his dissatisfaction reflects the very real problems that Lenin himself was having in developing his own "stageist" view of watertight divisions between democratic demands and struggles and the proletarian socialist programme.

 

Until he had completed his work on imperialism, this view led Lenin to still see the coming Russian revolution as having an essentially national radical democratic character. Only his realisation of the ripeness of the world imperialist system for overthrow at the hands of the world proletariat broke him finally from that conception, although in a manner that, at least initially, led him to misunderstand the potential dynamic of some key democratic demands in the programme of proletarian revolution.

 

In rejecting the slogan of The United States of Europe, Lenin made a number of criticisms which, if they are aimed at Trotsky, do not stick. Lenin's quarrel is not with the politics of the slogan. In

 

August 1915, Lenin wrote that it remained "quite invulnerable as a political slogan,,18 But Lenin presumed the demand was posed as a demand within capitalism, therefore while it was "invulnerable" as a democratic political demand, its weaknesses lay in its economic consequences. He feared that its only outcome could be to create a cartel of European imperialisms in order to more efficiently exploit the colonial and semi-colonial world, and protect themselves against other imperialisms:

 

"Of course, temporary agreements are possible between capitalists and between states. In this sense, a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists...but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty against Japan and America".19

 

However, this argument does not offer us the basis for rejecting the slogan or Trotsky's argumentation. In the Peace Programme, Trotsky unambiguously posed the slogan as the slogan of international proletarian revolution, not as a democratic demand within capitalism, as Lenin thought. In his criticism of this slogan, Lenin showed that he had not yet fully grasped the fact that in the imperialist epoch, residual and unfulfilled democratic slogans take their place in the arsenal of the proletarian programme, possessing their own revolutionary dynamic, to the extent that they are fought for in a struggle led by a vanguard workers' party.

 

That is the sense in which Trotsky raised the slogan that is the sense in which we can say that it represented an internationalist development, a deepening of the programmatic method of permanent revolution which was to bring Lenin and Trotsky together in 1917.

 

STALINIST CRITIQUE

 

Lenin's last argument against the slogan has been grist to the mill of every Stalinist critique of Trotskyism to this day. Even conceding that the United States of Europe could be advanced as a programme of proletarian revolution Lenin remained alarmed that it could consequently be interpreted as a demand for a simultaneous proletarian revolution throughout Europe or none at all. As Lenin put it "it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also create misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the others". 20

 

Is this an argument for "socialism in one country", as the Stalinists would have us believe? Firstly, Lenin doubtless meant by "victory of socialism" a successful proletarian seizure of power, and not the final consolidation of socialism as the Stalinists have always claimed. No other reading would be consistent with Lenin's politics. More importantly, there is no evidence from a reading of the Peace Programme that Trotsky used the slogan in that sense - witness Trotsky's own words: "It is profitable and necessary to reiterate the elementary thought that no single country in its struggle has to "wait" for the others, lest the idea of parallel international action be supplanted by the idea of procrastinating international action".

 

Lenin does not give adequate grounds for dismissing Trotsky's use of the slogan "For a United States of Europe". In the way it is used here, it is a form "of the dictatorship of the European proletariat", not a part of a programme of rationalised ultra-imperialism.

 

COMINTERN ADOPTS THE SLOGAN

 

It is in this manner which Trotsky successfully argued for the slogan to be adopted by the Communist International in June 1923: "The slogan of 'the united states of Europe' has its place on the same historical plane with the slogan 'A workers' and peasants' government' ; it is a transitional slogan, indicating a way out, a prospect of salvation, and furnishing at the same time a revolutionary impulse for the toiling masses.

 

Is the realisation of a 'workers' government' possible without the dictatorship of the proletariat? Only a conditional reply can be given to this question. In any case, we regard the "workers' government" as a stage toward the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therein lies the great value of the slogan for us. But the slogan 'the united states of Europe' has an exactly similar and parallel significance. Without this supplementary slogan the fundamental problems of Europe must remain suspended in mid-air" . 21

 

In order to make the slogan more precise, the revolutionary aspect of the slogan was made explicit (in the manner put forward by Trotsky in his 1922 post-script) and the "Soviet United States of Europe" became part of the Comintern's programmatic armoury.

 

Trotsky himself was later to dramatically relegate the importance of the demand. After 1928 it was never raised by Trotsky in any of his major programmatic documents. He used the "Soviet United States" slogan again in a discussion on Greece in 193222. In the only other recorded use of the slogan, in a discussion on Czechoslovakia in June 1938, he used the formulation "the United Socialist States of Europe". 22

 

We have examined some of the strengths of Trotsky's position. However, the truth is that Trotsky's view that the United States of Europe demand was the most important component of the programme and the key slogan of the hour was profoundly mistaken. While the slogan had excellent propaganda value in the midst of the imperialist war, it did not have the organising role, mobilising power or tactical leverage that Trotsky seemed to invest it with.

 

In all these spheres it was Lenin's slogans and tactics - and the party he built to fight for them - that proved indisputably more effective in developing organised proletarian struggle against the imperialist war. On the question of defeatism, Trotsky was definitely wrong. Much has been made by socialist writers of this division between the two men, generally in an attempt to suggest that there was merely a difference "of propagandist emphasis".24 However, Trotsky's later consistent use of Lenin's formulation makes it clear that he felt that there was a significant difference between the two positions. In his major theses on the coming war, "War and the Fourth International" (June 1934), Trotsky explicitly embraces Lenin's formulation, and in his famous "Transitional Programme" (April 1938), he quotes it verbatim:

 

"the defeat of your own (imperialist) government is the lesser evil". 25

 

There are other important differences between Lenin and Trotsky in this period, expressed in the Peace Programme, which deserve our attention, for they point to the rapid curve of development which Trotsky's thought was undergoing during these years.

 

Trotsky's desire to act as a "middle man" between Bolshevism and Menshevism stemmed from his failure to understand the kind of party the working class needs, and the kind of programme that party needs to be armed with.

 

PROGRAMME AND TACTICS

 

Lenin and the Bolsheviks put forward a programme and a series of tactics that enabled them both to construct a disciplined vanguard party in Tsarist Russia, and to intervene consistently in the struggles of the working class.

 

With that programme, tactics and experience, they waged an international struggle that laid the basis for the creation of the Communist International.

 

The approach was alien (although increasingly less so) to Trotsky during the war years. Not only did he reject much of the Bolsheviks' body of programmatic gains, he also barely applied himself to advancing key tactics that would enable a party to intervene in the class. Such tactics are notably absent from both War and the International and the Peace Programme.

 

Instead, Trotsky concentrates on the broad sweep of historical development, and addresses his programme to enunciating those tendencies, not to their intimate interaction with the struggles of the workers and poor peasants.

 

Part of the reason for this lay in his understanding of the epoch and of the role of "history". As was pointed out earlier, Trotsky's understanding of the epoch contained great strengths.

 

It enabled him, unlike Lenin's initial response, to see the coming period in Russia as one of socialist revolution, not a radical democratic stage. Lenin's views coalesced with Trotsky's in the rapids of revolution in 1917, when both appreciated the ability of the Russian workers and peasants to seize power and the necessity of a party to lead them in that task.

 

LACK OF PRECISION

 

However, his view of the epoch was also seriously flawed in a manner which led him to his errors over the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and his attitude towards tactical questions at this time.

 

The pre-1917 Trotsky tended to see the permanent revolution as an objective process, driven onward by the motor of history separate from, and regardless of, the intervention of organised forces to shape and mould that process.

 

Hence his advancement of an analysis of the causes of the war as being primarily "a revolt of the forces of production against the political form of nation and state. It means the collapse of the national state as an independent economic unit". 26

 

This view of a bursting asunder of national boundaries in the face of the needs of the productive forces is focused at a different level of analysis from that of Lenin's more precise and scientific explanation of the imperialist role of the major powers in exploiting and carving up the world.

 

Both are correct to imply that imperialism was not "a policy", but a new and decisive internal development of capitalism - its "highest stage" as Lenin had it. But Lenin's approach led to a whole series of programmatic positions which Trotsky's more abstract approach could only hint at. For example, in the early sections of the Peace Program me, Trotsky deals with Belgium - a minor imperialist power - in the same manner as Serbia, Persia, Rumania, Greece and other imperialised countries. Belgian imperialism was an early loser in the inter-imperialist clash of 1914-18. The imperialised countries were always the victims of imperialist domination, and as such a different set of tactics needed to be advanced towards them.

 

A similar lack of precision is shown in the section on the right of nations to self-determination. Because of his understanding of the epoch, he correctly understood that the national question and the permanent revolution were intimately inter-related, but he failed to emphasise that the national question could be the beginning, the dynamic lead into the revolution, as had Lenin. Instead, the national question is completely bound up with the political union of Europe - the socialist revolution. No independent role for the national question is envisaged. It is one thing to recognise that a revolution will be necessary to achieve national liberation. It is quite another to always bind the two together.

 

At the root of these problems with Trotsky's approach at this time lies a certain "objectivism", a reliance upon the "laws" of permanent revolution and "history".-For this reason, before 1917, he tended to eschew ideological struggle with opportunism and the fight for defeatism in the ranks of the working class, and instead based his programme on ineluctable laws that would spontaneously propel the working class towards the international revolution.

 

This reliance upon a "process" is a one-sided, under-developed element in Trotsky's evolving politics at this time which has tragically come to represent "Trotskyism" for thousands of militants all over the world. The "objectivism" of pre-1917 Trotsky has come to be characteristic of post-war "Trotskyism".

 

The search for the epicenter of "the world revolution" has led these epigones to trail their coats behind every radical movement that has developed - from students, through petit-bourgeois nationalism to Stalinism. Their approach is a caricature of Trotsky's early method. They see the overall development of the "revolutionary process" and cheer from the sidelines whatever struggle is going on, dissolving themselves into the movement wherever possible.

 

At his worst, Trotsky was far superior to these characters: he was moving towards communist politics they are moving away.27

 

A HIGHER SYNTHESIS

 

The arguments between Lenin and Trotsky, and the development of their respective positions, were of profound importance in the construction of the party and programme that were to lead the Russian proletariat to power in 1917. Lenin was breaking with the radical stageist programme that informed Bolshevism before 1914. Trotsky was applying on the international terrain the programmatic method that he had developed out of the 1905 experience. The enormous strengths and continuing weaknesses of the traditions they represented are still in evidence in the period examined here. It was only in 1917 itself that Bolshevism was able to transcend the two traditions, creating a higher synthesis that broke Trotsky from "objectivism" and centrism, and won Lenin in practice to the programme of permanent revolution.

 

The Peace Programme is not a perfect, finished document. It is one frame from the film of Trotsky's political development at a key point in the struggle waged by Trotsky, Lenin and many other revolutionaries for a new communist programme and a new communist international. It is in that context that the article should be read and studied today.

 

The Peace Programme has had a chequered history, rarely being published in the same form over the past seventy years. Trotsky wrote the articles for Nashe Slovo in 1915-16, and then edited them into a pamphlet. In May 1917, Trotsky revised the articles, and wrote a new Introduction. This was published as a Bolshevik pamphlet in June of that year. In 1918 an English translation of the pamphlet was published in Petrograd.

 

The first English translation abroad was an abridged version edited by the veteran US socialist Louis C Fraina, which appeared in 1919 in the collection The Proletarian Revolution in Russia, by Lenin and Trotsky.

 

In 1942, the American SWP published a revised translation of Fraina's edition, taking the final Soviet edition of Trotsky's writings as their reference point. (It was for this edition of his collected works that the 1922 post-script was written).

 

In September 1944, the SWP published a new translation, taken direct from Trotsky's collected works, and including the sections which Fraina had omitted.

 

Having consulted the Russian version in the Collected Works, and the 1918 Petrograd translation, we decided that John G Wright's 1942 translation was in many respects better than that of 1944, especially in the early sections. We have therefore reproduced the 1942 translation directly from the SWP's Fourth International of May 1942 (hence the American spellings). To enable the reader to judge the differences between the 1942 and 1944 versions, we have included all the substantive differences between the two, in the form of footnotes, together with explanatory notes for today's reader. Abridged passages in the footnotes are denoted by square brackets.

 

We have been unable to check any of the post-1917 versions with the original articles from Nashe Slovo; it is not known how much Trotsky edited the articles prior to their publication as a pamphlet. The version we present here, however, is the best and most complete translation currently available.

 

 

 

Footnotes

 

1. Lenin Collected Works Vol. 21 p.18

 

2. ibid.

 

3. ibid. p. 163

 

4. ibid. p. 40

 

5. Trotsky War and the International Colombo 1971 p. vii. This 1915 pamphlet has only been reprinted once in English since 1918. The 1971 Sri Lankan edition can still be found in some bookshops.

 

6. ibid. p. 74

 

7. ibid.

 

8. ibid.

 

9. I. Deutscher The Prophet Armed Oxford 1970 p. 217

 

10. Lenin Collected Works Vol. 21 pp. 347"8

 

11. Trotsky op. cit. pp. 86-89

 

12. Labour Review (London) September 1980 p.246

 

13. Quoted in Lenin Collected Works Vol. 39 p. 383

 

14. Original emphasis. ibid. p.385

 

15. Lenin Collected Works Vol. 21 p. 33

 

16. ibid.

 

17. Trotsky What is a peace programme? Petrograd 1918

 

18. Lenin op. cit. p. 340

 

19. ibid. p. 34]

 

20. ibid. p. 342

 

21. Trotsky The First Five Years of the Communist International Vol. 2 p. 345 London 1953

 

22. Trotsky Writings Supplement 1929-33 New York 1979 p.130.

 

23. Trotsky Writings 1937-8 New York 1976 p.357

 

Trotsky never made clear his reason for this change of phrase, but it may reflect his coming to grips with the corruption of much of the experience and slogans of the Russian revolution under Stalin's rule. For millions of workers, the term "soviet" increasingly did not imply the mass activity of the working class organised into workers' councils, but the jackboots of Stalin's secret police crushing workers' democracy and instituting savage purges. As the chief revolutionary opponent to Stalin's regime of terror, Trotsky may have sought to reappropriate the legacy of the Russian revolution in its prime, whilst not identifying with its symbolic title of "soviet" when it had degenerated into political counter-revolution. This could therefore have led to him formulating the slogan as "the united socialist states".

 

24. Deutscher, op. cit. p. 236. See also, for example, Workers Action (London) No. 108 June 24th 1978 p.6

 

25. Trotsky The Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution New York 1977 p. 13]

 

26 Trotsky War and the International p. vii

 

27. For a more detailed critique of the degeneration of the Fourth International, see our book, published jointly with the Irish Workers Group, The Death Agony of the Fourth International, London and Dublin 1983

 

 

 

Arguments on the Malvinas (1982)

Originally published by Workers Power (Britain) in WP 32 in May 1982.

 

 

 

Note from the Editor: Workers Power (Britain) and its international organization, the LRCI, were the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency.

 

 

IN TRADE UNION and Labour Party meetings many workers will voice support for Britain's war drive because it is being waged FOR "self determination" and AGAINST a "fascist junta'. We don't think that this is what this war is about. It is about Imperialism's ability to maintain its colonies and military bases to police and exploit the imperialised world. That's why we have no doubts as to which side we are on in this conflict. But socialists must be able to tackle these arguments -articulated most dishonestly and hypo­critically by the Labour leaders - in their struggle to defeat Thatcher's war drive. The following article deals with some of the most common arguments that have been voiced within the labour movement.

 

YOU SOCIALISTS TALK a lot about "democratic rights" but what about the rights of the Falkland Islanders, don't we de­fend their right to live where they are and under what regime they choose?

 

The Falkland Islanders are not a distinct nation with their own culture, tradition and language. Their hold on the Falkland Islands depends on the power and commitment of British Imperialism to hold on to these South American islands. In fact they are all British settlers who were moved into the Malvinas after it was seized by the British from Argentina in 1833.

 

They have never expressed their desire to exercise any "rights of self ­determination" i.e. to become an independent state. Of course, in practice this would be impossible for 1800 people on an isolated island. Their practical dependence on Argentina has already been demonstrated. It was the soldiers of Argentina who built the only airstrip on the islands, which has now been blown up by the British. It was the Argentine air force which provided the only air service to the islands, it was Argentine hospitals which provided for the seriously ill, and Argentine colleges which provided the only route to higher education for the islanders.

 

What the islanders have declared in favour of it remaining part of the British Empire. Socialists can have no truck with this desire. To do so would allow every group of British settlers, or British citizens who benefit from imperialism, to continue to occupy someone else's territory. The Malvinas is a South American island, claimed by Argentina as early as 1820 after her struggle for independence from Spain and settled by her. The British settlers have two choices; either to live under Argentine rule, and, we would hope, join with their fellow Argentinean workers and small farmers in the fight to overthrow the dictatorship, or to leave the islands for somewhere of their own choosing. "

 

But doesn't support for Argentina mean supporting a fascist junta that is an even more ferocious enemy of the working class than Margaret Thatcher?

 

Not at all. We support the demands of the Argentinean people against British imperialism, not the Junta that is trying to solve its own crisis by fighting for those demands. The blood stained Junta hoped it would deflect attention away from the 13% unem­ployment and 130% inflation through a diversionary action that was certain to be popular with the masses. They hoped that exercising their rights over the Malvinas would head off mounting opposition from the working class.

 

However, the Junta has met with resistance. Their invasion of the Malvinas was popular, but it has not made the tyrannical Junta itself pop­ular with the masses. Demonstrations in Buenos Aires have called the anti-imperialist credentials of the Junta into question. Peronist forces in the unions have openly taken to the streets with their own banners and slogans. The Left has been able to distribute 'leaflets and papers against the Junta and for Argentina's right to the Malvinas. Under pressure, the Junta, which is committed to the imperialists' stranglehold over the eco­nomy, was forced to block the re­patriation of foreign profits and halt the removal of the foreign invest­ments on April 21st.

 

The nationalist sentiments of the masses, which the Junta is trying to ex­ploit, are rooted in the imperialised status of Argentina. The flag waving patriotism of the British, the extent that it is not a media creation, is rooted in Britain's imperialist past - and present. The task we set ourselves is to drive a wedge between the workers and the Junta, not to deny the rights of the Argentinean people, even if these happen to be advocated by the Junta at the moment.

 

The Argentinean workers can break with the Junta by developing and ex­tending the struggle against imperialism, including the struggle for the Malvinas. Anyone who says the Argentinean masses only have the right to fight British imperialism once they have dumped the Junta is, what­ever their claims, siding with the imperialists against the Argentine workers.

 

The workers of Argentina must take the oppor­tunity the army gives them to take up arms and be trained in their use. They should take advantage of the present situation to strengthen and extend their own organisations. They should refuse to relinquish their arms when the Junta feels its adventure has gone too far. Against the 'anti-imperialist' Junta of Galtieri, which is selling off state industry to inter­national capital, they must fight for all imperialist holdings to be nationalised under the control of the workers themselves.

 

Of course it is possible that the Junta might win a victory in the Malvinas over Thatcher and leave Esso and Royal Dutch Shell unscathed. Such a victory would not be a lasting one for the workers of Argentina. It would still leave them under the heel of imperialism. But a defeat for Thatcher would weaken one of their major props of the Junta and its like throughout Latin America. It would have served to arouse the workers themselves and weakened the base of the Galtieri regime.

 

But wouldn't a defeat for Argentina serve to weaken and undermine the blood stained regime far more immediately and dramatically?

 

By no means. Firstly, it would be a significant and potentially highly demoralising defeat for the oppressed Argentinean masses themselves. Secondly, there is no shortage of potential pro-imperialist right wing dictators to take Galtieri's place should the masses be demoralised and beaten back by Thatcher's imperialist war machine. Neither can we guarantee that the outcome would not be the chance for a Peron-type populist demagogue to come to power. Such a figure could use injured nation­alism to further enslave the working class. A victory to Thatcher could even serve to tie the masses to the Galtieri regime. Whatever the outcome of such a defeat, the oppressed masses of Argentina have nothing to gain from a British victory.

 

In fact, the whole question of the credentials of the Argentinean regime is a complete red herring from the Labourites There was no dearth of oppor­tunities for Labour's leaders to attack the regime before the Malvinas crisis. But the last Labour government was supplying 30% of the Junta's arms between 1974 and 1976. Diplomatic relations were broken because of friction over Britain's colony in the Malvinas - not because of Labour's anti-fascism.

 

Imperialism will always declare that its wars are directed against tyranny. Doesn't it claim that its nuclear arsenals are directed against the Russian dic­tatorship's threat to the 'freedom' and 'liberty' of the capitalist world Didn't it claim that the Allende regime in Chile was undemocratic and un­representative? Hasn't the Vietnamese regime por­trayed as being despotic and totalitarian when it took on the armed might of the US forces occupying Vietnam?

 

Supporting Imperialism in the name of demo­cracy pits Labour's anti-fascists behind the murder­ous Reagan and Thatcher war drive and against those struggling against oppression and exploitation at the hands of imperialism.

 

But wouldn't the best solution be to hand the question over to the UN? What way it would be out of the hands of both Thatcher and Galtieri?

 

No, it wouldn't be out of the hands of British Imperialism. The United Nations was formed after the Second World War to replace the previous "world organisation", the League of Nations which Lenin described quite rightly as a "thieves kitchen of the Imperialists". The great Imperialist powers, Britain, France and USA, together with the USSR and China, all have a complete veto over any actions which they think affect their direct interests. The Stalinists participate in the UN as part of their pur­suance of a modus vivendi with imperialism, and are quite willing to sell out the interests of the oppressed nations if it suits their own purposes.

 

The history of the UN confirms that its major role has been settling disputes in the interests of imperialism. In 194718 it played a major role in setting up the imperialist settler state of Israel, with the USSR voting in favour. In 1950, it acted as the collective armed force of western imperialism in the Korean War, at one time advancing across North Korea almost to the Chinese border while its

 

General Assemblies called for the unification of a capitalist Korea. In 1960, it was used to intervene when Belgian imperialism was threatened in the Congo. It played a devious role in the secession of Katanga, a rich copper mining area of the Congo, only moving to end the rebellion when Patrice Lumumba the Prime Minister, who was seeking aid from the Soviet Union, was removed and murdered.

 

By the time UN forces left in 1964 the Congo Was once again safe for imperialism, having been redivided between the Belgians and the USA. To hand over the Malvinas question to the UN would be to just let the imperialists barter for which of them should have the biggest slice of the Cake. The future of the Malvinas question is one for the Argentinean people to decide, not the collective arm of imperialism.

 

 

 

The Failed Coup in the USSR (August 1991)

 

 

Note from the Editor: Below we reprint two statements from our archive about the failed Stalinist coup in August 1991 in the decaying Soviet Union. They were published by the predecessor organization of the founder of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) - the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI). One statement (“The Failed Coup in the USSR”) was issued on 30 September 1991, the other (“Revolution and counter-revolution in the Soviet Union”) on 30 August that year.

 

A summary of the RCIT's theoretical understanding of Stalinism can be found in Michael Pröbsting's book "Cuba‘s Revolution Sold Out? The Road from Revolution to the Restoration of Capitalism" (see chapter II). It can be read online here. Michael Pröbsting is the International Secretary of the RCIT. He was a long-time leading member of the LRCI (1989-2011) until he and other comrades were expelled by the majority of this organization which had entered the road of centrist degeneration.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

The Failed Coup in the USSR

 

30 September 1991

 

 

 

The failed coup d’état of 19-21 August has deepened the pre-revolutionary situation in the USSR. It opens up a new phase in the history of the disintegration of the rule of the Soviet bureaucracy. As in Eastern Europe in the last quarter of 1989 it poses the question of political revolution or social counter-revolution. It is this question that the Soviet proletariat will face and must find a solution to in the coming months and years. On 19 August the clique of “hardliners” within the Council of Ministers, discovering hitherto unsuspected medical capabilities, diagnosed Mikhail Gorbachev as too sick to continue to wield the State Presidency. In his place stepped Gennadi Yanayev and behind him the real junta: Pugo, Yazov, Kryuchov and the uncertain prime minister Pavlov, representatives of the layer of bureaucratic conservatives in the military, heavy industry, interior ministry, KGB and armed forces.

 

The conservative clique held back from acting until the very last possible minute, on the eve of the signing of the new Union Treaty. This in itself indicates the relative weakness and desperation of the coup makers Their chosen battleground—the maintenance of the integrative ministries and mechanisms of the all-Union federation—holds no appeal for the masses and is not a decisive issue for important layers of the bureaucracy in the republics. The coup makers acted because they had no other choice. They had to act even if their hand was not strong. Had they waited a day longer, Gorbachev’s concessions would have led to the radical dissolution of the powers and privileges of a major section of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

 

But behind this decision to oust Gorbachev lay months of a creeping coup, one which had been checked and frustrated by Gorbachev and by the Yeltsinite opposition both within the state apparatus and beyond. Late last year it was Gorbachev himself who, under pressure of the conservatives and the disintegrating economic and national situation, blocked with the conservatives and appointed his future jailors, Yanayev and Pavlov and boosted the powers of the rest. But this clique became disillusioned with Gorbachev’s failure to use his new presidential powers to arrest the economic and political decline.

 

This was sharply revealed in Gorbachev’s ineffectiveness in the face of the miners’ strike. From mid-April Gorbachev moved back towards making major concessions to the pro-market liberals and republic leaders. In June the clique unsuccessfully tried a constitutional coup by strengthening the powers of the Council of Ministers. Another insufferable attack on the bureaucracy was delivered by Yeltsin when he banned the CPSU from organising in the factories in the Russian Republic. When in July Gorbachev returned empty handed from the G7 summit and offered to give the republics most of the powers currently invested in the centre, the erstwhile allies and appointees of Gorbachev saw the writing on the wall and tried to extend the President’s holiday in the Crimea into a permanent retirement.

 

The State Committee’s state of emergency decree was a reactionary attempt to clamp down upon the forces unleashed by glasnost in order to preserve the caste’s privileges. The main orders banned political parties and strikes, proscribed opposition publications, closed down TV and radio stations; troops went onto the streets to enforce these provisions. None of decrees were undertaken to defend the post-capitalist planned property relations even if it could have led in the short term to a strengthening of the apparatus of bureaucratic control over distribution of food and essential supplies.

 

The members of the State Committee wanted to preserve their caste privileges and dictatorship. This might mean slowing down or even temporarily halting the process of restoration. For example, Geraschenko, the head of the state central bank, had opposed the Union Treaty on the grounds that it would make it “impossible to pursue a single monetary and credit policy”; another coup maker, Starodbtsev, in charge of state farms, feared the break up of the collectives into private holdings. But none of them dared to claim at the outset of the coup that they were defending in principle the post-capitalist property relations. Indeed, they have no strategic or principled opposition to the restoration of capitalism. Rather, they insist that they maintain their privileges in the process. In short, they wanted an authoritarian perestroika that would allow them to become a new ruling class in a capitalist Soviet Union.

 

Our tasks

 

It would have been wrong to have given even critical support to their actions. Our task is to get the working class to defend their post-capitalist property relations in the context of defending their democratic gains. The destruction of the democratic gains would have made it impossible to raise the consciousness of the masses to a level adequate to this task. Moreover, nothing the State Committee would have done would have halted the tempo or direction of capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe; on the contrary, the clique’s actions ensured that imperialism took steps to accelerate the process of integration and provide a further ideological weapon for the restorationists against the working class of Eastern Europe. Troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe were to continue. Finally, the coup makers rushed to assure the imperialists that all the pro-imperialist agreements undertaken by Gorbachev would be honoured.

 

The State Committee were emboldened to move by the widespread resentment towards Gorbachev inside the USSR, and sense that the masses are too disillusioned with his domestic failures to leap to his defense. The masses did not take up shouting Gorbachev’s name on the streets of Leningrad and Moscow. The cynical decree on price freezes and wage rises was calculated to drive a wedge into the opposition between those who are sceptical about the value of the democratic rights so far obtained and those who feel they are not worth defending if food can be put on the table by the new clique.

 

The opposition to the state of emergency was uneven and far from generalised. Miners went on strike in protest, as did some workers in Leningrad; makeshift barricades were erected in Moscow. From the outset the coup was hesitantly and unconfidently undertaken; communications lines within the USSR and to the outside world were left intact; few arrests of key oppositional figures were made. Given the fissures that already existed within the armed forces this relatively low level of resistance was sufficient to see the coup attempt fall apart. Quite simply, neither the army nor the interior ministry troops could be relied upon to carry out a Tiananmen Square style massacre in Red Square. That this was so was due in large measure to the incremental effects of six years of glasnost inspired changes in the Soviet high command and officer caste. It was also due no doubt to the lessons absorbed by the army as a result of its retreat from Eastern Europe in the face of popular discontent and the unwillingness to do differently in the USSR. It also failed because the coup makers had no genuine alternative political or economic policy to Gorbachev beyond the defence of their own narrow caste interests. The events of the last week have proven that the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR was not qualitively different from the bureaucracies in the East European states in terms of its willingness or ability to defend the property relations upon which it draws its privileges and power.

 

The manner in which the coup attempt took place illustrated the profound disarray of the CPSU. The coup makers could not get a quorum for a Central Committee meeting to depose Gorbachev as General Secretary. Gorbachev was replaced as Soviet President, not as General Secretary. Party declarations on the coup were completely absent. Just as with the Jaruselski coup in Poland in 1981 the unreliable and fragmented Stalinist party had to be bypassed by the coup makers. Power within the nomenklatura resides clearly within the military industrial ministries, not with the party organs. Now the coup has failed, the CPSU is revealed as no longer the principal ruling power in the USSR. If it survives it will undergo further drastic changes. Its coming Congress was already due to adopt a social democratic programme in the style of the German PDS. As a power base for Gorbachev with such a transformed programme it may survive.

 

In the three days of the coup attempt it was essential for all proletarian forces to have blocked with all those forces actively resisting the coup to prevent the coup makers from achieving success in their aims. It was natural and necessary to bloc with all and anyone who by deeds was prepared to resist the closure of parties (except fascist ones), publications and democratically elected forums (e.g. republican parliaments) that the workers have expressed themselves through. As the days wore on the Russian parliament was increasingly the focus of the resistance to the coup; the mass demonstrations and the barricades was rapidly turning the parliament into the site of one side of an embryonic dual power. The strikes did not have time to spawn a network of alternative proletarian forms of organisation against the coup, and therefore also potentially against the democratic restorationists also. The ability of the pro-capitalist and nationalist Yeltsin to lead the limited resistance to the coup reveals the depth of the crisis of working class leadership. Such anti-working class forces gain a hearing in the working class due to the absence of a class conscious revolutionary leadership which would combine a struggle to destroy the bureaucracy with a defence of post-capitalist property relations. Imperialist agents have worked with the indigenous restorationists to consciously win the independent unions to their side.

 

But in these coup days there were strict limits to the bloc with the “democratic restorationists” and all such blocs had to be carried out within the context of no political support for Yeltsin at all. While other republic leaders appealed to imperialism for help or preached calm and sought to negotiate, Yeltsin thrust himself forward as the leader of mass resistance. He called for a general strike and openly incited the army to disaffection. It is clear why he, of all the republics’ leaders, had the most to gain from the Union Treaty and most to lose at the hands of the State Committee. Yeltsin’s calls—for active resistance to the coup, for a general strike against it—needed to be supported and taken up by workers’ organisations, which at the same time needed to retain their political independence from the Yeltsin restorationists.

 

Yeltsin—the greatest danger

 

The greatest danger to the working class now that the coup has collapsed is Yeltsin. The greatest tragedy for the Soviet working class would be to hitch itself to the wagon of Yeltsin or the Democratic Forum. A secondary danger is to actively seek the re-establishment of the power of Gorbachev. Yeltsin is no friend of the working class. He represents all the elements in the former bureaucratic caste who have abandoned the prospect of bureaucratic parasitism on proletarian property relations in favour of becoming the new ruling class of a restored capitalist Russia.

 

His pro-capitalist policies spell mass unemployment and a destruction of social welfare for tens of millions of workers; he wants to open up the 120 million Soviet workers to unbridled imperialist exploitation. His actions in promoting and then ending the miners’ strike of the spring show that his calls to mass action are motivated by his own narrow power struggles against a rival section of the disintegrating bureaucratic caste. In the aftermath of the failed coup Yeltsin is increasing his attempt to place the armed forces under his command. To the degree that he is successful he will deploy them in the future against the workers he has so cynically called to action.

 

Imperialism naturally frowned upon the coup. It feared where it may lead, how far the clampdown will lead to a retreat from the process of market reform and opening up of the USSR to imperialist penetration. But Gorbachev had already carried out most of his possible mandate; he had very nearly, if not entirely, exhausted his historic mission for them. He was a necessary detonator of the now irreversible process of reform in Eastern Europe; he was essential to the delivery of disarmament and the suicide of the Warsaw Pact. Gorbachev’s stability was very important in securing the alliances for the US victory in the Gulf War and the opening phase of the new world order. But these are past conquests for the imperialists.

 

That is why imperialism, especially the USA, at first reacted cautiously on news of the coup. Their first response was to insist that the coup makers reassure the west they would honour their commitments and treaties. The sanctions that were announced were diplomatic courtesies to Gorbachev and a gesture of solidarity with Yeltsin, but they were not intended to inspire the isolation of the USSR’s new rulers, still less re-run the Cold War. Some imperialists even voiced the opinion that a new leadership would stem the inevitable tide of economic refugees to the west as capitalism is restored in the USSR.

 

Only, later, when it became clear that the coup was failing, did they talk of the re-establishment of the status quo and even more importantly the role that Yeltsin played in rescuing Gorbachev. Indeed, new conquests for the imperialists lie in the direction of Yeltsin and the Democratic Forum. Despite their self-congratulation the imperialists are unable to guarantee a smooth and peaceful process of capitalist restoration over the next months and years. Under the leadership of Yeltsin and/or Gorbachev the transition ahead will be fraught with conflicts. The pre-revolutionary situation is far from over in the USSR.

 

In the immediate aftermath of the failed coup it is possible to discern only the main line of development. The events of the past week, whilst they have blocked the road to a Stalinist bureaucratic counter-revolution aimed against the political liberties of the working class, have acted as a catalyst to speed up the social counter-revolution; the cause of the democratic restorationists has been immeasurably advanced. The tempo of the demise of the nomenklatura has likewise been accelerated.

 

But it is also true that the bourgeois democratic and proletarian reform organisations will also be strengthened in the short term at least. Glasnost will be deepened and the working class may be awakened from its cynicism. Elections will be brought forward and become more universal as all forces seek a democratic mandate for their plans and in this way seek to dislodge the nomenklatura from their posts. The CPSU will fragment and a flowering and strengthening of bourgeois political forces will occur.

 

The future of Gorbachev is unclear. Certainly, the ground has been removed for a continuation of the previous form of Soviet Bonapartism that relied upon balancing between the camps of democratic restoration and conservative resistance. But a different kind of Gorbachev Bonapartism may emerge in the next period, one that balances between the ambitions of Yeltsin and imperialism, wherever they do not coincide. On the one side, Yeltsin seeks a further revision of the Union Treaty in the direction of more republican power and a confederation which leaves Russia with its own armed forces. But imperialism does not favour the break up of the USSR, beyond the inevitable departure of the Baltic states. They may well need Gorbachev to act as a check and balance against Yeltsin.

 

What is clear for revolutionaries and all those concerned with the strengthening of the newly founded organisations of the Soviet working class and of the preservation of the planned property relations is that the proletarian resistance to the coup must be deepened and broadened now into a fight against the pro-capitalist measures of Yeltsin and Gorbachev and resistance to all and any attempts to use the armed forces against working class resistance to capitalist restoration. Soviet workers must fight for:

 

• Out with the coup makers and their supporters at every level. For workers’ tribunals in every republic to try those involved. For workers’ commissions of inspection of the KGB and the army High Command

 

• Lift the ban on parties (except fascist ones), strikes, publications and the independent media; No coups, no constitutional dictators

 

• Self-determination for the republics; special armed forces and interior ministry troops out of the republics seeking independence. Recognise Estonian’s declaration of independence. For soviet workers’ republics in the Baltic states.

 

• No confidence in the help from imperialism; purge the media of bureaucrats and imperialist agents

 

• Release all political prisoners arrested under the state of emergency

 

• No political support for Gorbachev, Yeltsin or the Democratic Forum

 

• Down with constitutional dictators. End the Bonapartist powers of the presidencies of all republics and the Federation

 

• For workers’ councils elected in every workplace and region of the USSR

 

• Elect rank and file soldiers’ committees in the army. Disband immediately all special armed forces and the KGB. Open all the files of the KGB to workers’ inspection.

 

• Against emergency plans for the establishment of the market. For a workers’ emergency plan to combat the economic crisis drawn up by the workers’ organisations. For working class control of the plan; for elected workers’ and housewives’ committees to oversee food distribution

 

• For proletarian political revolution to smash the dictatorship of the Stalinists and prevent the restoration of capitalism

 

• For a Leninist Trotskyist party in the USSR

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

Revolution and counter-revolution in the Soviet Union

 

Adopted by the International Secretariat of the LRCI, 30 August 1991

 

 

 

The failure of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (SCSE) to carry out its coup of 19-20 August marks a turning point similar in magnitude to the 1989-90 events in Eastern Europe. Launched by the conservative core of the nomenklatura to halt the “malicious mockery of all the institutions of the state” the SCSE’s ignominious collapse has only served to propel their arch enemies into a dominant situation within the fragments of the state power in the USSR.

 

The coup itself turned an eighteen month pre-revolutionary crisis into a revolutionary situation in which the ruling Stalinists lost control over their armed forces and could no longer deploy them to defend their power. The working class failed to seize the initiative and overthrow the dictatorship with its own organisation and armed power and rescue the post-capitalist property relations from their deathly grip. Within the present dual power the working class can still open up the road to the political revolution on condition that it finds a political leadership willing and able to do this.

 

In the early weeks after the failed coup the working class of the USSR faces a dual task. On the one hand, it must complete the destruction of the dictatorship of the Stalinist caste by its own hand; on the other, it must turn its fire on the Yeltsinite regime that will conserve as much of the old dictatorship and political apparatus as will be needed to suppress the workers in the months and years ahead as they push towards capitalism.

 

Ever since the 1990 elections to municipal and city soviets and the presidential elections in the republics there has been a situation of growing dual power: on the one side, the conservative faction of the old nomenklatura, and on the other, a coalition of the forces of bourgeois restoration, republican independence and the workers and petit-bourgeoisie. The former hoped by their actions on 19 August to defend their privileges on the basis of post capitalist property relations and sought political legitimacy in the Supreme Soviet. Yet their real power base lay in the central economic control agencies (banking, planning industrial ministries etc), the central agencies of repression (KGB, MVD and the SAF) and the central administrative and social co-ordination apparatus (the all-Union federal administration, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the remains of the old trade unions). Those for whom the SCSE spoke were all pragmatically opposed to Gorbachev’s “market socialist” reforms whenever they threatened them. On the other hand, they had no alternative programme of reform to his. Thus their only real proposals were to dilute and slow down Gorbachev’s various plans, so as to preserve their own institutions and to carry out what reforms this left in an authoritarian or dictatorial fashion.

 

By contrast, the coalition of the forces opposed to this conservative faction were heterogeneous: proto-exploiters keen to enlarge the scope of their wealth, workers determined to defend the democratic freedoms gained during the preceding years. This coalition, gathered around the Moscow parliament, hoisted Yeltsin to power. Its origins lie in two different camps. First, in the democratic and nationalist oppositions, rooted in the intelligentsia that pre-existed Gorbachev in the underground “dissident” movement. Secondly, a whole segment of the Gorbachevite faction of the bureaucracy itself.

 

The former layer of oppositionists, in the period between the Prague Spring and Jaruselski coup in Poland, lost almost all belief in reforming “really existing socialism” and were oriented to western democracy and a market economy as ideals. The latter—the ex-Gorbachevites—became disillusioned with Gorbachev‘s utopian project of “market socialism”, outraged by their leader’s vacillations and compromises with the conservatives and attracted into the service of imperialism as the restorers of capitalism in the USSR. What does the Yeltsin-headed coalition of forces politically represent? Yeltsin, Shevardnadze, and indeed the whole military and political entourage of the Russian President, represent a faction of the bureaucracy that has abandoned the defence of its caste privileges and their source—a degenerate workers’ state—in favour of becoming key members of a new bourgeois ruling class.

 

When the SCSE made its faltering grab for power they were not opposed by the elemental and inchoate forces of the masses, undifferentiated by class, formless in their opposition. On the contrary, they were confronted with real apparatuses and administrations, bolstered by “democratic mandates” and even possessing rudimentary armed forces. Moreover, utilising glasnost to the full they had eroded the homogeneity of the all-Union administrative and military apparatus and effected cold splits at a number of levels.

 

The result is now clear to see. What in Eastern and Central Europe took weeks of mass protest and months of wrestling with the nomenklatura to achieve, has been realised in days in the aftermath of the failed coup. The tempo of purgation of the nomenklatura is extremely rapid. Some 80% of the army high command at the level of general or above is or will be displaced. The KGB has effectively been purged of its leadership and ruling collegium, robbed of its 230,000 armed forces and subordinated to the regular army. The Soviet Union cabinet of ministers has been sacked and replacements largely chosen by the Yeltsinite camp. The conservatives headed by Kryuchkov, Pugo and Yazov have been displaced from all leading positions and their followers marginalised as a faction within the shattered and reeling bureaucracy.

 

The “conservative faction” is under fierce attack from the Yeltsinites and even from Gorbachev. But it still has redoubts and pockets of resistance. It still has large numbers of deputies in the Supreme and republican soviets. In Azerbaijan and some Central Asian republics it still holds power. There the duality of power has a territorial aspect. Unless they are removed in the next months they could launch a limited counter-attack as the restorationists themselves hit a crisis provoked by resistance to their programme.

 

An unstable partnership

 

In terms of the balance of forces within the USSR at present the situation is analogous to the first Solidarnosc government headed by Masowiecki but co-habiting with President Jaruselski. In short, there is now a restorationist government in of?ce, in a very strong position because of the coup but still without undivided power over the state apparatus. The regime is headed by an unstable partnership of Yeltsin and Gorbachev. The latter has now only a shadow of his former power. He has ?nally abandoned his attempts to cling to the remnants of “market socialism”. He is a ?rm supporter of a restorationist programme. But his bottom line is a defence of the centralised federal state. This obliges him to rely on the rump of the bureaucracy of the central state apparatus against the confederalists of the republics and the, as yet, undecided Yeltsin. Its inertia gives him what shrinking room he has for Bonapartist independence and manoeuvre.

 

The measures to deprive the Stalinists of all the levers of economic and political power are an essential stage, a prerequisite to turn to the next stage—the task of rapidly dismantling the instruments of central planning. We can expect the planning ministries, the central bank, the state farm sector to all be purged in the coming months. This process will decide whether Gorbachev retains any use for the restorationists.

 

The CPSU was the chief mechanism for preserving the Stalinist political dictatorship. Through its 5,000 regional of?ces, its factory cells, its political officers in the KGB and army and through its regulatory intervention into the economy the CPSU was the focal point of bureaucratic rule. But faced with the state of emergency the CPSU crumbled. The reasons lie in the previous two years of internal disintegration of the homogeneity of the party. At a CPSU conference in July 1989 Gorbachev signalled that dissent and proto-factions would not be outlawed. The foundation of the Democratic Platform in January 1990 openly contravened the ban on factions and attracted 100,000 party members; the main planks of programme were to destroy the bureaucratic centralism of the CPSU and replace them with horizontal links and to displace Marxism-Leninism as the ideology of the party. The emergence of the Democratic Platform served to encourage a multiplicity of tendencies within the CPSU.

 

Paralysis within the CPSU

 

The July 1990 28th Congress of the CPSU witnessed bitter debate between the factions, the resignation of Yeltsin and the open rebellion of many in the CPSU. The party was being paralysed and subject to defection of entire republican parties, as when the Baltic CPs split. During the course the 1991 the paralysis increased as the CPSU retreated more and more from the running of the economy and splits and defections mounted right up to the eve of the coup, as with Shevardnadze and Yakovlev. On the eve of the coup the CPSU was an increasingly demoralised entity.

 

If the military and secret police bases of the conservative faction of the bureaucracy crumbled without a serious fight the role, or rather the lack of a role, of the CPSU was truly miserable. The conspirators could make no use of it. Its Central Committee meekly succumbed after the event, but even parts of its press were banned by the decree of the State of Emergency. It tried to gather itself together on Gorbachev’s return to Moscow. For this reason the party has become, with the KGB, the principal target of the Yeltsinite offensive.

 

Gorbachev tried for two days to shield it. He tried to stick to his perspective of a congress at the end of the year to reform the party, giving it a social democratic programme and purging it of hard liners. But all this was too little and too late. In Moscow and other cities its buildings were seized and sealed, its newspapers suspended and the activities of its cells in the army, and even the KGB banned. Gorbachev was humiliatingly obliged to resign from the party altogether and call for it to dissolve itself. Finally the Supreme Soviet, with a huge “conservative” majority has been obliged to suspend all the operations of the party. The party was the glue that bound the different elements of the bureaucracy together. With its dissolution the bureaucracy will have to face its ?nal end with no coherent centralised leadership.

 

Revolutionaries share the workers’ hatred for all the real and symbolic representatives of their oppression. We support the closing down of the palatial CPSU offices, private shops and sanatoria, the rooting out of the KGB officers. But we put no trust in Yeltsin or the leadership of the main soviets in the chief towns and cities to carry out the destruction of the Stalinist dictatorship. We seek at every point to involve the masses independently in the process of the destruction of the CPSU dictatorship. We do so because the masses alone have every interest in the most thoroughgoing eradication of their privileges and power. It is the forces of restoration, the forces of “law and order” and “stability” who will seek to keep the destruction of the apparatus of repression within limits.

 

Yeltsin and Bakhtin will seek to keep the loyal elements of the KGB and seek to turn it into the secret service that can police the working class in the coming years; it will not seek to open up the secrets of the Lubyanka jail to workers’ inspection, and thereby show how far into the Yeltsin camp go the crimes of the Stalinist dictators before they converted to the dogma of the market. The workers must control the process of destruction of the Stalinists through to the end and not let Yeltsin preserve what is useful to him. In parts of the state apparatus (and even in whole republics) the tasks of the political revolution against the bureaucracy still exist and the working class must come to the head of this struggle with its own class organisations.

 

But the working class gives no support to the bureaucratic banning of the CPSU. All that we ask is that the privileges of the CPSU are brought to an end, that all their members in the factories lose their offices and are put back on the shop or office floor. Their press, their money, their offices must be put at the disposal of the working class organisations that have been bled dry over the years, so that a democratic and lively political culture springs up to replace the monolithism of Stalinism. The forces of restoration must not be allowed to expropriate the property and wealth of the CPSU for its own bourgeois design while bureaucratically banning all activities of the party.

 

Yeltsin rose to power by spearheading the drive of all the republics to free themselves of the control of the central bureaucratic stranglehold of the Kremlin, the Lubyanka and Gosplan. When these powers are safely shattered then it is likely that Yeltsin and Co will turn back towards a federal project, incorporating those other republics which are valuable and manageable. Given the exceptionally high level of economic interdependence and division between all the republics of the USSR then the erection of national barriers will send the already slumping economy into a complete tail-spin. This would minimise the possibility of stability in the process of capitalist restoration. Already there are clear signs of this change of line in Yeltsin’s threat to raise border questions with seceding republics.

 

Can and will Gorbachev continue to play a role in the process of restoration? Imperialism at least for the moment thinks it is cost effective to keep him there in a team with Yeltsin. He is a guarantee against “conservative” revival and his support will speed the self-dissolution of the party and the purge of the KGB and the army. In military strategic terms he can help safeguard the nuclear arsenal from falling into the wrong hands. In the international arena he can supervise the surrenders to imperialism in the Middle East, South Africa, in Indo-China and in the Caribbean. The foreign ministry and the task of relations with imperialism remain within Gorbachev’s grasp for the moment.

 

Internally the role he has set himself is to preserve a federal union with a central government which has some measure of authority in matters of defence, monetary, fiscal and banking policy and which can relate as a unitary power on the world stage. Some, if not all, these objectives are pleasing to imperialism which does not want to see a Yugoslav catastrophe on a grand scale, with borders being forcibly redrawn. In addition there are some signs that after the first flush of Yeltsinmania Washington, London and Bonn would prefer a Yeltsin under some restraint. Yeltsin himself may have continued use for his old rival or at least for his policies. Gorbachev, deprived of his social base within the CPSU, and restored to only a shadow of his former Bonapartist power, represents for the rump of the bureaucracy their best hope to preserve what ever they can of their privileges and power but now brutally made aware that the best it can hope for is to share power, even as a junior partner with the Yeltsin led forces.

 

Major questions are posed by these events. Was the perspective of political revolution an unreal, a utopian perspective? Was the resistance to the conservative coup in itself counter-revolutionary? Would a successful bureaucratic clamp-down have given the working class a breathing space? The answer to all of these questions is no!

 

In what sense could be it be said that SCSE “defended the planned property relations”? Only in this: that it resisted their abolition to the extent that they were the “host” off which it was parasitic. However, this massive social parasite was the principal cause of the sickness unto death of the bureaucratic centrally planned economy, of the consequent disillusion of the masses in it.

 

Through its totalitarian dictatorship the Stalinists were also an absolute bloc on the self-activity and self-consciousness of the proletariat and its ability to crystalise a new vanguard, which alone could have not merely preserved but renewed the “gains of October”. The full scale of this parasitism is only now likely to be revealed, but reports that after the coup the party’s business manager was trying to send £500 billion worth of assets out of the USSR indicates that we are not dealing with minor perks, but with a vast collective and individual plunder of the social product of the workers’ state. No wonder these people never could and never did put themselves at the head of the working class resistance to restoration.

 

The impending catastrophe and how to combat it

 

A prolonged pre-revolutionary situation has gripped the USSR at least since 1988. Despite the accumulated discredit that Stalinism’s brutal repression of the proletariat, and its parasitism and mismanagement of the planned economy, brought to the very idea of a workers’ state it would have been possible to struggle within the new strike committees and the trade unions for class independence and for a workers’ government with a programme of a democratically drawn up emergency plan as a solution to the economic crisis.

 

As long as the bureaucracy survives with any remaining hold on power and as long as there exist the decisive elements of the “gains of October” our programme must remain that of political revolution. We cannot abandon it because of the low level of class consciousness of the masses. The loss of the gains of October would be a historic defeat for the world working class. It would strengthen imperialism against all its enemies politically, economically and militarily. The Soviet bureaucracy for its own counter-revolutionary reasons gave material aid to the other workers’ states, to semi-colonial countries and to Stalinist or petit bourgeois nationalist movements against imperialism. These workers’ states and semi-colonies will now be prostrate before imperialism. Already reactionary pro-imperialist regional peace treaties are in discussion in South Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia. If the Soviet Union collapses then the crises of the Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian and North Korean regimes will be brought forward.

 

Though it may take longer the fate of the Chinese workers’ state is also called into question. The collapse of the Stalinist parties world-wide is politically no loss but in the context of a rightward moving social democracy and the acute crisis of revolutionary leadership, it will further undermine the elementary class identi?cation of the worlds’ labour movements. In the short term the bourgeoisie and its agents will use the collapse to proclaim the utopianism of the socialist project and Marxism itself. Thus the struggle for political revolution was not an optional extra, to be posed only if the masses were already sympathetic to it. It was an objective necessity to avoid a strategic defeat for the Soviet and the world working class.

 

The seeming disinterest of the Soviet masses in the social gains they have inherited from 1917 is primarily and principally the result of the Stalinist dictatorship. No continuation of it could conceivably aid revolutionaries in their central task of clearing the consciousness of the proletarian vanguard through democratic debate and active involvement in struggle so that they discover who their real allies and their real enemies are. No bloc with the Stalinist clamp-down could have done any thing but put a river of blood between revolutionaries and the working masses and oppressed nationalities. Thus we had to stand with and indeed take the front ranks in the fight to stop the coup. But at the same time revolutionaries have to oppose Yeltsin’s seizure and consolidation of power.

 

The fact that the first fruits of this present crisis is the installation of a counter-revolutionary government with mass support and considerable democratic illusions means that bringing the masses to oppose Yeltsin will not be swift or easy. Yeltsin is intent on resolving the instability of the post-coup revolutionary situation into a de?nitive victory for counter-revolution. He wishes to resolve the remaining duality of power with the remaining bureaucracy and create a regime with “democratic credentials”, possibly by plebiscitary, means, possibly by means of parliamentary elections. Such a regime would have a mandate to use the harshest police and military means to enforce its draconian economic measures to clear out all the bodies still stuffed with CPSU members.

 

The Soviet workers must seek to open a real duality of power between its own class organisations and both Yeltsin and Gorbachev, or for that matter the likes of Landsbergis and Gamsakhurdia. None of these people seek to bring democracy to the workers, collective farmers or the urban intelligentsia. Once installed in power and seeking to crystalise a new class of exploiters even full and consistent bourgeois democratic rights for the masses will become intolerable. Yeltsin’s eagerness to ban parties and newspapers, Gamsakhurdia’s repression of all nationalist opposition to himself indicates just what these democrats are made of.

 

The working class must launch an immediate struggle to defend its own democratic rights. But these democratic rights must not stop short—as they do in all capitalist countries—at the gate of the factory, the office, the school or the hospital. These institutions were not built by capital but by the intelligence and the sweat of three generations of Soviet workers. They must not be handed over to assorted foreign banks and multinationals, Soviet “mafiosi” and speculators let alone by Yeltsinite ex-bureaucrats.

 

The struggle for workers’ democracy must mean the organisations of the proletariat fighting for its independent class economic interests in the face of the economic crisis and against Yeltsin’s project of the rapid restoration of capitalism. Secondly, it must, in the course of such struggles, reforge its own organisations, politically and organisationally independent of the state structures of the USSR, the republican governments and the corrupting clutches of the AFL-CIO the TUC or the DGB, and countless assorted imperialist labour agencies.

 

The tasks of the Soviet workers are:

 

• to complete for themselves the most and radical and thorough smashing of bureaucratic power while resisting the consolidation of power by the restorationists.

 

• For workers’ action to drive out the party and KGB spies in the workplace, to abolish all party privileges, putting party property under the control of the factory committees.

 

• For workers’ inspection of all CPSU property and files and the nationalisation of all assets accumulated by it at the expense of the workers’ state. The handing over of all private sanatoria, party dachas,. to independent workers’ organisations and factory committees.

 

• Public trials by workers’ juries alone of the plotters and organisers of the attempted clamp-down. At the same time we must oppose any witch-hunt of the CPSU rank and file members by the new authorities. No mass sackings of party members against whom no charges of anti-working class actions can be proved. Abolish the death penalty. No bans on political parties including the CPSU except for fascist parties like Pamyat

 

• An immediate end to Gorbachev’s restrictions on strikes. Demand that Yeltsin and the so-called democrats who dominate the republican and city soviets repeal all restrictions on the right to strike to demonstrate to assemble.

 

• For workers’ control of the mass media and against all state censorship whether by the Stalinist bureaucrats or the Yeltsinites.

 

• The workers of the USSR need no new Tsars, Stalin’s or capitalist dictators either. Down with Bonapartism in all its forms! Build and arm independent workers’ organisations, fight for workers’/soldiers’ control of the factories/army. Abolish all the special powers of the Soviet and republican presidencies. Abolish all special armed forces in every republic.

 

• End Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s capitulations and concessions to world imperialism. Continue and increase aid without strings to all states and movements in conflict with imperialism and its agents. Military and economic support for Cuba and Vietnam and the other bureaucratically degenerate workers’ states. Support for any struggles by their workers to oust their bureaucrats including aid for a political revolution in China.

 

• Defend the remains of the gains of the October Revolution; defend state ownership of all large scale enterprises by putting them under workers’ management; smaller economic units and those in the production and distribution of consumer goods that wish to should be transformed into worker co-operatives. All collective farms should be transformed into genuine democratic co-operatives. Drive the parasitic party bureaucrats out of the collective farm system. Transform the fake co-operatives formed in the Gorbachev period into genuine democratic bodies of producers and consumers. Expropriate the racketeers. Resist privatisation.

 

• Defend free and universal provision of housing, education, crèches and care for the elderly and disabled under the control of the users and local workers’ representatives; massively improve the quality of these services out of the expropriated wealth of the party and bureaucratic apparatus.

 

• Defend free abortion on demand; massively expand the availability of contraception; defend women’s jobs; no forced return to the home as a result of the market.

 

• An emergency plan to stop the impending economic catastrophe. Immediate election of committees in every factory, office, shop, and collective farm and on the railways and in the haulage enterprises to draw up inventories of produce in all state, private and party storage. For town, city and regional councils of delegates from these committees to issue binding orders. The drawing up of an emergency plan for the winter at every level and its co-ordination by a union wide council of workers’ and collective farmers’ delegates. Only the workers and farmers can ensure that a speedy and equal distribution of food, fuel and clothing takes place.

 

• For an armed workers and collective farmers’ militia to enforce the emergency plan against the bureaucrats, the mafia, and all horders and speculators. Only such a militia can defend national minorities against pogromists, fascists and those who wish to make facts by changing borders against the will of their populations.

 

• For the immediate right to secession of all republics wishing to do so. Force the central government to recognise all “seceded” states and withdraw all SAF troops at once. Disband the special forces throughout the Union. For the right of self-determination of all oppressed nationalities within each of the republics, including autonomy or separation. For independent workers’ council states in all the seceding republics.

 

• At the same time workers and their organisations throughout the USSR should render fraternal aid to workers in any state resisting privatisations and the attacks of the nationalist and restorationist governments. For workers’ council states in every republic. For a voluntary federation of such states.

 

• Down with the undemocratic command planning of the bureaucrats in Gosplan, in the ministries, in the foreign trade bodies and in the state bank, including a thoroughgoing purge of the corrupt authoritarian and inefficient bureaucrats.

 

• No to the dissolution of the central planning bodies in favour of the economic institutions of the market and the capitalist state. Close the stock exchanges. For workers’ inspection and control, and the transformation and restructuring of Gosplan into organs of democratic workers’ planning.

 

• The creation in every town and city of councils of delegates elected in the workplaces and instantly recallable to co-ordinate both emergency economic planning and to organise the struggle against the attacks on all economic and social gains of the workers and collective farmers.

 

• As long as these gains survive the strategic task facing the working class remains the proletarian political revolution. For the creation of a democratic workers’ state as an instrument of socialist construction and the international revolution against capitalism and imperialism. With the restorationists now in power in many republics and in the central institutions a fierce revolutionary struggle will be needed to carry this out. Essential as workers’ councils and truly independent and democratic trade unions are to this struggle they cannot win without a centralised organisation of the best worker cadres from every struggle, of the most self-sacri?cing intellectuals who reject capitalist exploitation and world imperialism. This can be nothing else than a revolutionary workers’ party, an anti-bureaucratic and anti-capitalist combat force based on the principles of Lenin and Trotsky.

 

 

 

 

The Degenerated Revolution: The Origin and Nature of the Stalinist States

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Note from the Editor: Below we reprint a book published by the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) - the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI). It was originally published in 1982 and reprinted in 2003 with a new Appendix which included some necessary theoretical corrections.

A summary of the RCIT's theoretical understanding of Stalinism can be found in Michael Pröbsting's book "Cuba‘s Revolution Sold Out? The Road from Revolution to the Restoration of Capitalism" (see chapter II). It can be read online here.

Michael Pröbsting is the International Secretary of the RCIT.

 


 

Contents

 

Introduction

The transition from capitalism to communism

From soviet power to soviet Bonapartism – the degeneration of the Russian Revolution

The survival and expansion of Stalinism after the Second World War

Bureaucratic social revolutions and the Marxist theory of the state

Tito and Mao: disobedient Stalinists

Vietnam's long revolution – a history of war, compromise and betrayal

Castro’s “Cuban road” - from populism to Stalinism

The permanent revolution aborted

Stalinism and the world working class

The programme of political revolution

The defence of the USSR and of the degenerate workers’ states

Centrism and Stalinism – the falsification of Trotsky’s analysis

Appendix: Marxism. Stalinism and the theory of the state

 


Introduction (2003)

 

Fifty years ago Stalinism was in crisis following the death of its world leader. Yet, the system he brutally forged lived on in the USSR and East Europe until 1989-91. Then, a combination of deep systemic crisis and democratic mass protests shattered the degenerate workers’ states one after another and, finally, the USSR itself.

The Degenerated Revolution was published 22 years ago, shortly after the brutal attempt by Polish Stalinists to maintain themselves by crushing Solidarnosc, and shortly before Mikhail Gorbachev tried to revive bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union by introducing glasnost.

This book was written in the conviction that Stalinism’s days as a ruling force were numbered. This was rooted in Trotsky’s revolutionary analysis of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the Left Opposition’s alternative programme which are presented in the opening chapters.

But its novel contribution lay in its explanation of the creation of Stalinist states, in Eastern Europe and China, later in Cuba and South-east Asia. The contradiction that capitalism had been overt h rown but by co u n ter- revo luti on a ry methods which excluded the working class from power and, therefore, prevented any progress towards socialism, had disoriented the Trotskyist movement since the 1940’s.Within it, currents accommodated to one wing or another of Stalinism, seeing them as relatively progressive opponents of capitalism, rather than collective opponents of socialism.

The left’s reaction to the events of 1989-91 only served to confirm the validity of the book’s critique of centrism. The USFI’s programme of reform led it to back Gorbachev and deny any danger of capitalist restoration. More grotesquely, the iSt believed the bureaucratic regimes themselves were a defence against capitalism and so sided with them against mass working class mobilisations.

In contrast, the LRCI was able to develop the programme of political revolution amid the fast changing situation, defending the socialist programme against bureaucrat and capitalist alike.

Despite these strengths, however, there were flaws in this work, in particular in the chapter dealing with the “post war overturns” and the Marxist theory of the state. The book argued that the capitalist states were “smashed” prior to the bureaucratic overthrows of capitalism after 1945. In fact, the Stalinists were able to “take over”, or reconstruct, the bourgeois apparatus, and use it to destroy capitalism whilst maintaining the repression of the working class. In an appendix to this re-publication we set out the corrections needed to the Degenerated Revolution on this issue published in 1998.

In addition, 1989-91 revealed weaknesses in our programme of political revolution itself. Although anti-bureaucratic demands, including calls for democratic economic planning were raised, as expected, they were rapidly replaced by support for restoration of capitalism as the best guarantee of freedom and economic advance. We underestimated the degree to which Stalinist dictatorship had alienated the mass of workers from the idea of collective ownership and socially planned production. Worse, it had denied the working class any opportunity to develop its own organisations or leaders, and leadership was quickly provided by pro-Western forces. The tra n s i ti on to capitalism, h owever, has massively increased poverty and social inequality in the former degenerate workers’ states. Already, a new generation of young adults – with no living experience of Stalinist rule – resists. This edition is dedicated to them, that they may learn from their parents’ and grandparents’ history so that they do not have to relive it.


Chapter 1 The transition from capitalism to communism

 

Against those who asserted the eternity of the state machine and those who made the first act of the revolution its “abolition”, Marx and Engels argued that the proletariat could neither inaugurate a classless and stateless society at one blow nor use the existing state machine, but that:

“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat . . . The proletarian revolution therefore inaugurates a new epoch in human history – the attempt to consciously construct a society which can ‘inscribe on its banners: From each according his ability, to each according to his needs’”.2

The central task facing the proletariat in the transition period is to transform property relations, social life and political power so as to make possible the final consolidation of a communist society. In this period not only are the productive forces themselves to be massively expanded, not only are the social relations of production to be revolutionised but the proletariat as a class, and its proletarian state, will themselves wither away. This was one of the earliest insights of Marx and Engels, one from which they never wavered.

“The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonisms, and there will be no more political power properly so called, since “political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism-in civil society”.3

And again:

“When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.” 4

The dictatorship of the proletariat is thus a temporary though indispensable, agency in the final eradication of capitalism and its social and economic laws. It is the means to the full realisation of the Marxist programme – communism.

 

Politics in the transition period

 

The proletarian dictatorship has a double function. It must ensure the repression and destruction of the former ruling class and the defence of the workers state against internal and external counter-revolution. But it also inaugurates the construction of a planned economy which will allow the proletariat to progressively eradicate the laws of motion of capitalist economy and, on the basis of material abundance, replace all its repressive social norms and institutions. Marx and Engels were clear that the first prerequisite for the opening of the transition was the seizure of political power by the proletariat and the forcible retention of that power:

“But before such a change can be accomplished it is necessary to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, whose prime condition is a proletarian army. The working classes have to win the right to emancipation in the battlefield.” 5

The purpose of the possession of state power – “the organised power of one class for oppressing another” – is to “sweep away by force, the old conditions of production” and thereby lay the basis for the abolition of its own supremacy as a class. The function of the proletarian dictatorship as the repressive agent against the bourgeoisie necessitates its dictatorial aspect. It is in Lenin’s terms “unfettered by any law” in its dealings with the bourgeoisie and their agents.

The attainment of communism via socialist construction imperatively demands the widest democracy for the toilers. To this end not only must the armed power of the bourgeoisie be taken from its hands but the whole military-bureaucratic machinery of the bourgeois state must be smashed and replaced with a state of a new type representing the power of the proletarians themselves.

Marx and Engels in their observations on the Paris Commune, Lenin and Trotsky in their concrete assessment of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in Russia, all isolated the distinct features of the state form the proletariat must construct if it is to organise itself to rule as a class. Most vitally, this state form must be based on: the abolition of the standing army and its replacement by a popular militia; and the recallability of all officials who shall be in receipt of no material privileges bar those of skilled workers. Lenin described the features of this semi-state thus:

“The workers after winning political power, will smash the old bureaucratic apparatus, shatter it to its very foundations, and raze it to the ground; the working class will replace it by a new one, consisting of the very same workers and other employees, against whose transformation into bureaucrats the measures will at once be taken which were specified in detail by Marx and Engels: 1) Not only election, but also recall at any time; 2) pay I not to exceed that of a workman; 3) immediate introduction of control and supervision by all, so that all may become “bureaucrats” for a time and that therefore, nobody may be able to become a “bureaucrat’”.6

The building of a classless and stateless society cannot be victorious in one country or group of countries. So long as capitalism retains its essential grip on the world’s productive forces and its arsenal of destruction, the successful revolution of the proletariat, can only prove ultimately victorious through the world-wide defeat of the bourgeoisie. The transitional period therefore must also be a period of the internationalisation of the proletarian revolution.

 

Economics in the transition period

 

The immediate task of the proletarian state is to complete the political destruction of the bourgeoisie, to expropriate the capitalists and thus centralise the means of production in the hands of the state representing the toilers themselves. But the expropriation of the capitalist class does not of itself eradicate the operation of the laws or norms of capitalist production and distribution. The Marxist programme aims to replace the capitalist system of production with production planned consciously to meet human need. This, of necessity, will entail a period of transition within which the working class fights to eradicate the norms of capitalist production, distribution and exchange.

Marx and Engels presumed that in the early stages of the transition considerable remnants of capitalist society would remain in operation. “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerged”. 7

Marx presumed, for example, that in the initial stages of transition, remuneration for labour would take place on the basis of a system whereby:

“The individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made exactly what he gives to it. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form he receives back in another”. 8

But he pointed out that such a system would necessarily involve the perpetuation of bourgeois right.

“But one man is superior to another physically or mentally, and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement”;9 “it is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right”.10

He goes on:

“But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby”.11

The economy in the transition period is characterised by the continuation of the class struggle, but under different circumstances. Class conflict within the boundaries of a workers’ state is not principally determined by the opposition between wage labour and capital in the workplace.

However the proletariat remains a definite social class. It is not abolished by the revolution but is rather obliged to struggle against the remnants of capitalism within the workers’ state and against the continued domination of capitalism on a world scale.

In this struggle the proletariat in a workers’ state is no longer simply a class of wage slaves, but rather toilers consciously eradicating the material foundations of their slavery from the advantageous position of being organised as a ruling class. By continuing the class struggle, by raising the productivity of labour and eliminating scarcity the proletariat does not merely negate the bourgeoisie, it also progressively negates its own existence as a definite social class. This goal is completed by means of the transition, but the existence of a transition period implies the continuation of aspects of the “old society” – the proletariat, bourgeois methods of distribution and remnants of the operation of the law of value.

The task of the proletarian state is to progressively subordinate the operation of the laws of capitalist society and economy to the principles of conscious planning. It was E. Preobrazhensky, at the time a supporter of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, who, in The New Economics most sharply characterised the essence of the political economy of the transition period as a struggle to subordinate the law of value to the laws of planning.

While the bourgeois revolution is itself only an episode in the development and emancipation of bourgeois mode of production, the task of constructing a socialist economy only:

“begins its chronology with the seizure of power by the proletariat. Neither does that economy grow and develop automatically as the result of expropriation of the capitalists, it has to be consciously constructed by the proletarian state.”12

The development of any economic form means its ousting of other economic forms, the subordination of these forms to the new form, and their gradual “elimination”.13

Statified property in the hands of even a healthy proletarian state does not have, in the immediate aftermath of the proletarian revolution, an automatically socialist character.

The socialist, or otherwise, character of this post capitalist property is determined by whether or not the direction of those property relations is towards the triumph of conscious planning for the purpose of constructing a society based on the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. We know of no better short description of the specific characteristics of socialist property than that advanced by Trotsky himself:

“The latter has as its premise the dying away of the state as the guardian of property, the mitigation of inequality and the gradual dissolution of the property concept even in the morals and customs of society.”14

There can be no progressive mitigation of inequality, no final triumph of the conscious planning principle over the law of value, no withering away of the state except at the hands of the proletariat democratically organised to exercise its own power. “The emancipation of the working class” remains “the task of the workers themselves”.

Without direct control by the proletariat, the guarantee against the emergence of a distinct stratum of bureaucrats ceases to exist and the vital force that can revolutionise the productive forces in a rounded and dynamic way in order to meet human need – the creative energy of the proletariat itself – is excluded from the planning process.

But what happens in a state where capitalism has been abolished but where the working class has lost or never gained the power to exercise direct political power? It is precisely this question that has faced the Marxist movement ever since the final triumph of Stalin in the USSR.

 

The transition blocked

 

Can the working class be said to be a ruling class where its political power is not expressed by a revolutionary vanguard linked to the mass of the class by organs of proletarian democracy? Can the dictatorship, the class rule of the workers exist where a bureaucratic dictatorship over the working class has been established?

The history of the development of the capitalist mode of production shows us many instances where the capitalist class either did not exercise, or lost the ability to exercise, direct political power by and for itself. In France, the Napoleonic era, the Restoration period, and the Second Empire of Louis Napoleon all excluded the bourgeoisie from direct access to political power. But such is the nature of the capitalist mode of production and the capitalist class that this in no way hampered the development of the capitalist economy and capitalist relations of production.

Indeed Bonapartism is an inherent tendency of capitalism's political life – one which becomes dominant in the imperialist epoch. The bourgeoisie’s fear of the proletariat, the fact that its position as ruling class was assured by economic laws over which it had no conscious political control made it possible for the bourgeoisie to tolerate, and even desire in certain circumstances, a form of state that had a tendency to autonomy from direct control by the bourgeoisie itself. This is no way altered the class character of that state as long as it presided over and protected capitalist property relations.

But, as we have seen, the Marxist movement had always seen the proletariat’s direct control over its own state as an indispensable element without which the transition to communism cannot be effected. Trotsky, for example, in 1931 continued to express the view that the very designation of a state as a workers’ state – in this case the USSR – signified that the bourgeoisie would need an armed uprising in order to take power while the workers could revive the party and regime “with the methods and on the road to reform”.

The history of the rise of the bourgeoisie evidences a series of “political revolutions” where the politically expropriated bourgeoisie struggled to overthrow their political expropriators (after having already sealed the hegemony of capitalist relations of production). This was the case with the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830 and the Orleanists at the hands of the French Revolution of 1848.

While the bourgeoisie resorted to revolutionary action and attempted to dress up its actions as a social revolution, these events did not signify the passing of social and economic power from one ruling class to another.

Before the work of Trotsky in the 1930s, based on the concrete experience of the political degeneration of the Soviet Union, the Marxist tradition had made no attempt to study the potential situation of a working class that had succeeded in crushing capitalist power and property but failed to prevent the emergence of a distinct bureaucracy strong enough to deprive the proletariat itself of political power.

Trotsky was the first Marxist to develop an analogy between the bourgeois “political revolution” and the tasks of the proletariat should it itself be politically expropriated without capitalist property relations having been restored in a social counter-revolution.

In Trotsky’s view the loss of direct political power by the proletariat and its vanguard does not lead immediately or automatically to the re-establishment of the capitalist mode of production. The experience of the USSR shows this to be the case. But should the proletariat and its conscious organised vanguard lose political power then the transition to socialism will be blocked because the only force with a material interest in that transition, and the ability to effect it, will have been prevented from doing so.

The result will be that “the state” will continue in precisely the form Marxists seek to abolish – set above and against the toilers. Far from a tendency to ever greater equality, inequalities will continue and solidify. The capitalist norms of distribution and exchange that Marxists seek to destroy and replace with conscious planning at the hands of the mass of toilers will continue and even strengthen. Family life, sexual oppression, the deadening cultural void of human relations under capitalism will not be transformed, but will live on in the post-capitalist society.

Such societies – although no longer dominated and determined by the laws of the capitalist system of production – can only advance to communism after the proletariat has seized political power again. The oppressive machinery in the hands of the ruling bureaucracies in the so-called socialist states, the jealously guarded material privileges of the bureaucrats mean that the proletariat cannot seize that power through reform. It will of necessity be forced on the road of political revolution.

Thus the monstrous bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the duplication of its essential features ab initio in a whole series of revolutions, does not introduce a question unforeseen by the founders of communism. It does not require a qualitative alteration of the Marxist programme but the development of the anti-bureaucratic content present from its creation.

A vital element of the Marxist programme for constructing communism – the expropriation of the capitalist class and the centralisation of production on the basis of a plan – has been implemented in the USSR and the other degenerate workers’ states.

For this reason we recognise these states to be a historic gain for the working class – states based on post-capitalist property forms. But without proletarian political power the potential of that property form to revolutionise the productive forces and lay the basis for a communist society cannot be realised. The political power of the bureaucracy and the state forms which defend it remain therefore an obstacle to the realisation of the historic interests of the working class.

 

Footnotes

1. Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme", Marx and Engels Selected Works, (Moscow, 1970), 3 vol., vol.3, p.26.

2. ibid., p.19.

3. Karl Marx, Marx and Engels Collected Works, (London, 1976), voI.6,pp.211-2.

4. Marx and Engels, Collected Works, (London, 1975), voI.4,p.36.

5.Marx, “Rede auf der Feier zum seibenten Jahrestag der Internationalen Arbeiter assoziation am 25. September 1871”, cited in K. Marx, F. Engels, V.I. Lenin: On Scientific Communism, (Moscow, 1976),p.244.

6. V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, (Moscow, 1964), vol.25,p.481 (our emphasis.)

7. Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme” op.cit., p.17.

8. ibid.,p.17.

9. ibid.,p.18. 10.lbid.,p.18. 11.lbid.,p.19.

12. E. Preobrazhensky, The New Economics, (Oxford, 1965),p.79.

13.ibid.,p.77.

14. L. Trotsky, “The Fourth International and the Soviet Union”, Writings 1935-36, (New York, 1977),p.354.

15. L. Trotsky, “Problems of the Development of the USSR", Writings 1930-31 (New York),p.225.

 


Chapter 2: From soviet power to soviet bonapartism

 

In October 1917 state power in Russia was seized by forces intent on using that state power to effect the transition from capitalism to communism. Never before in world history had conscious revolutionary communists taken state power. The October revolution inaugurated the first attempt to implement and develop the programme of revolutionary communism in the aftermath of a proletarian seizure of power.

State power in Russia lay in the hands of the workers and soldiers organised in workers’ councils – the Soviets – and a workers’ militia. The politically conscious vanguard of the workers was organised in the Bolshevik party – 250,000 strong at the time of the October revolution. That party commanded a majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets that assumed power after the overthrow of the old Provisional Government. In the first Council of People’s Commissars – itself responsible to the Soviet Congress – the Bolsheviks had a majority of posts but shared governmental power with a section of the populist Social Revolutionary party – the Left SRs – who supported the creation of Soviet power.

Enormous material obstacles confronted the Soviet Government’s attempt to begin creating the socialist order. The Tsarist regime had developed industrial capitalism in Russia in conjunction with the major imperialist powers and to a large extent economically subordinate to them. As a result Russia experienced extreme unevenness in the development of her productive forces. Developed capitalist industry fostered by imperialism coexisted with under-development and pre-capitalist relations, particularly in agricultural production. On the eve of the first imperialist war the national income per capita in Tsarist Russia was 8 to 10 times less than in the United States.1

Four-fifths of the population earned their miserable livelihoods from agriculture. Although Tsarist Russia was a net exporter of grain, her wheat yield was on a level with that of India and well below that of the European states. Consequently the vast majority of the population eked out a pitiful living in conditions of extreme material and cultural backwardness.

Imperialist capital did however develop pockets of heavy industry amidst the rural squalor of Tsarist Russia. Over half the capital invested in the Donetz coal field in 1914 was foreign, as was over 80 per cent of the capital in iron mining, metallurgy and the oil industry.2 It was in these industries that the Russian proletariat was formed and grew to political maturity. The Russian working class was small but highly concentrated. In 1914 between two and three million were employed as factory workers, three-quarters of a million in the mines and one million on the railways.3

But the concentration of that proletariat in giant plants – enterprises employing over 1,000 workers employed 17.8 per cent of the American proletariat, but 41.4 per cent in Russia – gave it enormous social weight and political strength.4

Taken in isolation the material backwardness of revolutionary Russia was striking. Tsarist Russia had relied on western capitalism for both capital and key manufactured goods – chemicals in particular. Hence the unquestioned unanimity in the ranks of the Bolshevik party that the construction of the material base for a classless, stateless society could not be achieved in one country alone, let alone in one as backward as Russia.

The key planks of the Bolshevik Party’s programme for transition attempted to relate the programme developed by Marx and Engels to the particular circumstances of Russia and the part to be played by its revolution in the world proletarian revolution.

All the Bolshevik leaders saw their revolution as but an initial act in the world revolution. They saw the fate of their revolution as being tied indissolubly to that of the world proletarian revolution. This was stated clearly and unambiguously by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky in their commentary on the programme of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks):

“The Communist movement can be victorious only as a world revolution. If the state of affairs arose in which one country was ruled by the working class, while in other countries the working class not from fear but from conviction, remained submissive to capital, in the end the great robber states would crush the workers’ state of the first country.”5

At the heart of the Bolshevik programme for transition, therefore, was the struggle to internationalise the revolution. The Russian revolution was but one gain in the struggle for international revolution. The communist programme is a programme for the eventual abolition of classes and the state. Having smashed the armed power and executive bureaucracy of the old regime, Bolshevism was committed to the struggle to replace the old type of administrative and coercive apparatus with one that mobilised and actively engaged the toilers themselves.

In Russia this meant taking sovereign power into the hands of the working class organised in soviets. But it also meant the struggle to ensure that working class rule was not simply formal. A struggle had to be waged to enable the workers themselves to gain the experience and culture (in the first place) to be able to directly hold the administrative apparatus to account. This was a necessary staging post to being able to directly manage the economy and dissolve the administrative apparatus as a form separate from the working class.

In this struggle cultural obstacles as well as material ones confronted the Bolsheviks, not least the problem of illiteracy. The pre-revolutionary census of 1897 found that only 21.1 per cent of the population of the Russian empire (excluding Finland) were able to read and write.6 As a result the programme for transition in Russia required an increase not only in the social and political weight of the industrial proletarians but also a conscious struggle to raise the cultural level of the masses of Russian society to one commensurate with the tasks confronting them.

The Russian revolution was not, however, simply the work of the industrial proletariat. The proletarian insurrection took place alongside the seizure of land and the breakup of the old estates by the peasantry. It combined elements of a land war against the remnants of feudalism with a working class seizure of power.

As a result Russia’s arable land was divided into 25 million peasant farms. Not only did the size of these units present an obstacle to re-building agricultural production on a scale and with a technological level sufficient to ensure a qualitative transformation of agricultural production. It also served to strengthen petty-commodity production and primitive capitalist relations in the countryside.

The programme of transition therefore, had to win those peasants who had gained least from the revolution on the land the poor and middle peasants-to an alliance with the proletarian state against the rural capitalists and for cooperative large scale agricultural production, utilising developed technology. The Soviet Government referred to transition proceeding “gradually with the consent and confirmation of the majority of peasants following the teachings of their practical experience and of the workers.”7

These then were the broad outlines of the Bolshevik programme for effecting a transition to socialism in the aftermath of the Russian revolution. The initial period after the revolution saw an enormous extension of the sovereignty of the masses and, as a result, the break up of the authority and jurisdiction of the apparatus the old state machine.The October revolution immediately decreed that authority in the factories should reside with the workers’ committees therefore legitimising “workers’ control” over the capitalists. In December 1917 full power in the army was transferred to soldiers’ committees with the right to elect and dismiss officers.

The initial perspective for transition was therefore one of prioritising measures to break the power of the remnants of the old state apparatus, the employers and industrial managers and the officer caste, by subjecting them directly to the sovereignty of the Soviets and factory and soldiers’ committees. In February 1918 the old courts were abolished and a decree promulgated to ensure the election of judges.

The July 1918 constitution of the young Soviet republic systematised the achievements of Soviet power. Sovereign power formally resided with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, whose constitution ensured the predominance of the proletariat’s voice within it. Rural and urban bourgeois were not granted the right to vote.

The franchise was weighted so as to give one seat in the Congress for every 25,000 urban voters and 125,000 provincial voters. In the provincial Soviets the vote was weighted to one seat for 2000 city voters and one for 10,000 rural voters. The Bolshevik programme aimed at combining democracy for the proletariat with proletariat’s dictatorship over the old exploiting classes and hegemony over the peasantry.

 

The formation of the Red Army

 

The tempo and nature of the transition was of necessity determined by both the material problems confronting the fledgling Soviet regime and the military/political struggle waged by its internal and external enemies. German imperialism resumed its advance against Soviet Russia until the regime signed the March 1918 Brest Litovsk treaty, ceding the majority of the Ukraine to Germany. Later in 1918, and during 1919, the armies of 14 capitalist states waged a war to overthrow the workers’ republic. The Social Revolutionaries and a majority of the Menshevik leaders sided with the White Armies of Yudenich, Denikin and Kolchak in the civil war that ensued. In White-dominated areas, with the backing of the SRs, the Soviets were dissolved and the power of the institutions of the Tsarist state – the Dumas and Zemstvos – was reinstated.

In the face of counter-revolutionary attack the Bolsheviks were compelled to make specific tactical retreats in order to ensure the survival of the workers’ dictatorship. The Red Terror exercised by the Extraordinary Commission (Cheka) was an indispensable weapon of the proletarian dictatorship. In order to effectively defend the revolution a standing army was re-created, but now to defend the gains of the working class and therefore in an important sense an army of a “new type”.

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army was created on 23 February 1918 and grew to be 5 million strong by 1920. 30,000 of the old Tsarist officers were enrolled into that army so that the workers’ state could take advantage of their military expertise.8 While political supervision of these officers by the workers’ state continued, the form that it now took was the appointment of political commissars to oversee their work.

In the middle of 1918 the right to elect officers in the Red Army was abolished. Such actions were necessary and justified because the military threat against the young workers’ state precluded the peaceful and gradual evolution of a group of capable commanders by way of the elective method. The needs of war in defence of the workers’ state demanded military expertise immediately. Appointment of officers and the Commissar system alone could achieve this.

The refusal of the Mensheviks and SRs to recognise the authority of the Soviet regime led to their expulsion from the Soviets in July 1918. They continued to legally operate outside the Soviets. A left shift by the Mensheviks in October 1918 led to their readmission to the Soviets in November of that year. After an armed attempt to destroy the Bolshevik-led regime, the Left SRs were expelled from the Soviets in July. In the factories the move towards workers’ management was halted and reversed in favour of the single authority of the director appointed by the workers' state. By the start of 1921 some 2,183 out of 2,483 enterprises were managed in this fashion. All of these measures marked a decisive shift towards the centralisation of political power in the hands of the party that organised the conscious layer of the Russian proletariat. These layers were rightly committed to holding state power for the working class as the prerequisite for the transition to socialism. The proletarian dictatorship in Russia took on the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat’s political party.

Anarchists denounced the dictatorship of the party without explaining how else counter-revolution could have been defeated.

On the other hand, by the early 1920s leading member of the Communist Party Gregori Zinoviev was laying down theoretical foundations for Stalinism. He idealised the dictatorship of the party, and made it synonymous with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Neither position in any way serves the proletariat in the long term. Revolutionaries recognise that exceptional circumstances demand exceptional measures. The dictatorship of the party was such a measure, entirely justified and utilised correctly by Lenin, as a temporary and emergency method of defending the proletariat’s gains against a vicious counter-revolution.

The Civil War had a devastating effect on the industrial base of the Soviet Republic and therefore on the size and morale of the working class. In the proletarian citadel of Petrograd, for example, industrial production in early 1921 stood at only one-eighth of its 1913 level.9

In 1920 and 1921 the giant Putilov works, the symbolic heart of the Petrograd working class was working at only 3 per cent capacity.10 As a result the industrial workforce of Petrograd dropped from a registered 230,000 in January 1918 to only 79,500 in September 1920.11

Those workers most committed to the transition to socialism were drawn into the Red Army and the state apparatus, those least conscious were either forced back into the villages or forced to survive in appalling and demoralising material circumstances in the beleaguered and economically stagnant cities. By January 1921 there were only 3,462 members of the Russian Communist Party employed in Petrograd’s factories – comprising only 3.2 per cent of the city’s industrial workers.12 No wonder then that the factory committees and Soviets withered as effective, representative and dynamic instruments of the proletarian dictatorship.

In order to deploy and mobilise scarce resources for the battle front of the class struggle, the workers’ state made decisive revisions in the schedule for expropriating private property. On 28 June 1918 every important category of industry was nationalised. From the spring of 1918 “food detachments” from the towns were sent into the countryside to forcibly requisition grain from the peasants. The system of War Communism was deployed to ensure the survival of a regime that, at the height of the Civil War, controlled less than one-quarter of the territory of the old Russian Empire. It meant the virtual abolition of money as a means of exchange and the market as a means of distribution.

It also necessitated temporary measures to militarise the workforce so as to deploy them in the interests of the Red War effort. In November 1919 a decree was issued which placed the employees of state enterprises under military discipline.13

The eventual victory of the Red Army in the Civil War therefore had a contradictory character. On the one hand it marked a victory for forces still committed to the transition to communism.

On the other it was achieved at the expense of retarding both the material and political prerequisites of that transition. This retardation was compounded by the defeat of the post-war revolutionary movement of the European working class. The savage betrayal of the German revolution by the social democratic leaders – a betrayal paid for with the blood of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht – and the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic left the victorious workers’ republic isolated in backward and ravaged Russia.

War Communism and international isolation gave birth to several alien and unscientific views of the transition, and false estimates of the relations between present political forms and those required of the workers’ state at its existing stage in the transition. Some, like Strumilin, who attempted to draw up a plan of production in a moneyless system, and Bukharin, who hailed the collapse of money and the de facto barter economy as advanced forms of the transition to communism, hopelessly overestimated the potential of the regime to effect measures to create an advanced transitional society.

Similarly utopian, and ultimately therefore reactionary, views were in evidence in the struggle of the Workers’ Opposition against the party majority in 1920 and 1921. This grouping around Shlyapnikov, Luovinov and Kollontai urged that the party should relinquish its hold over the battered economy and place it in the hands of a Congress of Producers. The reality of the morale, size and organisation of the Russian working class at this time made such proposals utopian in theory and potentially disruptive of the political power of the advanced layers of communists organised in the party.

At the same time however there was a definite tendency towards bureaucratism within the proletariat’s party and in the relation between that party and the state apparatus. At the Tenth Party Congress in 1921 the Secretarial triumvirate of Krestinsky, Preobrazhensky and Serebriakov who urged a relatively tolerant and open regime within the party were ousted and replaced by Molotov. The party also agreed to a temporary ban on the right to form factions within the party. While the party at the same time set out to purge indisciplined and careerist elements – 24 per cent of the party was expelled during 1921-4 – these measures served to strengthen the potential for the exercise of bureaucratic power in the party itself.

By the end of the Civil War the possibility of continuing the transition to socialism depended on the vanguard and its ability to comprehend the scale of deformation and retreat in the workers’ state, so as to be able to advance. In essence it depended on the commitment of the Bolsheviks to continue a relentless struggle, with the aid of the new Third International, for the international revolution of the working class. Meanwhile inside Russia itself the defence of the revolution and its advance now required a conscious struggle to recreate the working class as a material and political force.

The Kronstadt rebellion of February 1921 and a series of peasant revolts spreading from Tambov to Western Siberia highlighted the problems facing the victorious workers' state. A fuel and food crisis in Petrograd precipitated a strike wave amongst the city’s workers in February. The demoralised and impoverished workers were receptive to Social Revolutionary and Menshevik agitators and only emergency food supplies and a declaration of martial law in the region secured a return to work. This revealed that forces who had supported the Reds against White counterrevolution were themselves profoundly dissatisfied with the political and economic regime of War Communism. That dissatisfaction amongst the peasant sailors of Kronstadt for example served to increase the potential for counter-revolutionary elements, masquerading as the allies of the toiling masses, to mobilise mass discontent against the revolutionary regime.

 

The young workers’ state and the New Economic Policy

 

It is evidence of Lenin’s supremely concrete understanding of the problems confronting the proletarian regime that, in the face of this upsurge, the Party took specific measures both to strengthen its own monopoly of political power and to affect a retreat from the policies of War Communism. The Kronstadt rebellion was crushed. The alternative would have been to tolerate the opening of a new phase of civil war and the joining of a reactionary peasant war against the regime. But at the same time, with the inauguration of the New Economic Policy (NEP), major concessions were made to the private peasantry by the workers’ state. War Communism’s system of requisitions was replaced by a system of taxing the peasantry on the basis of a fixed proportion of each peasant farm’s net produce. The after-tax surplus of the peasants could be traded by the peasant on the free market.

In that it legalised the operation of the law of value, NEP represented a retreat by the regime. In that it served to revive agricultural production and won a breathing space for the internationally isolated regime it was a retreat that granted the regime the potential to make future advances along the road of transition.

Under NEP there existed two fundamental and conflicting elements in the economy of the Soviet Union. In agriculture and other petty commodity production the law of value was absolutely dominant. Yet in the statified economy – mainly heavy industry and transport – the law of value could be offset by state direction of investment and was, therefore, susceptible to the planning principle. In this period the major threat to the workers’ state and to its ability to extend its control over the economy through extending conscious economic planning was the spontaneous development of primitive capitalist accumulation in the countryside and the potential alliance between it and imperialist capital.

For that reason the state monopoly of foreign trade was an indispensable weapon without which direct imperialist penetration into the economy of the first workers’ state could not have been prevented. In the struggle against this threat the young workers’ state had accumulated three principle weapons with which to defend itself: the revolutionary expropriation of the industrial sector of the economy; the application and extension of the planning principle; and the state monopoly of foreign trade. These three measures, taken together, anti-capitalist by their very nature, form the characteristic defining property relations of a workers’ state.

NEP was a retreat and was recognised as such by Lenin. It made him acutely aware of the need to ensure that it did not pave the way for a rout. In the last two years of his active political life Lenin attempted to concretise and refocus the Bolshevik programme for transition. First, it was necessary to construct the mechanisms of economic planning and extend their authority over the Soviet economy. Enormous problems of experience and culture faced the young regime in its attempts to weld together an apparatus of economic planning in the material circumstances of post revolutionary Russia.

In February 1920 a Commission for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO) was established with the brief to coordinate an all-Russian plan for electricity production. While the party programme called for “one general State Plan” the mechanism for creating such a plan had to be constructed gradually and on the basis of the first ever experience of the attempt to create planning mechanisms in the interests of subordinating and, eventually, extinguishing the operation of the law of value.

A Supreme Economic Council (Vesenkha) was established as early as December 1917. By the end of the Civil War it possessed the authority and experience to draw up plans for particular industries with the assistance of the state planning commission (GOSPLAN) which was established in 1921. It produced a Five-year plan for the metal industry in 1922-23 and in 1923 attempted to produce a general plan that would amalgamate Vesenkha’s plans for individual branches of industry. But in this period the planning mechanisms simply provided trusts with forecast “control figures” as dictated by their interpretation of market conditions within NEP. The strengthening and coordination of these mechanisms to a level capable of serious subordinating the law of value remained a prerequisite of effective transitional advance.

But the struggle against the law of value was not simply a struggle between industry and agriculture. Of necessity it involved a conscious struggle to wean the majority of the peasantry away from petty commodity production and from the economic and political dominance of the richer capitalist peasant farmers (the Kulaks). In Lenin’s last writings he advanced the programme of cooperation as the means of effecting an alliance (smychka) between the workers’ state and the poor and middle peasants on the road to building a socialist system of agricultural production:

“By adopting NEP we made a concession to the peasant as a trader, to the principle of private trade; it is precisely for this reason (contrary to what some people think) that the cooperative movement is of such immense importance.”15

Lenin realised that the small and middle peasants had gained insufficient land from the revolution to guarantee them a secure livelihood and to make possible the application of the labour-saving technologies utilisable only in larger agricultural units. Hence through the provision of equipment to the poorer peasants organised in cooperatives the workers’ state could both raise the technological level of Soviet agriculture and cement solid political ties with the mass of the peasantry against the layer of rich labour hiring Kulaks.

In On Co-operation Lenin therefore advocated a policy of the ruthless prioritisation of the provision of credits and machinery to those peasants organised in cooperatives as a means of recommencing the transition to socialism in the Soviet countryside.16

Any other policy would unleash the potential within NEP to strengthen the tendency to social differentiation within the peasantry and towards an increase in the social and economic weight of the anti-socialist Kulaks.

Lenin’s last writings also focus on the problem of developing the ability of the working masses to replace the old form of administrative apparatus and to subject the existing state apparatus to the authority of the workers’ state.

“Two main tasks confront us, which constitute the epoch: to reorganise our machinery of state, which is utterly useless, and which we took over in its entirety from the preceding epoch; during the past five years of struggle we did not, and could not, drastically reorganise it. Our second task is educational work among the peasants.”17

Repeatedly in the period after the Civil War Lenin emphasised the bureaucratically deformed nature of the Soviet workers’ state and struggled to reform that state apparatus:

“Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not been overcome, has not yet reached the stage of a culture that has receded into the distant past.”18. . . “The most harmful thing here would be haste. The most harmful thing would be to rely on the assumption that we know at least something, or that we have any considerable number of elements necessary for the building of a really new state apparatus, one really worthy to be called socialist, Soviet etc:”19

But this perspective of renovating the Soviet workers' state and recommencing the transition to socialism in alliance with the poor and middle peasants remained part of a programme for internationalising the workers’ revolution. The isolation of that revolution necessarily served to retard the development of the material pre-requisites of socialist construction

“The general feature of our present life is the following: we have destroyed capitalist industry and have done our best to raze to the ground the medieval institutions and landed proprietorship, and thus created a small and very small peasantry, which is following the lead of the proletariat because it believes in the results of its revolutionary work. It is not easy for us, however, to keep going until the socialist revolution is victorious in more developed countries merely with the aid of this confidence, because economic necessity, especially under NEP, keeps the productivity of labour of the small and very small peasants at an extremely low level. Moreover, the international situation, too, threw Russia back and, by and large, reduced the labour productivity of the people to a level considerably below pre-war.”20

What then were the roots of the bureaucratisation of the workers’ state that Lenin perceived and fought against in the early 1920s? The functional roots of the bureaucracy lay in the exhaustion and weariness of the internationally isolated Soviet society in the aftermath of the civil war, together with the material backwardness of the country inherited from Tsarism. In this context a series of “pre-socialist” and “non-socialist” tasks faced the young Soviet regime. Trotsky correctly outlined this process:

“No help came from the West. The power of the democratic Soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the task of the day was to accommodate those privileged groups whose existence was necessary for defence, for industry, for technique and science. In this decidedly not ‘socialist’ operation, taking from ten and giving to one, there crystallised out and developed a powerful caste of specialists in distribution...”21

While the armed forces and executive bureaucracy of the old ruling class were smashed, the proletarian state was forced to work with significant remnants of the old Tsarist state machine in order to administer the world’s first workers’ state. Lenin described this process-and its impact in the following way:

“We took over the old machinery of state and that was our misfortune. Very often this machinery operates against us. In 1917, after we captured power, the government officials sabotaged us. This frightened us very much and we pleaded: ‘Please come back’. They all came back, but that was our misfortune.”22

As we have seen, the Russian proletariat itself was decimated by the experience of the civil war that it fought to defend the workers’ state. Its most conscious element was drawn into administering the state machine, its advanced layers suffered death and privation to secure the victory of the Red Army. Of necessity the advance of the proletarian dictatorship in the direction of planning and equality depended on the small conscious vanguard section of the Russian working class organised in the Communist Party. Political degeneration in their ranks, a slackening of their direct commitment to socialist advance – nationally and internationally – would serve to undermine the proletariat’s only guarantee of advance towards socialism.

Enormous objective material factors therefore contributed to the process of bureaucratisation. These were strengthened by the operation of NEP within which the state apparatus was called upon to play the role of arbitration between the interests of the peasantry and the industrial working class. This process of bureaucratisation not only led to the continuation of the old form of administrative apparatus and to a considerable continuity of personnel between the old and new apparatus.

It also played an important role in shaping the character and leadership of the Bolshevik party itself. By 1923 less than 10 per cent of the party had pre-revolutionary records and two-thirds of the members and half of the candidates were involved in non-manual jobs. In Lenin’s last years alarming signs of bureaucratic degeneration were apparent in the party’s highest bodies.

In the face of these objective and subjective tendencies the key problem facing the workers’ state was whether the vanguard could regenerate itself and the working class as a whole, in a struggle against bureaucratism, national isolation and complacency. Lenin’s last writings show him to have been increasingly aware of bureaucratism in the party apparatus and that this was serving to render the party powerless in the face of the weight of the old state apparatus.

In turn this presented an obstacle to building a new state apparatus responsive to the vanguard itself and committed to the transition to socialism. In fact bureaucratism in the state was positively strengthening the “old ways” of Great Russian chauvinism, rudeness and bureaucratism within the party itself.

In his last battles Lenin concentrated on the regime in the party and the relation between the party and state apparatus as the key problems without the solution to which the transition to socialism would be retarded. Until his death he remained the most astute of all the party’s leaders as to the realities of Soviet Russia and to the type, nature and tasks of the workers’ state. His last testimony itself – Letter to Congress – contains an implicit criticism of the entire old guard of the party for its failure to grasp the urgency of, and the necessary concrete steps towards, regeneration.

Lenin’s eyes were opened to the degree of bureaucratic degeneration within the party by relations between Dzherzhinsky, Stalin and Ordzhonikidze and leading representatives of the Georgian Communist party. The latter were resisting plans to replace the loose federal structure of the young Soviet republic with a more centralised structure under the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. During the controversy Ordzhonikiadzhe struck Kabanidze, a supporter of the Georgian party leader Mdivani. While not in complete solidarity with the political stand of the Georgians, Lenin weighed in against the central leadership.

Lenin conceded that perhaps the unionisation plan had been premature:

“There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed somewhat until we could say that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now, we must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; the apparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the course of the past five years without the help of other countries and because we have been ‘busy’ most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine.

It is quite natural that in such circumstances the ‘freedom to secede from the union’ by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk.”23

Lenin urged exemplary punishment for Ordzhonikidze and that: “The political responsibility for all this truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign must, of course, be laid on Stalin and Dzherzhinsky.”24 At the same time Lenin urged on the party the strengthening of the accountability of the state machine through raising the political weight of the Workers and Peasants’ Inspection (RABKRIN).

Mindful of the developing bureaucratic regime in the party and Stalin’s evident unsuitedness to the post of Secretary that he had quietly assumed in 1922, Lenin urged the removal of Stalin from his post:

“Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealings amongst us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc.”25

As Lenin’s letters to Trotsky published first in The Stalin School of Falsification show, Lenin urged a bloc with Trotsky against Stalin on these issues.26

But the tendency towards bureaucratic arbitrary rule within the party continued throughout 1923. There is evidence of the formation of secretly organised opposition groups within the party which called for a struggle against the new bureaucratism.

The most significant – the Workers Truth group – was led by Miasnikov who had been expelled from the party in 1921.27 In response the party leadership responded to the working class discontent that this evidenced with an attempt to strengthen police dictatorship within the party itself. A special commission headed by Dzherzhinsky “demanded from communists the immediate denunciation, either to the Control Commission or to the GPU, of illegal groups within the party.”28

This crisis coincided with mounting imbalance within the NEP economy to the advantage of the private trader and farmer and to the disadvantage of the proletarian state. By 1922-23, 75 per cent of retail trade was in private hands. By 1923 industrial production stood at only 35 per cent of the pre-war level while the marketed agricultural surplus had reached 60 per cent of pre-war totals.29

This strengthened a tendency towards a “scissors crisis” – rising industrial prices and relatively declining agricultural prices – which threatened to result in a drop in peasant markets if state industry could not provide sufficient manufactured goods at cheap enough prices to encourage the peasants to sell their surpluses. At the 12th Party Congress in 1923 Trotsky showed that industrial prices were at 140 per cent of their 1913 level while agricultural prices stood at only 80 per cent. Only a strengthening of the planned industrial base of the USSR could have provided the material prerequisites of cooperation – for example tractors, manufactured implements and have served thus to isolate the prosperous Kulak layer of the peasantry which commanded the bulk of the surplus. Continued retardation of industry could only serve to strengthen the Kulak and the grip of the law of value within the Soviet state.

 

The growth of bureaucratism

 

But 1923 also saw mounting signs of the ossification of the party leadership in terms of its ability to aid and develop the international revolution of the proletariat. Under the direction of Zinoviev the Communist International seriously miscalculated tactics for a revolutionary offensive in Germany in the autumn of 1923. The bureaucratically deformed workers’ state remained isolated.

It is in the face of these manifest degenerative processes that Trotsky and the cadre of the Left Opposition launched their struggle against the party leadership in order to reactivate the struggle for socialism. True, Trotsky failed to activate the proposed bloc with Lenin at the 12th Party Congress in April 1923. He left Bukharin to fight alone against the bureaucratism of the party’s leading Troika of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin – an unholy alliance united by enmity towards Trotsky.

In 1924 he was complicit in the decision of the same party leadership to conceal the existence of Lenin’s call for the removal of Stalin. To this extent he clearly did not share the sense of urgency felt by Lenin as to the threat to socialist advance in the USSR. But the coincidence of Miasnikov’s grouping and Dzerhzhinsky’s police tactics stung Trotsky into a war against bureaucratism during the latter part of 1923. In October he wrote to the Central Committee denouncing party administration in general – particularly the demise of the elective principle – and Dzherzhinsky’s proposals in particular.

Trotsky had no doubt that bureaucratism had a profound material roots:

“It is unworthy of a Marxist to consider that bureaucratism is only the aggregate of the bad habits of office holders.

Bureaucratism is a social phenomenon in that it is a definite system of administration of men and things. Its profound causes lie in the heterogeneity of society, the difference between the daily and the fundamental interests of various groups of the population.”30

But Trotsky insisted this bureaucratism posed fundamental problems to the advance of the revolution:

“...bureaucratism in the state and party apparatus is the expression of the most vexatious tendencies inherent in our situation, of the defects and deviations in our work which, under certain social conditions, might sap the basis of the revolution. And, in this case as in many others, quantity will at a certain stage be transformed into quality.”31

For Trotsky only the struggle for democracy in the party could mobilise the vanguard against bureaucratism. The alternative was alienation and demoralisation amongst the ranks of worker communists.

“Not feeling that they are participating actively in the general work of the party and not getting a timely answer to their questions to the party, numerous communists start looking for a substitute for independent party activity in the form of groupings and factions of all sorts. It is in this sense precisely that we speak of the symptomatic importance of groupings like the Workers’ Group.”32

As a result “The task of the present is to shift the centre of party activity towards the masses of the party” because “There is not and cannot be any other means of triumphing over the corporatism, the caste spirit of the functionaries, than by the realisation of democracy.”33, 34

The offensive of Trotsky was complemented, in October, by the declaration of 46 Old Bolsheviks including Antonov Ovseenko, Serebriakov, Preobrazhensky and Pyatakov. Taken as a whole the two positions represented a platform of extending democracy in the party as the immediate form of extending workers’ democracy in the USSR and of developing industrial planning as the means of strengthening the smychka with the poorer peasants against the Kulaks. To this extent it represented an important development and refocusing of the programme of Bolshevism. It contained the key elements, in embryo, of the future programme of the Left Opposition.

The 1923 debate also showed that despite the party’s leadership, the careerists who had entered its ranks and the exhaustion of significant sections of its cadre, there remained a solid core within the party committed to the transition to socialism. Despite the campaign against “Trotskyism” that was launched by the ruling Troika the platform of proletarian democracy received widespread support in the party. It received strong support in Moscow, the Urals and Kharkov.35

As late as 1929 the Stalinist historian Yaroslavsky was admitting that the opposition won half the votes in certain areas of Moscow.36 The leadership was forced to concede the demand of the 46 for a special Central Committee meeting on the subject and a declaration in favour of democratising the party’s life in return for a Central Committee resolution condemning the activities of Trotsky and the 46. It would clearly be wrong therefore to conclude that the party at this time could simply be described as the property of its central and increasingly bureaucratic leadership.

The death of Lenin in 1924, following on from the first setback for the forces of the Left Opposition (the Central Committee confrontation), served to intensify the tendency towards revisionism and bureaucratism within the party leadership. Against the struggle for regeneration waged by Trotsky and the Left there were three major groupings all representing specific programmatic revisions and degenerations.

In 1924 and 1925 a definite Rightist tendency increased in confidence and weight within the party apparatus. Represented primarily by Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov, this tendency reflected the pressure of the richer layers of the peasantry on the party/state apparatus. Its programme involved continued and extended concessions to the richer peasants in the name of building a specifically Russian peasant-based form of socialism. As its principle spokesman, Bukharin, put it:

“We have come to the conclusion that we can build socialism even on this wretched technological level... that we shall move at a snail’s pace, but that we shall be building socialism and that we shall build it.”37

During 1925, at both the 14th Party Conference and Congress Bukharin elaborated a specific new content to Lenin’s call for “an understanding with the peasantry.” It was to mean concessions to the peasantry in order to encourage their economy, it was to mean tailoring the pace of industrial development to these concessions. The policies of Bukharin were enshrined in the decision of the April 1925 Central Committee meeting to sanction the right to hire labour and extend the rights of land leasing and thus strengthen the operation of the law of value in the USSR. In April 1925 Bukharin delivered his famous speech to a mass party meeting in Moscow calling on the Russian peasants to “enrich yourselves.”

The Right had another social base within the bureaucratised apparatus of the workers’ state. An important section of the Soviet Trade Union leaders – particularly Tomsky – craved an unprincipled alliance with the reformist leaders of the Yellow Amsterdam-based International Trade Union Federation. For them potential alliances with the reformist trade union leaders-particularly in Britain-represented a potential road of protection and stability for the Soviet state in its existing bureaucratised form.

In essence the Right was therefore a tendency committed to strengthening capitalist forces within the USSR and securing peace with world capitalism through the medium of the reformist labour bureaucracies. The Right’s programme was a narrow nationalist one that sought to preserve the status quo – the bureaucratically deformed workers’ state. Objectively, however, the Right were in fact a tendency for capitalist restoration. This was the logical end point of their programme of concessions to rich private peasants. In the mid-1920s their reactionary views accorded with the doctrine of “Socialism in One Country”, a creed they shared with Stalin. But the Right’s policy of relative freedom for Soviet Trade Union officialdom and compromise with the rich peasant farmers meant that they were not of necessity wedded to the forms of bureaucratic rule later advanced by the group around Stalin.

In concert with this group against the Communist Left, but in material conflict with the Right’s programme, stood a bureaucratic left centre group around Zinoviev and Kamenev. Their social base was the industrial city of Leningrad and the Communist International. For the Rightists the failed German Revolution of 1923 underlined the fact that the proletariat of Western Europe could not be relied on to solve the problems of isolated and backward Russia. For Zinoviev however, it meant that a serious blow had been struck at the ability of the Soviet state to resist the developing bourgeois forces within its own boundaries. Zinoviev expressed this in the following terms:

“An alliance of a proletarian Germany with Soviet Russia would create a new phase of NEPism... would nip in the bud the tendency of a new bourgeoisie to assume a controlling position in the economic life of our republican union.”38

The 5th Congress of the Comintern, meeting in June and July 1924, reflected a profound disorientation in the strategy and tactics of the Communist International. Zinoviev responded to the German defeat and the appearance of capitalist stabilisation with a call to bureaucratically “Bolshevise” the Communist Parties and a turn to left rhetoric – effectively turning the Comintern against the decisions taken at its fourth Congress on the United Front tactic and the Workers’ Government slogan.39

It was at this Congress that the characterisation of Social Democracy as a wing of fascism was first aired – by none other than Zinoviev himself. In its aftermath Zinoviev probably ordered the abortive uprising in Estonia in December 1924.40

Victor Serge described Zinoviev’s bureaucratic leftist response:

“How could Zinoviev have initiated this imbecile adventure? The man terrified us. He refused to acknowledge the German defeat. In his eyes the rising had been only delayed and the KPD was still marching to power. The riots in Krakow were enough for him to announce revolution in Poland. I felt that he was obsessed by the error in his otherwise sensible judgement which had led him in 1917 to oppose the incipient Bolshevik revolution; in consequence, he had now swung into an authoritarian and exaggerated revolutionary optimism.”41

Under Zinoviev therefore the Comintern veered from ultraleft to opportunist tactics to secure success. The base of Zinoviev in Leningrad also served to shape his response to the Right.

The April 1925 concessions to the peasantry included a 25 per cent cut in taxation on the peasantry and the freeing of agricultural prices.42 This caused serious hardship and discontent amongst the workers of Leningrad. But while this bureaucratic left could, on occasion, reflect workers’ hostility to the effects of Rightist policies on the working class, they were themselves hostile to the programme of proletarian democracy waged by the Left Opposition.

The campaign against “Trotskyism” was particularly virulent in Leningrad. It was Zinoviev and Kamenev who demanded the expulsion of Trotsky from the party at the January 1925 Central Committee. Stalin opposed them!43 To this extent they were the pioneers of despotism within the party.

Alongside these two groups there existed a centre grouping around Stalin, with its base in the central party apparatus. Its hold on the secretariat of the party made it most wedded to the secretarial form of dictatorship in the party. It stood with the right for concessions to the Kulak to the extent that they presented no threat to the political power and modus vivendi of the central apparatus. The Stalinist group did not oppose industrial planning as such, to the extent that it developed at a tempo and in a form that would not disturb the smychka with the rich peasants.

The most important programmatic hallmark of the Stalin group was the theory of “Socialism in One Country”.

In an article directed against Trotsky in December 1924 Stalin first put forward his theory of the possibility of constructing “Socialism in One Country.”

“The victory of socialism in one country, even if this country is less developed in the capitalist sense, while capitalism is preserved in other countries, even if these countries are more developed in the capitalist sense – is quite possible and probable.”44

The programmatic logic of the “theory” was that given a sufficient period of peaceful relations between imperialism and the USSR it would be possible to build “Socialism in One Country”.

In this view the Soviet Union necessarily ceases to be an integral, and necessarily dependent, component of the world proletarian struggle to destroy capitalism. It is capable, from its own resources and in isolation, of building socialism without the assistance of the world revolution. Of necessity, this leads to a revision of the Marxist concept of socialism. Socialism – as a programmatic goal ceases to mean a developing classless and stateless society. It comes to mean the stability, order and interests of the USSR as they are construed by those who have political power in the USSR.

This theory, and its chief proponent, accurately reflected the conservatism of the Centre grouping. It was the conservatism of a still-developing bureaucracy keen to defend the marginal, but growing privileges that its role within the Soviet state had provided it with. Stalin and his grouping recognised that through “Socialism in One Country” – i.e. the abandonment of real socialism which is internationalist by definition, and the development of the Soviet economy under their control – these marginal privileges could be extended and the bureaucracy strengthened. This explains why the Stalin group did not wholly support the programme of the Right, which potentially threatened it with the growth of the Kulaks as a rival for power, or the programme of the Left, which threatened it with the revolutionary rule of the proletariat.

Yet it also explains why it could bureaucratically utilise elements of both of these programmes to consolidate its own position and eventually to secure its own victory over both the Right and the Left. The bureaucracy’s programme was eclectic, pragmatic and vacillating, guided centrally by the principle of self- interest.

In 1923 and 1924 Stalin, Zinoviev and Tomsky had a common interest in blocking in order to prevent the implementation of the programme of the Left Opposition. They orchestrated a scurrilous campaign against Trotskyism, introduced new degenerate norms of debate in the party and new levels of caste loyalty between themselves when they conspired to prevent the implementation of Lenin’s testimony and to keep it concealed from the party, (an agreement Trotsky mistakenly, went along with).

Further to this they flooded the party with new recruits via the Lenin Levy of 1924. In two years the party’s size was increased by more than two-thirds.45 Most of the recruits were either raw or careerists and their presence rendered the party far more susceptible to manipulation by the bureaucratic leaders, against the revolutionary left.

These measures, taken together, represent a systematic and conscious attempt to politically isolate and, ultimately decapitate, the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat. However, at this time no faction was, as yet, strong enough to drive it out of the party. This was the beginning of the process of the Thermidorean degeneration of the revolution, first fought under the slogans of “Socialism in One Country”, “enrich yourselves” and “fire to the left”.

When we use the term Thermidor in connection with the Russian Revolution we are using it to describe a process analogous with that which took place after the great French Revolution of 1789. In 1794 power was seized from the radical democratic Jacobins by the most conservative anti-democratic section of the bourgeoisie which proceeded to dismantle those elements of the first French Republic which made it the most thorough going bourgeois democracy in its time.

It marked a shift of power from the democratic and revolutionary to the conservative section of the same class – the bourgeoisie. It was not the transfer of power from one class to another. While the Zinovievites, Bukharinites, and Stalinists all had Thermidorian aspirations in 1923 and 1924, the form and pace of the victory of Thermidor was not determined at that time. Neither was its eventual triumph inevitable.

Alongside the development of Thermidor we do see a partial advance in the strengthening of the mechanisms of planning. By August 1925 Gosplan was able to produce outline control figures which economic departments were to take into account in structuring their own plans. Trotsky greeted these figures as “the glorious music of the rise of socialism.”46 But the majority of the party leaders could not comprehend the potential of the development of these mechanisms as a means of effecting transition.

Bukharinism was committed to a hybridised populist vision of a small proprietor peasant socialism. Neither Stalin nor Zinoviev evinced enthusiasm for the planning machinery and the potential of planning when they were discussed at the 14th Party Congress in December 1925. Only the Left Opposition-and in particular Preobrazhensky and Pyatakov waged an unflinching struggle, at this time, for the planned industrialisation of the USSR as the road to rebuild the proletariat and thus its social and political weight, in concert with the poor and middle peasants.

During 1925 a split occurred in the camp of the Thermidorians between the bureaucratic left centrists and the Stalin/Bukharin bloc. Defending their base in the major workers’ city (Leningrad) and the Comintern against the nationalist peasant line of the “majority”, Zinoviev and Kamenev began a struggle based on formal opposition to “Socialism in One Country” and the policies of concessions to the rich peasants.

It is evidence of the growing grip of the secretariat in the party that the Stalin group were able – after defeating the Leningraders at the 14th Congress in December 1925 – to immediately take the Leningrad organisation into their control through the person of Kirov. Kirov moved in to restore “order” in the party – that is to consolidate Stalinist control over the local party apparatus. In addition Zinoviev was removed as head of the Comintern.

The defeat of the left centrists pushed them in the direction of an alliance with the revolutionary Left Opposition. At a plenum of the Central Committee and Control Commission in June 1926 Zinoviev openly declared to Ordzhonokidze: “Yes, on the question of the deviation and on the question of bureaucratic oppression by the apparatus, Trotsky proved to be right against you.” [that is against the Stalinist Ordzhonokidze – eds]47 In the summer of that year Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev formed the United Opposition to wage what was to be the final, open campaign inside the party for reactivating the struggle for socialism in 1926 and 1927.

What was the balance sheet of transition in the period of the United Opposition campaign? First, social diversification was well developed in the Soviet countryside, giving an enormous bargaining position to the Kulaks. In late 1925 Zinoviev produced figures to show that 12 per cent of peasant farmers were producing 60 per cent of the grain supply.48

The United Opposition platform showed – quoting the Statistical Review – that on 1 April 1926 58 per cent of all the surplus grain in the country was in the hands of 6 per cent of peasant proprietors.49

The obverse of this process was the continued existence of 30 to 40 per cent of horseless and toolless properties.50 The regime had manifestly failed to raise the cultural and material level of the poorer peasants against the richer peasants through the medium of cooperation. By 1929, only one-third of the agricultural population were involved in any form of cooperative movement.51 They remained rudimentary, underfinanced and underdeveloped.

In the sphere of planned industrialisation with a view to developing the material base of socialism, and subordinating the law of value to the rule of conscious planning, the transition was similarly retarded. Gosplan recommended figures for a Five Year Plan to last from 1926-7 to 1930-1. It envisaged only a small growth in capital investment in industry (1,142 million rubles in 1928 and 1,205 million in 1931 – in line with the prevalent Bukharinite orthodoxy of achieving growth through maximising the use of then existing resources. Growth was set at rates between 4 and 9 per cent each year.52

The Soviet regime suffered from the fact that its manufactured goods were too scarce, too badly produced and too expensive (on average 2.5 times world market prices) to encourage the rich peasant to part with his grain. Hence the serious danger of grain strikes and shortages and of increased Kulak pressure to relinquish the state’s monopoly of foreign trade and open up the USSR as a market for imperialist-produced manufactured goods. But the Stalin/Bukharin bloc was proposing a state budget for 1931 of 16 per cent of national income, compared with the pre-war Tsarist budget of 18 per cent of national income.

Wretchedly slow rates of industrial growth were of enormous social and political consequence for the workers’ state. Officially registered unemployment in the USSR stood at 1,478,000 in April 1927.53 Gosplan’s projected Five Year Plan envisaged cutting that total by 400,000! Real wages increased until 1925 but decreased in 1926.

The trade unions were relatively moribund with decisions in the plants being taken by the appointed director and the chief trade union and party officials. The Soviets continued to be lifeless bodies usually subordinated to their executive bodies, meeting rarely for plenary sessions and with the period between elections increased in the mid-1920s. At a time when the working class was once again of pre-war proportions and industrial production was back to its pre-war tempo, only the Left Opposition espoused a programme for reactivating Soviet democracy in the USSR and thus recommencing the battle to construct a state apparatus of a new form.

The process of degeneration and stagnation was evident in the party too. The party underwent a process of deproletarianisation during 1925 and 1926. The 1927 Party Census showed that of those leaving the party in the first half of 1925 60 per cent were manual workers, a figure that reached 77 per cent by 1926.54

The census showed that as of January 1927, 42.8 per cent of party members recorded themselves as office employees, 30.0 per cent as factory and transport workers, 1.5 per cent as hired farm workers and 8.4 per cent as private farming peasants.

Alongside this tendency for the party to remain predominantly an organisation of officials grew a marked tendency to bureaucratisation against the workers’ vanguard within the party.

The campaign against the Opposition signalled a new and decisive phase of the Thermidorean degeneration of the Bolshevik Party. The bureaucrats and pro-Kulak elements in the party, that is the majority of the party, were separated by their privileges and interests from the authentic representatives of the proletarian vanguard. To them the Opposition’s fight for democracy and industrialisation inevitably meant a curtailment of their privileges and restrictions on the Kulaks. They were not prepared to allow that threat to become a reality. They adopted methods of “debate” that opened a period of qualitative degeneration of the Communist Party and laid the basis for Stalin’s later regime of terror.

In the place of the honest debates that were characteristic of Lenin’s party, the Stalin/Bukharin bloc stifled the voice of the Opposition. Articles submitted by Trotsky to the party press were rejected.

The Opposition’s platform was declared to be “illegal information” and the Politburo refused to allow it to be printed. When the Opposition tried to print it themselves the OGPU raided the print shop on 12 October 1927 and the leading Oppositionist, Mrachovsky, who was overseeing its production, was arrested and expelled from the party.

The technique of associating the Opposition with the outside counter-revolutionaries, later to become infamous at the Moscow trials, was initiated. One of the printers of the Opposition platform, it was falsely claimed, was in contact with a former member of the White army, Baron Wrangel, who was in turn in contact with a counter-revolutionary group. This whole story was an OGPU fabrication as even Stalin later admitted.

In addition to slander and bureaucratic repression, the Stalinists introduced into the debate that other barbarous hallmark of theirs – violence against the working class and its vanguard. Evoking anti-semitic sentiments – Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky were all of Jewish origin – Stalin ordered hand-picked gangs of hooligans, rightly denounced as “Black Hundred” gangs by Trotsky, to physically smash up Opposition meetings. When the Opposition took their case to the factories the hooligans followed them, beating up speakers and inciting backward elements amongst the workers to denounce the Opposition and join in the campaign of physical intimidation against them.

After one factory meeting the hooligans left Preobrazhensky beaten almost lifeless at the factory gates. At the same time the Opposition’s public demonstrations were set upon by police squads.

Indeed one crucial development in the debate was the extension of police rule within the party. Lenin’s Extraordinary Commission (the Cheka) had under the direction of the Stalinist Dzerzhinsky been transformed into the OGPU (Unified State Political Administration) in 1923. The extension of the secret police was inevitable in isolated Russia. Sabotage and espionage were real dangers. However this extension was carried through under the direction of a Thermidorian bureaucrat, free from any meaningful workers’ control.

In these circumstances the Thermidorian leadership of the party were able to reverse the role of the secret police. From being a weapon of the state against counter-revolution, the OGPU was transformed into a weapon of the Thermidorians against their opponents within the party. Dzherzhinsky’s Thermidorian project for a police dictatorship over party oppositions was at last being fully implemented on the orders of General Secretary Stalin.

This process of Thermidorian reaction had major implications for the foreign policy of the Soviet State. In 1926 the British Communist Party tailed behind the TUC lefts of the Anglo-Soviet Committee who feted Tomsky and betrayed the General Strike of that year. The Chinese Communist Party was ordered to enter the nationalist Kuomintang as a subordinate partner to Chiang Kai Shek. It was thus disarmed when Chiang ordered a wholesale massacre of Communist Party-led workers in Shanghai on 12 April 1927.

The international friends of “Socialism in One Country” were given full license to betray and slaughter the advanced guard of the world working class. That the Soviet bureaucracy had not freed itself from the threat of armed imperialist intervention was demonstrated in May 1927 when the British Conservative government raided Soviet trading offices in London and broke off diplomatic and trading agreements with the USSR.

On every front the Thermidorian bloc of Stalin and Bukharin was poised to plunge the economy of the USSR into dislocation at the hands of restorationist forces, and to weaken and isolate the USSR in the face of a renewed anti-Soviet war drive. Hence the bitterness and venom with which the Thermidorians moved against the forces of the United Opposition during 1927. The leaders of the Opposition were hounded by the secret police, their supporters threatened with dismissal and reprisal on the grounds that they were fostering disunity in the face of danger. In November 1927 Trotsky and Zinoviev was expelled from the party.

Further expulsions followed at the 15th Party Congress in December. The leading figures were exiled from the major centres of the USSR. In driving out the section of the Old Guard still committed to an internationalist programme for transition the Thermidorian elements in the party had completed their task. With the defeat and expulsion of Trotsky, Preobrazhensky, Antonov-Ovsenko, Piatakov, Zinoviev and many other key figures in the Party’s heroic history, the Russian revolution experienced its own Thermidor. It was carried through by a bloc of the bureaucratic centre and rightist proto-restorationists presiding over a severe national and international crisis within which the Right and Centre could still agree to take joint action to politically expropriate the revolutionary vanguard of the working class.

No sooner had the final triumph of the Thermidorians been consolidated than the Thermidorian alliance began to fall apart. The rock on which this unity foundered was the Kulak anger of which the left had warned in 1926. In the winter of 1927-28, grain sales to the state agencies slumped. The Kulaks hoarded grain, trying to force up prices by starving the cities. From December 1927 through the early months of 1928 the party repeatedly passed resolutions for extraordinary measures against speculators and launched a purge against pro-rich peasant local communist cadres – part of the Bukharin faction’s social base.

The evident danger of Kulak-inspired economic warfare against the Soviet state coincided with renewed imperialist pressure against the Soviet Republic. In 1927 Britain broke off all diplomatic and trading links with the USSR. Bukharin’s policies of conciliating the rich peasants, “snail’s pace” industrialisation and right opportunism in international policy, had all suffered shipwreck. Stalin, an unoriginal man in all respects except as a brutal practitioner of repression, had been totally complicit in these policies. But the Stalin group acted swiftly to place the blame for the Soviet Republic’s crisis on Bukharin’s shoulders.

On 15 February 1928 Pravda published an article by Stalin entitled The Kulaks raise their heads again. Ten thousand urban cadres were dispatched to the countryside to carry out procurements in the style of war communism.

By the spring it was becoming obvious that a clash was brewing between Stalin, Kuibyshev, Molotov, Rudzutak and Voroshilov on the one hand and Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky on the other with the Stalin group moving towards a total break with NEP on the industrial and agrarian fronts.

With the bureaucracy and for different reasons, alliance of workers, spurred on to defend the workers’ state against its internal and external foes, the Stalin faction turned violently to the left. It committed itself to rapid industrialisation and the end of NEP in the countryside. But this sharp turn in the direction of policies advocated by the Left Opposition carried with it enormous dangers for the Stalin group. An admission of past errors would have immeasurably strengthened the Left. It would have necessitated opening the highest bodies of the state and party to the revolutionary Left Opposition. Such a course was impossible for the Stalinists.

Instead their policies of break-neck industrialisation and collectivisation were carried out by bureaucratic dictat and massive police repression. This required the construction of the bonapartist Stalinist form of state alongside the industrialisation and collectivisation drives. Stalin’s left turn saw the centrist Stalin faction transformed into a bureaucratic caste committed to a political programme of counterrevolutionary Bonapartism.

The defeat of the Right proved relatively easy. They were already disorientated and demoralized by the collapse of the whole world of NEP. The only further step that they could have taken in pursuit of their own political line was to appeal directly to the Kulak, i.e. directly embrace the bourgeois counter-revolution. Since Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and the leading Rights were neither subjectively prepared, nor objectively well-placed, to go this far, they were doomed unless the Kulaks and external counter-revolution came to their albi by routing the Stalinist bureaucratic offensive.

As co-authors of Thermidor in the party, freshly implicated in the destruction of proletarian democracy in all these organs and centrally involved in the expulsion and persecution of the left opposition, they dared not and could not appeal to the proletariat inside or outside the party. Thus they surrendered position after position without a fight.

Firstly at the Sixth Comintern Congress held in mid-1928, Bukharin’s Comintern Policy was implicitly criticised and replaced with that of the “Third Period”, an adventurist pseudo-left policy of refusal of the united front “from above”, i.e. with the reformist leaders. In Germany this policy with its “red days” , “battles for the street”, its aping of right-wing nationalism, was eventually to prostrate the strongest party of the Third International under the Nazi jackboot.

By 1930 the Stalin Faction of the Thermidorians had triumphed over all their rivals. Kaganovich, Kirov, Rudzutak, Voroshilov, Molotov, Kuibyshev, Kalinin and Kossiov dominated the commanding heights of the party apparatus, the state bureaucracy, the army and the police. The repression meted out against the Right was, however, much milder than that aimed at the Left Opposition.

In February 1929 Trotsky was deported to Turkey. In March 2,000 Bolshevik-Leninists were arrested and deported to the Siberian isolators. In December 1929 Stalin opened what was to become a “river of blood” between his regime and the Left Opposition. Jakob Blumkin, a prominent Bolshevik since the civil war and an important official in the GPU, visited Trotsky in exile in Istanbul and returned with a political document. On his return he was arrested and shot.

Two other Oppositionists, Silov and Rabinovich, were shot for “sabotage of the railroad system”. From 1929-30 the left Opposition conducted its debates and published its manuscript organs in the isolators of Verkhne-Uralsk, Suzdal and Yaroslavl. The hunger strike was its principal form of struggle against the mounting Stalinist repression. From 1929 to 1932 a smuggled exchange continued between Trotsky in Turkey and the imprisoned Oppositionists. Then the repression severed the links.

Whilst the Bolshevik-Leninists were subjected to the full rigour of the OGPU, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky retained their seats on the Central Committee and their followers (albeit demoted from positions of command) retained their status as functionaries as well as their party membership.

Bukharin was put in charge of the research department of the Commissariat for Heavy Industry in 1932 and later edited the official government paper Izvestia.

Stalin’s Brumaire was possible only on the basis of the Thermidorean destruction of the party and merely completed its transformation into a party of functionaries.

The weakness of the Bolshevik-Leninist resistance was partly due to the almost complete changeover of party membership since the heroic days of the Bolshevik Party. By 1929 only 8,000 had been members before February 1917 and only 130,000 out of one and a half million had joined before the end of the civil war.55 In these circumstances the overwhelming bulk of the party had known no other regime than that of the Stalinist apparatus.

Helene Carrere D’Encausse has noted that “From 1923 onwards, the field of action of the Police Apparatus extended to the party”.56 The Security Apparatus – renamed GPU in 1922 and OGPU in 1923 – became an instrument of Thermidorean persecution and violence against the Left Opposition.57 The collectivisation and industrialisation drive of the 1930s was accompanied by a massive increase in the role, powers and size of the OGPU. In 1930 Yagoda took over an expanding apparatus with its own network of transportation and labour camps – the GUlAG.58

In D’Encausse’s words, “the most profound change in the status of the police within the political system took place in 1929 with the economic revolution”.59 The Shaknty trial of bourgeois experts in July 1928 (five were executed) marked the onset of terror against “wreckers”.

Whilst some outright sabotage by bourgeois experts was possible, the main purpose was to silence all objections to the Stalinists’ arbitrary and adventurist economic targets and to prevent realistic reports being drawn up. Realistic and accurate reports could have served as a means of holding the Stalin faction to account. Stalin, in 1930, launched a campaign to terrorize and silence any potential source of criticism.

Having defeated the right and left factions of the party, Stalin set out to crush all “neutral” expert elements whose testimony might be raised against him. In April 1929 he announced that Shakhtyites are “now ensconced in every branch of our industry”.60 In 1930, OGPU reported the discovery of an illegal “Toiling Peasant Party” (TKP) under the leadership of the famous economist N.D. Kondratiev. In the Autumn a plot to disrupt the food supplies was “discovered”.

In November and December 1930 the OGPU unearthed a so-called “Industrial Party” (Prompartiia), responsible for “wrecking” in industry and in direct personal collusion with Raymond Poincare, the President of France! In March 1931 the members of a so-called “Union Bureau of the Central Committee of the Menshevik Party” were put on trial. In all these cases the accused confessed to the crimes.

The OGPU and Stalin began to strike at prominent non-factional theoreticians and intellectuals. The economist I.I. Rubin and the director and founder of the Marx-Engels Institute, D.B. Riazanov, were expelled from the party, tried, imprisoned and exiled. In these cases the OGPU utilized the full range of their repressive measures, including endless interrogation, torture and the seizure of relatives as hostages in order to extract confessions.

As leader of a factional clique that absolutely dominated the party and the state apparatus by administrative and repressive means, Stalin himself became the object of an obscene personality cult. The Bonapartists had to embellish and glorify the person of their Bonaparte. On Stalin’s 50th birthday the State Publishing House published a laudatory anthology wherein one could read that Comrade Stalin was Lenin’s “single most reliable aide, who differed from others by never faltering, by always moving hand in hand with Vladimir Ilyich at all the crucial stages of the revolution.”

Historians now had to revise and shamelessly falsify their works. Even long-time opponents of Trotsky, like M.N. Pokrovsky, fell in the wave of persecutions. By 1934 the torrent of glorification had mounted to obscene and ludicrous proportions. Pravda carried in January of that year a two page article by none other than the capitulator Radek which in Medvedev’s words heaped “orgiastic praise on Stalin”.61 “Lenin’s best pupil, the model of the Leninist party, bone of its bone, blood of its blood...as far sighted as Lenin.”

With this article the river of adulation burst its banks. The cult of the “all-seeing, all-knowing, wise, father of the peoples” Stalin put even the glorification of Hitler into the shade.

It was between 1927 and 1930 that all the essential elements of the Stalinist system were assembled in their own particular Bonapartist form. The events of 1927 to 1930 saw the establishment of a Bonapartist regime on the ruins of Lenin’s party, the soviet structures of the workers’ state and the ruins of the Thermidorean party.

The state of the mid-1920 Stalin’s “Eighteenth Brumaire”, like its preceding “Ninth Thermidor” was not a single act.62 It was carried out not by an insurrectionary coup d’etat, but by a series of blows that, having already definitively driven the revolutionary communist vanguard out of the party, drove the rightist wing of the Thermidoreans out of the leadership and subjected the entire Thermidorean bureaucracy to a one-man dictatorship. That dictatorship rested, of necessity, on a dramatically increased police apparatus able to intervene within the party.

 

The collectivisation of agriculture

 

As we have seen, the Stalin group had co-existed with the restorationist wing of the party tolerating the growth of Kulak farming, low industrial growth targets and ineffective planning machinery. At this stage in its development it was defined as a political tendency by its commitment to holding political power within the isolated Russian state on a programme of politically expropriating the most consciously revolutionary layers of the working class.

But it differed from the right in that in certain exceptional circumstances, should its political grip on the Soviet state be threatened, it was capable of bureaucratically moving against private property and of developing and extending a form of economic planning in conflict with the operation of the law of value. Its interest in developing forms of planning flowed from its need to hold on to the political power it had usurped, not from a commitment to socialism.

During 1927 the Soviet state faced difficulties in procuring grain from the peasants to the same level that it had achieved in 1926.63 Similar problems faced the state procurement agencies in 1928. The Thermidoreans were reaping the bitter fruits of under industrialisation and concessions to the Kulak. The centrist Stalin group made its decisive turn against the Bukharin wing and against the policies of late N EP. The prerequisite of the Stalin group being able to make that left turn was that the revolutionary left had been decisively ousted from power.

In December 1927 local Communist Party organisations were ordered, with little success, to step up their efforts to procure grain. At the same time Stalin was still declaring, “The way out is to unite the small and dwarf peasant farms gradually but surely, not by pressure but by example and persuasion, into large farms based on common, co-operative cultivation of the land.”64 The draft five year plan accepted in 1928 contained 15 per cent as an optimal target for collectivisation of agriculture in its duration.

Forcible collections of grain were carried out under the guidance of key Stalinists – Stalin himself, Zhdanov, Kossior and Mikoyan – during January and March 1928. The inevitable response of the peasants was to cut back on their sowings of wheat and rye in 1928. Either the Stalinists could face a threat to their political power by conceding to the private farmers by raising prices and importing cheap consumer goods from the West or they could move to break the hold of private property in the countryside.

It was in order to preserve their bureaucratic power, rather than because of any long-term plans for collectivising agriculture or expected immediate beneficial results in the agricultural sector, that the Stalinists decided to collectivise Soviet agriculture. The material base of the Soviet economy was hopelessly ill-prepared to provide the required resources to supply collectivised agriculture with the facilities needed to make it capable of achieving qualitatively higher yields.

In 1928 the USSR possessed only 27,000 tractors compared with the 200,000 it needed.65 The collectivisation of agriculture was undertaken without any formal discussion or decision making in an official party body. It was the work of the triumphant Stalin faction and a measure of their grip over the party at this time.

On 7 November 1929 the press carried an article by Stalin in which he hailed the “spontaneous turn of the broadest mass of poor and middle-peasant households towards collective forms of agriculture.” In December Stalin launched a campaign for the liquidation of the Kulaks “as a class” which was underwritten by a decree of 5 January 1930 proclaiming the State’s commitment to “total collectivisation.”

Within seven weeks of the decree over 50 per cent of the Soviet peasantry were members of rudimentary and ramshackle collectives. Active resistance automatically led to protesting peasants receiving the designation “Kulak” from the party organs. By July 1930 320,000 Kulak families had been expropriated and deported – a number that far exceeded the number of Kulaks claimed by Stalinist statisticians on the eve of collectivisation.

Collective farm membership figures for 1930 show quite how spurious were the Stalinists’ claims that collectivisation represented a spontaneous movement of the mass of the peasantry. A brief hint of relaxation from Stalin in a March 1930 Pravda article entitled “Dizzy with Success” precipitated a dramatic exodus from the collective farms. By early March 1930 58 per cent of the Soviet peasantry were enrolled in collectives. That figure had dropped to 23 per cent by June! In the highly fertile Central Black Earth Region membership dropped from 81.8 per cent to 15.7 per cent over the same period.

The uprooted peasantry found no resources or equipment in the new collectives. Neither the tempo of industrial development throughout the 1920s nor the targets of the First Five Year Plan made it possible for collectivisation to do other than simply generalise the want, squalor and backwardness of Russian agriculture. Peasant resistance to this process took on the character of a civil war. To the extent that the peasants were incapable of resisting collectivisation they slaughtered their own livestock as their sole means of thwarting the agencies of the central state. This is evidenced by the dramatic drop in Soviet livestock between 1929 and 1934.

In those years the number of horses and pigs declined by 55 per cent, of cattle by 40 per cent and sheep by 66 per cent. While 1930 was blessed with a good harvest, agricultural output dropped considerably in the first years of collectivisation. In 1932 cereal production was 25 per cent down on the average NEP years and famine re-appeared in the Soviet countryside on a horrific scale.

Faced with this resistance and the disastrous effects of collectivisation on agricultural production, the Stalinists did order a temporary retreat in 1930. But the collectivisation drive was resumed in 1931 as the means by which the Stalinists took a tight grip on the productive forces of Soviet agriculture.

They were prepared to retard the productive capacity of the Soviet countryside in order to achieve this desired effect for the Bonapartist regime. By 1932, 61.5 per cent of cultivated land was collectivised; there were 211,100 cooperative farms (Kholkhozes) and 4,337 State farms (Sovkhozes).66

While the Kholkhozes were formally established as co-operatives the local party organs appointed their secretaries and leading committees. In 1935 the Kholkhoz system received a definitive form. Agricultural machinery, agronomists, mechanics, educational, veterinary and training personnel were all to be concentrated in state machine tractor stations (MTS). Party and Security (NK VD) supervision of the countryside was also to be based in the MTS.

The Kholkhozes, in their turn, were to hire machinery and expertise from the local MTS. In this way a definite layer of privileged MTS workers was crystallised in the countryside alongside the perfection of an apparatus of repression and scrutiny over the mass of the peasantry.

Peasant income was made dependent on the income of the Kholkhoz after the state had purchased its crops and collected its tax tribute from the Kholkhoz. In 1935 the average household earned 247 rubles a year for Kholkhoz work – the cost of a pair of shoes! In addition the peasants were now to be allowed a small plot of no more than half a hectare from which the mass of the soviet peasantry gleaned the essentials of their miserable life.

The reintroduction of an internal passport system for the Kholkhozniki in 1933 effectively tied the peasants to the Kholkhoz. A law of 17 March 1933 stipulated that a peasant could not leave his Kholkhoz without a contract from an employing enterprise that had received the sanction of the Kholkhoz management.

The Soviet peasantry therefore experienced collectivisation as the loss of their “gains of October.” The Bonapartist bureaucracy had preserved its political power and material privileges by destroying the petty-commodity production base of the Kulak and the NEPman. In this way the ability of the peasantry to challenge the political rule of the bureaucracy through a grain strike was effectively destroyed.

But the result was not only the agricultural stagnation and inefficiency which haunts the Soviet bureaucracy to this day. It also created a sullen and rebellious peasantry held down by savage repression. The Stalinist victory over the peasantry created an enormous explosive charge in the very foundations of the workers’ state and necessitated a huge apparatus of repression – including the slave labour camps which grew alongside collectivisation – to keep the peasantry in the collective farms.

 

Bonapartism and industrialization

 

The left turn of the Stalinists in 1928 also marked the beginning of their drive to industrialise the economy of the Soviet Union. Throughout the period of the First Five Year Plans, up to the outbreak of war with Germany, the Stalin faction grappled with the problem of consolidating and extending their political control of Soviet society at the same time as they attempted to build a modern industrial economy.

At all times their guiding objective was to retain their political power and privileges and only in this context can the zigs and zags of their economic policies be understood. Like all non-revolutionary forces their policies were empirically determined as they searched for a way both to prevent the re-assertion of proletarian control over the soviet state, and to fend off the attacks of imperialism.

As such it was this period which was to provide Stalinism with its formative experience and furnish it with its characteristic methods and politics. The defining feature of Stalinist state power, the attempt to create a bureaucratically planned economy on the basis both of the destruction of capitalist property relations and the political expropriation of the proletariat, took shape in the period of the first two Five Year Plans.

As with all other situations where Stalinists were later to expropriate private capital and organise production on the basis of centralised planning, decisive measures against the remaining power of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie were only taken after the revolutionary leadership of the working class had been politically expropriated.

Up to that moment Stalinism sided with the Rightist pro-capitalist forces against the working class until it could guarantee that the working class did not have the resources to create organs of a healthy revolutionary workers’ state. However in order to defend its own privileges and political power it moved to defend and extend non-capitalist property relations but in a manner that ensured, and extended, the destruction of the remaining rights of the toilers themselves.

While opposed to the Marxist programme for the planned construction of socialism in the aftermath of destroying the bourgeoisie, Stalinism can expropriate bourgeois property and create planning mechanisms for its own non-socialist purposes.

As a bureaucratically controlled overturn of capitalist property relations, the First Five Year Plan and collectivisation drive pre-figured the post-second world war overturns in all its essential features save that the first workers’ state had as its direct origin the proletarian insurrection of October and the expropriations and nationalisations of 1918.

A politically degenerate a regime such as that represented by Stalinism standing on post-capitalist property forms must possess a highly contradictory character. The property relations, the potential of plannification itself, are stifled and distorted. The fact that the property relations of the USSR remained post-capitalist and that economic policy was the result of central planning, not the working of the law of value, did not mean that this statified property in the USSR had a socialist character.

In the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy the statified economy was not being utilised to construct a society implementing a programme of socialist construction – a programme directed to the withering away of inequality and of the state itself. The bureaucracy’s means of administering the planned economy, and the goals they set for it, flowed from their interest in maintaining their rule and privileges. The massive cost of the repressive state machine built up to protect the bureaucracy constituted, in and of itself, an enormous burden on the property relations of the USSR.

The Stalinist form of planning is only possible after the proletariat has been politically expropriated. This means that the self-activity and democratic initiative of the toilers themselves – the very force that is indispensable to planning and developing the productive forces on the road to socialist construction – cannot be harnessed by the bureaucracy. Because the Stalinists deny the masses all political rights, they must also deny them access to the decision-making machinery of the central plan. In that the plan guarantees the privileges of the bureaucracy it must, in concealing these privileges, shroud the workings of the plan in a veil of secrecy.

As the bureaucracy denies the masses’ elementary rights and material needs so the toilers conceal the real workings of the economy from their bureaucratic overlords. Low labour productivity, high absenteeism and labour turnover are evidence of this. At each and every stage in the bargaining process that precedes agreements on plan targets, the bureaucrats and managers themselves conceal their real productive potential from their superiors in order to gain maximum leeway from the central state apparatus. These aspects of the bureaucratic plan were all in evidence in the First Five Year Plans.

They have been present in every plan since. Their cumulative effect is to periodically slow down growth rates, disrupt the economy, create shortages and throw the economy into crisis. Enthusiasm of the masses, evoked by promises of socialism, recedes as does the possibility of socialism or even of real and lasting economic improvement. The bureaucratic plan extends its potential as it increases inequality and fosters disproportionality in the economy. It cannot achieve sustained qualitative growth in the economy.

That is, while it has been able to modernise the USSR by copying capitalism’s highest achievements, it has not, in a rounded and developed way, ever been able to outstrip the economic achievements of the major imperialist powers.

Within the Stalinist regime, planning is necessarily crude and blind. The existence of that regime based on bureaucratic power means that the transition to socialism in the USSR is blocked. Although post-capitalist property forms remain in existence the Stalinist regime from its inception prevents them being consciously developed as a means of implementing the programme of revolutionary Marxism.

Many attempts have been made to challenge the Trotskyist characterisation of the property relations upon which the Soviet state is based. There certainly has been no shortage of pedantic intellectuals who use the published evidence of the non-fulfilment of plan targets as verification of their own heavily ground academic axe that the Soviet economy is planless – and has always been so.

The journal Critique invests its credibility, and that of its lead editor Hillel Ticktin, in this thesis. After rummaging in the academic bargain basement for what regularly passes as new ideas freed from the “stale orthodoxy” of the past, the leadership of the British Revolutionary Communist Party have decided they can plug a gap in their own theoretical dyke by opting to attempt to convince us of this same sophistry.

Seizing on the evident expansion of producer goods production at the expense of consumer goods and fortified by the manifest deterioration in the living standards of the working class, the founder of the British Socialist Workers Party Tony Cliff has deduced that the inauguration of the First Five Year Plan, taken in conjunction with the collectivisation of agriculture, signifies the re-introduction of capitalism – albeit in a bureaucratic state capitalist form – in the USSR.67

Other analysts purporting to stand in the Trotskyist tradition – notably Ernest Mandel – have sought to prove the non-capitalist nature of the property relations extended and fortified by Stalinism by reference simply to their statistically evident growth in comparison with world capitalism.68

None of these schools begin to tackle the fundamental problems presented to Marxists in defining the property relations presided over by Stalinism in the USSR. Whether non-capitalist property relations exist in the USSR depends on whether the fundamental law of capitalist production the law of value – determines the nature of production, remuneration and exchange in the USSR.

Even the healthiest of workers’ states, would – in a situation of blockade and encirclement – be forced to subordinate the consumption of the masses to the production of producer goods to survive in the face of imperialism. Whether the economy is planned or not depends on whether the fundamental laws of capitalist production have been subordinated as the principal laws governing production by a system of rules emanating from the centralised decision-making apparatus of the USSR. It flows from the fact of the political expropriation of the working class in the USSR that the norms of planning in the USSR will not conform to those for which revolutionary Marxists fight. However, the non-existence of the norms of socialist planning is not sufficient evidence to deduce the non-existence of planning per se in the USSR.

It is impossible to talk of Soviet planning as if the outcome of every productive operation was, or is, simply the execution of the will of the central planning bureaucracy. The periods of fastest growth have been during the First Five Year Plan and in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

In both cases relatively primitive tasks of construction and reconstruction had to be fulfilled, growth took place primarily in the producer goods sector and the bureaucracy could rely on a significant degree of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice from large sections of the working masses.

However, in general – for example at the end of the First Five Year Plan and increasingly in the post-war period – the Stalinist bureaucracy has desperately searched in vain for rational methods of administering the plan, of co-ordinating its various branches and measuring needs and output.

Under the capitalist system of production these decisions are taken by the laws of the market itself. In a healthy workers’ state they are the result of the conscious rule of the toilers themselves deciding on their tasks and needs in order to establish a socialist order.

Neither the anarchic laws of capitalism nor the rules of transition are determinant in the USSR. The historically illegitimate bureaucracy has to attempt to make order out of property relations that historically only has validity as the means by which the working class constructs socialism. Hence the particular gross absurdities, irrationalities and failures of Soviet planning.

 

The Stalinist model of planning

 

The Stalinists sought to expand their industrial base through a drive to both increase the USSR’s heavy industrial base and to extend the operation of centralised production planning in every major sphere of Soviet industrial production. Planning was, therefore, a vital means for asserting and maintaining the hold of the Stalinists over Soviet society as a whole. The Stalin group proceeded, at first, to revise the plan targets upwards in a particularly adventurist fashion and then to call, in December 1929, for the completion of the Five Year Plan in four years.

The target growth rate for 1931 was to be nearly double that originally intended. Over the four and a quarter years from October 1928 to December 1932 actual investment in heavy industry nearly doubled the original estimates. The Stalinists, breaking with the Right, attempted to establish a dynamic industrial economy through centralised planning.

It is necessary to understand the term “planning” as it can be applied to this stage of the development of the Soviet economy. At least in the early years of the First Five Year plan the targets were arbitrary to a large extent and played an exhortative rather than an immediately prescriptive role.

For example the maximum variant of the First Five Year Plan called for a quadrupling of investment in state industry, an 85 per cent in consumption expenditure, a 70 per cent increase in real wages and a 30 per cent increase in peasant incomes!69

In the realm of consumption expenditure, real wages and peasant incomes in reality bore no resemblance to these figures by the end of the First Five Year Plan.

The results of the first major round of Stalinist planning were uneven. For reasons we have already discussed agricultural production fell far short of planned targets. Similarly the production of consumer goods failed to reach planned targets. Even bourgeois commentators, however, are forced to accept that the production of producer goods increased considerably and on a scale beyond that envisaged by the plan formulators. Alongside this there were significant advances in the construction of an operative apparatus of planning in the USSR. A balance sheet of the achievements and short comings of the First Five Plan can be drawn from the following table:

 

                                                                1927-28                 1932 Plan Target                               1932 Actual

Producer goods                                   6.0                          18.1                                                        23.1

[in millions of rubles]

Consumer Goods                                12.3                        25.1                                                        20.2 (70)

Agricultural Production                     13.1                        25.8                                                        16.6

(Source: A. Nove: An Economic History of the USSR p191)

 

Stalinist planning did achieve notable successes during the First Five Plan period. Achievements were recorded primarily in the sphere of heavy industry, which received 80 per cent of total investments. Some 1,500 new factories were built with metal plants being established at Magnitogorsk, Kusnetsk, Zaporozhe. A new coalfield was built in Kazakhstan. The biggest hydro-electric station in Europe was built on the Dneiper. At a time when world capitalism was reeling under the effects of severe recession the First Five Year Plan increased Soviet production by 250 per cent. In the heavy industrial sphere this momentum was continued, albeit at a slightly slower pace, in the Second Five Year Plan. As a result coal and pig iron production increased five fold between 1928 and 1940, steel fourfold, and chemical production tenfold.

But to what extent can these achievements be attributed to planning? The drafting of plans was the joint responsibility of the party and government with the State Planning Commission – Gosplan. They were responsible for drawing up both a prospective plan for the Five Year period and a series of current plans which, initially, took the form of annual control figures. In 1931 an annual plan was produced for the first time and thereafter yearly. During the 1930s mechanisms were developed with a view to both maintaining an account of what was being produced and a material balance between quantities produced by various branches of industry.

It was not until the very late 1930s that the planning mechanisms were sufficiently well developed to draw up a general balance of the economy of the USSR as a whole. During the Second World War (1939-45) Gosplan was resorting to monthly plans as its means of organising and directing production. The execution of plans was the responsibility of the various Commissariats and other economic authorities under the Supreme Economic Council.

Targets were set in quantitative terms and, in the sphere of heavy industry, were generally fulfilled in the period of the First Five Year Plan. The Stalinist system showed that it could use the potential of a centralised planned economy to direct resources to the front of heavy industry. Figures for consumer goods production demonstrate the bureaucracy’s ability to ensure that available resources were primarily made available to its priority projects.

But quantitative successes should not blind us to the qualitative failures of Stalinist planning during this early period. Alongside the Stalinists’ adventurist upping of all plan targets, productivity was due to rise by 42.1 per cent in 1931 but rose by 20.5 per cent. Production costs in that year rose by 6 per cent rather than a planned 8 per cent reduction.

By the admission of the Stalinists themselves the quality of goods produced deteriorated during the First Five Year Plan. Hence Molotov could declare on January 1933, “In the course of the Second Five Year Plan we must focus our efforts not on the quantitative growth of production but on improving the quality of production and on the growth of labour productivity in industry”.72

Periodic breakdown of planning occurred particularly in the light industrial sector. Textile production, for example, fell in certain years of the First Five Year Plan.73 Rakovsky showed that for light industry during May and June 1931 “the plan was little more than 50 per cent fulfilled”.74

The Stalinist planners faced mounting problems both of maintaining proportional balance between the various sectors of the economy and in devising rational means of measuring production, needs and the rate of exchange between goods. These were not simply problems of the consumer goods sector. 16,000 kilometres of new railways were planned for the First Five Year Plan period – the materials were only made available to build 5,500 kms.

Bureaucratic planning, as the plan proceeded, faced mounting problems of distributing’ produced goods to the institutions most in need of them. In 1932 and 1933 the planning mechanisms came under considerable strain and disorganisation. The adventurist targets of the Stalinists were only an additional contributory factor rather than the root cause of the disorganisation of the Soviet economy by the end of the First Five Year Plan.

Consistent with the reactionary programme of Socialism in One Country the Stalinists aspired to the building of an autarchic planned economy separated from the operations of the world capitalist economy. In a manner that prefigures the projects of Pol Pot and Leng Sary, Stalinist planners theorised a transition to communism in the USSR through the achievement of complete autarchy and the utilisation of the USSR’s own resources.

But as Trotsky had warned in Towards Capitalism or Socialism in 1925, this attempt to create a planned economy in isolation proved a utopia. Despite the enormous resources of the USSR both the workings of the world market and imperialism’s hostile designs against the USSR periodically and inevitably disrupted the Stalinists’ goal of establishing an autarchic planned economy.

During the First Five Year Plan, for example, declining world prices for raw materials occasioned by world capitalism’s recession, obliged the Soviet planners to export more raw materials in order to purchase machinery and import less, for example, cotton and wool than had been planned.

The targets and priorities of the Second Five Year Plan were to be severely disrupted by the increasing obligation on the Soviet planners to prepare the military defence of the USSR.

Having attempted to send the mechanisms of the market “to the devil” the Stalinists faced insurmountable problems in devising rational pricing mechanisms within their economy. In 1930 and 1931 Soviet economists were again heard to rationalise the pricing chaos in the USSR as a symptom of the withering away of money!

Bread rationing was re-introduced in 1929 and was extended to most other manufactured consumer goods during 1930. In addition the same commodity could be purchased at five different prices: commercial prices in special restricted access shops for luxuries; open model stores with prices above “commercial” prices; special shops in workers’ districts that in theory sold goods at between commercial and ration prices; Torgsin stores selling in exchange for precious metals and foreign currency; and “free prices” on the private and black market.

Prices paid by the state to the Kholkhoz were planned on the basis of the state’s revenue requirements not determined on the basis of the law of value. For example, in the mid 1930s the peasants were paid 5.70 rubles for a centre of rye by state provincial agencies which sold it to state flour mills at 22.20 rubles a centre. The pricing mechanisms made possible a large revenue to the central state in the form of the “turnover” tax.

Failure to raise labour productivity in line with plan targets posed major problems to the Stalinists as to how the industrialisation was to be financed. The heavy taxation tribute extracted from the peasantry provided half the turnover tax yield to the state budget in 1935.75 But increasingly during the First Five Year Plan new investments were funded from the massive and inflationary expansion of the supply of printed money. In 1928 1.7 milliard rubles were in circulation – the figure reached 8.4 milliard by 1933.

As the Left Opposition tirelessly pointed out this inflationary spiral made it all the more impossible for the Soviet planners to measure, compare and judge achievement in the Soviet economy. The Stalinist bureaucracy did not have its own alternative rational measuring criteria with which to replace those of the law of value.

These contradictions within the Stalinist system took on an increasingly dramatic form in the last period of the First Five Year Plan occasioning a serious crisis in the planning system in 1932 and 1933. There were serious shortfalls in target achievement for electricity, pig iron, coal and oil in 1932. Steel production which had over-fulfilled its 1928-9 target figure was below the 1930 level in 1932 and the 1933 target was set at 7 per cent below the 1931 target.

Steel production suffered from a major failure to put new facilities into operation. In 1933 there was a 14 per cent drop in investment. In addition to the famine that struck the Soviet countryside that year there was a serious transport crisis and gross industrial production, which had been rising at 20 per cent per annum, rose by only 5 per cent.

The Soviet crisis of 1932 and 1933 had its roots not in the operation of the law of value on an internal or international scale. It was a crisis of a system based on consciously challenging the laws and dictates of market mechanisms by a Bonapartist bureaucracy which could not develop and sustain a planned and balanced growth of the productive forces at its disposal. It represented a crisis of Stalinist planning in a form that pre-figures the crises of proportionality and stagnation that have regularly interrupted the development of bureaucratic planned economies.

The very existence of this form of crisis was predicted and analysed by Trotsky in his writings on the Soviet economy. Writing in 1931 in Problems of Development of the USSR Trotsky evidenced the tendency to crisis that lurked behind the facade of success:

“the industrial successes of recent years in themselves do not at all assure an uninterrupted growth in the future. Precisely the speed of industrial development accumulates disproportions, partly inherited from the past, partly growing out of the complications of the new tasks, partly created by the methodological mistakes of the leadership in combination with direct sabotage.”77

He envisaged the principal elements of the form that the crisis of bureaucratic planning would take:

“the substitution of economic direction by administrative goading, with the absence of any serious collective verification, leads inevitably to the inclusion of mistakes in the very foundation of the economy and to the preparation of ‘tight places’ inside the economic process. The disproportions driven inward inevitably remain at the following stage in the form of disharmony between the means of production and raw materials, between transport and industry, between quantity and quality and finally in the disorganisation of the monetary system.”78

He developed this method of analysis with greater clarity during 1932:

“The whole trouble is that the wild leaps in industrialisation have brought the various elements of the plan into dire contradiction with each other. The trouble is that the economy functions without material reserves and without calculation.

The trouble is that the social and political instruments for the determination and effectiveness of the plan have been broken or mangled. The trouble is that the accrued disproportions threaten more and greater surprises. The trouble is that the uncontrolled bureaucracy has tied up its prestige with the subsequent accumulation of errors. The trouble is that a crisis is impending with a chain of consequences such as the enforced shutting down of factories and unemployment.”79

There was definitely a tendency for the Left Opposition in the early 1930s to envisage a complete collapse of the planning machinery and Stalin’s industrialisation project. Rakovsky’s The Five Year Plan in Crisis written in 1936 is built on a perspective of impending collapse drawn from a sharp and clear analysis of the tendency towards crisis. As the Critique editorial board gleefully points out, Rakovsky and the Mensheviks envisaged a developing and progressive “planlessness” in the Soviet economy. A similar telescoped perspective can also be found in some of Trotsky’s writings on the economy of the USSR in the early 1930s:

“In the sphere of money inflation, as in that of bureaucratic despotism, is summed up all the falseness of the policy of centrism in the field of the Soviet economy as well as in the field of the international proletarian movement. The Stalinist system is exhausted to the end and is doomed. Its break up is approaching with the same inevitability with which the victory of fascism approached in Germany.”80

Reality was, however, to show these perspectives to be too starkly drawn. History allows us, with Trotsky, to recognise that the planned property form did survive the 1932-3 crisis only for the general tendencies towards crisis that we have discussed to re-occur at the latter end of the Second Five Year Plan.

In the face of crisis the Stalinists dramatically re-drafted their plan targets during 1933. The plan targets for 1934-6 were relatively well fulfilled. In steel production, for example, 35 per cent, 22 per cent and 28 per cent of targets were met and marginally over fulfilled.81 In 1936 cotton cloth production rose 22.3 per cent over its 1935 level.

Again it would be difficult to attribute the relatively stable expansion of the USSR’s productive forces in this period either to the operation of the law of value or to the work of “planlessness”. While the tendency towards planlessness was always part of the Left Opposition’s theory of the roots of crisis, they never attempted to characterise the system as permanently “planless”. Neither can one seriously begin to explain the relatively stable mid-1950s in the Soviet economy without recognising the existence of and strengthening of, planning mechanisms during this period.

In 1935 the most rounded and even fulfilment of plan targets was achieved. That year also saw the planning agencies relatively free from the adventurist pressure of the Stalinists, chastened by the 1932-3 crisis. To this extent it was a period where the planning mechanisms had the greatest opportunity to prove their real potential. In this year quantitative growth targets were fulfilled, for the first time, by every all-union Commissariat. Labour productivity in heavy industry actually rose more than its planned target. 1936 was even more satisfactory than 1935 in most regards.

How then do we explain this relative success? Firstly it demonstrates the superiority of, and potential of, planned production itself. It pays tribute to the potential of the socialist organisation of production. This was recognised by Trotsky in 1936:

“With the bourgeois economists we have no longer anything to quarrel over. Socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth of the earth’s surface, not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.”82

On the basis of material experience, Trotsky’s estimate of the achievements of Soviet planning – but not of its deformations and tendency to breakdown – had been developed in the light of previously unobtainable experience. This has led the supporters of Critique to “accuse” Trotsky of changing his position in the mid- 1930s and breaking with the “correct” perspective that he and Rakovsky held to in the early 1930s.83

They are right to suggest that Trotsky modified his estimate of the achievements of Soviet planning. But it was Trotsky who was correct to modify his view of plannification in the USSR on the basis of learning from the unique and concrete experience of the USSR in the 1930s. Revolutionary perspectives are of necessity tentative and in permanent need of being tested and re-assessed. Academics can afford the luxury of orthodoxy and of “never changing their position” whatever may happen in the material world.

Unless revolutionary Marxist perspectives are permanently tested and re-assessed on the basis of living experience the door is open to dogmatism, to schematism and the collapse of the revolutionary programme as an instrument of intervention. .

An explanation of the relatively stable mid-1930s period must also base itself upon an understanding of the operation of other contributory factors. A number of the major projects of the First Five Year Plan – including Magnitogorsk – only became fully operational during this period. The proportion of machinery imported from the West declined during this period as a result of the achievements of the First Five Year Plan.

A relaxation of rationing was accompanied by an increase in Labour productivity which continued through to 1937. Again it was the achievements of planning and not the operation of the laws of capitalism or the lawlessness of the USSR as viewed through the eyes of the Critique editorial board that explains this relative stability.

The last year of the Second Five Year Plan in 1937 experienced the onset of significant disequilibrium and stagnation. Steel production rose by only 4 per cent compared with 28 per cent in the previous year.84

It grew by only 2 per cent in 1938 and fell by 4 per cent in 1939. The effects of the disastrously bad harvest of 1936 were felt throughout the USSR in 1937. The Third Five Year Plan – prepared in 1937-8, inaugurated in 1938 and ratified at the 1939 18th Party Congress – was in the process of being fulfilled only in an extremely uneven and unsatisfactory manner at the time of Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in 1941. Sugar production declined, oil production was stagnant leading to a serious fuel shortage alongside the miserable performance of the steel industry.

How do we explain this second major crisis of planning in the USSR? Once again we are confronted with the major features of mounting disproportionality and developing stagnation towards the end of a planning period. Again the planning mechanisms were failing to sustain balanced growth and target figures were becoming increasingly fictional. With trade with the West diminishing and the market effectively subordinated within the USSR the root of this crisis cannot be found primarily in the effects of the spontaneous operation of the law of value. However we are once again faced with a tendency for the planning processes of Stalinism to break down.

Contingent and particular factors can be advanced as an explanation of the stagnation of the Soviet economy in the later 1930s. The period saw the dramatic re-organisation of Soviet production to meet the mounting war threat presented by imperialism. While defence expenditure as a percentage total of the Soviet budget stood at only 3.4 per cent in 1933, it grew to 11.1 per cent in 1935, 16.1 per cent in 1936 and 25.6 per cent in 1939.85 This had the effect of forcing the operative planning agencies to divert investment and goods earmarked for consumer good production into prioritised heavy industry and military projects.

This has been adduced by Cliffite theorists of “State Capitalism” as evidence of the existence of a Permanent Arms Economy which propelled the USSR to become locked into ever larger rounds of arms production in order to produce “use values” to survive successive rounds of arms-based competition between state capitalist Russia and the West.

But this arms production was organised by the Soviet bureaucracy – by its own methods – as a means of defending the planned economy of the USSR (and the privileges of the bureaucracy that depended on it) against the designs of German and Japanese imperialism to turn the USSR into a semi colony once again. Even the healthiest of workers’ states would act far more decisively to this end than did the Stalinist bureaucracy that placed its hopes for defence on alliance with one, or another, of the camps of imperialism.

The purges of the mid-30s had a devastating effect on the personnel and morale of the planning apparatus. Similarly relative success in the field of planning saw the recrudescence of the adventurist, arbitrary and bogus norms of Stalinist planning. Increases in labour productivity encouraged the Stalinists to inaugurate a major drive to storm production targets. This was the context of the Stakhanov movement launched in August 1935.

In August 1935 Stakhanov bust his work norm by mining 102 tons of coal in six hours. He did so with the help of a handpicked team and special training and provisions. His “achievement” was, however, to set the pace for Soviet labour in the next period. In October 1935 Makar Lashtoba fulfilled his work norm by 2,274 per cent when he mined 311 tons of coal in one day!

At the first all-union conference of Stakhanovites the ex-Oppositionist Pyatakov gave voice to the crude adventurism of the Stalinists when he declared:

“We will smash the devil himself and attain unheard of production results of which no one has ever dreamed....One must simply shout ‘the devil take it’”86

Competing for favour from the central planning agencies, local management showed a definite tendency in. this period to keep their acclaimed Stakhanovites fully supplied while shortages and bottlenecks kept the majority of the workforce idle. In its own peculiar way the Stakhanovite movement testified to the inability of the Stalinists to genuinely mobilise the working class to utilise the “gains of October” and the inability of the Stalinist bureaucracy to effect rational and long term methods to raise the productivity of labour.

But separated from these contingent factors the crisis of the late 1930s stands as evidence of the fundamental contradictions that are to be found at the heart of planning under Stalinist bureaucracies.

 

The planned economy as “state capitalism”

 

It is not possible within the confines of the present work to deal with all aspects of Tony Cliff’s analysis of the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic state capitalism. It is necessary, however, to point up the inadequacies of his fundamental thesis concerning the creation of Russian “state capitalism” and to draw out the most important political ramifications of his method.

Cliff interprets the creation of the bureaucratically planned economy of the USSR as a social counter-revolution that inaugurated bureaucratic state capitalism in the USSR. In this analysis the newly emerged ruling bureaucracy is seen as having been transformed into a collective capitalist by virtue of the fact that it undertook the “bourgeois” task of accumulation. In his attempt to make this theory stick, Cliff has to falsify both the realities of the Soviet economy in the 1930s and, indeed, the Marxist definition of capitalism itself.

Cliff wishes to prove that, at the same time as the working class lost political power, the bureaucracy which replaced it was in the process of developing into a capitalist class because of the economic measures that it was forced to take. Therefore, alongside data establishing the fact that the proletariat lost all semblance of control, direct or indirect, we find in Russia – A Marxist Analysis a constant emphasis on the parallels between the tasks the bureaucracy undertook and those undertaken by the nascent bourgeoisie.

For Cliff the significance of this lies in the fact that, “Under capitalism the consumption of the masses is subordinated to accumulation.” 87 He has no difficulty in presenting figures to show that the First Five Year Plan witnessed a significant change in priority from consumption to accumulation. Within the use to which Cliff puts these figures (which are not themselves in dispute) lies a most important element of Cliff’s method – the use of the syllogism: under the First Five Year Plan consumption was subordinated to accumulation; under capitalism consumption is subordinated to accumulation; ergo, the First Five Year Plan was capitalism!

The syllogistic method of formal logic is no substitute for dialectics in the analysis of social phenomena. Being formal it ignores the content of such phenomena, i.e. the class content. This is the tell-tale weakness of Cliff’s analysis.

The accumulation of the bourgeoisie is the accumulation of capital which can, of course, be expressed in the accumulation of the means of production such as factories, railways and power stations. However, whether such things are capital in any given circumstances is not determined by the mere fact that they are accumulated. Indeed, this point was one of the first advances made by Marx in his analysis of capitalism. In Wage Labour and Capital, for example, he argued:

“Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour and raw materials, not only of material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All the products of which it consists are commodities. Capital is, therefore, not only a sum of material products; it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes.”88

He further argued that:

“Capital does not consist in accumulated labour serving living labour as a means for new production. It consists in living labour serving accumulated labour as a means of maintaining and multi plying the exchange value of the later.”89

The accumulation of the means of production in the Soviet Union in no way squared with this definition of capital. Neither the factories, mines, power stations and machinery nor the products made with them were commodities, they were not produced for eventual sale on the market. They were not built in order to, “multiply the exchange value” of accumulated labour but rather because they were necessary for the implementation of the industrialisation programme. In other words they were not capital but use values.

A workers’ state must, necessarily, accumulate use-values, in particular the means of production, since its task is to expand production on a massive scale. Whether this accumulation preponderates at any given time over consumption cannot be a test of the class nature of the state that presides over the economy. Production of munitions and material for the Red Army was an absolute priority during the wars of intervention against the young Soviet republic, and quite rightly too.

The same formalist method is extended by Cliff to “prove” that the bureaucracy is a collective capitalist. Basing himself on Lenin’s description of the historic task of the bourgeoisie to “increase in the productive forces of social labour and the socialisation of labour”, Cliff explains why the First Five Year Plan was the point of transformation of the bureaucracy into a collective capitalist:

“It was now, for the first time, that the bureaucracy sought to realise the historic mission of the bourgeoisie as quickly as possible. A quick accumulation of capital on the basis of a low level of production, of a small national income per capita, must put a burdensome pressure on the consumption of the masses, on their standard of living. Under such conditions the bureaucracy, transformed into a personification of capital, for whom the accumulation of capital is the be-all and end-all, must get rid of all remnants of workers’ control, must substitute conviction in the labour process by coercion, must atomise the working class, must force all social-political life into a totalitarian mould...

“Thus, industrialisation and a technical revolution in agriculture (collectivisation) in a backward country under conditions of siege transforms the bureaucracy from a layer which is under the direct and indirect pressure of the proletariat, into a ruling class...”90

Leaving aside the claim that collectivisation, i.e. the expropriation of all rural capital, big and small, was a mere “technical” question, the bureaucracy that undertook it and directed the Stalinist form of industrialisation on the basis of command planning now somehow becomes the most perfect example of a capitalist class because:

“The fact that the bureaucracy fulfils the tasks of the capitalist class, and by so doing transforms itself into a class, makes it the purest personification of this class. Although it is different from the capitalist class, it is at one and the same time the nearest to its historical essence.” 91

That any social grouping should be defined as a class because it undertakes a task “normally” associated with a class, let alone a particular class, is incompatible with Marxism. In the greater part of the world the task of industrialisation will fall to the proletariat. In many countries the proletariat will face the problems of economic dislocation and political isolation that were encountered in the Soviet Union in the 1920a if not on the same scale.

The implication of Cliff’s analysis of Russia in the years before the First Five Year Plan is that progress, indeed survival, will be determined solely by external factors. Internally, all policies must lead to the restoration of capitalism in one form or another. In the 1920s says Cliff, there were only two realistic economic programmes:

“One solution to the conflict between state industry and individualist agriculture would have been to make the development of industry depend an the rate at which agricultural surpluses developed.

Alternatively, the conflict between industry and agriculture might have been resolved by rapid industrialisation based on ‘primitive accumulation’ by expropriating the peasants and forcing them into large mechanised farms thus releasing labour power for industry and making agricultural surpluses available for the urban population.”92

In other words Bukharinism and Stalinism were the only choices that faced the Russian workers, revolutionaries could have had no alternative programme.

For Cliff there was no way forward for the Russian working class other than reliance on the European revolution which never came. The policies of the Left Opposition, designed to regenerate the proletariat via planned industrialisation and the siphoning of a surplus from the rich peasantry to pay for it, were a utopia for Cliff. He singles out Preobrazhensky as an example,:

“Actually the implementation of Preobrazhensky’s ‘socialist primitive accumulation’ would logically have led to a very different state of affairs from that which he envisaged. Any attempt to ‘squeeze’ the peasants would be likely to be met by a deliberate reduction in production, so that if the ‘terms of trade’ between agriculture and industry were in favour of the latter, the amount of trade would fall. There would be only one way to deal with such a strike and that would be to use violence against the peasants, to expropriate them, and to concentrate them on such large farms that it would be possible for the state to control their work and output.”93

Thus, the logical outcome of the policies of the Left Opposition would have been Stalinism! No doubt Preobrazhensky and the other capitulators developed similar justifications, that is no reason for today’s revolutionaries to argue that Stalin carried out the rational kernel of the Left Opposition’s programme.

This tacit acceptance that the proletariat cannot use state power to maintain and extend its interests in an underdeveloped country, that is to say, this rejection of the strategy of Permanent Revolution, is the consequence of Cliff’s revision of the nature of capitalist accumulation. It has a Menshevik logic that would leave communists in today’s imperialised countries as incapable of charting a way forward for the working class as Cliff believes the Left Oppositionists were in the 1920s.

Cliff’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as a state capitalism is founded upon a rejection of what, for Marxists, constitutes the defining feature of capitalism. He develops an economic model in which military competition between industrialised nations takes the place of generalised commodity production and the law of value as the dynamic of social production under capitalism. The model itself is based on a false extension of Bukharin’s theoretical prognostications (which themselves suffer from a characteristic one-sidedness) concerning the development of finance capital. In order to see clearly the scale of Cliff’s revisionism on this point it is first necessary briefly to outline the Marxist analysis of the defining characteristics of capitalism.

Capitalism is the mode of production in which both the prerequisites for production, including labour power, and the products themselves take the form of commodities, it is generalised commodity production. That is to say, all goods are produced for the market. On the market they are exchanged, in the last analysis, on the basis of the amount of socially necessary labour contained in each commodity. This is the law of value. It is a law that finds expression in the competition between individual capitals on the market. Through the operation of the law of value, capital tends constantly to flow to those sectors of production which will yield the greatest return on investment. Thus, production is not undertaken to satisfy human need but to create ever greater masses of capital. Within capitalism the division of the total labour of society, that is the determination of what shall be produced and in what quantities, is effected by the operation of the law of value.

It is in the nature of capitalism that on the basis of its own laws of motion, it tends towards the creation of ever greater formations of capital. Success in competition for one capital can only be at the expense of other capitals. Through a process of concentration and centralisation, capital tends towards monopolisation of whole branches of production. The creation of such a monopoly, in which every step of production is controlled by one capital, takes place on the basis of the law of value through a process of competitive destruction of other capitals, thereby removing competition within its own sphere of operation.

However, even the greatest monopoly is itself dominated by the law of value in that its products are destined for the market. The law of value now expresses itself in the competition between monopolies. Despite any rationalisation of production within the monopolies, the anarchy of capitalism dominates between them.

As monopolies develop and merge into an ever smaller number of ever greater capital formations they are able to exert greater and greater control over the societies out of which they develop. By a process of fusion, banking capital and industrial capital create finance capital. So powerful within modern capitalist society is finance capital that its requirements dominate the activity and policies of the state, itself the machinery of oppression which protects bourgeois property relations. The stage at which finance capital reaches this degree of pre-eminence in society is the imperialist epoch of capitalism. The economic order of the imperialist epoch is rightly called, “state monopoly capitalism”.

To conform to his model, Cliff has to prove that, as a result of its relationship to the world economy, the Soviet Union acts as a single block of capital, USSR Ltd which is, therefore, subject to the laws of capitalism. The problem for Cliff is that there is, effectively, no competition between USSR Ltd and other capital blocks on the world market and, therefore, no means by which to “execute the inner laws of capital” upon the Soviet Union. It is at this point that Cliff substitutes military competition for capitalist competition in order to provide the vital missing link in the chain between world capitalism and the Soviet economy.

It is worth reproducing the argument used by Cliff, if only to reveal most clearly the sleight of hand method by which logical contradiction masquerades as dialectics.

“If Russia traded extensively with countries outside her empire she would try to produce commodities which would fetch a high price on the world market, and to buy as cheaply as possible commodities from abroad. Thus, she would be aiming, like a private capitalist, at increasing the sum of use-values at her disposal by production of some use-value or other, regardless of what it would be...

But, as competition with other countries is mainly military, the state is interested in certain specific use-values, such as tanks and aeroplanes and so on. Value is the expression of competition between independent producers: Russia’s competition with the rest of the world is expressed by the elevation of use-values into an end, serving the ultimate end of victory in the competition. Use-values while being an end, still remain a means.”94

The first of these paragraphs is a complete red-herring – all trading implies the attempt to get the best price possible for one’s own goods and to pay as cheaply as possible for those goods that have to be imported. This would be equally true of a healthy workers’ state and was, indeed, a central element in the economic thinking of the Bolsheviks and the Left Opposition. For them the state monopoly of foreign trade was a device for increasing and manipulating contacts with the world market, not a means to the reactionary end of economic autarchy that it became under Stalin.

The fact that the Soviet state, as a consumer, is interested, among other things, in tanks and aeroplanes is not because of the workings of some ahistorical category called competition but because without these things the state would be unprotected from its enemies. Again, this is, and always has been, a feature of all states, capitalist or not.

In order to equate military competition with capitalist competition, Cliff has to resort to a completely meaningless scrambling of Marxist categories. Value is not the expression of competition between independent producers. It is the measure of socially necessary labour time congealed within a commodity.

By definition a commodity is a product made for exchange and it is through exchange that the owner of the commodity realises its value. The law of value, as discovered by Marx, is a codification of the fact that the exchange of commodities takes place on the basis of the amount of value contained in the commodities to be exchanged, like exchanging with like.

In its most simple form this does not involve any competition between the producers. This only arises where we are dealing with the realisation of the value of commodities in which there is contained surplus value, that is to say, commodities produced by proletarians but owned by capitalists, The competition consists in the various capitalists attempting to increase the proportion of surplus within their commodities which they can realise through sale. The successful capitalist is able to realise a greater amount of surplus value than his competitors and, as a result, increase his capital for the next cycle of production. Thus, the struggle to amass greater volumes of capital is the only way in which the law of value can express itself.

When Cliff argues that, “Because international competition takes mainly a military form the law of value expresses itself in its opposite, viz. a striving after use values” 95 he is again equating the accumulation of use-values with the accumulation of capital. “Striving after use-values” is only another way of saying, “striving to accumulate material wealth” something which has been a feature common to all societies save the most primitive.

This is not to say that there is no kernel of rationality whatsoever within Cliff’s argument. The pressure of military competition does exercise a distorting effect on the soviet economy, as it will on the economy of any workers' state, healthy or unhealthy. Certainly a degree of symmetry in the matter of military technique is imposed by this imperialist pressure and the limits of this pressure are related to the functioning of the law of value within, most importantly, the US economy. Again, this would be the state of affairs if we were examining quite the healthiest workers’ state and how its economy was affected by imperialist blockade. None of this means for a moment that military competition can take the place, or have the same results, as capitalist competition.

 

The Five Year Plans

 

The working class grew considerably as a result of Stalinist industrialisation. During the first Five Year Plan the cities grew by 44 per cent. In 1931 alone 4,100,000 peasants joined the city population. But this swelling army of proletarians was subject to severe dictatorship. The triangle arrangement of management, party and union administration in the plants, that had developed during NEP, was abandoned in 1929 for fierce managerial rule. The Stalinist Kaganovich declared “the earth should tremble when the director walks around the plant”96.

The First Five Year Plan initially saw an enormous turnover of labour. During 1929 the Soviet worker changed jobs, on average, every two months. This figure was down to four months in the coal and iron ore mining industries.97 In conditions of an acute labour shortage, Soviet workers resorted to defending themselves and their bargaining power through this labour turnover. The trades unions had been transformed into transmission belts for the directives of the Bonapartist state.

During the 1930s the bureaucracy acted to curtail this route of self-defence for the working class. From 1930 labour exchanges were instructed to keep lists of those who had “arbitrarily” terminated their employment. By September 1930 such workers were to permanently lose their rights to unemployment benefit. During 1931 every worker was issued with a wage book including details of every change of job and discharge from work.

By 1932 all employees had to show an internal passport to obtain work and had to have their place of work entered in their passport. Employees were obliged to discharge workers guilty of truancy (Progul) with one days absence from work being sufficient to justify dismissal. “Truants” were to be deprived of all food and merchandise ration coupons and to be evicted from any dwelling that went with the plant.

In December 1938 – at a time of serious disequilibrium in the Third Five Year Plan – new disciplinary provisions were introduced to the Soviet labour code. Arriving more than 20 minutes late for work was to constitute “unjustified absence”. Full sickness benefits were only to be made available after six years employment at a given plant.

Taken together these measures constituted the means by which the Bonapartist bureaucracy consolidated its political dictatorship over the Soviet working class. They were, however, accompanied by the development of forms of remuneration and retail outlets that enabled the Stalinists to stimulate the crystallisation of a distinct layer of skilled workers in the USSR who had a material interest, through their relative privileges compared with the unskilled, in the maintenance of the Stalinist regime.

The Stalinists have always made sure that a significant section of Soviet society has a material interest in not challenging the rule of the central bureaucracy.

In 1932, Stalin explicitly disavowed the Marxist goal of the gradual progressive abolition of inequality.

“Equalitarianism owes its origin to the individual peasant type of mentality, the psychology of share and share alike, the psychology of primitive communism. Equalitarianism has nothing in common with Marxist socialism. Only people who are unacquainted with Marxism can have the primitive notion that the Russian Bolsheviks want to pool all wealth and share it out equally. That is the notion of people who have nothing in common with Marxism.”98

For the mass of the Soviet workers, the First Five Year Plan led to a serious drop in their real wages. The doubling of labour productivity on which the achievement of the targets depended was not achieved. In industry as a whole, labour productivity grew by 41 per cent by 1934.99 As a consequence the working class suffered a severe drop in income to pay for the achievement of targets. The fall in living standards was about 40 per cent between 1929 and 1932.100 At the same time the range between salaries was increased and the old party maximum, which prevented a party member earning more than a skilled worker, was abolished.

Alongside Stalin’s critique of egalitarianism, wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers were increased to a ratio of 3.7: 1. In addition, “Cadres” were to receive higher pay and privileges. “Shock workers” and management personnel were given access to closed shops, to special clothing allowances, and to top priority in housing lists.

The general dearth of consumer goods highlights the significance of these privileges. In the entire period prior to 1940, the urban population increased by 79.2 per cent, and the urban housing stock by a mere 27.6 per cent. Hence the importance of the seemingly marginal privileges that Stalinism was able to bestow on a skilled aristocratic layer of the Soviet working class.

The Stakhanov movement of 1935 represented a further attempt, on the part of the Stalinists, to create a privileged layer of workers separate from the mass of the working class and beholden to the Stalinists for their distinct and relatively luxurious lifestyle. By 1935 this layer of Stakhanovite “shock workers” in the industrial and agrarian work force was receiving on average between 500 and 2000 rubles a month compared with an average wage of 150 rubles. In 1933 20 per cent of urban workers received 40 per cent of the available wage fund.101

 

The Stalin turn in foreign policy

 

Up until the victory of Nazism in Germany in 1933, the Comintern, under Stalin, had pursued the ultra-left policies of the Third Period. Adventurism at home was reflected by adventurism abroad. The Third Period was designated the final period of capitalism. Communism was around the corner. As such all bourgeois parties – social democrats and fascists alike – were equal enemies of the working class. The Comintern characterised social democracy as “social fascism” and refused to unite with reformist workers in a struggle against the growing fascist danger. The tactic of the united front, developed by Lenin and Trotsky, was abandoned in favour of the “red front”.

Fascism, as the last phase of bourgeois rule, was even to be welcomed since their victory would simply mean “our turn next”!

These policies produced tragic results. Hitler came to power in March 1933, and proceeded to butcher the flower of the strongest working class movement in the world. Even the Kremlin bureaucracy could not fail to recognise that his ascension to power represented a dire threat to the USSR. In foreign policy, as in internal affairs, the Stalin group would admit of no mistakes. The Comintern sections continued to affirm the correctness of their line. However, the line was changed in typical bureaucratic fashion. The Comintern, a subservient tool of Soviet foreign policy, received new directives from the USSR.

In order to ward off the Nazi threat, Stalin now attempted to engineer a bloc with those “democratic” imperialisms that were likely to clash with Germany – principally Britain and France. In accord with the new diplomatic needs, Stalin flipped 1800 from ultraleftism to the right opportunism that was to become so central to Stalinist strategy.

The united front was embraced only to be turned into a popular front – an alliance between the workers and liberal, anti-fascist elements of the bourgeoisie in the democratic camp. This alliance could only mean the subordination of the workers’ interests to those of the bourgeoisie. The Stalin-Laval pact of 1934 was the first codified operative agreement to maintain peaceful coexistence between the Stalinists and a section of world imperialism – “democratic” France. That this bound the French working class hand and foot to the bourgeoisie became clear in 1936. In that year the Stalinists connived in the defeat of the biggest strike wave that had ever gripped France, in order to maintain the Popular Front.

 

The development of the Left Opposition’s analysis of Stalinism

 

Faced with the monstrous growth of this bureaucratic tyranny, raising itself above the working class and reducing its already heavily bureaucratised party, trade unions and soviets, to empty ciphers the Bolshevik Leninists (led by Rakovsky within the USSR and by Trotsky abroad) had to analyse these events and the conclusions for strategy and tactics they held.

Trotsky, Rakovsky and the expelled Left Opposition were faced with the task of analysing the results of their own defeat, of assessing the Stalinist “left turn”, the debacle of the Bukharinites, and the increased bureaucratic tyranny of the early 1930s. They were subjected to pressure from “left’ sectarian positions within the Opposition (the Democratic Centralists) and to right-opportunist forces (the capitulators to Stalinism for example Radek, Preobrazhensky and Pyatakov).``

In arguing with the Democratic Centralists, who claimed that the counter-revolution was victorious and that capitalism had been restored, or the capitulators who argued that Stalin had adopted the Left Opposition’s policies, Trotsky, Rakovsky and their co-thinkers were obliged to re-examine both the concrete stages in the development of the bureaucracy and the terminology and analogies they had used throughout the 1920s. Central to this process was the discussion of the question of Thermidor and Bonapartism.

The Left Opposition had operated with an analogy with the French Revolution of 1789-98. The Left Opposition, in combating the Stalin-Bukharin bloc in the years 1926 to 1928 had characterised the threat which the rightist policies posed to the workers’ state as one of concealed capitalist restoration. This danger they named Thermidor.

“What does the right danger signify in the present period? It is less the danger of an open, fully-fledged bourgeois counterrevolution than that of a Thermidor, that is a partial counterrevolutionary shift or upheaval which, precisely because it was partial, could for a fairly long time continue to disguise itself in revolutionary forms but which in essence would already have a decisively bourgeois character, so that a return from Thermidor to the dictatorship of the proletariat could only be effected through a new revolution”.102

Trotsky argued that a “strongly advanced process of dual power” existed in the Soviet Union. That power had slipped out of the hands of the proletariat “to a considerable degree, but still far from decisively”.103 The decisive question for Trotsky in 1928, and indeed to the end of his life was, had state power passed to the agents of the bourgeoisie, was capitalism being restored?

His answer was categorical:

“No ... the bourgeoisie could seize power only by the road of counterrevolutionary upheavals. As for the proletariat, it can regain full power, overhaul the bureaucracy and put it under its control by the road of reform of the party and the soviets”.104

The retreat of the proletariat on the one hand and the advance of the Kulak and NEPman on the other, in his view, gave the room for the “monstrous predominance of the bureaucratic apparatus oscillating between the classes”.105 However, in his and the Lefts’ use of the analogy, Trotsky mistakenly identified Thermidor with a social counter-revolution.

“Why do we speak precisely of Thermidor? Because, historically, it is the best known and most complete example of a counter-revolution which is masked, which still retains the outer forms and the ritual of revolution, but which changes irreversibly the class content of the state”.106

Trotsky saw Thermidor and Bonapartism as differing types of social counter-revolution. In 1931 he expressed it thus:

“By Thermidorean overthrow the Left Opposition always understood a decisive shift of power from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, but accomplished formally within the framework of the Soviet system under the banner of one faction of the official party against the other. In contrast to this the Bonapartist overthrow appears as a more open, “riper” form of the bourgeois counterrevolution, carried out against the Soviet system and the Bolshevik party as a whole, in the form of the naked sword raised in the name of bourgeois property”.107

Thus for Trotsky the expulsion of the Left Opposition in 1927 was only a “party rehearsal for Thermidor”108. Moreover since “In the Soviet Union only the peasantry can become a force for Thermidor,”109 Trotsky looked to the Bukharinites with their openly pro-Kulak policy as the principal agents of the coming Thermidor even after their defeat in 1924. The Stalinist faction he saw as playing an auxiliary role to the Right.

However, despite the errors of this use of the analogy, Trotsky (and Rakovsky) did methodically analyse, step by step, the growth of Stalin’s Bonapartist power.

In late 1928 Trotsky pointed to the Bonapartist element in the position of the Stalin regime.

“The Master [Stalin – eds] says: ‘These cadres can be removed only by civil war’. Klim [Voroshilov, Commissar for War – eds] adds, ‘If you workers make too much fuss, remember that a great power stands behind me’. Both these statements point to elements of Bonapartism. In the first case speaks the party-state apparatus, which considers itself higher than everyone else, higher even than the army. In the second case speaks the military apparatus, which tomorrow will feel compelled to ‘put the civilians in their place’. A bloodless victory of the centrists’ party apparatus over the right would not do away with the Thermidorean-Bonapartist perspective but would only change and postpone it”.110

Whilst for Trotsky, the Bonapartist regime could only be fully actualised as an instrument of social overturn, he described and analysed its “preparation” in such a way that his self-revision was no sudden or ill-prepared leap. By 1931 Trotsky was talking of the “plebiscitary degeneration of the party apparatus (which) undoubtedly increases the chances of a Bonapartist form [of counter-revolution - eds]”.111

He referred many times in these years to the “Bonapartist features of the regime in the Soviet Communist party”.112 Furthermore he noted that “The party, as a party does not exist today. The centrist apparatus has strangled it”.113 Here it might be observed that there was a contradiction.

Trotsky and the Bolshevik-Leninists insisted that the bureaucracy could be ousted on the road of reform and that no new party was necessary. This paradox was more apparent than real.

Trotsky clearly regarded the Left Oppositionists as representing the nucleus of the Bolshevik party. He held that the “relation between the Left Opposition and the centrist apparatus ... is a substitute for the party and holds the right in check”114

Trotsky advocated that the Left Opposition mount a clear and independent defence of the interests of the working class in line with the Platform of the Opposition. This was to include the leading of struggles, wage struggles for example, against the bureaucracy. This being so, why did Trotsky hold back from the view that a new party was necessary?

The answer to this lies in essence in the international nature of the Opposition’s platform. The Russian party remained a section of the Comintern, an alliance of subjectively revolutionary mass parties albeit subjected to centrist misleadership. The years 1929 to 1933 were years of acute crisis in all capitalist countries. The mass CPs, especially the German Party faced the . question of fighting for power point blank. Indeed the latter faced the question of victory or destruction. The Comintern’s tactics, forced on the German Party, were disastrous. A united front with the Social Democracy was vital to obstruct the fascist onslaught.

The Comintern’s proscription of the united front except from below, its ludicrous characterisation of the reformists as “social fascists” created a situation of enormous political tension throughout the communist movement. If the German party managed to adjust its tactics in time – i.e. rallied to the Left Opposition’s tactics, then the domination of the Stalin leadership within the Russian party and state would have been called into question. Before the German revolutionary crisis was resolved it was impossible to abandon the Comintern as dead for the revolution. Therefore it was impossible to abandon the CPSU.

Trotsky’s change of analysis hinged not upon events in Russia, but in Germany – “the key to the international situation.”

The crushing defeat of the German Communist Party (KPD) in early 1933 demonstrated that the road of reform of the Comintern, the KPD and the CPSU was at an end. Trotsky, by October of this year, was drawing decisive new conclusions.

Firstly, he asserted the importance of the German debacle for the Soviet workers. In The Class Nature of the Soviet State, he wrote:

“The Soviet workers would have settled accounts with the despotism of the apparatus had other perspectives opened before them, had the Western horizon flamed not with the brown colour of fascism but with the red of revolution”.115

He concluded that with regard to the internal political situation a decisive shift had occurred, but this did not extend to the social roots of the proletarian dictatorship:

“the bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in order to guard its social conquests with its own methods. The anatomy of society is determined by its economic relations. So long as the forms of property that have been created by the October Revolution are not overthrown, the proletariat remains the ruling class.”116

Moreover, here for the first time Trotsky began to re-examine the Thermidor/Bonapartism analogy:

“If Urbahns wants to extend the concept of Bonapartism to include also the present Soviet regime, then we are ready to accept such a widened interpretation – under one condition: if the social content of the Soviet ‘Bonapartism’ will be defined with the requisite clarity. It is absolutely correct that the self-rule of the Soviet bureaucracy was built upon the soil of veering between class forces both internal as well as international.

Insofar as the bureaucratic veering has been crowned by the personal plebiscitary regime of Stalin, it is possible to speak of Soviet Bonapartism. But while the Bonapartism of both Bonapartes as well as their present pitiful followers has developed and is developing on the basis of a bourgeois regime, the Bonapartism of Soviet bureaucracy has under it the soil of a Soviet regime. Terminological innovations or historical analogies can serve as conveniences in one manner or another for analysis, but they cannot change the social nature of the Soviet state”.117

Alongside this re-examination of the analogy, Trotsky changed his position on the question of the new party and the possibility of peaceful reform. “No normal ‘constitutional’ ways remain to remove the ruling clique. The bureaucracy can be compelled to yield power into the hands of the proletarian vanguard only by force.”118

Trotsky insists that “it will be necessary to apply against it, not the measures of civil war but rather measures of a police character”.119 In essence Trotsky here presents for the first time the programme of political revolution, though he does not explicitly call it such. His programme is for a programme of political revolution because he continues to insist that no social overturn has occurred. But it remains a revolution nonetheless because no peaceful process of reform will remove the bureaucracy. The full elaboration of this position however took place only in February 1935 in Trotsky’s essay The Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism, and in 1936 in The Revolution Betrayed.

It was in these works that Trotsky finally came to terms with the contradictory nature of Stalin’s Russia. That it remained a workers’ state was evidenced by the fact that the fundamental property relations of the USSR were those created by a workers’ revolution which had expropriated the capitalists. The Soviet Thermidor and Stalin’s Bonapartism had developed on the basis of these property relations and had not overthrown them.

In July 1935 in The Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism, Trotsky fully revised his earlier position on Thermidor. He recognised it as a form of political counterrevolution that had taken place on the social foundation established by the revolution. The working class had been politically expropriated by the Thermidorian bureaucracy but that bureaucracy still rested on the planned property relations of the USSR.

Trotsky recognised that 1924, and the triumvirate’s campaign against himself and the Left, marked the beginning of Thermidor and that, once triumphant, the bureaucracy had resorted to a form of Bonapartism to exercise its rule:

“In the former case [Napoleon I – eds.] the question involved was the consolidation of the bourgeois revolution through the liquidation of its principles and political institutions.

In the latter case [Stalin – eds.] the question involved is the consolidation of the worker-peasant revolution through the smashing of its international programme, its leading party, its soviets ... What else should this regime be called, if not Soviet Bonapartism?”120

From this point on Trotsky is no longer ambiguous about the nature of Soviet Bonapartism or the tasks of revolutionaries in relation to it. In The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky analyses the material roots of the Soviet Thermidor:

“No help came from the West. The power of the democratic soviets proved cramping, even unendurable, when the task of the day was to accommodate those privileged groups whose existence was necessary for defence, for industry, for technique and science. In this decidedly not ‘socialist’ operation, taking from ten and giving to one, there crystallised out and developed a powerful caste of specialists in distribution.”121

In this situation “The young bureaucracy, which had arisen at first as an agent of the proletariat, began now to feel itself a court of arbitration between the classes.”122 For Trotsky the roots of Soviet Thermidor were to be found in the crystallisation of this agency into a distinct bureaucratic stratum with its own privileges and conservative interests separate from those of the proletariat: “The leaden rump of the bureaucracy outweighed the head of the revolution. That is the secret of the Soviet’s Thermidor.”123

The Soviet Thermidor – spearheaded by Stalin and Bukharin – had a Bonapartist logic from the start:

“The Bonapartist rule grew out of the fundamental contradiction between the bureaucracy and the people, and the supplementary contradiction between the revolutionists and the Thermidorians within the bureaucracy. Stalin rose by supporting himself primarily on the bureaucracy against the people, on the Thermidorians against the revolutionists. But at certain critical moments he was compelled to seek support among revolutionary elements, and, with their assistance, among the people against the over precipitate offensive of the privileged ones. But it is impossible to support oneself on a social contradiction that is turning into an allies. Hence the forced transition to Thermidorian ‘monolithism’ through the destruction of all vestiges of the revolutionary spirit and of the slightest manifestations of political self-activity on the part of the masses.”124

This led Trotsky to finally reject the term “bureaucratic centrism” as in any way applicable to the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1937.125 If Trotsky was now no longer ambiguous about either the “centrism” of Stalinism or the reformability of the Soviet State, he still had to grapple with the problem of developing a characterisation of, and perspective for, a state where post capitalist property forms remained but where all vestiges of proletarian political power had been destroyed by a Bonapartist bureaucracy. Despite its enormous privileges and power, Trotsky rejected the designation of the bureaucracy as a ruling class for reasons which we consider valid.

The Soviet bureaucracy does not have the characteristics of a ruling class in the Marxist sense. Within the Marxist tradition, classes are defined not within the relations of distribution or authority of any given society but by their position in the relations of production themselves. A class be it a ruled or ruling class – has a distinct, necessary and identifiable relation to the productive forces within the social relations of production. Layers of administrators are not classes in the scientific Marxist use of the term.

While the bourgeoisie under capitalism is a necessary component of the relations of production, the Soviet bureaucracy is not such a necessary element in the planned property relations of the USSR. On the contrary, its monopoly of political power, its control over distribution is, and always has been (even during the most dynamic phases of Soviet economic development) an obstacle to the full realisation of the potential of the property relations of the USSR. In all hitherto existing societies the property relations, and the class structures that necessarily flowed from them, became a brake on the development of the productive forces of mankind. In the USSR it is not the property relations but a layer of administrators and distributors who block the development of the productive forces.

The fundamental contradiction of hitherto existing societies on the eve of social revolution – that between the forces of production and the class relations of production - does not exist in the USSR. The bureaucracy is in fact unnecessary for the rational and progressive development of the productive forces within the system of planned property relations.

The contradiction at the heart of the Soviet Union is the contradiction between a system of property relations and a layer of administrators and distributors (the bureaucracy) who stand in the way of the working class dynamically developing the productive forces in its own, i.e. socialist, interests.

Because it is therefore a parasite on the property relations, not an indispensable part of them, we reject the view that the bureaucracy is the ruling class in the USSR.

For these reasons it remains the case that even in Stalin’s Russia the working class remained the ruling class because the property forms in existence were those that the working class requires in order to build socialism. The working class had, however, been politically expropriated by a caste of bureaucrats analogous to the caste of bureaucrats in the trade union movement under capitalism.

Along with Trotsky we say that the USSR:

“can be called a workers’ state in approximately the same sense – despite the vast difference of scale – in which the trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is, by agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organisation. Just as the trade unions under capitalism are workers’ organisations run by class collaborationist bureaucratic castes in the working class, so the USSR remains a state where the working class is the ruling class but where power is in the hands of a reactionary bureaucratic caste.”126

It follows however, that this parasitic bureaucracy – as long as it retains power – blocks the transition to socialism in the workers’ states. Trotsky was adamant that in designating the USSR a “workers’ state”, albeit in a bureaucratically degenerated form, did not mean that the USSR could be characterised as socialist. In The Fourth International and the Soviet Union, written in July 1936, he explicitly rejected the attempt to describe the state property of the USSR as socialist property:

“for the latter has as its premise the dying away of the state as the guardian of property, the mitigation of inequality and the gradual dissolution of the property concept even in the morals and customs of society.

The real development in the Soviet Union in recent years has followed a directly opposite road. Inequality grows, and, together with it, state coercion.”127

A workers’ state within which the transition to socialism is blocked must prove a highly unstable and contradictory phenomenon. The bourgeoisie historically can tolerate the loss of direct political power within Bonapartist regimes so long as its property and economic life is safeguarded. But its property relations can prosper and expand under Bonapartism as can the bourgeoisie itself.

However the loss of political power by the proletariat undermines the very workings of the property forms established by the working class. Of necessity therefore Stalinist Bonapartism as a political regime has to maintain itself in power with a degree of terror and repression against society at large that testifies to its lack of historical legitimacy. Only ruthless terror and the atomisation of society can maintain the Stalinist bureaucracy in power. That is why the Stalinists have never been able to permanently coexist with independent organisations of the working masses and why all Stalinist regimes have ultimately relied on terror and large scale force to both establish and maintain their rule.

The Stalinist form of Bonapartism was, for Trotsky, unprecedented in the degree of independence from society that it had established for itself.

“The Stalin regime, rising above politically atomized society, resting upon a police and officers’ corps, and allowing of no control whatever, is obviously a variation of Bonapartism – a Bonapartism of a new type not before seen in history.”128

In political form the Stalinist regime and the fascist regimes in Western Europe “In many of their features they show a deadly symmetry.”129 And this symmetry itself testified to the inability of Stalinism to survive as anything other than a regime of terror.

From this analysis of the contradictory nature of the USSR Trotsky developed a perspective based on its inherent weakness and instability. The social base of the Soviet Bonapartism was particularly fragile. On the one hand, it based itself on the property relations of a workers’ state and a small privileged layer of those who prospered from the political expropriation of the working class within that state. This meant that the regime set itself against the overwhelming bulk of the population over which it ruled.

“In the USSR there are 12-15 million privileged individuals who concentrate in their hands about one half of the national income, and who call this regime ‘socialism’. On the other hand there are approximately 160,000,000 people oppressed by the bureaucracy and caught in the grip of dire poverty.”130

On the other hand, it based itself on constructing strategic alliances with sections of the world bourgeoisie as a means of buttressing and maintaining its power. However, the 1930s showed very clearly that imperialism’s alliances with the Stalinists were entered into by the imperialist powers only for tactical reasons. Whatever its hopes or expectations the Bonapartist regime could not eliminate the fundamental contradictions that existed between the property system it presided over and that of world imperialism. It followed for Trotsky that such a regime must, of necessity, prove a regime of permanent crisis and prove to be a short lived episode in the history of the transition to socialism.

He returned to this theme time and time again in the mid to late 1930s and in 1935 in The Workers’ State and the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism he formulated this perspective in the following way:

“Bonapartism, by its very essence, cannot long maintain itself as a ball balanced on the point of a pyramid, it must invariably roll down on one side or the other.”131

The onset of the bloody purges of the mid and late 1930s seemed to provide ample evidence of the inability of the regime to stabilise itself and its rule:

“Severe crisis cannot be a permanent condition of society. A totalitarian state is capable of suppressing social contradictions during a certain period, but it is incapable of perpetuating itself, The monstrous purges in the USSR are most convincing testimony of the fact that Soviet society organically tends toward ejection of the bureaucracy ... symptomatic of his oncoming death agony, by the sweep and monstrous fraudulence of his purge, Stalin testifies to nothing else but the incapacity of the bureaucracy to transform itself into a stable ruling class.”132

The onset of the imperialist war furnished further evidence of the fragility of Stalinism’s base. The war itself opened the road for the final destruction of Stalinism. In his last years Trotsky presumed that either the proletariat would destroy the bureaucracy in the next period or that the bureaucracy, incapable of defending planned property relations, would open the door for the restoration of capitalism in one form or another. This was the immediate perspective upon which the Transitional Programme was based:

“either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers’ state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back to capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.”133

It was this perspective that Trotsky considered was confirmed by Stalin’s 1939 pact with Hitler and the Soviet bureaucracy’s humiliatingly unsuccessful bid to seize parts of Finland in 1939.

“Stalin’s apogee is behind him, Not a few fateful tests are before him, With the whole planet thrown out of equilibrium Stalin will not succeed in saving the unsteady equilibrium of totalitarian bureaucracy.”134

For Trotsky the impending destruction of the Stalinist regime either at the hands of the proletariat or of capitalist restoration flowed inevitably from the nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy itself. Hence the confidence with which he could declare,

“if this war provokes, as we firmly believe, a proletarian revolution ... To every single person it will become clear that in the process of the development of the world revolution the Soviet bureaucracy was only an episodic relapse.”135

And again:

“Either the Stalin regime is an abhorrent relapse in the process of transforming society into a socialist society, or the Stalin regime is the first stage of a new exploiting society.”136

We will return later to the problems posed to Trotsky’s perspective and analysis by the stabilisation and expansion of Stalinism in the aftermath of the Second World War. As we have already argued, perspectives must always be put to the test of real experience and adjusted accordingly. What lay at the heart of Trotsky’s analysis of the USSR during this period was the unswerving insistence that only if the proletariat seized political power through revolution in the USSR could the property relations of the Soviet Union be put to their correct historical use in the process of socialist construction.

The full development of Trotsky’s analysis of Soviet bonapartism took place alongside, and indeed made possible, the development of Trotsky’s programme for the degenerate workers' state. When the call for the Fourth International was first made Trotsky did not spell out that the tasks of the new Soviet section would be those of political revolution.

Without a clear understanding of the nature of the political counter-revolution that had taken place this was not surprising. So in 1933 he argued:

“Much more important is the fact that these organisations [parties of the F.I. – eds.] will acquire an enormous authority in the eyes of the Soviet workers and will thus finally create favourable conditions for the rebirth of a genuine Bolshevik party. It is only on this road that the reform of the Soviet state is possible without a new proletarian revolution.”137

Trotsky was hamstrung by his wrong conception of Thermidor. Germany had convinced him of the need to call for new parties – though he had effectively recognised that the last congress of the real Bolshevik party took place in 1923. However, he still erroneously held onto the perspective of reform.

Only after the development of the characterisation of the regime as a counter-revolutionary workers’ state ruled by a form of Bonapartism, did Trotsky fully appreciate the need for a new proletarian revolution:

“To believe that this state is capable of peacefully ‘withering away’ is to live in a world of theoretical delirium. The Bonapartist caste must be smashed, the Soviet state must be regenerated. Only then will the prospects of the withering away of the state open up.”138

This programmatic position was the decisive outcome of Trotsky’s theoretical analysis of the USSR. By recognising the possibility of a counter-revolutionary workers’ state, Trotsky was able to arm his supporters with a programme that dialectically combined defence of the property relations established by October with the most intransigent revolutionary opposition to the bureaucratic caste. That position remains valid today and applies to all of these states which we characterise as degenerate workers’ states.

Trotsky’s analysis of the USSR was in a state of constant development. While he was wrong not to have realised that Thermidor had been completed until 1935 his struggle, and that of the Left Opposition was historically justified. The events that unfolded in the USSR were not readily grasped in their complexity by the Left Opposition until the late 1930s. However throughout this entire period Trotsky waged a revolutionary struggle against Stalin’s Bonapartism.

In the end the argument over whether Trotsky was correct in the timing of his call for a new party in the USSR is a formal one. For Trotsky the key question was the best means of approaching the Soviet masses and winning them fighting to win leadership of “Lenin’s Party” or turning one’s back on it? Furthermore the possibility of reform of the party and the Comintern was linked to the existence of millions of subjective revolutionaries within the Comintern.

Their revolutionary consciousness made the struggle for reform both viable and politically correct. The defeat of the working class convinced Trotsky that their consciousness could no longer be turned into a material force for reform.

With the collapse of this perspective and amidst the welter of police repression that followed in the USSR, it was clear that Trotsky needed to ground new perspectives in theoretical analysis.

Like Marx and Engels in 1848 he had oriented his followers to pursue a consistent Marxist line. Like them the failure of that line to triumph forced him to consider the problem at a deeper level. His tardiness on the question of calling for a new political revolution is, therefore, explicable in terms of the enormity of the problems posed by the establishment of an entirely new formation – a degenerated workers’ state.

It was Trotsky’s genius that he learnt from the failures of his initial analysis and perspective and proved capable of constructing a new analysis and a new programme. His revolutionary genius developed the theory of a degenerated workers’ state and that same genius developed the Marxist programme to meet this new and unexpected eventuality.

 

Bonapatism in crisis: Stalin’s terror

 

All of the essential elements of Stalinist Bonapartism had been constructed by the early 1930s. However, the successes and failures of the Five Year plans and collectivisation and the enormous social contradictions that they created set a distinct limit to the “golden age” of Stalinist Bonapartism.

The road to untrammelled Bonapartist tyranny led through a series of zig-zags to a struggle, muted and repressed to be sure, within the Stalin faction which now felt the varied social pressures of Soviet society, the effects of collectivisation and the Five Year plan. The Thermidorians had denied to the proletariat and its vanguard the ability to consciously deal with the problems of the direction of the workers’ state. The revolutionists were imprisoned and exiled; the Right, who reflected the pressure of the better-off peasantry had been silenced. The pressure of the working class and peasantry now was distantly refracted, through the boorish bureaucrats, the “rude satraps” (Trotsky’s phrase for men like Kirov) but it could not be totally suppressed.

By 1932 the sufferings of the masses began to tell even on the nerves of their overworked taskmasters. The hard-pressed lower echelons of the bureaucracy’s desire for a halt were expressed in the Ryutin group. M.N. Ryutin, a member of the Central Committee and the man responsible for organising anti-opposition strong-arm squads in Moscow, tried to organise within this body for the removal of Stalin as general secretary. Stalin, informed by the OGPU, tried to order Ryutin and his fellow plotters to be executed. Yagoda, head of OGPU refused unless the Control Commission and the Politburo authorised it.

According to George Paloczi Horvath in his book Kruschev, Stalin’s motion to allow this in both the Central Committee and in the Politburo was defeated- twice.139 The upper levels of the bureaucracy, although they had initiated and officiated in the Stalin cult for the last two years, refused Stalin licence to terrorise them. Indeed Politburo members Kirov, Rudzutak and Ordzhonikadze led the opposition in this case. All three were dead by 1937.

The famine of 1933 and the under-fulfilment of much of the Five Year Plan served as a brake on the Stalinist bureaucracy’s adventurist stampede towards industrialisation. The famine in the countryside could not be allowed to spread into the cities. Fearing that the ferocity of the attacks on the peasantry would intensify the agricultural crisis, Stalin and Molotov circulated an instruction in May 1933 to curb excesses.

They denounced the “saturnalia of arrests” and ordered that future arrests should only be directed against “organised resistance.”140 By 1934 there was wide-spread desire within the bureaucracy for relaxation – for an easing of tempos in agriculture and industry. In the Politburo the three members cited above, often with the support of Kalinin and Voroshilov, resisted Stalin’s break-neck policies.

The Congress of Victors in 1934 was the public outcome of those internal Politburo decisions. In January 1934 the XVIIth Party Congress confirmed the complete victory of Stalinism over the revolutionary vanguard within the USSR.

At this congress the Stalinists were able to put on display an abject parade of repentant oppositionists from both the Left and the Right. Preobrazhensky declared the incorrectness of the Left Opposition’s economic policies, while saluting the far-sightedness of Stalin. Tomsky performed in a similar vein on behalf of the Right. Delighted at the “unity”, that is at their total victory over the main opposition, Kirov, on behalf of the Stalinists, declared: “Our successes are really immense. The devil take it, to speak frankly, one so wants to live and live! After all, look and see what is going on around us. It’s a fact.”141

The other side of the Congress was an attempt by Kirov and his supporters to curb the growth of Stalin’s bonapartist rule over themselves. While Stalin was reaffirmed in all of his positions the darling of the congress was undoubtedly Kirov. He had received the ovations. He, according to Roy Medvedev, only had three votes against him in the Central Committee elections, whereas Stalin is supposed to have had 270 cast against him.142

It was in the context of this that Stalin’s title was changed from General Secretary to Secretary. Clearly Kirov hoped to use his own enhanced position to curb Stalin’s personal rule. However, his unwillingness to fight to remove Stalin (unlike Ryutin) was to prove fatal for himself and for the great bulk of the “victors” who were to fall at the hands of Stalin’s regime of one-man Bonapartism.

Kirov’s failure to really challenge Stalin – or rather his inability to do so – meant that Stalin was able to use the Congress to further consolidate his plans for his dictatorship. The secretariat was dominated by his own key men – Zhdanov, Kaganovich and himself, plus Kirov. Yezhov became a full member of the Central Committee and was placed on the Orgburo and, as second in command to Kaganovich, in the Party Control Commission. The Central Committee itself came to be dominated by hand-picked police members, loyal to Stalin. Thus while the Congress of Victors signified the final victory of the Stalinist faction, it heralded the final victory of Stalin himself over his faction.

The moves towards relaxation were continued after the XVIIth Congress. The Congress had accepted a proposal from Ordzhonikidze for a slower rate of industrial growth than originally proposed in the draft Second Five Year Plan.

Later, in November 1934, it was announced that bread rationing was to be lifted and peasants on the collective farms were given the right to cultivate private plots. Throughout the year there were pronouncements emphasising raising the standard of life. Agricultural output began to rise for the first time since 1928. Towards the end of the year Stalin declared the slogan for 1935 to be: “Life has become better, comrades, life has become more joyous.” This was far from the truth. In 1934 attacks on the party had continued with 340,000 purged from membership. In Leningrad 30,000 Communist and non-party workers were deported.

Only by reforming the security apparatus and placing it under the control of his most trusted henchmen could Stalin hope to exercise the degree of terror necessary to prevent opposition to him from within his own faction. This he accomplished in 1934. In July of that year the OGPU was reorganised and renamed the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (the NKVD). Its head, Yagoda, had proved unreliable in the Ryutin case. While he remained at the head of the NKVD, he was now to be overseen by Yezhov – a key supporter of Stalin who, in 1935, was to succeed Yagoda.

Stalin was able to prepare this machinery without meeting any opposition because in the economic field and in foreign policy he continued to pursue the policies pushed for by Kirov. He appeared united with his political opponents while at the same time preparing to launch a devastating blow against them.

This blow, begun in the last month of 1934 and carried on through the Great Purges of 1936-8, constitute the transformation of Soviet Bonapartism from the Bonapartist rule of a faction into the Bonapartist rule of one man.

On 1 December 1934 Sergei Kirov was assassinated by the young Nikolayev. A degree of mystery surrounds this event. For example the NKVD officer responsible for Kirov’s safety died before anybody was able to question him.

Whether or not Stalin directly organised, or simply withdrew any obstacles to the murder, it served as the immediate signal to launch his full-scale war on the party’s old Bolshevik leaders.

In early 1935 Yezhov took over the Party Control Commission and succeeded Kirov as Secretary of the Central Committee. Khruschev, Malenkov and Beria – all absolutely trusted henchmen of Stalin – were moved into key positions within the party and the state. The murder provided these gangsters with the pretext they needed to exercise their total control. The rights of anyone accused of terrorist acts were suspended.

Thus the NKVD could select who it wished for immediate transportation and execution. From 1935 into 1936 Stalin, true to form, struck first at the Lefts – Zinovievites and the capitulators from the Trotskyist opposition. Zinoviev and Kamenev were tried and imprisoned in January 1935 for complicity in the assassination of Kirov.

Stalin chose his charge well – every bureaucrat from the party cell secretary in the Kolkhoz to the head of a ministry feared the silenced and brutally oppressed masses, they feared the appearance of “the avengers” that the Narodnik tradition had implanted in the Russian consciousness. Any sacrifice seemed justified to dispel the long shadow of terrorist revenge.

The bureaucracy raised above its head the guillotine it had for so long feared. After a lull of some eighteen months in August 1936 the great purges and the slaughter began. In the first trial of the “terrorist counter-revolutionary Trotskyist Zinovievist bloc”, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yevdokimo and Ivan Smirnov made grotesque extorted “confessions”. At the instigation of “Judas Trotsky” they had become the “despicable servants and agents of Germano-Polish fascists”.

The defendants – the closest collaborators and comrades of Lenin for many years – were summarily shot. In January 1937 the second wave began, this time centring on the old members of the Left Opposition who had long since capitulated Pvatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, Muralov. In June 1937 Stalin attacked the leadership of the Red Army including Tukhachevsky. The purge was thoroughgoing; three out of five Soviet Marshals, 13 army commanders out of 15, 57 corps commanders out of 80, 70 divisional commanders out of 190, 75 of the 90 members of the Higher War Council – indeed over half the officer corps was purged. The road to the massive Soviet defeats of 1941 was opened by this holocaust.

That the old “left” were attacked first can be explained by the nature of Stalin’s bonapartism. The Stalinist Bonapartist state depended on negotiated alliance and co-existence with the governments of the imperialist states. From the time of Hitler’s rise to power the Stalinists sought to cement alliances with democratic imperialism. The Stalin-Laval pact signalled this. The Soviet bureaucracy was prepared to lend its weight, experience and police agents to drowning the Spanish workers’ vanguard in blood in order to keep alive this strategic element of international class collaboration in the Stalinist programme. Stalin was keen to make sure that the “democratic” imperialists were able to point to aspects of Soviet life that corresponded with the values and ideals of bourgeois democracy. The left, despite their capitulations, remained thorns in his side.

Zinoviev, for example, had been the bogey of the European democracies during his period as head of the Comintern in the 1920s. To allay suspicion Stalin aimed to discredit and destroy the “left”. By linking them with Germany and Japan – suggesting they were agents – Stalin was linking them to the enemies of “democratic” imperialism. At the same time he was linking them to a danger that ordinary Soviet citizens realised was a very real danger.

His Bonapartism also led him to once again ally with the Right, now broken and not a real threat. Bukharin, a symbol of the Right and therefore a symbol of appeasement with imperialism, was allowed to be the editor of Izvestia, the official government paper and was involved in drafting the 1936 Constitution. The Constitution itself was symbolic in that it reproduced bourgeois democratic norms – such as geographical representation – but confirmed the absolute supremacy of the Party. It was a piece of paper that liberal friends in the West could point to in their pursuit of the Popular Front, but it was also a tool in the hands of the police dictatorship.

But the terror did not stop at the old “left’. It was to engulf Soviet society for the last years of the 1930s. How do we begin to explain this particular bloody period of Stalinist Bonapartism?

In the late 1930s internal and external contradictions propelled the Bonapartist regime into deep crisis. In a manner that prefigures the experiences of Stalinist terror in Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, the Stalinists could only respond to that crisis by unleashing their terror apparatus against every layer of Soviet society. Stalin’s purges represent this extraordinary form of Bonapartism’s response to crisis rather than the essence of Stalinism itself.

The later “de-Stalinisation” by Khruschev in the 1950s was an attempt to return to the norms of pre-1934 Stalinism rather than any attempt to dismantle the essential machinery of the Stalinist regime itself.

The key elements of Stalinism’s crisis were analysed and predicted by Trotsky and the International left Opposition.

The international position of the USSR deteriorated dramatically in the mid-1930s. On 25 November 1936 Japan and Nazi Germany signed the anti-Soviet anti-Comintern pact. In the face of the fascist offensive the Soviet bureaucracy’s alliance with the “Western Democracies” proved bankrupt.

The certain victory of Franco in the Spanish Civil War by 1938, the “Anschluss” of Austria with Nazi Germany in 1938, and the Munich agreement of September of that year whereby the British and French bourgeoisies recognised Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland, all testified to the weak and duplicitous nature of the “democratic” bourgeoisies.

Having slaughtered the left as a means of appeasing the democratic imperialists the Stalinists turned to slaughter the Bukharinites and Soviet military chiefs who, each for their own particular reasons, were pledged to pro-Western or anti-German policies. The purges made possible the dramatic about-turns in Stalinist foreign policy as the Soviet bureaucracy turned first to the Western bourgeoisie and then to the fascists with the 1939 Stalin-Hitler pact as a prop to sustain them in the accelerating international crisis.

Secondly, the late 1930s saw the increased articulation of the accumulated contradictions of autarchic bureaucratic planning. Even the most limited discussion or accountability proved intolerable for the Stalinist regime in these circumstances. Only massive purges and the expansion of the Gulag economy could plug the gaps and keep the system in operation during the Third Five Year Plan.

In these crisis circumstances the bureaucracy could not tolerate discussion within its own ranks. A recrudescence of factionalism erupted in 1932-34. Unless it was terrorised into submission, the bureaucracy itself threatened to so divide under the impact of internal and external pressure that the right and more dangerously the left stood to gain a hearing once again both within the ranks of officialdom and, more importantly, within the working class itself. Hence Stalin’s resort to extreme terror and the wholesale destruction of nearly all who had any connection with either the heroic or Thermidorian period of the Revolution.

The terror also served another purpose. The grotesque show trials and confessions could serve not only to silence the Soviet masses but also to explain shortages and increased work speeds. The visible shortcomings of Stalinist planning could be “blamed” on saboteurs and agents. The bureaucratic mis-managers, hiding behind the cloak of police terror, could cover their own incompetence and privileges from the scrutiny of the masses.

A final factor in explaining Stalin’s post 1934 offensive against the Thermidorian party was his terror of a revival of the left, following the German debacle. Trotsky had been proved so signally correct against Stalin and the fate of the German workers might have awakened sections of the Communist movement to this fact. Stalin could not risk such a possibility. This period saw not only the stigmatisation of all the “old Bolsheviks” as counter-revolutionaries, but also a worldwide campaign to implicate Trotsky and the Trotskyists in the crimes of fascism, In all the trials the “fascist” Trotsky was the chief defendant – in absentia. His followers were murdered by the NKVD: Klement, Ignace Reiss, Leon Sedov among them. The Bonapartist terror was aimed at destroying the Trotskyist movement inside the USSR and outside, and preventing it from becoming a challenge to Stalin. As Trotsky rightly pointed out:

“but under no condition is it permissible for the international proletarian vanguard to obtain the opportunity to verify freely and critically the ideas of Leninism through its own experience and to juxtapose Stalinism and so-called Trotskyism in the broad light of day.”143

The net result of the purges was the total destruction, not merely of Lenin’s party (which had occurred much earlier), but of virtually everybody who had been in Lenin’s party. Stalin successfully created a party that was his tool and was made up of his followers.

The XVIII Party Congress in 1939 was the first since the Congress of Victors. The victors had now been vanquished, with the majority of delegates to the 1934 Congress having been killed in the purges. As Molotov pointed out at the XVIII Congress, the party was dramatically transformed under the impact of police terror. Some 80 per cent of republic Party secretaries and 93 per cent of district secretaries had joined the party after 1924, and had known no other party regime than that of Stalin.144 Equally significantly the party dropped in size from 3,500,000 members in 1933 to 1,900,000 by 1937.

The 1937 census for the USSR revealed a population of 164 million – some 16.7 million less than the planned forecast. This shortfall gives some indication of the scale of the terror that Stalinism inflicted on Soviet society.

The monstrous barbarity of Stalin’s regime was not the result of his deranged personality. In order to free itself from all social restraint and to destroy any potential base for opposition, Stalinism had to create this apparatus and regime of terror. In its own way this testifies to the illegitimacy of the Stalinists’ usurpation of power and the inability of the Stalin clique to legitimise their regime in the eyes of the mass of Soviet toilers.

Their creation of an army of millions of slave labourers enabled them to both terrorise the Soviet working class with the threat of the camps and complete a series of industrial projects under the bayonets of the NKVD. As Roy Medvedev has explained it:

“State plans assigned an increasingly important role to Gulag. By the end of the thirties GULAG was responsible for much of the country’s lumbering and extraction of copper, gold and coal. GULAG built important canals, strategic roads, and many industrial enterprises in remote regions... The planning agencies frequently put pressure on the NKVD to speed up certain projects. Planning was done not only for projects assigned to GULAG but also for the growth of its labour force. Planning even encompassed the mortality rate in the camps – and in this respect achievement far exceeded plan goals”145

In the spheres of cultural and family life the Stalinists inaugurated a period of acute reaction. Incapable of legitimising their dictatorship as either socialist or the will of the working class the Stalinist bureaucracy decked out their dictatorship ever increasingly in the colours of Great Russian chauvinism. Medvedev highlights this well when he describes how,

“A symbol of the time was the absence in Moscow of a monument to Marx, to Engels, or even to Lenin, while a statue of Yuri Dolgorukii, a stupid and cruel twelfth century prince, went up on Soviet Square, replacing the Obelisk of Freedom that had been erected at Lenin’s suggestion.”146

 

Thermidor and the family

 

The reactionary impact of Stalinism is vividly illustrated by its erosion of the rights won for Soviet women by the October revolution and the proletarian dictatorship. In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky correctly stated that “The October Revolution honestly fulfilled its obligations in relation to women.” The early Soviet government granted women full political, legal and economic equality and took important positive steps towards removing the burden of women’s oppression within the home. All legislation which assumed the subordinate position of women was repealed, and women were written into the constitution with equal rights and obligations. Protective legislation was extended to women, specifically in the areas of night and underground work, and any work considered injurious to a woman’s health. Equal pay for equal work was established as a fundamental principle.

All restriction on women’s movements were lifted – she no longer had to move with her husband. Inheritance and property laws were revised to weaken the strength of the nuclear family. In December 1917 civil registration of marriage and easy free divorce were granted, abortion was legalised in 1920 and made available free in Soviet hospitals. In Central Asia there were problems with the extreme oppression of Muslim women, and concessions were made on marriage laws, but abduction, forced marriage and the Kalym (bride price) were made criminal offences.

Alongside these legal measures:

“the revolution made a heroic effort to destroy the so-called ‘family hearth’ – that archaic, stuffy and stagnant institution in which the woman of the toiling classes performs galley labour from childhood to death”. 147

The family hearth was to be replaced by socialised institutions for child care, eating, laundry etc. These plans were made, and support for them built, but due to the poverty of the Soviet state and the exigencies of the civil war, they could never be adequately implemented. During the Civil War there were communal dining rooms, as there were during the industrialisation of the early 1930s, their popularity being probably due more to the absence of other sources of food than to a commitment to communal living.

The establishment of the Zhenotdel (Women’s Department in the Party) in 1918 was important as a means of positively mobilising and propagandising among women, but the female membership of the party still remained low – by 1922 only 8 per cent of party members were women.

The period of the NEP curtailed the limited social programmes that had been established, and the unemployment it created amongst women pushed them back into the home and, increasingly, onto the streets. The 1926 family legislation made married and unmarried couples responsible for supporting each other -– a measure dictated by the inability of the state to support the vast numbers of deserted women, and aiming to prevent them from abandoning their children and turning to prostitution.

Thermidor as it affected the family and women can be seen to develop from these early problems, but to then have been actively exacerbated and consolidated by Stalinism.

During the First Five Year Plan, women’s employment increased at a rate that exceeded the expectations of the planners – the number of women in industry and the national economy doubled from 1928-1932, and continued to rise to 41.6 per cent of the working population by 1939, 56 per cent after the Second World War, 51 per cent in 1970.

During the initial rise in the early 1930s, it was not accompanied by a correspondingly large increase in child-care and communal facilities. Women were simply working longer hours and doing all the housework. Childcare, of necessity, was expanded in the USSR, but it was still inadequate, both in numbers of places and the care received so that many women would prefer to use a “Babushked” – an unpaid member of the family, to look after the children. Protective legislation for women, particularly maternity leave, and pay declined proportionately with the increase in female labour. Thus the forced industrialisation policy meant that “A woman’s place is in the factory and the home”.

Up to the mid-1930s, the soviet government was still declaring that it would abolish the yolk of domestic slavery. “Down with the Kitchen!” was one of their slogans. In the mid-1930s this was abandoned alongside moves to strengthen the family. An ideological campaign was mounted, and backed up with legislation, to reinforce the family as a bastion of the “new socialist society”. This was officially justified partly as a response to the “promiscuity” and breakdown in family life that had been witnessed after the revolution.

The Stalinist state wished to re-establish the family as a performer of domestic labour, but more importantly as an institution for the maintenance of discipline and order, to put a check on the youth and return workers to the isolation of the nuclear family. Homelessness among children, and prostitution were both increasing and the state response was to punish both – parents who were forced by poverty and destitution to abandon their children were fined and imprisoned, harsh measures were taken for the first time by the Soviet state against prostitutes and homosexuals.

This change in position on the family was consolidated in the new family legislation of 1936, which made abortion illegal, emphasised the centrality of the nuclear family and made divorce much more difficult. Stalin made other direct attacks on the equality that had been established after the revolution – in education differentiation of male and female roles was emphasised in schools and courses, and in 1943 co-education was actually abolished in many schools.

Still to this day, girls are taught domestic science and needlework in school and an emphasis on the duty of motherhood remains.

The Marxist tradition has always held that the level of culture and emancipation of society as a whole can be gauged by the position of women within it. Just as Stalinism upholds and extends the oppressive apparatus associated with the old type of state. So it struggled to recreate the old forms of oppression in family life. The position of women in the USSR at the end of the 1930s served as a poignant symbol of the profound degeneration that the world’s first workers' state had undergone at the hands of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist regime.

 

Footnotes

1. L. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, (London 1967) p27.

2. M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development 1917 (London 1966) p 38.

3. Ibid, p36.

4. L. Trotsky, op.cit. p27.

5. N. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, (Harmondsworth 1969) p 186.

6. R. Pethybridge, The Social Prelude to Stalinism (London 1974) p137.

7. Quoted in Dobb, op.cit.p83.

8. E.H.Carr, The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin 1917-29 (London 1979) p11.

9. N. Mironov and Z.V.Stepanov, Rabochie Leningrada (Leningrad 1975) p 184.

10. S.N.Kanev and V.M. Nanov, Ocherki Istorii Leningradskoi organizatsii KPSS (Leningrad 1968) p148.

11. O.I. Shkaratan, “Ismeneniya v sotsial'nom sostave fabrichnozavodskikh rabochikh Leningrada” in Voprosy Istorii (SSR 1959) No. 5 p22.

12. Ibid. p32.

13. P.R. Gregory and RC. Stuart, Soviet Economic Structure and Performance (New York 1981) p41.

14. H. Carrere O'Encausse, Lenin - Revolution and Power (London 1982) p131.

15. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow 1966) pp 467-8 16. Published in Pravda May 26th and 27th. See Collected Works Volume 33.

17. Lenin, Collected Works, op. cit. Vol 33 p 474.

18. Ibid,p487.

19. Ibid, p 488.

20. Ibid, p 498.

21. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (London 1967) p 59.

22. Lenin,op.cit.p 428.

23. Lenin, Collected Works op. cit. Vol. 36. p 606.

24. Ibid. p 610.

25. Ibid, p 596.

26. L. Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification (New York 1937) pp 58 - 63.

27. H. C. O'Encausse, op.cit. p 154.

28. quoted in M. Schactman, The Struggle for the New Course (Michigan 1965) p 153.

29. Oobb, op. cit. pp 161-162.

30. L. Trotsky, The New Course (Michigan 1965) p 45.

31. Ibid. p 46.

32. Ibid, p 18.

33. Ibid, p 19.

34 Ibid, p 23.

35. M. Schactman, op. cit. p 169.

36. Quoted in ibid, p 170.

37. Chetyrnadtsaty S'Ezd VKP (b), Stenograficheski Otchet . (Moscow 1926) p 135. .

38. Quoted in W. Korey, Zinoviev and the Problem of World Revolution 1919 - 1927 (Unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia 1960) p 189.

39. For a fuller discussion of this see Workers Power Journal, (Autumn 1977) No 5, pp 10 - 15.

40. For more details see A. Neuberg, Armed Insurrection (London 1970) 41. V. Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941 (London 1963) p 177.

42. H.C. D’Encausse, op.cit. p 170.

43. Ibid, p 165.

44. J. Stalin, “The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists” in Leninism (London 1940), pp 96 -97.

45. E. H. Carr, op. cit. p 69.

46. L. Trotsky, Towards Capitalism or Socialism? (London 1976) p 9.

47. L. Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin (New York, 1970), p 240.

48. Pravda, 20 October 1925.

49. Platform of the Joint Opposition (London 1973), p 28.

50. Ibid, p 28.

51. M. Lewin, Russia

 


Chapter 3: The survival and expansion of Stalinism after the second world war

 

The continued existence of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers’ state into the 1980s can only be understood and explained by an analysis of the expansion of Stalinism since the end of the Second World War. The theoretical and political problems posed by this expansion have caused programmatic confusion amongst those claiming to uphold the banner of Trotskyism. In part or in whole this confusion has stemmed from an inability to creatively elaborate Trotsky’s own analysis of Stalinism under the changed conditions of the war and its aftermath.

Ever since the early 1920s Trotsky sketched out the general contradictions which were pushing towards a new imperialist world war. He correctly recognised that the USA emerged from the First World War far stronger than both the victorious and the defeated imperialism of Europe. At that time Trotsky believed that a new war would arise out of a failed attempt at post-war USA expansion, a failure caused by an inability to accumulate sufficiently on a ruined European economy, and French and British unwillingness to be reduced to semi-colonies of the USA.1

The major impetus which forced Trotsky to concretise his analysis and discuss the tempo of the coming war in the 1930s, was of course, the rise to power of Hitler in 1933 in Germany.2 Precisely because Stalinism’s fate was inextricably tied to the respective fortunes of imperialism and the working class, Trotsky drew a number of conclusions regarding the fate of the Kremlin usurpers should the expected war materialise.

Trotsky argued that the imperialist war and its accompanying revolutionary upsurges would sweep away the Stalinist bureaucracy. Either it would succumb directly to the onslaught of imperialism aided by restorationist forces within the USSR or a series of successful proletarian revolutions in Europe, arising out of the war, would lead to political revolution in the Soviet Union and destroy the Kremlin bureaucracy.3

Taken as a strategic prognosis, Trotsky’s formulations retain their validity. The reactionary, utopian policy of “detente” practiced by Stalinism in the USSR will lead, inevitably, to the destruction of the collectivised property relations should the working class not first come to the rescue. This undeniable tendency towards the destruction of Stalinism was, however, offset during the course of the second world war, by a set of conjunctural factors which Trotsky did not, and, in some cases, could not anticipate.

 

Stalinism and class struggle in the second world war

 

The divisions within world imperialism weakened its offensive capacity against the USSR. The very nature of the imperialist war – bloody conflicts over the division of the world markets – led to the Allied or “democratic” imperialist nations (primarily Great Britain and the USA) eventually enlisting the support of the Stalinist bureaucracy for its war effort against the Axis Powers.

The defeat of the Axis countries and the various compromised national bourgeoisies at the close of the war was accompanied by large-scale anti-capitalist mobilisations. This confirmed the objective potential for the revolutionary variant of Trotsky’s programme for the war. In the Axis countries (Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary) the upsurges were most pronounced after the German defeat. In Bulgaria, for example, The Economist (7 October 1944) noted that throughout Thrace and Macedonia, “Soldiers councils have been set up, officers have been degraded, red flags hoisted and normal saluting has been abolished.”4

In Eastern Europe the working class was most to the fore in Czechoslovakia where plant committees, Councils and workers’ militias were created, and dual power existed for many months in 1944 and 1945. It was a full year before the government dared limit workers’ control in the factories. In Germany there were widespread workers’ uprisings, particularly in Halle and Magdeburg. It has become commonplace, even amongst bourgeois historians to recognise that the defeat of Hitler in France during 1944 provoked extremely favourable conditions for the working class to seize state power.6

The successful imperialist bloc in the war was itself not able to crush this movement. Imperialism was forced to lean upon the Kremlin and its armed agencies to abort this rising tide of war and rising class struggle. The use of the Red Army to forcibly end workers’ control in the factories was widespread, particularly in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. In defeated Germany and Austria the working class suffered much worse. Many workers’ districts were terrorised. Vienna was looted and pillaged for three days.

The continuance of the alliance had the effect of delaying an immediate confrontation between Stalinism and world imperialism. This unholy alliance against the working class took on a sickening dimension in Indo-China where the Stalinists, from positions of great prominence in the ranks of the workers and peasants, helped butcher the vanguard and delivered a broken proletariat into the hands of imperialism.

In Greece the Stalinists, acting in accord with Stalin’s directives, were guilty of a similar betrayal. “Spheres of influence” deals struck between Churchill and Stalin in Moscow and by all the allies at Yalta had given Indo-China and Greece to the imperialists and Stalin was determined to honour this deal.

Trotsky’s prognosis had always insisted that the prerequisite for the revolutionary destruction of the Soviet bureaucracy during the war was the ascendancy of the leadership of the Fourth International (FI). However, the war came to a close, and working class struggles erupted, in a situation in which the FI cadre were aim completely marginalised, except for a few notable exceptions, such as Indo-China. The Stalinists in the USSR and elsewhere were able to survive, therefore, because the revolutionary upsurge lacked a leadership capable of directing it against the bureaucracy, as well as against imperialism. The role of the conscious factor in Trotsky’s prognosis should never be overlooked. Failure to recognise its importance led the FI movement, eventually, to believe that Stalinism and imperialism could be overthrown by the “objective process”, unfolding independently of human will. This method of thinking was alien to that of Trotsky. He believed that prognoses had to be revised and corrected in the light of experience.

The survival of the USSR and Stalinism within it cannot just be explained by a series of international factors. Important internal events must also be taken into account. The swift and extensive construction of a war economy displayed the progressive potential of the planned property relations in the USSR. But the survival of the Soviet Union is ultimately accounted for by the heroism of the Soviet masses (e.g. 20 million dead) in the face of German imperialist aggression.

The resistance of the people to fascism, despite the tyranny of Stalinist rule, is explained, on the one hand, by the sobering experience of fascist rule in large western areas of the USSR, and, by the relative weakening of the Bonapartist state machinery over the masses, enabling them to efficiently organise their own defence against German imperialism relatively free from bureaucratic oppression as happened in Leningrad.

Although the property relations of the USSR were to prove resilient to the attacks of imperialism the war did wreak havoc on the productive forces of the Soviet Union. This manifested itself most dramatically in a severe contraction in accumulation and an absolute decline in the level of productive forces. In all 31,850 industrial plants were destroyed. 65,000 kms of railway track, 15,800 locomotives and Y(?) (CHECK) 2 million freight cars were ruined. Coal and steel production fell between 40-50 per cent in 1942-3. It only reached the 1940 level again in 1946. In addition, 4.7 million houses, 1,710 towns and 70,000 villages were destroyed.

In agriculture the picture was equally grim. Some 98,000 collective and 1,876 state farms disappeared. Seven million horses were lost as were 20 out of 23 million pigs. Only 3 per cent of the tractors survived in German-occupied Russia.7 Centrifugal tendencies undermining the planned property relations became more and more pronounced between 1941 and 1944. Heavy industry, for example, suffered greatly as budget production costs were done away with in 1941, giving autonomy to the trusts. Light industry was often organised on a local scale and even reduced to handicraft production in some areas.

In the countryside the war witnessed an accelerated tempo of capitalist restoration in agriculture, with the extensive development of primitive capitalist accumulation which threatened to undermine the social regime in the USSR. As Germain observed:

“The corollary to greater freedom given to the richer peasants was a massive increase in draconian measures taken against the working class in the cities in order to meet the war’s demands. At the same time the privileges of the bureaucracy and its cohorts were extended. The right of inheritance was increased, the orthodox church re-established, and the army and GPU were given independence from the party. Despite this massive crisis the Kremlin rulers managed to reassert their rule and establish an unexpected level of stability. As the siege of Leningrad was lifted, for example, the GPU converged on the city once again. This was possible because of the exhaustion of the working class. Furthermore, the lend-lease aid given to the Kremlin by the Allies at Teheran and Potsdam served to shield the bureaucracy from the worst effects of its economic crisis. As it became clear that Hitler was going to be defeated the Kremlin took fright at the powerful restorationist forces it had unleashed and which threatened the collectivised property; a Five Year Plan (the Fourth) was drawn up for 1945-49 which aimed at a 10 per cent growth rate. At the end of 1944 large show trials of industrial bureaucrats were held for “misappropriations” and at the end of 1945 in official pronouncements, the terminology of “Marxism-Leninism” began to replace that of Great Russian/Imperial chauvinism that had been stoked up in the war.

Gradually the Bonapartist state machine was re-built up all over the country as a guardian of the bureaucracy’s interests against restorationist and proletarian threats to its existence. On the one hand, this bonapartism struck out against the elements of restoration in the countryside which had been let loose. At the same time, however, the Kremlin lashed out against the working class which had shown a developing independence from the bureaucracy during the process of defending the USSR.

However, the survival of the Stalinist caste was not, in the last analysis, a question to be settled on the national arena. Rather, it was the international scene at the close of the war which held the key to the future of the Kremlin bureaucrats.

Formal political and military contact between the USSR and the Allies was established in July 1941, a month after the German invasion of the USSR put an abrupt end to the Stalin-Hitler pact. The military bloc was always shot through with suspicion and hostility on both sides. Even the first meeting of the heads of the Grand Alliance in late 1943 in Teheran was a bitter affair at which the Soviet Union urged the immediate opening of a second front in Europe.

The Western Allies, in fact, had left the Soviet Union to take on the might of German imperialism in the East while they concentrated on reconquering lost colonies from Germany and Japan. While the US did give lend-lease aid to the USSR their policy was one of both defeating Germany and exhausting their Soviet ally. As token of its sincerity towards its democratic imperialist allies the Kremlin formally dissolved the Communist (Third) International in 1943, thus ending even the pretence of commitment to international revolution.

 

Diplomatic manoeuvres between Stalinism and imperialism

 

In the earlier part of the war the dominant thinking amongst US imperialist leaders was total US control over Europe. George Kennan, chief foreign policy advisor to Roosevelt and head of the Policy Planning Staff in the White House said in 1942:

“We endeavour to take over the whole system of control which the Germans have set up for the administration of the European economy, preserving the apparatus putting people of our own into the key positions to run it, and that we then apply this system to the execution of whatever policies we adopt for continental Europe, in the immediate post-war period.”9

The decisive shift in the balance of forces between Allied and Axis imperialism took place during the course of 1943, when the victory of the Allies became more and more assured. Soviet victory at Stalingrad and entry into Eastern Europe forced the imperialists to come to terms with the bargaining power of the Soviet bureaucracy within the anti-German alliance. At Teheran little consideration was given to post-war territorial divisions apart from a general agreement to dismember Germany. Stalin said: “There is no need to speak at the present time about any Soviet desires. But when the time comes, we will speak.”10

However, Roosevelt left the conference convinced that some tactical concessions would have to be made to the USSR after the war. It was only as the defeat of Germany became a certain prospect and the role that the USSR would play in the defeat became clear to the USA that such tactical concessions were even considered.

Roosevelt on his return from the Yalta conference in January 1945 confessed to a group of Senators:

“The occupying forces had the power in the areas where their arms were present and each knew that the others could not force things to an issue. The Russians had the power in Eastern Europe ... The only practical course was to use what influence we had to ameliorate the situation.”11

Even in these moments of weakness the imperialists did not give carte blanche to the USSR. They insisted on spheres of “influence”, not “control”. Faced with this prospect the Kremlin was confronted with several acute problems, all of which necessitated a right turn in international policy. The chief problems was the containment of the rising tide of anti-capitalist upsurge throughout Europe which was largely outside the control of the Soviet bureaucracy or was threatening to get out of control of the indigenous Stalinists. But the Soviet leaders also had to be wary of the strategic threat from Anglo-American imperialism. Although the tactical alliance with the latter bloc was necessitated by the threat of German imperialism, as this threat subsided, so the threat of Anglo-American aggression resurfaced. It was essential for Stalin to take steps to prepare for this threat.

Such tactical concessions to the Kremlin were opposed by sections of the US ruling class. Acting Secretary of State throughout most of 1945 was Joseph Grew, a warmonger who argued in December 1944 (the eve of Yalta):

“It will be far better and safer to have the showdown before Russia can reconstruct herself and develop her tremendous potential military, economic and territorial power”12

At the Potsdam Conference in June and July 1945, the fine details of the post-war carve up were agreed. On 16 July the USA exploded the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. The existence of the bomb would render redundant the US imperialists request for a Soviet drive against Japan at the end of European hostilities and serve to shift the balance within the alliance against the Soviet Union. Churchill, on behalf of the British, was delighted at the new weapon. Before the news of Churchill’s defeat in the July General Election forced him to take his leave of Potsdam, he wrote:

“We now have something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians. The secret of this explosive and the power to use it would completely alter the diplomatic equilibrium which was adrift since the defeat of Germany.”13

In addition Churchill was determined to keep the German army intact as a bulwark against the USSR.

Aware of this potential threat Stalin recognised the imperative need to rebuild the ravaged economy as quickly as possible so as to re-establish his security both internally against the working class and externally against the threat from imperialism. In order to put pressure on the Kremlin, lend lease aid to the USSR was stopped in June 1945, immediately prior to Potsdam.

The US also took a much tougher line on reparations. Both these measures were designed to punish the USSR for supposedly overstepping the limits of the Yalta agreements. Consequently at Potsdam reparations were the sticking point, as Stalin was determined to make Germany pay for the cost of the war. In the end, the seal of approval was given to any reparations taken from USSR occupied territory and 25 per cent of “unnecessary” capital equipment from the imperialist-controlled zone of Germany.

 

The politics of Stalinist reconstruction after the war

 

Given the crucial nature of the manifold threats to the existence of a stable, parasitic caste in the USSR, and the international character of the dilemma, the survival of Stalinism was inescapably bound up with the political consolidation of its military expansion in Eastern Europe.

Stalinism’s expansion was marked by a number of specific features. Stalinism fears above all the threat of genuine proletarian revolution. Consequently, the expansion of its political influence was achieved in a manner which subordinated the interests of the working class to itself, and through it to imperialism. The reactionary, utopian theory of “socialism in one country”, the credo of the Stalinist bureaucracy, leads programmatically to the illusory strategy of “peaceful co-existence” with world imperialism. The interests of the working class were sacrificed on the altar of this strategy.

However, under exceptional circumstances, the strategy of “detente” with private property on a world scale can lead, by its very logic, to its tactical negation on a local scale. In other words, the overall desire to strike a “modus vivendi” with private property leads to the abolition of private property in certain, local circumstances where this proves unavoidable for the Stalinists.

This proved to be the end result in most of the areas that the USSR had occupied at the end of the war. But this only occurs when the balance of “detente” has become very unfavourable to the Stalinists. It occurs only in order to re-establish “peaceful co-existence” with the imperialists on a more stable basis on a world scale.14 It does not indicate that Stalinism has in any way become a revolutionary factor in events.

An extremely important impulse for expansion was the crisis of accumulation within the USSR. For example, the Soviet Union sought to repair its war-torn economy at the close of the war through forced transfers of raw materials and energy (i.e. plundering) and through unequal exchange (i.e. the “mixed company”).

The previously Axis countries of Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary were hit first and hardest. Immediately they were occupied, about 70 per cent of their industrial machinery was removed. In Hungary some 90 per cent of industrial capacity in the metal and engineering industries was removed in 1945.

In Rumania, between 23 August 1944 and 12 September 1944 equipment to the value of $2 billion was taken, including the entire war fleet, most of the merchant marine fleet, half the available railway stock, and the oil industry equipment. In Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia some 15-25 per cent of the industrial stock was removed. Sixty large industrial enterprises alone were dismantled from the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia.

In that part of Germany annexed by Poland after the war, it is estimated that up to 30 per cent of industry was uprooted and taken to the USSR. In addition, up to 30 per cent of each occupied country’s annual GDP was siphoned off by the Kremlin.

In theory the “mixed company” was supposed to be an equal combination of Russian and national bourgeois capital. In reality very little of the Russian share was forthcoming. Under this guise lots of raw materials and energy supplies went to the USSR for next to nothing in exchange (e.g. Rumanian oil, Iranian oil, Yugoslavian bauxite).15

We must remember Trotsky’s own warning that the rapacious insatiable appetite of the bureaucracy, with its desire to enhance its privileges and prestige over other areas, will always be a factor in any expansion. However, this will be very much a subordinate factor since alone it would not be sufficient reason for the Stalinists to risk their “understanding” with imperialism nor provoke the possibility of unleashing unwanted revolutionary action by the oppressed masses.

In Eastern Europe (i.e. Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia) the political strategies pursued by the Stalinists at the end of the war, and the impetus behind them were essentially the same. In each of these countries the defeat and retreat of German imperialism was accompanied by uneven and potentially revolutionary mobilisations of the urban and rural workers and peasants.

Although anti-capitalist in direction, these actions of the masses were without revolutionary Trotskyist leadership. The hold of indigenous Stalinism on the other hand, over the vanguard of the masses was very uneven throughout Eastern Europe. Czechoslovakia was the only Eastern Europe country on the eve of war to have even a semblance of bourgeois democracy. This helped the CP to operate fairly openly. At its lowest pre-war point the KSC (Czechoslovakian CP) had a membership of 24,000. Electorally it always managed to pick up at least ? [CHECK] million votes, although it only controlled about 12 per cent of file? trade union membership. It survived the occupation emerging with a membership of 27,000 in May 1945 in the Czech areas alone. This grew to 1,159,164 by January 1946.

On the other hand the Polish Communist Party suffered from the Stalin purges of 1938. It was virtually liquidated, with 12 of its Central Committee members executed. Reconstituted in late 1941, after the breakdown of the Stalin-Hitler pact (in preparation for which the Polish Stalinists had been killed), it still only had a membership of about 4,000 in 1942-3.

In the last analysis, though, the weakness of certain indigenous Stalinist parties was compensated for by the role and control of the Red Army. Given the sporadic and atomised nature of the resistance movements in Eastern Europe the major force for sweeping German imperialism out was the Red Army – the armed wing of the Kremlin. From 1944 onwards, the defeat of German imperialism by the Red Army was accompanied by the deliberate destruction of the anti-fascist and anti capitalist movements of the Eastern European masses. Everywhere the Stalinists protected, and in some cases reintroduced, the rule of the bourgeoisie in the economy and prevented the seizure of private property by the workers and peasants. Where the workers had already seized factories then the Stalinists used nationalisation as a means of taking direct control away from the workers.

Molotov’s strictures to the Bulgarian working class were typical of this period: “If certain Communists continue their present conduct we will bring them to reason. Bulgaria will remain with her democratic government and present order.”16

Of Bulgaria, the French bourgeois paper, Le Monde, was pleased to note in June 1946: “Moreover, the Fatherland Front, has been able to maintain a sound economic situation and to safeguard the financial stability of the country.” The equally worthy Swiss publication, the Geneva Journal crowed the previous month, with regard to Hungary, “Wherever they can do so, the Russians block and oppose the taking over of large industrial enterprises under a new statist system.”

In Rumania, the fascist collaborator and big oil trust magnate Tatescu was vaunted by the Stalinists as a national hero. Even the discredited Rumanian monarch, King Michael was brought back, decorated by Stalin and put back on the throne.17

In the occupied countries of Eastern Europe such as Czechoslovakia the German bourgeoisie owned much of the capital. In 1945 in Czechoslovakia more than 60 per cent of the industry, and virtually the whole of the financial system was in German hands.

With the retreat of the fascists the workers established workers’ control throughout the nation. The workers’ councils set up national managements, which the Benes government were forced to recognise. A short time after there were some 10,000 national managements embracing some 75 per cent of industrial workers. Nationalisation by the state and the gradual introduction of state functionaries into the plants as managers was the only way, short of terrible blood letting, of defusing the revolutionary situation.

At the same time there was considerable popular pressure for nationalisations from the working class who believed it would mean an end to capitalist exploitation. As a result, the October 1945 nationalisation decrees brought 61.2 per cent of the working class into nationalised industries (16 per cent of the enterprises). This did not represent the expropriation of the whole capitalist class by the Czech workers. On the contrary, as the KSC put it: “By nationalisation we understand the transfer of the property of Germans, Hungarians, Traitors and collaborators to the hands of the Czech and Slovak nation.”19

One nationalisation decree was even more explicit, stating that the enterprises were to be administered in line with the principles of commercial business, independence, profit making and free competition.20 The impeccably bourgeois president of the first Czech government, Benes, stated the position clearly in an interview to the Manchester Guardian in December 1945:

“The Germans simply took control of all main industries and all the banks ... In this way they automatically prepared the economic and financial capital of our country for nationalisation. To return this property and the banks into the hands of Czech individuals or to consolidate them without considerable state assistance and without new financial guarantees was simply impossible.The state had to step in.”

 

Dual power in Eastern Europe, 1944-47

 

At the level of the state, the Red Army served to stabilise and in some cases reconstruct the forms of administrative and repressive state apparatus associated with bourgeois rule: government centralised in the hands of a distant and unaccountable executive; internal and external security centralised in the hands of a standing army above and opposed to the mass of direct producers.

Given the highly statised nature of the property relations in these countries and hence the relative weakness of the individual representatives of capital in the economy, it was particularly important for the Stalinists to construct coalition governments with the representatives of the bourgeoisie in high, if not crucial, places.

In Bulgaria, throughout 1945 there was a wave of political executions possibly numbering 20,000. Nevertheless, the popular Agrarian Party leader, Nikola Petkov was in the government. In November the elections took place with an overwhelming majority for the Fatherland Front, a Stalinist and bourgeois nationalist coalition headed by the strident anti-communist Prime Minister Georgiev. In Romania the first government after the German defeat was made up by the National Peasants and National Liberals in September 1944, the only Stalinist representative being the Minister of Justice Patrascanu.

The machinations and brutal force of the Red Army over the next months in Romania were designed to remove the two major bourgeois parties (The National Democratic Bloc) and replace them with a government of the National Democratic Front (NDF), consisting of Stalinists, Social Democrats, Union of Patriots and the Ploughman’s Front.

Such a government would be an extremely malleable one for the Kremlin. In this period the Kremlin charge, Vyshinsky, dictated the sequence of events to King Michael. Eventually after a period of armed demonstrations an ND F government was installed in March 1945 with 17 Cabinet positions going to the NDF and three economic ministries to the oil magnate Tatarescu who was installed as foreign minister. These measures were clearly designed to placate the “democratic” bourgeoisie.

A similar struggle took place in Poland this time between the US/GB backed London based group of Polish nationalists headed by Peasant Party leader Mikolajczyk and the Soviet backed Lublin Committee. In each of these cases the purges, intimidation and liquidation of prominent bourgeois figures must not be interpreted as the complete elimination of bourgeois rule, but as measures designed to crush bourgeois parties with strong roots in the national population and replace them with other bourgeois figures who would have little base from which to resist the designs of the Kremlin, but which could, at the same time, administer the economy in a way that would also serve the interests of the national bourgeoisie and even solicit aid from imperialism. In each of these countries the state apparatus had, to a greater or lesser extent, disintegrated in the last period of the imperialist war.

While the Stalinists prevented the workers and peasants from creating their own new state apparatus (based on Soviets and a workers’ militia) and re-established bourgeois control in the economy, they kept the key levers of the reconstructed state apparatus firmly in the grip of the Red Army and its local allies and agents. The leading Hungarian Stalinist Rakosi spoke for all his ilk in Eastern Europe in this period when he remarked:

“There was one position, control of which was claimed by our party from the first minute. One position where the party was not inclined to consider any distribution of the posts according to the strengths of the parties in the coalition. This was the State Security Authority. . . We kept this organisation in our hands from the first day of its establishment.”21

In fact, it was in Hungary where the Stalinists had to make the most concessions on the issue. The coalition which emerged from the October 1945 elections haggled over portfolios. Eventually Imre Nagy secured the Ministry of the Interior but responsibility for the police was delegated to the Smallholders Party. With the exception of Czechoslovakia, the Stalinists also retained the post of Defence, again reflecting the relative strength of the bourgeoisie in this country.

Everywhere the levers of armed power were used in this period to intimidate opponents, fix elections and in general guide policy down desired channels.

The result was a dual power situation that reflected the balance of forces between the world bourgeoisie and the USSR as it manifested itself in the Eastern European area. Political power was split, or rather shared, between the Stalinists and the bourgeoisie.

The Stalinists held a monopoly of repressive power but the bourgeoisie were reintegrated into the political superstructure via their control of the highly statified economy. Nowhere was this more clearly the case than in Czechoslovakia. The Germans were finally driven from Prague only in May 1945. The first post-war government set up was a coalition of four bourgeois parties and two bourgeois workers’ parties. The KSC emerged from the war the strongest and they were given first choice of ministries, the 22 portfolios being divided up equally among the parties. The KSC chose Interior, Information and Agriculture, leaving the economic ministries in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

By defining this period as one of dual power we can understand its instability and its eventual outcome. In Eastern Europe after 1945 the dual power consisted of a pact between the Stalinists and the bourgeoisie. Such a pact was necessary for the bourgeoisie because they were weak and depended on the Stalinists to maintain private property. It was necessary for the Stalinists because during the period 1945-47 they wanted to maintain private property to fulfil their deal with imperialism and in return secure economic aid. Dual power was also necessary for the Stalinists because it was a means of crushing the independent activity of the working class. Trotsky, drawing on the experience of the English and French revolutions (17th and 18th centuries) anticipated the possibility of such a form of dual power:

“The splitting of sovereignty foretells nothing less than civil war. But before the competing parties will go to that extreme – especially in case they dread the interference of a third force-they may feel compelled for quite a long time to endure, and even to sanction, a two power system.”22

The coalition governments were the sanction given by both parties in Eastern Europe in 1945 to the split sovereignty that existed. These governments had, to a greater or lesser extent, bonapartist characteristics. This was less so where the indigenous bourgeoisie and Stalinists represented genuine social forces, as for example in Czechoslovakia, more so where the new governmental form had little indigenous social foundations e.g. Soviet Occupied Germany.

The ability of the Stalinists to resolve the dual power from 1948 onwards without recourse to civil war can be explained by their dominance within those governments. Dual power does not necessarily mean that both sides are equal and balanced. The Soviet Army and police apparatuses established in Eastern Europe meant that repressive power lay exclusively in the hands of the Stalinists. There were therefore able to use this power to resolve dual power in a cold manner, when world imperialism moved against them.

 

Popular front and bourgeois workers’ government

 

Within the coalition governments in existence throughout Eastern Europe in this period the Stalinist parties were the decisive force because of their relations to the armed forces of the USSR.23 Committed to the maintenance of private property and the demobilisation and continued exploitation of the masses they acted either in a form of popular front with the bourgeoisie as in Czechoslovakia or as a specific form of a bourgeois workers government. These parties with roots in the national working class, owing their power to the Soviet bureaucracy, shaped the policies of government in the interests of a deal between imperialism, its own national bourgeoisie and the Soviet bureaucracy.

The two forms of government established by the Stalinist Parties were different. A popular front is an open coalition of bourgeois and workers’ parties, while the bourgeois workers’ government is a concealed coalition in which a workers’ party governs on behalf of and in the interests of, the bourgeoisie.

However, in content they are both designed to deflect the working class from seizing power and exercising it in its own name. Of the bourgeois workers’ government the Comintern rightly stated that they:

“are a means of deceiving the proletariat about the real class character of the State, or to ward off, with the help of corrupt workers leaders, the revolutionary offensive of the proletariat and to gain time.”24

Likewise with the popular front, as Trotsky pointed out, referring to its role in demobilising the French working class in 1936:

“The People’s Front in France took upon itself the same task as did the so-called ‘coalition’ of Cadets, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in Russia in February 1917 – checking the revolution at its first stage.”25

He went on to point out that, like a bourgeois workers’ government, the popular front disguises the real nature of bourgeois power from the workers:

“The workers were deprived of these instruments [party and soviets– Eds] because the leaders of the workers’ organisations formed a wall around the bourgeois power in order to disguise it, to render it unrecognisable and invulnerable. Thus the revolution that begun found itself braked, arrested, demoralised.”26

The bourgeois workers’ governments and popular fronts played exactly these roles in Eastern Europe. The bourgeoisie was extremely vulnerable. Its armed power was negligible. It lacked, at this time, decisive support from imperialism. The advance of the Red Army had aroused the expectations and activities of the masses. Everywhere the objective possibility of replacing the collapsed power of the bourgeoisie with genuine proletarian power existed. Such an outcome could have delivered a death blow to the Kremlin Stalinists.

For that very reason, rather than moving against the bourgeoisie, they either governed on their behalf (e.g. East Germany) in specific forms of bourgeois workers’ governments, or drew the bourgeoisie into open coalitions, i.e. popular fronts (eg Czechoslovakia and Romania). The dominance of the Stalinists in the bourgeois workers’ governments and the Popular Fronts did not alter their nature. It did alter the eventual outcome of these necessarily temporary government formations. The bourgeois workers’ government, as the Comintern predicted, could “objectively help to accelerate the process of disintegration of bourgeois power.”27 Thanks to the shift in imperialist policy and the dominance of the Stalinists, this objective possibility was realised.

The popular fronts were also superseded by governments in which the Stalinists had absolute control. They were able to dispense with their weaker coalition partners, when the main threat came from imperialism rather than genuine proletarian revolutions which the Popular Fronts laid served to check.

The nationalisations of the coalition period were carried through as the result of an agreement between the Stalinists and the bourgeoisie to nationalise that property which was owned by the Axis powers and their collaborators. Land reform affected only the largest estates and occurred generally within the first months of “liberation”, but was uneven between countries and inadequate in scope.

Given the weight of the peasant-based parties in the post-war coalitions, the large-scale evacuations of the land by former landlords in the wake of the German retreat and the immense contribution of the peasantry in the various partisan forces, it was expected that there would be a considerable movement pressing for land redistribution. In addition, the immediate need for increased food production required giving peasants the initiative to produce. The most sweeping reforms were in Hungary where all landholdings were reduced to 142 acres.

In Romania all holdings of more than 500 hectares were partitioned. Thousands more peasants “benefited” from such decrees but the social condition of most remained the same. This was because the Red Army took the best agricultural machinery to the USSR as reparations and left untouched the crippling system of credit, thus condemning the small peasantry to perpetual crisis.

It is clear than between 1944-47 the Kremlin and the local Stalinists were committed to resolving the dual power situation through the creation of capitalist states friendly to the USSR. To this end they sought to maintain or partially reconstruct the old (i.e. bourgeois) official apparatuses. Only these apparatuses could have permanently guaranteed the protection of bourgeois property. Thus, in the period of dual power the states in Eastern Europe can be described as still, essentially, capitalist. However, this general statement is insufficient to explain the dynamics of a dual power situation which by definition is transitional and lends to the state itself a contradictory, transitional character. As Trotsky pointed out with regard to the Russian Revolution after February (i.e. before the proletarian revolution):

“if the state is an organisation of class rule, and a revolution is the overthrow of the ruling class, then the transfer of power from the one class to the other must necessarily create self-contradictory state conditions, and first of all in the form of dual power...”28

The aim of the Stalinists was to prevent the resolution of dual power in a genuinely revolutionary direction. Two options alone were open to them in carrying this through. Either, they could fully reconstruct a capitalist state and cede power to it – a course that would in fact have resulted in the restored capitalists dumping them from government and attacking them (as happened in Vietnam in 1945).

Or they could have carried through a bureaucratic revolution which from the outset, excluded the proletariat from direct political power as they had done in the Baltic states and Eastern Poland at the beginning of the war. The possibility of these two options for the Stalinists invested the state machine in Eastern Europe between 1944-47 precisely with a self-contradictory character. The Stalinists reintegrated sections of the bourgeoisie into the state machine, but their fear of the reintroduction of imperialism into their newly established “buffer zone” led them to exclude the bourgeoisie from any control over the armed power of the state.

This does not mean, however, that these states became degenerate workers’ states immediately after the entry of the Red Army. We do not, as Marxists, define the form or the content of the state according to the social or political composition of its personnel. That the Stalinist personnel were in the last analysis largely dependent on post-capitalist property relations but found themselves defending capitalist property relations further underlines the contradictory, transitory nature of the period 1944-47.

 

From compromise to containment

 

Shortly before his death Trotsky commented that should the Stalinists successfully make their peace with capitalist property relations in those countries it dominated politically for any length of time, then we would be forced to revise our understanding of Stalinism and the social nature of the USSR.29

A closer appreciation of Trotsky’s reasoning on this score allows us to affirm the correctness of his analysis. Trotsky’s statement was based on the irrefutable fact that with regards to an isolated workers’ state, imperialism (i.e. world capitalism) remains stronger than the USSR. If Stalinists were to hold power then their reign must inevitably be short-lived as the national economic power of the bourgeoisie, itself drawing on the power of imperialism through its thousands of ties, would be marshalled to unseat the “alien body” in the bourgeoisie’s state.

In this way a bourgeois political counter-revolution would destroy the political rule of Stalinism and the contradiction within the social formation would be “resolved” in favour of imperialism. For this reason the Stalinist project of consolidating capitalist states was necessarily utopian.

It is within this perspective and not by abandoning it that we must understand the situation in Eastern Europe at the end of the war. A situation that allowed this contradiction to exist in reality, but only for a short period. The stagnation of world trade and the protectionism of the decade before the war was at its height during the war itself and spilled over into the post war period. With the partial exception of Czechoslovakia, the Eastern European countries had been bonapartist regimes throughout the 1930s and of semi-colonial status. Their economic and political ties with imperialism were severely dislocated during the war. The contraction of world trade and the fracturing of the world economy continued right through the 1944-7 years. However, relations between Anglo-American imperialism and the national bourgeoisies of Eastern Europe were virtually non-existent after the war.

In its turn, this reduced the power of the national bourgeoisies to resist the enforced direction of the Stalinists. This fracturing of the relations between imperialism and its national agents was a highly unstable, conjunctural factor which temporarily offset the contradiction between Stalinism and the bourgeoisie. But this strategic contradiction reasserted itself during 1947/8 when the long expected “united front” of the successful imperialisms was directed at the Kremlin’s role in Eastern Europe.

The tactical united front between imperialism and the bureaucracy, put together to deny the possibility of a European revolution now subsided along with the threat of a revolution itself. Relations between the USSR and the Western Allies had deteriorated with increased rapidity during the course of 1946, which was a watershed year, a transitional year from compromise to contain.ment on U.S. President Truman’s part. He had an ally in Churchill who had become the front runner for a more hawkish attitude ever since he detected a “betrayal” of the Yalta agreement in 1945.

In fact, the first reference to an “Iron Curtain” across Europe dates from five days after the German surrender in May of that year.

The celebrated reference in a major speech in the USA in March 1946 to the Iron Curtain was a pulling together of the threads of what was to later become called the Cold War stance of America and British imperialism against the USSR.

The reasons which underpin the gradual change in ideological stance in 1946 are not hard to find. The Yalta and Potsdam conferences had come to an agreement over “spheres of influence” which basically covered Europe and the Balkans. But the Kremlin’s refusal to take its troops out of Northern Iran in February 1946, Molotov’s claim to the “trusteeship” of Libya in North Africa, and the USSR’s fiery insistence on having the right of access to a warm water port in the Dardanelles in August, convinced the imperialists of the urgent need to contain the USSR. The imperialist offensive was led by the USA; the western nations, such as France and Great Britain, were in the midst of economic crises and were thus unable to relaunch a vigorous round of accumulation on their own.

British coal production in 1946 was 20 per cent down on its 1938 level; in Western Germany it was two-fifths of its 1938 level. Precisely because of the dominant position of Germany in the industrial field before the war, its crushing defeat was bound to have an enormous effect throughout Europe. In 1939, Germany had been responsible for one-fifth of all Europe’s industrial production.

Allied to all this was a severe agricultural and financial crisis in Europe. European wheat production fell in 1947 to less than half its 1938 level. In 1946, some 125 million Europeans were living on 1000-2000 calories a day, and this was to worsen. A measure of the financial instability can be gauged from the fact that wholesale prices in France in 1946 were rising at the rate of 80 per cent per annum.30 The USA’s own productive capital emerged from the war relatively untouched, indeed even strengthened.

Relative to its markets the productive forces were burgeoning. In 1945 the USA manufactured half the world’s products. In 1946 it accounted for half the world’s income. In short, it occupied a position of dominance in the world economy unparalleled since Britain of the 1850s. However the boom in the USA economy was facing the prospect of a major reversal if it allowed the stagnation in the markets of Western and Eastern Europe to continue.

Stalin’s hold in Eastern Europe and the spectre of revolution in the west, called forth the Truman Doctrine – the doctrine of containment, not immediate war against the USSR, backed up by massive economic aid for anti-communist governments. Greece proved to be the launching pad for this new policy. Rapidly crumbling as an imperialist power, Britain refused to financially underwrite Greece in February 1947, then in the midst of civil war.

Fearing a communist (ELAS) victory, the US made an unconditional commitment to the right-wing government. More than $300m was given immediately. On 12 March, Truman elaborated before Congress: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.”31 The economic complement of this doctrine was the Marshall Aid Programme and the plans to introduce a new currency unity in the imperialist-occupied zones of Germany.

General Marshall had replaced Byrnes as US Secretary of State in January 1947. His Plan was called the Truman Doctrine in Action and was announced in June though it was to take nearly a year to be ratified by Congress. It was not a programme of relief but of reconstruction, entailing some $17bn to Europe in return for massive US influence in domestic and foreign policy. Sixteen countries had applied and accepted its terms by September 1947.

With this twin attack the US codified its Cold War stance; to draw the line on USSR influence in Europe, to burden the Kremlin with sole responsibility for reconstruction in its own “spheres” and to eradicate its influence in the imperialist spheres. These events threw the Kremlin and the National Communist parties into a turmoil. In Western Europe the Stalinists were unceremoniously dumped from the bourgeois coalition governments. It was the social instability arising from the economic crisis that forced the French and Italian bourgeoisie to tolerate the Stalinists in government, since they could control the working class. In May Marshall wrote to De Gasperi, head of the Christian-Democrat Government, urging the expulsion of the CP and promising to underwrite their financial needs.

In Eastern Europe, where the levers of political power were in their hands, the Stalinists were compelled to choose whether to confront the imperialist offensive or retreat and concede to it.

Consistent with their attempt to construct a strategic alliance with capitalism, several of the national communist parties were prepared to accept Marshall Aid. The Marshall Aid Plan was formally open to the USSR, but this was merely a deliberate ploy to put the onus on the Kremlin to make the split. Molotov attended the preliminary discussions briefly before withdrawing.

The Czech and Polish Cabinets showed a positive response to the Plan, including the Stalinists. But they were soon forced to decline by USSR pressure. As a counter measure the Kremlin drew up a set of improvised trade agreements (the Molotov Plan) for Eastern Europe. If the road of the Marshall Plan had been accepted then sooner or later Stalinism would have lost complete control in Eastern Europe and imperialism would have stood knocking on the door of the USSR itself.

The Kremlin and Stalin were not prepared to risk this fate and so risk their own necks. Stalin tightened the reins of power and ordered the elimination, from above, of the economic roots of the bourgeoisie, and their political representatives in the state who could have been a potential point of departure for rebuilding their power in the future.

 

Counter-revolutionary social overturns in Eastern Europe

 

A preparatory and necessary step to the bureaucratic liquidation of bourgeois power in Eastern Europe was the complete bureaucratic control of the national communist parties over the working class. Primarily this meant the destruction of the influence of the Social-Democratic parties over the working class which rivalled and in most cases outshone that of the Stalinists. This was especially so in Poland, Hungary and in what was to become East Germany.

The method was usually the same; intimidations, purges and forced fusions. In September 1944, a new pro-Stalinist leadership was foisted on the Polish socialists (PPS) with a view to securing unification. The rank and file continuously refused to endorse this so in December 1947, it was done anyway, a further 12 leaders being removed and 82,000 members expelled. The term “salami tactic” was used by Hungarian Stalinist, Rakosi, to describe what was done. Persistent resistance from the Hungarian socialists (SDP) was finally overcome in February 1948 when the pro-Moscow minority in the SDP convened a Congress without the centre and right under the protection of the secret police and in June the merger was announced.32

Despite the risks this policy held for the future of “detente”, the Kremlin reckoned that not to take this road was to risk its own destruction. Not only would the USSR have had to give up the enormous productive potential of Eastern Europe to imperialism, but it would have seriously threatened the continued existence of the bureaucracy itself. Faced with this extremely disadvantageous turn in the relationship of “peaceful co-existence”– the Kremlin decided everywhere in these countries to economically and politically destroy the bourgeoisie. Everywhere the pattern was the same. Leading bourgeois figures were arrested or executed and opposition gradually banned. In Poland, the opposition leader, Mikolajczyk fled in 1947 to escape from the tightening hold of the Stalinists. In Romania King Michael was deposed in December and in early 1948 the now Stalinist dominated United Workers Party took control. The leader of the Agrarian Party in Bulgaria, Petkov, was arrested in June 1947 and executed in September.

20,000 were arrested and opposition papers closed for good. In Hungary, Kovacs, the former Smallholders leader, was arrested in May by the SAF. The Prime Minister fled to the USA in May. New elections in August saw the CP dominant, though they continued the facade of a coalition until the fusion with the socialists in 1948.

After 1947-48 the destruction of capitalism in these countries was undertaken bureaucratically from above and was combined with repression against the vanguard of the proletariat. One of the ways this repression occurred was through purging of the Communist Parties themselves. This was continuous after 1947 but received new momentum after the Stalin-Tito split in the summer of 1948.

In Poland, for example, between September and December 1948 30,000 members were expelled. The General Secretary, Gomulka was imprisoned. In Bulgaria, the vast majority of the leadership and 92,000 of the rank and file were expelled up to 1950. In Czechoslovakia, where the spirit of independence had long been nurtured via Czech nationalism, 100,000 were expelled between February and August 1948, The Stalinists were already in control of the political and repressive apparatus and could utilise this power against the bourgeoisie and its agents.

Only in Czechoslovakia, during February 1948, did the Stalinists mobilise forces outside their own security apparatus to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The period of dual power, an exact and precarious balance in the Czech Cabinet, came to a decisive end in late February 1948. On 20 February a dispute over Cabinet control of the police resulted in 12 non-CP ministers offering the bourgeois head of government, Benes, their resignations. It was understood that they would be refused, and was designed as an offensive against the KSC.

But the KSC staged mass demonstrations culminating in marches of armed trade union militia on 23 February. No independent organisations were thrown up; the demonstration was kept within strict limits designed to put pressure on Benes to accept the resignation which he did. The KSC was asked to form a government which it did comprising only the KSC and its allies.

The May elections went ahead under great repression, with one slate of candidates and a decree that a blank ballot paper was “tantamount to treason”, the results gave a juridicial seal to the “coup”.

Elsewhere demonstrations and rallies were used merely to legitimise the bureaucratic overturn in the eyes of the Stalinists base.

During this period the Stalinists did not constitute a “revolutionary workers’ government” acting under the pressure of the masses to take decisive measures against the bourgeoisie and its property.

The government was not a government of struggle based on independent workers’ organisations – militias and soviets. Instead the overturn was the work of a Stalinist bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers’ government which had ensured that the masses were so disorganised, and that the state force at its own disposal was so considerable as to prevent the working class carrying out the expropriation of the bourgeoisie itself and replacing it with the forms of revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat based on workers’ councils and a workers’ militia.

Such a prospect would have both challenged the privileges and authority of the bureaucratic caste that had been coalescing in these countries between 1944 and 1947 and stood to challenge the political rule of the Stalinists in the USSR itself.

The qualitative transformation of these bureaucratised states into a bureaucratically degenerate form of the dictatorship of the proletariat takes place at that point when the regimes have expropriated the bourgeoisie economically and set out to subordinate and curtail the operation of the essential law of the capitalist economy – the law of value-and organise their nationalised economies on the basis of the planning principle – albeit in a bureaucratically deformed manner.

None of this is possible without the prior existence of nationalisation, the monopoly of foreign trade and the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie. But in themselves the existence of these features do not necessarily constitute a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. a state based on post-capitalist property forms. Total planification and the complete elimination of the bourgeoisie was necessary on top of these features before a post capitalist economy could be established. This aspect of these degenerate workers states and their method of creation distinguishes them from the period of a healthy workers state in the USSR created by the October revolution.

The characterisation of Russia as a workers’ state in 1917 flows from the fact that state power was in the hands of the working class organised as ruling class with its own organs of class rule the soviets and the workers militia. This preceded nationalisation and planning in the USSR. In Eastern Europe the workers’ states Established as a result of Kremlin policy-were degenerate from birth. From their inception a political revolution against the bureaucratic caste was the prerequisite for the working class to take political power into its own hands. With the introduction of the Five Year Plans in the Buffer Zones: Bulgaria 1948, Czechoslovakia 1949, Hungaryt950, Poland 1950, Rumania and GDR 1951, the process of the creation of bureaucratically degenerate workers’ states was complete.

We reject the term “deformed workers state” for the states created by the post World War II overturns. Terminologically “deformed” does not adequately suggest the qualitative difference between such states and proletarian dictatorships where the working class holds political power. In the former case there may exist severe bureaucratic deformations – as Lenin admitted existed in Russia in 1921. But in this case the bureaucratic political counter-revolution still lay in the future, as does a political revolution to remedy it.

The post-war bureaucratic anti-capitalist revolutions were at the same time counter-revolutionary expropriations of the proletariat’s political power. Therefore we designate such states degenerate workers’ states as degenerate from birth.

Thus we identify these states in all fundamentals with the degenerated workers’ state in the USSR, there being only the latter’s origin in a genuine proletarian revolution to distinguish them.

Wherever it occurs and whatever form it takes, Stalinist bureaucratic social revolutions are counter-revolutionary. They are carried through against the prevailing level of consciousness of the forces necessary for the proletarian revolution in the country – i.e. the working class. They occur on the basis of a bureaucratic-repressive limitation of independent action of the working class and therefore devalue the very notion of “revolution”, “socialism”, “workers’” state and the planned economy in the eyes of the oppressed masses.

They retard the development of a revolutionary consciousness within the world proletariat. They create a congenitally bureaucratised state in which the working class is politically expropriated. The bureaucratic regimes represent an obstacle in the path of the world working class in the struggle for socialism and communism. The measures carried through by the Stalinists in the course of the social overturn (expropriation of the bourgeoisie, statification of the means of production), whilst themselves revolutionary in character, are achieved in a military bureaucratic fashion. This means that during the bureaucratic overturn, revolutionaries organised as an independent force, struggle to transform that overturn into a direct fight for proletarian power.

It was Trotsky himself who witnessed and recorded these things in the first case in which Stalinist expansion coincided with a bureaucratic social overturn – Poland and the Baltic states during 1939-40. Under the direct threat of invasion by German imperialism the Kremlin felt compelled to secure the Western flank of the USSR by invading those countries. This adventure was kept within the strict limits of a bureaucratic-military straitjacket and was followed by generalised repression against the working class and the poor peasantry. This invasion led to the incorporation of these countries into the USSR and the destruction of the private property relations within them. Trotsky summed up his understanding of the nature of these overturns thus:

“The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organisation of the world proeltariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to the world revolution.”35

 

Footnotes

1. cf. L. Trotsky, Europe and America, (New York, 1972).

2. For a selection of his most prescient statements on this theme see “Uneven and combined development and the role of American Imperialism”, in Writings 1933-34, (New York, 1975),pp.116-120, March 1933; “Hitler and Disarmament”, ibid., pp.246-57, June 1933; “Hitler’s Victory”, ibid., pp.133-7, March 1933; “Hitler the Pacifist”, ibid., pp.144-8, November 1933. All these articles are full of a profound grasp of the central strategy of Hitler in Europe in his struggle against the Versailles Treaty and the USSR as well as an excellent insight into the diplomatic and military tactics that Hitler would have to employ to secure his aim. But perhaps the most perceptive estimate of the tempo and line up in the approaching war is to be found in “On the threshold of a new World War”, Writings 1936-7, (New York, 1978),pp.379-96. Trotsky also predicted the Stalin-Hitler pact after the downfall of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and because of that pact, the inevitability of war between the USSR and Germany.

3. “In either case the war will lead to Stalin’s downfall.” (Trotsky) Depending on which of Trotsky’s writings one reads, one can find sharp or guarded statements on the “inevitability” of the destruction of the Soviet bureaucracy in the war. For the former see for example “War and the Fourth International”, Writings 1933-4, (New York, 1975), Thesis 48,pp.316-7; or for one of the innumerable briefer passages on the theme see “The Kremlin’s role in the European Catastrophe”, Writings 1939-40, (New York, 1973), June 1940,pp.290-1. For a more guarded and considered view see “The USSR in War”, in In Defence of Marxism, (New York, 1973) ergo “War accelerates the various political processes. It may accelerate the process of the revolutionary regeneration of the USSR. But it may also accelerate the process of its final degeneration.” (p.21).

It may appear an obvious point, but against those who have taken this prognosis as an example of Trotsky’s one-sided “catastrophism” it needs to be stressed that Trotsky always saw these questions from the point of view of programme, that is, the need to outline to his supporters the main conflicting tendencies in order to orientate them for action to bring about the desired end.

4. Quoted in Y. Gluckstein, Stalin’s Satellites in Europe, (London, 1952). Leading member of the Fourth International, E. Germain also noted the widespread demonstrations and strikes throughout Romania and Bulgaria in the Autumn of 1944. See “The Soviet Union after the War”, September 1946 in the Internal Bulletin of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International,p.7.

5. cf. J.Bloomfield, Passive Revolution, (London, 1979),pp.50-51

6. For one such account, see E. Mortimer’s article on France in Communist Power in Europe 1944-49, (ed. M. McCauley, London, 1977)pp.151-3. He concludes that 1944 “was the most favourable moment for a revolutionary insurrection...”. In Italy the defeat of the German troops occurred in 1945 and they were also accompanied by massive workers’ strikes. Allum and Sassoon in ibid., show that in this period there was not a factory in the North and a few in the centre that was not armed. Churchill summed up the problem facing the imperialists in West Europe at this time in a letter to his Foreign Secretary Eden, in November 1944: “...every country that is liberated or converted by our victories is seething with Communism and only our influence with Russia prevents her actively stimulating this movement”. Quoted in R. Douglas, From War to Cold War 1942-48, (London, 1981 ),p.61.

7. cf. Germain, op.cit., pp.2-3, and D. Yergin, Shattered Peace, (Harmondsworth,1980),p.64.

8. Germain, op.cit.,p.3.

9. Quoted in Yergin, op.cit., p.55.

10. Quoted in Ibid., p.473.

11. Quoted in Ibid., p.58.

12. Quoted in Ibid.,p.91.

13. Quoted inlbid.,p.120.

14. Trotsky first recognised this in his analysis of the soviet invasion of Poland in 1939:”This overturn was forced upon the Kremlin oligarchy through its struggle for self-preservation under specific conditions. There was not the slightest ground for doubting that under analogous conditions it would find itself compelled to repeat the very same operation in Finland.” Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, op.cit., p.175.

15. See Germain, op.cit., p.7; C. Georges, “Russian Economic Policy in Eastern Europe”, in SWP (US) Internal Bulletin vo113, no.8,p.10; L. Schwartz, “USSR and Stalinism”, in International Information Bulletin SWP(US), vol.1 ,no.2; C. Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe, (London, 1974), pp.49- 53.

16. Quoted in Harman, op.cit., p.31.

17. P. Zinner in Revolution in Hungary, (New York, 1952), gives details of the factories returned to private owners. See also Schwartz, Germain and Harman. In Romania, Patrascanu, the Communist Minister of Justice, drew up a law allowing industrialists, businessmen and bankers to escape punishment as war criminals.

18 cf. Bloomfield, op.cit., Chapter 6.

19. Quoted in ibid., p.89

20. cf. Schwartz, op.cit., pp.32-33.

21. Quoted in Harman, op.cit., p.35.

22. L. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, (London, 1977), p.225.

23. The SAF reached its maximum size in May 1945, at the moment of Germany’s defeat and the height of the independent actions of the workers and peasants, when it stood at an enormous 11,365,000. Demobilisation began in June and in early 1948 it was estimated at 2,874,000, still twice the size of the imperialist troop presence in Europe. The role of the SAF in Eastern Europe was uneven between nations. In Czechoslovakia in late 1946 British intelligence believed that only 5,000 troops were in the country. Shortly after the “Prague coup” in 1948 American intelligence thought there were as few as 500 USSR troops left in the country. In other words, the strength of indiginous Stalinism enabled the construction of native security forces that was not possible elsewhere. Poland’s security, on the other hand, depended heavily on the SAF and the Soviet Security Corps (NKGB). The latter were particularly notorious, having been granted full control 'over civiliansecurity in the Soviet Army’s rear' by the Committee of National Liberation, see McCauley, op.cit.,p.270, and Yergin, op.cit.,pp270-348.

24. J. Degras, The Communist International 1919-1943, (London, 1971) vol.1, p.421.

25. L. Trotsky, On France, (New York, 1979),p.193.

26. Ibid., p.201.

27. Degras, op.cit., p.427.

28. L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, op.cit.,p.231.

29. L. Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, op.cit., p.18.

30. Yergin, op.cit., pp.303-310.

31. Quoted in Douglas, op.cit., p.153.

32. cf. Harman, op.cit.,p.36, and McCauley, op.cit.,p.102 33. cf. Harman, op.cit., p.54.

34. For the relevant passages see Trotsky , In Defence of Marxism, op.cit., pp.8-20,26-29,56-59,81-90, 130-137, 170-178.

35. Ibid., p.19.

 


Chapter 4: Bureaucratic social revolutions and the Marxist theory of the state

 

The bureaucratic anti-capitalist revolutions that have occurred in Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba did not witness the destruction of the state by the proletariat organised in armed workers’ councils. Yet when the actual stages of these revolutions are examined it becomes clear that the abolition of capitalism by Stalinist parties did not contradict the Marxist theory of the state. The capitalist state was smashed in each bureaucratic revolution, but in a manner not envisaged by Marx, Engels or Lenin, nor in a manner that is at all desirable from the standpoint of revolutionary communism.

The bourgeois state and the Marxist programme

The state, fundamentally, is the oppressive apparatus used by the ruling class to defend its economic dominance in society.

Thus, we define the class nature of a state, not by its form (which for all states can vary tremendously), nor even by the specific features of its apparatus, but by the economic regime, the mode of production, that it defends. We recognise that the common feature of all states that have ever existed is the presence of a public force – bodies of armed men whose job it is to defend the given mode of production. As Engels noted: “We saw that an essential characteristic of the state is the existence of a public force differentiated from the mass of the people.”1 Or as Trotsky expressed it: “Friedrich Engels once wrote that the state, including the democratic republic, consists of detachments of armed men in defence of property; everything else serves only to embellish or camouflage this fact.”2

From this it follows that all social revolutions necessarily involve the passing of state power from one class to another: However for the bourgeoisie, during its revolutionary struggle against feudalism, it was not necessary for it to smash the feudal state or its public force. By virtue of its economic dominance prior to its achievement of political power it was possible for the bourgeoisie to merely capture the allegiance of the public force, of the whole state machine (through its influence and wealth). In other words the bourgeoisie captured and perfected the old state machine. It did not smash it:

“All revolutionaries perfected this machine instead of breaking it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor.”3

But the nature of the proletariat as a class and the task of its revolution – the conscious construction of a communist society – require that the proletariat organise itself as a ruling class with unique and particular state forms. Unlike all “hitherto existing revolutionary classes” the proletariat cannot achieve its historical objective by laying hold of the existing machinery and form of state – its army, bureaucracy and officialdom – and use it to implement its programme.

This was the principal lesson that Marx and Engels drew from the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871: “But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation.”4

The goal of Marxists is the abolition of classes and therefore also of all states. This is to be achieved in the first phase by the dictatorship of the proletariat; a state to be sure, but one that is, properly speaking only a semi-state:

“As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection – nothing necessitates a special coercive force, a state. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state [i.e. the workers’ state -Eds] is not ‘abolished’. It withers away.”5

Because the proletariat’s seizure of power inaugurates the transition to socialism, because the dictatorship of the proletariat is the first act in the very withering away of the state itself (i.e. of a form of coercive apparatus), the proletariat must smash the state of the bourgeoisie and replace it with a state of a new sort. Lenin, against the opportunists, made the necessity of this action clear: The supercession of the bourgeois state by the proletariat is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state i.e. of the state in general, is impossible except through a process of “withering away”.6

If the essential characteristic of the state is the existence of bodies of armed men in defence of property, then the essential element in the smashing of the state is the destruction of the armed power of the bourgeoisie. This is a fundamental law of proletarian revolution. By smashing the state we mean first and foremost smashing its armed apparatus. Marx left no room for doubt on this question:

“Paris could resist only because in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.”7

The Bolsheviks later codified this lesson into their programme:

“When the proletariat is fighting for the power, against whom and what is it fighting? In the first place against this bourgeois organisation [the state-Eds]. Now when it is fighting this organisation its task is to deliver blows that will destroy the organisation. But since the main strength of the government resides in the army, if we wish to gain victory over the bourgeoisie the first essential is to disorganise and destroy the bourgeois army.”8

The armed bodies of the bourgeoisie – its police and standing army – must be abolished and replaced by a militia of the armed proletariat. This repressive element of the state must be smashed, prior to or in the process of, the proletariat achieving state power. The degree of violence involved in that seizure of power will be determined by the degree to which the bourgeoisie have lost control over, and allegiance of, the coercive apparatus of the state. As long as the bourgeoisie’s armed power remains at all intact then the proletariat still faces the task of destroying it. Otherwise it will be used to crush the proletariat itself.

But, in addition to its armed forces the capitalist state maintains itself by alienating the mass of producers from the administration of society by means of a huge and powerful bureaucratic apparatus (civil service, judges etc.) This is directly and indirectly linked to the army and police etc. Thus the smashing of the state must also involve the destruction of this bureaucracy. The highest ranks of the executive bureaucracy – the top civil servants, the judges – must be immediately abolished by the proletariat revolution and replaced by responsible, recallable representatives of the proletariat. In this way the bourgeois executive is smashed.

This is vital for reasons made clear by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto: “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for the managing of the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”9

The bureaucracy of the modern state however, also consists of large numbers of lower ranking officials who possess administrative skills that would be vital to the functioning of a young workers’ state. Therefore, the bureaucracy in its entirety would not be smashed. Rather the ranks of the lower officialdom would be heavily purged and placed under the control of the workers themselves. Lenin, for example, distinguished between the smashing of the key elements of the oppressive apparatus and the need for the workers’ state to maintain certain elements of the administrative apparatus bequeathed it by the bourgeois state. He made this clear in advance of the seizure of state in “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?”:

“In addition to the chiefly ‘oppressive’ apparatus the standing army, the police, the bureaucracy-the modern state possesses an apparatus which has extremely close connections with the banks and the syndicates ... This apparatus must not, and should not, be smashed.”10

The tasks of book-keeping, accounting and so forth would be fulfilled by those sections of the bureaucracy thus retained by the workers’ state. The Marxist tradition maintained that such initial acts as limiting the pay of all officials to that of a skilled worker, subjecting the apparatus to workers’ control, were in themselves, preparatory to the gradual disappearance of administration as a distinct element in the social division of labour separate from and set against the producers themselves. The task facing a proletarian state was to progressively eliminate the separate caste of full time administrators on the road to building a communist society. This task was always seen, however, as distinct from the immediate act of smashing the bourgeoisie’s oppressive machine.

Prior to the October revolution Lenin outlined the tasks of the Bolsheviks in this sphere of the state apparatus thus:

“Power to the Soviets means radically reshaping the entire old state apparatus, that bureaucratic apparatus which hampers everything democratic. It means removing this apparatus and substituting for it a new, popular one, ie a truly democratic apparatus of soviets, i.e. the organised and armed majority of the people – the workers, soldiers and peasants. It means allowing the majority of the people initiative and independence not only in the election of deputies, but also in state administration in effecting reforms and various other changes.”11

In addition to the destruction of the bourgeois state machine Marxists also insist that the proletarian revolution involves a positive action – the consolidation of a state of a completely new sort which is in the process of withering away from its very inception. In other words the organs of destruction (of the bourgeois state) are, in turn, the organs of reconstruction, of a workers’ state. The workers’ state itself will disappear with the advent of communism that is with the disappearance of classes. Marx and Lenin were clear the building up of the workers’ state was a process that took place after as well as during the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the seizure of state power by the proletariat. This process constitutes the final element of the smashing of the state. It constitutes the continuation of class struggle even after the conquest of power by the proletariat: After the overthrow of the exploiting classes Lenin “repeats and explains in every chapter of State and Revolution the proletariat will shatter the old bureaucratic machine and create its own apparatus out of employees and worker.”12

 

The victory and defeat of Soviet power

 

The October revolution marked the passing of state power to the proletariat organised to wield that power with new distinctively proletarian state forms – the workers’ militia, the factory committees and the soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants’ deputies.

The police and army of the Russian bourgeoisie had been smashed as instruments upon which the bourgeoisie could rely in order to defend its class rule. The last significant attempt of the Russian bourgeoisie to deploy the army in defence of its interests crumbled with the defeat of the Kornilov coup in August 1917. After that – in the struggle against the Moscow uprising and in the form of the White Guards of the civil war, the bourgeoisie could only deploy armed force as an instrument of counter revolution-against a victorious proletariat. In all of the major industrial centres the standing army and police force was replaced by the armed power of the workers’ militia. The most essential aspect of the smashing of the capitalist state was completed – i.e. the bourgeoisie was deprived of its powers of coercion.

The executive power of the bureaucracy – its civil service chiefs and judges – was smashed by the soviet power. But the young proletarian state faced the task of building new forms of administration and regulation on the basis of the armed power of the proletariat expressed in the soviets. It faced that task in conditions of extreme material backwardness and, increasingly, of International isolation. In order to ensure the very survival of proletarian power the young proletarian state was forced to maintain, and even reintroduce, capitalist state forms in a workers’ state. A standing army was created, material privileges were granted to officials with particular invaluable skills and experience and a standing bureaucracy had to be maintained in order to preside over the unequal distribution of goods in a situation of extreme shortages :and disruption of production. Lenin and Trotsky both noted and explained this inevitable development. First, Lenin:

“Bourgeois law in relation to the distribution of the objects of consumption assumes, of course, inevitably a bourgeois state, for law is nothing without an apparatus capable of compelling observance of its norms. It follows that under Communism not only will bourgeois law survive for a certain time, but also even a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie.”

And for Trotsky:

“For the defence of ‘bourgeois law’ the workers’ state was compelled to create a ‘bourgeois’ type of instrument – that is the same old gendarmes although in a new uniform.”14.

By the death of Lenin the old administrative apparatus overwhelmingly determined the functioning and administration of the new soviet state. Lenin talked of Soviet Russia as a workers’ state with profound bureaucratic deformations. The administrative apparatus in Russia was not replaced by a state of a new sort in any permanent or lasting form. But, in our view, the forms of the state were not decisive. Despite its reversion to old forms of administration, the state was based on the defence, and that time particularly, the extension of new forms of property.

The possibility of different forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat has always been anticipated by Marxists, whose method is based on a dialectical analysis of concrete reality and not on the rigid application of schematic norms to reality. Thus Bukharin perceptively commented, against Kautsky:

“In his [Marx – Eds] analysis of capitalist production he took capitalist economy in its ‘pure’ form i.e. in a form uncomplicated by any vestiges of the old (feudal) relations of production, or any national peculiarities and so on, and he treats the question of the dictatorship of the working class in the same way, as a question of the workers’ dictatorship in general, that is to say a dictatorship which destroys capitalism in its pure form. And there was no other way to consider the question if he was to do it in abstract theoretical terms ie if he was to give the broadest algebraic formula for the dictatorship. Experience of the social struggle now permits concrete definition of. the question along the most diverse lines.”15

Likewise Lenin had not expected the dictatorship to have a universal form:

“Bourgeois states are most varied in form, but their essence is the same; all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.

The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same; the dictatorship of the proletariat.”16

The degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks increased the diversity of these potential forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat with tragic consequences for the Soviet and international working class, leading Trotsky to comment:

“In the interim between the conquest of power and the dissolution of the workers’ state within socialist society the forms and methods of proletarian rule may change sharply depending on the course of the class struggle internally and externally.”17

What for Lenin and Trotsky had been a temporary retreat or truce in the direction of strengthening bourgeois state forms in order to consolidate the workers’ state, was embraced as a permanent and conscious goal by the Stalinists. They strove to consolidate and extend elements of the capitalist state form in the USSR as a base for their own material privileges and as an obstacle to the proletariat’s realisation of socialism. In that the Soviet state defends bourgeois norms of distribution, in that it maintains a massive standing bureaucracy, army and police force against the masses, it retains key features of the state of the old, bourgeois type.

In that it defends, albeit in the manner of the privileged bureaucracy, the property relations of October it retains a proletarian character. Within the degenerated workers’ state bourgeois state forms continue to present themselves to the proletariat as an obstacle to the transition to socialism. The political revolution will destroy the power of the bureaucracy and, in so doing, either destroy completely bourgeois state forms or, where necessary, place them under the strict controls of the organs of the healthy workers’ state.

However, from this we do not conclude that there are two types of state co-existant in the USSR. We describe the degenerate workers’ state as one that has a dual, contradictory nature. It defends proletarian property forms but it does so with coercive instruments normally associated with capitalist states. It does this because the working class have been politically expropriated by the bureaucracy. Trotsky described the dual nature of the USSR thus:

“The state assumes directly and from the very beginning [i.e. even in its healthy period – Eds] a dual character; socialistic, in so far as it defends social property in the means of production bourgeois, in so far as the distribution of life’s goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing there from.”

This dual character remains right up to today but we should add that the bureaucracy have a monopoly of political control over the bourgeois aspect of the state and it serves first and foremost their interests. The Stalinist programme is historically committed to the maintenance of bourgeois state forms and the suppression of proletarian state forms even should bourgeois property relations be overthrown.

 

The bureaucratic workers’ government

 

When we look at each of the post war overturns we can see that in no case did the Stalinists permit the old bourgeois state to be replaced by a state of a new sort based on workers’ councils and a workers’ militia. Throughout the process they tried as best they could to strengthen and maintain bourgeois state forms – a standing army and police force, a bureaucracy separate from, and in opposition to, the mass of toilers.

The realisation of this element of their programme placed the Stalinists alongside the bourgeoisie in the struggle to break up the embryonic organs of a healthy workers’ state that emerged, in some form, prior to the creation of degenerate workers’ states in each case, ie in the period 1944-47.

While this was the case – and the new workers’ states were therefore created in a form bureaucratically degenerate from birth – in each case the armed bodies of men of the old ruling class were smashed and broken up either by the entry of the Red Army into Eastern Europe, by Stalinist led partisans as in Yugoslavia, Albania and later China or, in the 1959-60 by the politically petty bourgeois July 26th Movement in Cuba. These coercive bodies were smashed to the extent that the bourgeoisie were no longer able to deploy armed force in defence of their remaining property rights, just as the coercive machinery of the Russian bourgeoisie its army and police – disintegrated prior to the direct seizure of power by the proletariat and, to that extent, was smashed before the October revolution. Thus it is indisputable that the armed power of the bourgeoisie was physically smashed prior to each of the bureaucratic revolutions that marked the expansion of Stalinism in the post war period. This is decisive in understanding why apparently peaceful bureaucratic revolutions were able to take place. The essential element of the smashing of the bourgeois state had, in fact, already been completed.

In each case the outcome of this initial act of smashing was – as had been the case in Russia during the process of the disintegration of the Russian bourgeoisie’s enormous standing army – a highly unstable period of dual power. In each case there coexisted:

a) the forms of a reassembled/reasserted bourgeois state kept in viable existence by the continuing direct links between the particular native bourgeoisies and the armed power of world imperialism, but in each case in need of decisive external aid in order to reconstruct and deploy armed power in defence of its property of its own accord;

b) the embryo of degenerate workers’ states – in the form of the Red Army itself or of Stalinist – led armed bodies, not inevitably forced to, but in exceptional circumstances capable of, resolving the contradictory dual power period through the medium of a bureaucratic workers’ government should either the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy or the interests and privileges of a nascent Stalinist bureaucratic caste based on national proletarian forces come under threat in circumstances where the balance of forces between the Stalinists and the imperialists is unfavourable to the latter.

The Comintern recognised two types of “workers’ governments”: ostensible workers’ governments – liberal and Social Democratic – that were in reality bourgeois governments; and workers’ governments that could act as a bridge to the dictatorship of the proletariat. To the three types of the latter category: workers’ and peasants’ government, workers’ government in which communists participate and governments in which communists predominate, the experience after 1945 obliges us to add a fourth type: the bureaucratic workers’ government. In this new type Stalinists are politically dominant. The government has the programme of anti-capitalist measures constituting the expropriation of the bourgeoisie whilst simultaneously depriving the working class of political power.

Thus it prevents the formation or development of organs of proletarian struggle, self-organisations and democracy (soviets) with methods which range from political misleadership to outright military repression. Where the working class has a history of conscious revolutionary struggle, has an alternative revolutionary leadership, the element of repression, of breaking the proletariat's advance, of smashing and bureaucratising its parties, soviets and trade unions, will generally precede the formation of a bureaucratic workers’ government.

Where the proletariat is weak in numbers or where its class consciousness is obscured by petty bourgeois illusions, the process may take place while the masses are mobilised for non-socialist tasks but before clear class goals and the political forms are created to achieve and defend them, exist. In the latter case the element of repression, of Stalinist dictatorship may be attenuated for a whole period. However, what defines a bureaucratic workers' government is that it is not under the control or conscious pressure of the organs that can form the basis of a full political dictatorship of the proletariat. It is thus anti-capitalist but a bridge to a degenerate not a healthy workers' state.

Thus in Eastern Europe and in degenerate workers’ states created since the late 1940s the bourgeoisie is overthrown by an anti capitalist bureaucratic workers’ government. Such an overthrow of the bourgeoisie could only take place, in each case, after the potential organs of a healthy workers’ state had been either physically destroyed or rendered mere appendages to the Stalinists. In Eastern Europe what remained of the bourgeoisie's administrative apparatus, in each case was either deliberately maintained or reinstituted. The administrative apparatus – composed largely of the personnel of the old regime – was purged and key positions within it occupied by the Stalinists and their allies.

This utilisation of the capitalist state’s administrative apparatus (suitably purged) for the purposes of social revolution would have been impossible had the capitalist class not been deprived of their control of armed force. The armed power of a degenerate workers'’state (as in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam and later Cuba, Stalinist-Ied peasants armies) can be said to have completed the first and essential stage in the smashing of the capitalist state. This alone facilitated the later complete political and economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie.

The resolution of dual power in each case did not occur on the basis of the programme of revolutionary Marxism. The Stalinists moved against the bourgeoisie, having already destroyed their armed power, with the full intention of maintaining a state profoundly similar to that of the old bourgeois type, not of replacing it with a state of a new soviet type. The creation of new workers’ states was the work not of the working class acting in its own name and through its own democratic organisations but of a counter revolutionary caste based on the working class. This process was complete only after the liquidation of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of proletarian property forms. At every stage in the process the programme of the working class would have remained the seizure of power by the working class itself and the establishment of a state of a new type based on soviets and the armed workers.

This process does not contradict the Marxist theory of the state. It demonstrates that the capitalist state can be destroyed by counter revolutionary workers’ parties only to the extent that these new states no longer defend capitalist property relations while retaining most of the features of bourgeois type states. They are therefore an obstacle to the socialist transformation of society. The creation of a healthy proletarian state, a genuine semi-state, remains a task of the working class political revolution against the bureaucratic caste.

This does not mean that workers’ states can be created without the smashing of the capitalist state. The bureaucratic revolutions were only possible because in each case the coercive apparatus of the bourgeoisie had been smashed. The Eastern European overturns were to prove that the historical and material preconditions for the creation of workers’ states had been revised and extended as a direct result of the creation of the first workers' state in October 1917 and its consequent degeneration.

The Russian revolution mapped out the only conscious and revolutionary road for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of communism. The healthy workers' state will be the revolutionary product of the independent actions and organs of the mass of the working class, headed by a revolutionary Trotskyist party, which seeks to preserve the revolution by its extension internationally.

However, the degeneration of the Russian Revolution has meant that in certain exceptional historical circumstances, the preservation of the remaining gains of the October Revolution, together with concern for its own privileges, has driven the Stalinist bureaucracy or Stalinist parties to overthrow capitalism in a counter-revolutionary manner which retards the working class struggle for socialism and communism.

 

Footnotes

1. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, (London, 1972),p.180.

2. L. Trotsky, Whither France, (London, 1974),p.108.

3. K. Marx, Marx and Engels Collected Works, (London, 1979) voI.11,p.186.

4. K. Marx, Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune, (Moscow, 1976) p.202.

5. F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, (Peking, 1976), p.363.

6. V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, (Moscow, 1964), vol.25,p.400.

7. K. Marx, The Civil War in France, (Moscow, 1972),p.53.

8. N. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Communism, (Harmondsworth,1970),p.128.

9. Marx and Engels, Collected Works, (London, 1976),vol.6,p.486.

10. V.I.Lenin; Collected Works, (Moscow, 1964),-vol:26,pp.105-6:

11. Ibid., vol.25,p.368.

12. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, (New York, 1972),p.50 (our emphasis).

13. V.I. Lenin, op.cit., voI.25,p.471.

14. L. Trotsky, op.cit., p.53.

15. N. Bukharin, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period, (London, 1979), p.37.

16. V.I.Lenin, Op.cit., vol. 25,p.413.

17. L. Trotsky, Writings 1934-35, (New York~974),p.172.

18. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p.54.

 


Chapter 5: Vietnam's long revolution: a history of war, compromise and betrayal

 

For over thirty years the Vietnamese masses struggled against imperialist control of their country - by the Japanese, the British, the French and the Americans. This protracted anti-imperialist struggle ended with the creation of a degenerate workers’ state in Vietnam. The heroic struggle of the Vietnamese masses influenced a section of the Trotskyist movement to ignore the counter-revolutionary nature of the Stalinist leadership of this struggle.

During the 1970s the majority of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) denied that the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) was Stalinist and opposed the programme of political revolution for North Vietnam.1 Ernest Mandel argued:

“Because for us the Yugoslav, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean revolutionaries are distorted socialist revolutions led by bureaucratically distorted working class parties we prefer not to call the parties which led these revolutions ‘Stalinist Parties’” 2

The USFI’s Vietnam “expert” Pierre Rousset takes this point further:

“Of all these parties’ [i.e. Yugoslavian, Greek and Chinese – eds] the Vietnamese has travelled furthest in the direction of a rediscovery of the principles of Marxism” 3

However, the history of the VCP in the course of this struggle, and the nature of the social revolutions that have occurred in Vietnam, stand in sharp contradiction to this opportunist assessment by the USFI. The Vietnamese revolutions were carried through and betrayed by a thoroughly Stalinist leadership.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War as the Japanese armies retreated from Vietnam the Stalinist-led resistance movement - the Vietminh - took power.

The Vietminh, whose full title, “The Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh”, means the League for the Independence of Vietnam, was founded by the VCP, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh in May 1941. It was a classic popular front embracing bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalists, and announced a programme strictly limited to national independence. The VCP even dropped its slogan of “Land to the Tillers” in order to woo the bourgeois nationalists, it supported the Allied war effort – supplying the Americans and British with information about Japanese movements - and received aid and weapons from Chiang Kai Shek and the American Office of Strategic Services.

In the North it was in control by 20 August 1945 and then after out manoeuvring the Southern United National Front (which consisted of various nationalist groupings and a section of the Vietnamese Trotskyist movement) it established a “Provisional Executive Committee of South Vietnam” in Saigon. The independent and united Democratic Republic of Vietnam was declared by Ho Chi Minh on 2 September, at this time, apart from the armies of the Stalinist-led Vietminh, no coercive state apparatus existed.

The French had been disarmed by the Japanese in 1945. The Japanese forces were in complete disarray. The British expeditionary force that was to re-establish order on behalf of the French had not yet arrived. Thus the Vietminh, as a result of the “August Revolution” were in total control. Yet in these extremely advantageous circumstances the VCP proceeded to attack the Vietnamese working class, their revolutionary leaders (the Trotskyists) and lay the basis for a pact with imperialism that reopened Indo-China to imperialist armies of occupation for another 30 years. Such a historic betrayal underlines the Stalinist nature of the VCP. It reveals it as a counter-revolutionary party.

The August Revolution, at least in the South, and particularly in Saigon posed the objective possibility of the creation of a healthy workers state in Vietnam. Following the defeat of the Japanese, the workers in the South, often acting under Trotskyist leadership4 established some 150 “Peoples Committees”, these committees organised many thousands of workers, they were embryonic Soviets.5 They stood as a potential governmental alternative, and thus a second power, to the Vietminh coalition (with the ex-Emperor Bao Dai included in it by Ho!) The spectre of independent working class power terrified the Stalinists. Their project was for a negotiated settlement with imperialism, aimed merely at the guarantee of independence. Bourgeois property and the bourgeois state in Vietnam were to remain intact. As the Stalinist leader in the South, Nguyen Van Tao declared:

“Our government I repeat is a democratic and middle class government, even though the Communists are now in power.” 6

Thus, instead of basing themselves on the Peoples Committees, they proceeded to smash them. Ho Chi Minh based the constitution of his Democratic Republic on the bourgeois American Declaration of Independence (it opened with a sentence from that Declaration foreshadowing similar utterances from Fidel Castro). Five days after this declaration by Ho, the Stalinists issued a decree on 7 September , outlawing all armed bodies except their own. This was a direct attack on the armed workers.

Ten days after the declaration of independence on 12 September 1945, the Stalinists welcomed General Gracey, chief of the British expeditionary force, into Vietnam. In order to forestall organised working class resistance to this treachery, the Stalinists arrested and murdered the leaders of both the Trotskyist organisations. The Peoples Committees, robbed of their leaders, were effectively crushed by the British and the newly-returned French in heavy fighting in Saigon.

The Stalinists’ bloody services earned them little thanks from the imperialists. Preparing for the return of French troops to Vietnam was always the aim of the British. General Gracey had brought some French troops with him. He armed French troops who had been interned by the Japanese declared martial law in Saigon, forbade publication of Vietnamese language papers and allowed French troops and officials to take over all Vietminh-held public buildings in Saigon on 23 September. Having crushed the Saigon resistance to this restoration the British then stood aside leaving a clear field for the French General Leclerc to launch a campaign for the reconquest of the whole of Indochina.

Thus the Stalinist collaboration with the British resulted, in effect, in handing the South over to the French. The attempt to prevent this in October 1945 was doomed. The Saigon rising called by the Vietminh was abortive and the French, British and -Japanese troops, rearmed by the British, quickly massacred many of the insurgents. Ho, still in control in the North, then compounded his earlier treachery by seeking a negotiated pact with the French. The fruit of this was the 6 March 1946 agreement with the French which allowed them (with 25,000 troops) to enter Hanoi and the North. Having gained this enormous advantage the French repaid Ho by shelling the northern port of Haiphong in November 1946, deliberately provoking the Vietminh into war. Only when given no other option by imperialism did Ho sanction a war against the French by the Vietminh – a costly war made necessary by the actions of the Stalinists in August September of 1945.

 

Ho Chi Minh negotiates defeat

 

From the March settlement through to the shelling of Haiphong, Ho had been busy negotiating. In May 1946 he went to Paris in a bid to secure a referendum on independence in the South. The status of the South had been the outstanding problem in negotiations with France since March. In September Ho and the Socialist Minister of Overseas France, Marius Moulet, signed a “modus vivendi” in a bid to keep the negotiations open Despite this, the French imperialists had no intention of giving up their “right” to Vietnam. In November, following the formation of an army, under Va Nguyen Giap by Ho, the French General in Saigon – Vallay – telephoned the French commander in Haiphong and gave him the following message:

“Attempts at conciliation ... are out of season. The moment has come to give a severe lesson to those who have treacherously attacked you. Use all the means at your disposal to make yourself complete master of Haiphong and so bring the Vietnamese army around to a better understanding of the situation.” 7

On 23 November 1946, the town was shelled and some 20,000 Vietnamese were killed. Despite this, on 20 December Ho made yet another appeal (to Leon Blum) for negotiations. However, it is unlikely that the appeal reached him – the French generals held it up in Saigon. Ho was thus forced into a war of liberation by the imperialists.

These events demonstrate clearly that it is not the case that the Stalinists will inevitably carry through a social overturn whenever their repressive apparatus holds sway, and that of the capitalists has disintegrated.

There are two major reasons for this Vietnamese variant on the pattern elsewhere after the establishment of the armed hegemony of the Stalinists. Firstly, the Soviet bureaucracy had agreed to French imperialism’s claims for the re-establishment of its colonial power in Indochina. Vietnam, like Greece, had been definitively signed over to imperialism by the Kremlin. The imperialists could act with confidence to re-establish their state apparatus, knowing that the Soviet bureaucracy would not resist.

The second reason was that the Vietnamese Stalinists could not break with Stalin’s plans – as had the YCP and the CCP (however partially). This was due in the last analysis to the strength of the Vietnamese working class. Far more immediately than in China and Yugoslavia, the Stalinists were faced with the real threat of the establishment of genuine workers’ power. Their influence was rivalled by that of the Trotskyists, at least in the South. To have resisted the re-introduction of imperialist troops would have unleashed forces that the Stalinists would not have been able to contain. The Stalinist programme for the political expropriation of the working class had to be carried through in bloody alliance with imperialism.

The Vietnamese experience in 1945-46 shows how utterly false it is to believe that the Stalinists are compelled by some sort of objective process to economically and politically expropriate the bourgeoisie. It is completely false to characterise any regime within which the Stalinists have achieved armed hegemony as a workers’ state, or even a workers’ state in the process of formation. This position presumes that Stalinism is inevitably compelled to establish workers’ states and is therefore both expansionist and progressive.

In the war that raged from the end of 1946 through to July 1954, the Vietminh pursued a strategy identical to that of Mao’s CCP/PLA. The Vietminh withdrew its forces from the cities and began a strictly rural guerrilla war, leaving the small but, as 1945 had shown, strategically important working class of Vietnam in centres like Saigon, at the mercy of the French. It is true that the northern cities, especially Hanoi, were returned to the French only after very fierce fighting. However, once defeated in the cities, the Vietminh made no further attempt to base their war effort in any way on the urban population, until they had actually achieved victory.

Again, as in the war against the Japanese, the Stalinists fought on a purely nationalist programme. The struggle was called a “national democratic” struggle and Ho repeated many times that his aim was unity and independence on a capitalist basis and under the auspices of a coalition regime. Indeed, in the areas liberated by the Vietminh land reform – the crying need of the peasants who supported Ho’s army – was not granted until 1953.

The appeal of nationalism was very real in a country which had been directly controlled by the French since 1888. This domination squeezed every section of Vietnamese society including the national bourgeoisie which controlled only 5 per cent of private capital in Vietnam, and that mainly in the low profit agricultural sector.

In the course of the war the Stalinist leadership of the Vietminh, the VCP maintained themselves and their army by means of a tax on agricultural produce in the liberated areas. The Vietminh levied such a tax twice a year. It had 41 scales, ranging from 5 per cent to 45 per cent, depending on income. A trade tax (maximum of 28 per cent on net profits) was also levied. The Party branch in each village was responsible for the collection of taxes. They were also able to retain a portion of the taxes collected to use for local purposes.

During the 1956 Rectification of Errors campaign, many party cadres admitted to having “persuaded” peasants to pay more tax than they should have done. This taxation system was crucial in explaining the crystallisation of a Stalinist bureaucracy in advance of the creation of a degenerate workers’ state in Vietnam.

This bureaucratic caste had at its head Ho Chi Minh, Va Nguyen Giap, Pham Van Dong, Hoang Quoc Vet and Truong Chinh the established leadership of the VCP since the 1930s. Their brief enjoyment of government in 1945 had whetted the appetite of these bureaucrats for power, their dependence on a tax on the peasants who supported them and their Vietminh army provided a material base for the restoration of that power. Their programme was aimed at achieving governmental power, but not at smashing capitalism and the capitalist state in Vietnam. They were genuinely willing to co-exist with capitalism. Upon achieving power, however, the brutal realities of imperialism exposed this project as not only a reactionary one, but also an absolute utopia.

French imperialism emerged from the Second World War a considerably weakened world power. Their re-entry into Vietnam was only as a result of British intervention and a guarantee of non-intervention by the Soviet Union. Their early victories were a consequence of the Vietminh’s self-defeating treachery to the working class and the Vietnamese People in 1945. However, by the late 1940s the French were beginning to lose the war. A series of defeats enabled the Vietminh to launch an offensive in 1950.

The ability to launch this offensive was greatly facilitated by the victory of Mao in China, who officially recognised Ho’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 16 January 1950 and supplied the Vietminh with arms. Moscow only recognised the DRV after Mao had – on 31 January. No significant aid to the Vietminh was forthcoming from Moscow. The offensive was however defeated because in May the US decided to give military aid to the French. Anxious after Mao’s victory they were very concerned to keep Asia under imperialist control – via the French in Indochina and themselves directly in Korea. In July 1950, the first American military mission arrived in Vietnam. Despite American aid, which was not extensive enough, French imperialism was not able to sustain a successful war effort. In 1952 a second offensive by the Vietminh began.This culminated in the decisive defeat of the French in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.

This defeat gave Ho Chi Minh absolute control of the North and considerable prestige and support in the South. Once again imperialism was at a tremendous disadvantage. Once again the VCP prevented the Vietnamese masses from consolidating a final victory.

 

U.S. imperialism fills the breach

 

Prior to the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the USA, Britain, France and the Kremlin had convened a peace conference in Geneva.

This opened on 26 April 1954. The US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles made clear that the US was not interested in a negotiated peace with Ho Chi Minh. Immediately after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the then vice-president Nixon announced that if the French left, the US would move in. When the Geneva accords were signed, dividing Vietnam at the 17th parallel, recognising the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and providing for elections throughout a unified Vietnam in 1956, the US simply refused to sign.

They had strengthened their economic hold on the South, had installed a pro-American premier in June 1954 – Ngo Dinh Diem – and had increased their military aid to the French and the Saigon government’s forces. Their intentions were clear and yet Ho Chi Minh, with massive support throughout the country, with an army whose victories meant its morale was high, refused to move against the puppet Diem and instead signed the Geneva Accords on 21 July 1954.8 This was the Stalinists’ second historic betrayal in Vietnam, and one which, like the first, was to lead to many more years of war and suffering for the Vietnamese masses.

As his part of the bargain, Ho agreed not to move against capitalism in the North. He maintained the goal of achieving a capitalist democracy, despite the hegemony of Stalinist armed forces in the North. However, if, in 1945 it was the spectre of working class power that led the Stalinists to compromise with imperialism, between 1954-56 the intransigence of US imperialism’s puppet Diem forced them in the direction of overthrowing capitalism by means of a bureaucratic social revolution. Within months of the Geneva Accords, it became clear that Diem with the backing of the world’s most powerful imperialist nation – the USA – had no intention of allowing elections to take place.

Diem set about hunting out and killing all Southern Vietminh activists. He began military manoeuvres at the 17th parallel to provoke the North. At the same time the US blocked French aid to the DRV, and began an economic blockade of the North. In July 1955 Diem declared that South Vietnam had not signed the Geneva accords and did not therefore recognise them. In the following October he declared South Vietnam a Republic. This happened under the careful eye of the US. In November 1954, General Collins, Eisenhower’s special Ambassador to South Vietnam arrived in Saigon to give Diem backing against the French who remained sceptical of Diem. In January 1955 the (US started to give military aid directly to the South Vietnamese army instead of via the French, and a press campaign in the US, began in praise of Diem. The following month the US military mission took over training of the Southern Army from the French.

In these circumstances Ho was forced to change course. There was now no threat of independent working class power in the North. The wave of mass support that had followed Dien Bien Phu had largely receded. It was safe for Ho and the Stalinist caste that he represented to move against capitalism using bureaucratic means in the North. At the end of 1955 French businesses in the North were nationalised and a land reform programme was launched. A national planning board was set up and at the beginning of 1957 it implemented a one year plan. This was quickly followed by a three year plan:

“To liquidate capitalist ownership of the means of production in industry and trade”9

By 1960, no purely private enterprises remained in North Vietnam. Despite the miniscule size of the industrial base in the North (in 1954 there were only seven large-scale – French-owned – plants in the North), the drive to liquidate capitalism and plan the economy was facilitated by aid from Peking and Moscow. On 7 July 1955, Moscow concluded an aid deal with Hanoi with the establishment of a planned economy at the beginning of 1957, North Vietnam can be said the have become a degenerate workers’ state. On the basis of its planned property relations, North Vietnam was able to expand industrial output significantly. In 1955 state industries accounted for 40 per cent of total non-agricultural production (not including handicraft industries). By 1960 this had risen to 90 per cent of total non-agricultural production.10

Between 1954 and mid-1955 the government in Vietnam was a Stalinist-controlled bourgeois workers’ government. It acted, consciously in the interests of capitalism even though there were no bourgeois parties in the government. Bao Dai, who fled to the South in 1949 had been Ho’s main hope for a coalition. Between the second half of 1955 and 1957 however the blockade and sabotage of US imperialism and the actions of their puppet, Diem in South Vietnam, forced this government onto the road of systematic anti-capitalist measures, carried through bureaucratically.

Vietminh cadres, not independent workers and peasants’ organisations strictly controlled the nationalisations and land reform. The regime at this stage was a bureaucratic workers’ government. In the period up to the second half of 1955, this government presided over a situation of dual power. Its eventual resolution was in the interests of the Stalinists, as had happened in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China. In this period, revolutionaries would have sought to break the bureaucratic stranglehold on the liquidation of capitalism and landlordism, by transforming it into a struggle for genuine workers’ power based on soviets, a workers’ militia. The bloody liquidation of Vietnamese Trotskyism had ensured that no such leadership existed.

The establishment of post-capitalist property forms in North Vietnam was achieved with counter-revolutionary consequences in both the North and the South. In the North, the working class was robbed of political power in the state by the Stalinist bureaucracy. In the South the struggle against imperialism suffered an enormous setback. Another 18 years of open war were inflicted on the Vietnamese masses, North and South, by the combined effects of Stalinist treachery and the US imperialist stranglehold.

By 1957 the US bad replaced the French as imperialist masters of South Vietnam. By 1957-58 US aid funded all of the South’s armed forces; the US funded 80 per cent of all other government expenditure and 90 per cent of all imports into the South were from the US. In addition, more than1,000 officers and men from the US were in the South training Diem’s army.

Diem’s state was vital to them as a bastion of anti-communism, a prop to the whole string of US semi-colonies in South-East Asia. It was a check to the “falling domino” effect that the Americans feared would result from a communist takeover in Indochina. With this backing, Diem was in a strong position to step up his repression against the Vietminh elements in the South. In 1957 captured Vietminh cadres were thrown into a network of concentration camps. Diem further antagonised the masses by carrying through a “land reform” programme that was explicitly designed to benefit the small number of catholic landlords who supported the catholic clique around Diem.

Prior to the land reform there were 600,000 landless peasants in the South. Over 50 per cent of the land was owned by 22 per cent of the total number of landowners, while 70 per cent owned a meagre 12 per cent of the land. The land reform launched by Diem did not give land to the landless. It merely introduced a maximum rent of 25 per cent of the crop harvested. Given that a majority of peasants had been paying no rent during the war, this was in fact a guaranteed income from rents to the big (catholic) landlords.

The repression and the mass opposition to Diem forced the Southern Vietminh (led by the VCP) into war. In 1957 the second Indochina war began. The southern National Liberation Front was officially formed in 1960, but the army that comprised it had already been fighting for three years. That army had fought during that period without any material support from the Hanoi government. Despite Diem’s obvious contempt for the Geneva Accords, Ho Chi Minh was determined to remain loyal to them. It was only in 1960 after three years of seeing his supporters fighting a difficult and bloody war against an imperialist backed dictatorship that Ho called for the commencement of a struggle in the South. Even then, however, the aid that Hanoi gave to the NLF, imperialist propaganda notwithstanding, was minimal. Pentagon figures revealed that of the NLF weapons captured between 1962-64, only 179 (less than 1 per cent) were neither home made nor from the US – i.e. could have come from the North.

The Americans had no such qualms as far as their puppet was concerned. They poured aid into South Vietnam. When Diem became an international embarrassment, after the brutal suppression of a Buddhist rising in 1963, the US backed a military coup that replaced Diem with an equally barbarous dictatorship, but one that included Buddhists to offset the charges of religious repression that had been aimed at Diem and his US-backers. However, instability reigned in the South. A general strike in Saigon brought down Diem’s successor. In the 20 months succeeding the coup (1 November 1963), nine governments came and went. By 1965, the US decided that drastic measures were needed. More troops were poured in and on 7 February the US began bombing North Vietnam.

American involvement had escalated sharply towards the end of the 1950s. Before Diem’s fall, Washington was giving him $1.5m dollars a day to smash the NLF. After Diem’s fall, troops were poured into the South. By August 1965 there were 125,000 US troops involved in the war. By 1966 this had risen to 400,000, and at the height of the war in the late 1960s, half a million US troops were involved.

 

The Popular Front is launched again

 

By 1960, the VCP was able to launch the N LF having already moulded the liberation movement in the popular frontist image of the Vietminh. As with its forerunner the NLF was dominated by the Stalinists. They controlled its strategy (capturing the cities by a rural takeover) which was always purely military and never sought to link the war with the struggles of the urban proletariat in Saigon and elsewhere.

The famous Tet Offensive of 1968, while serving as an example of the courage and determination of the NLF, also underlined the centrality of this non proletarian perspective. It left the urban masses as passive spectators of a rural military conflict.

The NLF’s programme repeated all the formulations of that of the Vietminh. It promised to guarantee capitalism and limit the revolution to a national democratic stage.11 The appeal of this programme to the mass of the peasantry was strong. In the same way as the Vietminh had based itself on the peasantry, so the NLF followed suit. On this basis they were able to sustain the war despite meagre aid from their “allies” in Moscow, Peking and Hanoi. By the early 1970s, it became clear that America could not win this protracted war. The anti-war movement in America and elsewhere was massive. Morale amongst American troops was low, whilst the prestige and morale of the NLF was high. For a third time the possibility of completely ousting imperialism and its puppets from Vietnam was on the agenda.

Yet for the third time, the Stalinists chose to sit at the negotiating table. In January 1973 the Paris Accords were signed, calling a ceasefire and recognising the legitimacy of the Southern state now ruled by General Thieu. The Stalinists hailed these accords which allowed Nixon and Kissinger, the bombers of Indochina, to present themselves as peacemakers a victory for the masses

The need for an agreement was also due to the terrible devastation the North was suffering as a result of American bombings. A tactical agreement (recognised as such) with imperialism, to gain a breathing space would be entirely legitimate for a workers’ state to undertake. However, this should not then be announced to the workers as a revolutionary victory. The Bolsheviks for example, did not regard Brest-Litovsk as a victory.

There was no way the Paris Accords could be regarded as a victory they were viewed as a strategic pact with imperialism of coarse this is precisely what the Stalinists were aiming for – a goal that could only have profoundly reactionary consequences for the Vietnamese masses.

General Thieu had no such intentions. Having gained a respite he regrouped his forces and, again with American aid, launched an attack on the NLF and the DRV. In July 1974, the Third Indochina War began. However, it was to be even more short lived and self-destructive for Thieu, than was Chiang Kai Shek’s 1945 offensive.

As victory for the combined NLF/DRV forces approached, the Stalinists again sought a compromise that would have left Thieu’s successor, General Minh, in power in Saigon, in coalition with the NLF. Their strategy remained the implementation of the Geneva Accords. However, Minh was intransigent and in April 1975, as the last panicky US officials scrambled, aboard their helicopters, the NLF/DRV forces entered Saigon.

The pattern established by the Stalinist takeovers in Eastern Europe, China and North Vietnam was closely followed in the South. Despite the collapse of the capitalists armed forces and the hegemony of those of the Stalinists, the VCP refused to move against capitalism. Instead, one of the first radio announcements made after Saigon fell was a plea to the Saigon workers, who had struck to greet the NLF/DRV forces, to return to work at once. The immediate pretext for keeping capitalism intact was the need to secure $3.25bn in aid from France and America. When the imperialist powers found pretexts to withhold the aid they had promised, the Stalinists had no alternative to carrying though a bureaucratic social revolution.

The Provisional Revolutionary Government, established in June 1975, was a Stalinist controlled bourgeois workers government which was quickly driven under the pressure of an imperialist blockade and a devastated economy onto the road of an anti capitalist bureaucratic workers government.

In August of 1975, this government nationalised the Southern banks, and took control of all southern industry. In September it raided the houses of the wealthiest inhabitants of the Cholon areas of Saigon. The period of dual power between the VCP and the mainly comprador bourgeoisie ended very quickly, because that bourgeoisie, detached from its lifeline to imperialism had little cause to collaborate with the Stalinists.

For their part the enormous devastation that the Stalinists inherited forced them to act against the extensive black market profiteering, which the comprador elements had engaged in. This way the VCP hoped to offset a developing state of chaos that could easily have produced their own downfall. The move to liquidate capitalism was imposed on the Stalinists by the need to preserve their newly-won governmental power.

During the course of 1976, the overturn of capitalism was consolidated by, first, the geographical assimilation of the South into the North, announced on 25 April 1976; secondly, the inauguration of the five-year plan in the summer of 1976 for both North and South; and thridly, the consolidation of an aid deal from China in 1976 followed by a series of aid deals with the USSR.

In no sense was the overturn the action of the masses themselves. The key moves against capitalism occurred after the decisive mobilisations of the Southern working class in April 1975 had abated. The mass demonstrations that did occur in the period from late 1975 to summer 1976 (the period of the bureaucratic workers’ government) did reflect the desire of the masses, after thirty years of civil war, to effect a fundamental change.

Nevertheless they were not mobilisations based on independent organs of workers’ power. They were organised and tightly controlled by the armed forces of the NLF/DRV.

Although the capitalist Cholon merchants existed as a very important force in South Vietnam up to 1978 (when they were expropriated by government edict), the launching of the plan in 1976 and the unification with the degenerate workers’ state in the North, can be said to be the point at which all of Vietnam became a degenerate workers’ state.

This bureaucratic social revolution, carried through in a counter revolutionary manner, involved the political expropriation of the Vietnamese working class. The political revolution against the Stalinist rulers of Vietnam, with the defence of the country against imperialism and its restorationist agents, is the central tasks facing the Vietnamese working class.

 

The case of ‘Democratic’ Kampuchea

 

While the creation of a degenerate workers’ state in Vietnam presents no theoretical problems for Trotskyists the same is not true of the genesis of Democratic Kampuchea. If this was a degenerate workers’ state, then careful consideration is needed of its dynamics and the means by which it came into existence in order to explain the horrendous crisis that gripped the country in the late 1970s. Here was a degenerate workers’ state which exhibited, apparently as its defining features, an absolute economic autarchy, genocide against its own population and perpetual famine. How is this to be explained?

In 1970 a military coup in Phnom Penh brought to power a US puppet regime, headed by Lon Nol, in Kampuchea. In the same year the South Vietnamese regime, with full backing from the US, entered Kampuchea to help Lon Nol crush the Khmer Rouge (the military wing of the Kampuchean Communist Party, CPK). The CPK, underground since 1963, had established a base of support amongst the peasantry in the late 1960s. With this support behind it, the CPK moved into war against Lon Nol and allied itself with his predecessor, Prince Sihanouk. The Kampuchean National United Front (FUNK) was formed to prosecute the war. It was described by one leading CPK member as, “the largest united front in the world – all the way up from the peasants to the former king of the country.”12 Indeed, the purpose of this “united front” was to bring to power the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (RGNUK) .

From the earliest phase of the 1970-75 war against Lol Nol and his South Vietnamese and US allies, the anti imperialist fighters were grouped together in a popular front.

The Stalinist CPK (whose leading cadre had been educated in Paris and by the French GP) quickly moved into an alliance with Sihanouk after his fall, despite the fact that it had been Sihanouk’s repression which had originally driven them into the countryside. In Kampuchea itself, the Stalinists were the overwhelmingly dominant force in the popular front, Prince Sihanouk being unable to field many troops and relying on Chinese support for influence within the alliance. The real weakness of his position was sharply revealed after the fall of Lon Nol in April 1975 – he was at first kept out of the country altogether and then eventually forced to resign as head of state by the CPK in March 1976.

The war conducted by the People’s National Liberation Armed Forces of Kampuchea (KPNALF - Khmer Rouge – is actually an anti-communist term of abuse for this army) followed closely the patterns of peasant war applied by Mao in China. The KPNALF established a series of liberated zones in which land reform was carried out (e.g. freeing the peasants from the vice-like grip of the city merchants), hospitals were built (under the direction of Dr. Thiounn Thioeun, the former head of the Medical Faculty of the University of Phnom Penh) and a literacy campaign was undertaken. In return the peasants supplied manpower, food and shelter for the guerrillas. The CPK bureaucracy was in this way able to consolidate a material base for itself prior to the final seizure of power.

By this strategy the KPNALF was able to exercise control over virtually the whole countryside, to isolate the cities and to move slowly against them. In this project there was no shortage of peasant support. The peasantry of Kampuchea was exploited not primarily by landlords (agriculture consisted mainly of small holdings) but by a comprador mercantile bourgeoisie. This class, based in the cities, bought rice from the peasantry at deflated prices, sold goods and equipment to them at inflated prices and lent the peasants the money, at high rates of interest, to pay the difference! Indeed, the ferocity of the peasants towards city life (even as represented by inanimate objects such as typewriters which were smashed wholesale after the victory) can be accounted for by their relations to the merchants who exploited them.

By April 1975 Phnom Penh was completely surrounded. The torrent of US bombs, South Vietnamese troops and Lon Nol’s terror machine had failed to check the anti-imperialist advance. On 17 April, after most of Lon Nol’s regime had fled, the KPNALF entered Phnom Penh.

In the successful anti-imperialist struggle the potential for the future defeats of the Kampuchean masses was already lodged. First, the popular frontism of the CPK was to ensure that the masses themselves were prevented from taking the reins of political power into their own hands. Second, the peasant war strategy had weakened the anti-imperialists in the cities. Spontaneous urban uprisings against Lon Nol had been deliberately left isolated. They were cruelly repressed by Lon Nol. When the peasants met the urban population, the latter, or more particularly its proletarian and progressive elements, were too weak and disorganised to resist the CPK’s economic and political plans. Writing about China in 1932, Trotsky had warned of the dangers arising out of a Stalinist led victorious peasant army:

“The party actually tore itself away from its class. Thereby, in the last analysis, it can cause injury to the peasantry as well. For, should the proletariat continue to remain on the sidelines, without organisation, without leadership, then the peasant war even if fully victorious, will inevitably arrive in a blind alley.”13

The blind alley predicted by Trotsky was the restoration of a new bourgeois power. The experience of bureaucratic revolutions allows us to modify this prediction. The blind alley can be a degenerate workers’ state in which the economy, because it is being planned blind and according to the needs of the bureaucracy, can bring terrible ruin to the mass of the people. Following 17 April and the seizure of power by the Stalinist led peasant army, this was the path that was followed in Kampuchea. A degenerate workers’ state was established, but it proved to be a tragic blind alley for the masses of Kampuchea.

 

A land devastated by imperialism

 

The RG NUK, as the government was called until January 1976, inherited a land verging on total ruin. Under Lon Nol’s rule the area under his control had become a virtual desert.

According to UN figures, “[t]he area under rice production fell from 2,399,000 hectares in 1970 to 737,000 in 1973”14. It fell to 500,000 by 1975. In 1974, the Phnom Penh regime was importing 282,000 tons of rice – in 1968 Kampuchea had exported 230,000 tons of rice. Industrial production fell to 42 per cent below its pre-war level. Of the total resources of Lol Nol’s Kampuchea, only 2.2 per cent came from domestic production.

The rest came from the US (95.1 per cent) and a number of other countries (2.7 per cent). Phnom Penh and the other cities were gripped by economic chaos and increasing famine in 1975. This terrible situation was compounded by the 400,000 tons of US bombs dropped on Kampuchea’s countryside. The population of Phnom Penh swelled from 600,000 to 3 million, to create in the city a “Saigon syndrome” of corruption starvation, depravity and cruelty – before the entry of the KPNALF. Further, the war is estimated to have resulted, in the deaths of some 600,000 and at least as many wounded, out of a population of only 7 million.

This was the situation which faced the new government. It responded in a brutal, bureaucratic fashion. Its policies led to countless deaths (many people being murdered). The exact figure is difficult to determine amidst the imperialist lies and Stalinist counter-claims. However, given that sympathetic sources estimate at least 500,000 dead, it is probable that between that number and a million suffered death during the CPK’s regime. The policies of the CPK exposed thousands to exhaustion, malaria (on a massive scale) and semi-starvation.

The cardinal question is whether or not this terror is of a qualitatively different nature from that of Stalin or Mao which also led to countless deaths? It was not.

Despite its disgusting nature this was the terror of a bureaucracy based on post-capitalist property forms.

In the period April 1975 to January 1976 the RG NUK appeared to have the form of a popular front. Its initial gathering from 25-27 April was attended by 20 Buddhist clergy and 13 Sihanoukists. These delegates were outnumbered, however, by 125 “people’s delegates”, 112 army representatives and 14 FUNK delegates, all of whom were loyal to the CPK. Furthermore the RG NUK simply ceded real power to the Angkar (which means “revolutionary organisation” - a shadowy body which was in fact always the leading cadre of the CPK - Leng Sary, Saloth Sar, also known as Pol Pot, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan, Leng Thirith etc.), no evidence exists that any non-CPK figures held any ministerial power. The “popular front” was not a governmental alliance so much as a diplomatic charade that was designed to win and to further international credibility.

Sihanouk, the nominal head of state, was actually kept out of the country by the CPK until it had got a complete grip on the country. This government must, therefore, be defined by its policies.

 

The attempt to fulfill a reactionary dream

 

The economic policies of the Angkar were based on the doctoral thesis of Khieu Samphan. In essence the policy consisted of: mobilising the energy of the peasants to reconstruct the country, in the first place via hydraulic management and increased rice production; secondly, imposing autarchy to reduce foreign competition and the penetration of the economy by foreign capital. Success with these two policies was supposed to create a sound basis for industrial development. Leng Sary summed it up thus:

“After our total victory we extended to all Kampuchea the economic policy which had already been applied in the liberated zones. This policy consists of considering agriculture as the base and industry as the dominant factor. Our objective is to manoeuvre our country a modern agricultural and industrial country.”15

This schema was a reactionary utopian one. It was the Stalinist conception of Socialism in One Country, mixed with various petty bourgeois nationalist notions, taken to extreme xenophobic lengths. As in Russia, abandonment of internationalism could only lead to coercion of the masses on a huge scale, thereby creating new contradictions that would in fact undermine the planned economy.

The first steps taken by the Angkar involved depopulation of the cities and a population transfer (mainly to the countryside) of massive proportions, a drive to manage the water supply, vital for increased rice production, via the building of dams, reservoirs, canals and irrigation channels and, lastly, the collectivisation of agriculture and its organisation into cooperatives often up to 10,000 strong (on the model of the Chinese Communes). This policy was carried through rapidly in early 1976, and involved total collectivisation, including the collectivisation of cooking utensils! It was carried through against the wishes of the mass of peasants, going far beyond the simple communal organisation necessary for rice cultivation.

At the same time, however, by breaking the smallholding system it did create the conditions for improved harvests which, according to Western and Yugoslav diplomats did come about in 1976-77. However, achieved by coercion, it also led to new contradictions and sparked uprisings in 1977 in the West of Kampuchea together with a steady flow of refugees to Thailand and Vietnam.

In addition to the measures outlined above, all industry and foreign holdings (such as rubber plantations) were nationalised.

Kampuchean industry had always been a minor component of the country’s economy, as it was in the other countries of Indo-China. Between April 1975 and late 1976, the regime kept it that way. Industrial production was used only to serve the agricultural ‘revolution’ that was taking place. However, it was never destroyed. In the early days Pol Pot talked of maintaining industry, not of destroying it or expanding it. On 26 September 1975, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that some 70 factories (mainly small workshops) in Phnom Penh were once again working although key installations, such as the oil refinery at Kompong Sam, were not.

By mid-1976, with the full collectivisation of agriculture more or less complete; the Far Eastern Economic Review Asian Yearbook for 1977 reported over 100 factories back in operation. At the same time a construction drive resulted in the restoration of the Kompong Som to Phnom Penh railway, the country’s seven airports and a traffic-worthy road system.

In 1977-78, a shift in industrial policy appears to have taken place and figures indicate that, compared with its pre1975 levels, industry underwent a limited expansion. The New China News Agency reported in August 1977 that for the first time new factories were being built in Kampuchea.

These included a shipbuilding yard, an acid works, a motor vehicle plant and a number of machine tool shops. That this is not fiction is borne out by trading figures for 1977. These show a dramatic increase as compared to previous years in the import of raw materials and steel products for construction purposes. In the first six months of 1977, Hong Kong and Japan supplied $13m worth of steel products, spare parts, car generators, rubber processing plant, rice husking machinery and medicine trade with Hong Kong Japan and Singapore rose to $19m in 1978. These two figures compare with a mere $2.5m of total trade with the same countries in 1976.

All of these indicators show a hesitant growth of the Kampuchean economy between 1976 and 1978. Trade with workers’ states was carried out from 1975 onwards. All trade with the capitalist world was monopolised by the state via the Ren Fung trading company, based in Hong Kong. Trade with other degenerate workers’ states was absolutely decisive in allowing the Kampuchean economy to grow at all. China, in particular, supplied 4,000 technical advisors and in 1975 alone gave $1bn worth of aid. Trading deals favourable to Kampuchea were also carried out with Yugoslavia, Rumania, North Korea and Albania.

These measures comprised the programme of the government of Kampuchea. They were carried out by the Angkar, acting as the central authority, with instruments of its rule acting at local and regional level in the numerous committees of the cooperatives. From mid-1976 the Angkar had definitely centralised planning in industry, agriculture and trade, all of which were under its control.

It did this via a National. Development Pia which, like the plans in other degenerate workers’ states, set itself wild targets for agricultural production and for industrial development (e.g. 3 tons of rice per hectare for each crop, a quota that would have severely exhausted an already overworked peasantry). In no sense was the plan (referred to by CPK leaders with regard to water conservancy, rice production, control of malaria and industrial expansion) a democratic one. It was a bureaucratic plan that, in fact, conflicted with needs of the masses.

However, it was a plan for an economy that exhibited none of the features of capitalism. The law of value had been suppressed through the state direction of investment and the abolition of an internal currency (which resulted in some barter but not in a barter economy). All industry and agriculture was in state hands, there was no private property at all and no bourgeoisie left in either the economy or the state. All foreign trade was controlled by the state. In other words the plan operated within a post-capitalist economy.

The means by which this post capitalist economy, a degenerate workers’ state, came about roughly follows the pattern exhibited in China and Vietnam. In April 1975 a Stalinist dominated popular front came to power. Although the form of the popular front was maintained until January 1976 (when Democratic Kampuchea was declared) the establishment of direct rule by the Angkar, that is the CPK, indicates that from May 1975 to mid-1976 a bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers’ government was in power. It destroyed capitalism and it destroyed all the aspects and the personnel of the previous state machine. In doing this it also acted against the masses, riding roughshod over their needs and either killing or causing the deaths of many, many thousands. Like all such governments, its action against capitalism were far outweighed by the counter-revolutionary manner in which they were carried out.

There was no dual power situation in Kampuchea after May of 1975, prior to that dual power on a territorial basis had existed between the KPNALF and the Lol Nol regime. The bureaucratic workers’ government very quickly ended this.

With aid from China and the organisation of a transferred population into cooperative units, the Angkar, by mid 1976, was able to implement its National Plan. With the commencement of this plan we can say that a degenerate workers’ state was created by the bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers’ government. This degenerate workers’ state made possible the economic growth that we have detailed. But it achieved this by coercing the masses and depriving them of many basic needs. As such it built up new contradictions. The masses began to resist. Revolts took place and there was passive resistance as well.

The regime tried to play the card of anti-Vietnamese chauvinism and moved into a border war with the Hanoi regime which was anxious for its Western borders. Indeed, the long term goal of the Hanoi Stalinists was the creation of an Indo-Chinese federation under their control. The crisis, into which the Pol Pot regime ran because of its policies, provided an opportunity for them to take a step in this direction. They related to a wing of the fracturing Kampuchean bureaucracy around Heng Samrin, a wing historically sympathetic to them, and used it as a cover to legitimise their invasion. In late 1978, the Vietnamese Army sent its best regiments into Kampuchea.

The most battle-hardened army in Asia encountered little difficulty in establishing its control. However, the fact that the war between the Khmer Rouge guerrillas and Vietnam is still raging four years later indicates that Heng Samrin’s pro-Vietnamese regime is far from stable.

Since Heng Samrin came to power the collectivisation scheme has been relaxed and a free market partially restored, but the economic system has not changed in any fundamental sense since the invasion. The measures taken by Heng Samrin’s regime did end the internal coercion of the Pol Pot government and, in that sense, did temporarily offset the explosive crisis into which bureaucratic planning was leading Kampuchea.

The nature of the Kampuchean bureaucratic anti-capitalist revolution had a number of specific features that shaped the fortunes of the workers' state but, in essence, this revolution was no different from the ones carried out in China or Vietnam. The CPK leadership decided to emulate the CCP. They adopted wholesale the voluntarism and xenophobia that Maoism exhibited during particular periods of its history (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution).

In China the disastrous consequences of these policies became apparent to the CCP leadership before the Chinese economy was plunged into utter chaos. In Kampuchea these policies were carried out in a country proportionately more devastated by war than China, with a far smaller population, with far fewer natural resources and a less well developed industrial and agricultural infrastructure than China. In addition they were not checked by the CPK leadership and in a matter of months the hesitant revival of the economy seen by 1976 was facing constant crisis in 1977.

The immediate cause of the crisis was that the state was forced to expropriate all the peasants’ rice in order to finance trade and industrialisation plans. This, in turn, meant starvation and, therefore, the resistance of the peasantry. This crisis led to a fracturing of the bureaucracy in 1977 – along pro- and anti-Vietnam lines. The way was paved for a second destructive war - with Vietnam and entirely suited to Hanoi’s purposes. / We can say that the degenerate workers’ state of Kampuchea began its spiral towards total disintegration far more quickly than had been the case, so far, with any of the other degenerate workers’ states. The peculiarity of' Kampuchea was the speed of this development. The tendency to disintegration, however, is a feature of all economies where the plan operates blindly and bureaucratically and where the proletariat is politically expropriated.

The invasion of Kampuchea by Vietnam temporarily checked the process of internal disintegration but, because this was done by a counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy (in Hanoi) and because it was carried out by purely military means and did not involve the masses of Kampuchea at all, it has only offset the process of degeneration. It has not and cannot definitively check it. The political revolution in Kampuchea is desperately needed. Only by placing the post capitalist economy under the political control of the workers and peasants can the masses put an end to famine and war.

The case of Kampuchea shows, in an almost chemically pure form, what is meant by the counter revolutionary nature of Stalinist-led bureaucratic anti-capitalist revolutions. This dialectical formula was concretised in Kampuchea when the destruction of capitalism led, within a mere three years, to a process of degeneration the logical end point of which would have been, thanks to the Stalinists, the reintroduction of capitalism, probably courtesy of an ASEAN intervention - a course of action still being considered in Manila and Bangkok.

 

Footnotes

1. The Vietnamese Communist Party has existed under various names throughout this period - Indochinese Communist Party, People's Revolutionary Party, Association for the Study of Marxism etc. For convenience we will refer to it throughout as the VCP.

2. International, (London, 1972) Vol. 1 No.2 ,p.25

3. International, (London 1974) Vol.2 No.3, p.12

4. The Trotskyists: Though weakened as a result of Stalinist and imperialist repression, the Vietnamese Trotskyists had long enjoyed considerable support among the masses, particularly in the South. They were divided into two groups. The Struggle Group was led by Tha Thu Thau, after a period of collaboration with the Stalinists in the early Thirties it was attacked by them for criticising the Popular Front Government in France. The other Trotskyist group was the International Communist League which produced a daily paper, The Spark, and played a major role in the People's Committees. Both groups suffered massive repression and had their leaderships physically wiped out by the Stalinists in 1945.

5. cf. Stalinism and Trotskyism in Vietnam, Spartacist League Pamphlet p.21

6. Quoted in D.Jenness, War and Revolution in Vietnam, (New York 1965) p.8

7. Quoted in E.Hammer, The Struggle for Indo-China, (Stanford 1954) p.183

8. To illustrate the degree of support for Ho as compared with Diem it is worth comparing two bourgeois assessments. Eisenhower said of Ho, "I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indo-Chinese affairs who did not agree that if elections had been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80% of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh". Quoted in I.Birchall, Workers against the Monolith, (London 1974) p.15

9 The Economist magazine said of Diem, “Diem's problem is that he is not a leader who has been merely helped by the West; he has been created by the West ... The objectionable word, ‘puppet’ so often used by "both sides in a propaganda wars was in this case literally true.” Quoted in D.Horowitz, From Yalta to Vietnam, (Harmono~worth 1971) p.14 9. Quoted in Hoang Van Chi, From Colonialism to Communism, (London 1964) p.259

10. cf. C.Nyland, “Vietnam, the Plan/Market Contradiction and the Transition to Socialism” in journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol.11, No.4, p.431

11. Key clauses in the NLF programme were, “It [the N LF - Eds] has successfully consolidated its base among the broad masses of the people; at the same time it has engaged in joint action with many political and religious forces, and won over large numbers of manufacturers and traders, official functionaries of the puppet administration, and officers and soldiers of the puppet army.”' Programme of the NLF (Giai Publishing House). And, the NLF’s aim was to establish... a broad democratic national union administration, build an independent, democratic, peaceful, neutral and progressive South Vietnam." ibid) For workers it promised, “To settle disputes between employers and employees through negotiation between the two sides and mediation by the national democratic administration.” ibid) In short this programme contained not a whiff of independent working class power or of socialism or anything approaching it. It was designed to forestall such things in order to appease the capitalists who were being robbed of their imperialist paymasters.

12. Quoted in G.Hildebrand and G.Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, (New York 1976) p.65

13. L Trotsky, On China, (New York 1976) p.527

14. M.Gomes, The Kampuchean Connection, (London 1980) p.40

15. Quoted in Hildebrand and Porter. Op. cit. D.88

16. The following figures also suggest a significant degree of economic growth within the country: 200 factories reported in operation in 1977. a rubber factory producing 15,000 bicycle tyres a day; a Phnom Penh textile mill producing 14,000 metres of cloth a day; Battambang Bag Factory – 10,000 bags a day; rubber processing plants -– 40-50 tons of cured rubber a day. Imports of medicinal compounds indicate a re-opening of laboratories in Phnom Penh.

Each region possessing at least one reservoir with a capacity of 100-22 million cubic metres of water. One-third of the countryside made cultivable. A steel mill under construction in 1978.

The Bor 3 Plastic factory at Chak Angee – 9,000 metres of plastic sheet, 1,500 metres of rubber hose and 100 fifteen litre containers per day. The year 1977-79 saw a population increase (the first significant one since the war) of 392,000, taking the population to a post war record of 7.8 million. Exports to Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore rose from US dollars 357,000 in 1976 to US dollars 680,000 in 1977, including 130,000 tons of rice. Figures from Far Eastern Economic Review Year Book 1975

 

 


Chapter 6: Castro's Cuban road from populism to Stalinism

 

The “unique” features of the Cuban revolution have produced endless confusion in the “Trotskyist” movement, rivalling the programmatic chaos and ensuing revisionism engendered by the Tito-Stalin split in 1948. The fundamental problem the Cuban revolution poses is how can a petit-bourgeois nationalist movement not only overthrow a pro-imperialist military dictatorship (i.e. a political revolution) but pass on under the same leadership to overthrow capitalism and establish a self-proclaimed “socialist state” indistinguishable in type from China or Vietnam?

From this problem flow questions relating to the fundamentals of revolutionary Marxist theory. Does the experience of the Cuban revolution contradict the Marxist notion of the historical limits of the petit-bourgeoisie as a class and of petit bourgeois nationalism as a programme for social revolution? Does the experience of the Cuban revolution contradict the Marxist theory of the state?

The “adaptations” made to the fundamentals of revolutionary Marxism, by all sections of the movement which claimed to be ‘Trotskyist, to “account for” the Cuban events were all, in fact, revisions of the first magnitude. Permanent revolution is reduced to an objective force, a historical process that works its will independent of the consciousness of human beings even with regard to the socialist revolution. Its petit-bourgeois agents can be “unconscious Marxists” or “unconscious Trotskyists”. Therefore a revolutionary party is a desirable, but not essential, instrument of this process. Revolutionary workers’ governments can exist without the “norms of proletarian democracy”, that is, without soviet-type bodies to express and exert the revolutionary pressure of the working class. Lastly, the proletarian dictatorship can exist “without the norms of proletarian democracy” yet be qualitatively a healthy workers’ state – one not in need of a political revolution.

The positions developed by Joseph Hansen and the SWP (US), which provided the basis for the re-unified United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), repeated in a starker manner the theoretical and the programmatic collapse that occurred after 1948. The importance of the Cuban revolution was realised in the context of the Nicaraguan revolution and the consequent split in the USFI (1979/80). The issues it raises are not matters of idle historical curiosity, but have a burning relevance for the struggle for revolution today.

Cuba’s whole history prior to 1959 was dominated by its colonial and then semi-colonial status. From being a Spanish colony it passed into the hands of US imperialism. Formal independence was an empty shell under both parliamentary bourgeois nationalist regimes and under repressive military dictatorships. Attempted constitutional “revolutions” like that of 1933-34 were rudely aborted by US-backed military coups. The underlying cause of this was Cuba’s integration with, and subordination to, the US economy. As with all semi-colonies in the imperialist epoch, this integration had not transformed Cuba into a balanced and developed capitalist economy.

Cuba was dominated by sugar production for the North American market. At the beginning of the 1950s sugar production accounted for 36 per cent of Cuba’s GNP, for 80 per cent of its export revenues; and 83 per cent of all cultivated land was under sugar cane.

With 41 per cent of labour tied to agricultural production and 20 per cent to tourism, Cuba’s economy was tied to the sweet tooth of the North American populace and the pleasures and vices of its bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie directly owned a large part of the economy, 35 per cent of capital invested in sugar was US-based. In the late 1950s more than $1bn of US capital were invested in Cuba.

A small class of latifundists (less than 3,000 of them owned 70 per cent of the land) and a comprador and rentier bourgeoisie acted as the agents of US imperialism. Only a tiny fraction of the Cuban possessing classes were capable of any sustained opposition to US imperialism and even these turned sharply against the Castroite revolution as soon as it began to take limited measures of agrarian reform. The Cuban revolution confirmed to the hilt the Trotskyist assertion that in the epoch of imperialism the colonial and semi-colonial bourgeoisie are completely incapable of leading the struggle for national independence and independent (capitalist) economic development. On the other hand, the popular classes were not dominated by a peasantry chronically deprived of land. Cuban society was more urban than rural (57 per cent urban to 43 per cent rural in 1959).

Moreover, the countryside itself was dominated not by land hungry, small peasants but by rural proletarians suffering from chronic and massive unemployment, job insecurity, low wages and appalling social conditions. The sugar refineries were well organised in trade unions, as were the urban workers generally. The CTC (Cuban Trade Union Federation) unionised half the total workforce.

Cuba was possessed of a revolutionary nationalist tradition, that of Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo and the insurrectionary war against Spain and then US colonialism (1895-8); a tradition with parallels in the early years of the imperialist epoch (in China, Mexico, Turkey, Iran etc.) The island also had seen a reformist, constitutional attempt to break with US dominance.

In 1933-34 the democrat Dr. Grau San Martin was brought to power and driven from it 100 days later, by a military coup d’état engineered by Fulgencio Batista. Castro’s July 26th Movement was politically a continuation of these movements. There were no differences with Grau’s Autenticos of the 1930s or Chibas’ Ortodoxos of the late 1940s. Fidel Castro was a member of the latter party. The programme Castro was thus committed to was of political and economic independence and democracy.

History Will Absolve Me, Castro’s duly doctored (and re-written) speech from the court dock after the 1953 attack on Moncada Barracks was pure “Chibasism” in its programme. It promised restoration of the 1940 constitution, a “government of popular election”, a land reform to restrict large land holdings and nationalisation of US-owned electric and telephone companies. By December 1956, Castro had even renounced the nationalisation of the utilities and declared “Foreign investment will always be welcome and secure here.”1 His differences with the Chibas and the Ortodoxo party, which carried on the tradition after Chibas’ death, were that whereas they (and Grau and the Autenticos before them) were bourgeois nationalist reformists, he was (like Maceo and Marti) a bourgeois nationalist revolutionary – that is, he employed revolutionary methods of struggle not constitutional ones.

The July 26th Movement (J26M) however, never formulated a precise programme. It never held a conference or elected a leadership. It was in essence a military apparatus for overthrowing Batista. It was itself a miniature popular front. On its left wing stood figures like Raul Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara who were strongly influenced by Stalinism and privately had no objections to an overthrow of capitalism; and on its right wing stood the anti-communist figures like Hubert Matos and Faustino Perez.

 

The July 26th Movement – a coalition across classes

 

In the cities the J26M leaders, known as “the Plain” (“Llano”) were anti-communist bourgeois nationalists to the core. Nor were they an insignificant force. Frank Pais in Santiago and Faustino Perez in Havana controlled large movements of resistance and sabotage and supplied the rural guerrillas with arms and money. The Plain leaders were fiercely anti-communist and open defenders of private property. Faustino Perez reflected the views of this group in his attitude to the “extremist” Castro when he stressed in spring 1958 Castro will not be part of the Provisional Government:

“We shall create a climate of confidence and security for the investment of national and foreign capital” 2

On the left there were figures like Raul Castro, an ex-member of the CP youth and resolutely pro-communist (Stalinist). Guevara probably considered himself a Marxist from 1954 onwards.

His experience of the American backed coup against Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and a reading of Lenin’s State and Revolution led him to reject the “peaceful road” to revolution.

All wings of the J26M were highly suspicious of, if not hostile to the PSP, the Cuban Stalinists. The PSP had a history of collaboration with Batista and openly condemned the Castroites before 1958 as “adventurous”. But by the spring of 1958, Bias Roca, the veteran Stalinist leader threw his weight behind Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, leader of the pro-Castro wing of the PSP and against Anibal Escalante. A number of PSP cadres including Rodriguez were sent to the Sierra Maestra, base of Castro’s guerrillas, where a secret pact was made between the PSP and the Castroites in March 1958. It is clear that the J26M was not simply a petit-bourgeois movement but rather a coalition of bourgeois and proletarian (albeit politically petit-bourgeois i.e. Stalinist or proto-Stalinist) forces.

In January 1959, the two year long civil war between the J26M, its “rebel” army and the Batista regime culminated in the overthrow of Batista. Batista had led a corrupt military dictatorship that had acted as an agent for US imperialism in its Cuban semi-colony since 1953. The 1959 revolution was not however a mere putsch or coup d’état. In the countryside it assumed, during 1958, the character of a serious movement of the rural proletarians and poor peasants. In the cities it had the support of important sections of the nationalist bourgeois and petit-bourgeois strata grouped in the Directorio and the Civic Resistance Under attack from such a wide spectrum of Cuban society and deserted by its US backers, Batista’s regime collapsed after the failure of its summer offensive of 1958. A general strike in Havana assured the complete disintegration of the old regime.

The high command and much of the officer caste of the army, the judiciary and high state bureaucracy fled en masse. Castro subjected the remaining forces to a far reaching purge with hundreds shot and thousands imprisoned. The units of the old army were integrated with the Rebel Army and placed under J26M officers and commanders.

From January 1959 there was, as a result of this disintegration, a specific form of dual power, a fragmentation of the state power. The bourgeoisie’s hold on the army was very weak because of the loss of most of the officer corps and the whole of the high command, but substantial sections of the air force and the old regiments existed and would have formed a basis for a reassertion of the bourgeoisie’s control over the army. On the other hand, was the 3,000 strong Rebel Army, which by January 1959 was made up of “three-fourths to four-fifths” of rural proletarians and small scale peasant proprietors under the leadership of pro-PSP or populist and centrist tendencies.3

The effect of this where the left-wing of the J26M was in command (Raul Castro in Oriente for example) was an immediate push to grant peasant-worker demands. In February, 22,500 families were awarded 67 acre plots. In Camaguev on the other hand, rightists under Hubert Matos and backed by figures like Diaz Lanz (head of the old air force) held up reform. The duality of power ran through the army and the J26M itself. Fidel Castro played the role of a bonaparte – the “lider maximo” balancing between, and obscuring, this division.

However, the actual balance of forces was heavily unfavourable to the bourgeoisie. Its real strength lay in the pro bourgeois, class collaborationist politics of the J26M, in Castro’s unwillingness to break from the utopian project of national independent capitalist development for Cuba. It also lay in the Raul Castro/Guevara wing’s inability to break with the “lider maximo” and put themselves at the head of (and therefore potentially under the control of) the workers and poor peasants. They refused to openly express class demands against the bourgeoisie. They would not give voice to the proletariat’s historic goal. Lastly it lay in the PSP’s popular front stagist programme which gave the weakened bourgeoisie pride of place in the popular front. These forces, not the Cuban bourgeoisie’s intrinsic strength, accounted for the nine-month period of dual power.

The Castroite project throughout this period was to maintain the popular front whilst striking at the working class/poor peasant or bourgeois elements should either of these classes attempt to decisively tip the balance in their own favour. A wave of strikes and land occupations in January and February caused a serious breach between the “Lider maximo” and the PSP (a military bloc had existed from March; a trade union pact from November 1958).

In April 1959, Castro classified communism Peronism and fascism as merely different kinds of “totalitarianism”. Castro declared that the Cuban revolution was “humanist” – capitalism bred hunger whilst communism “took away liberty”. The Cuban revolution was not red but “Olive Green”.4

Early in 1959, the J26M officered police stood by as members of the Havana Civic Resistance ransacked the offices of “Hoy”, the PSP’s newspaper, an action which led its editor, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez to declare the PSP had gone underground before and could do it again.5 By May 1959, a vitrolic campaign was being conducted in the pages of Revolution, the J26M’s paper, against the PSP. The Stalinists were denounced as “anti-revolutionary”, similar to the counter revolutionaries. Particularly singled out for attack was their encouragement of strikes for wage increases, and their involvement in peasant land seizures in San Luis.6

 

Castro is forced to break with his bourgeois allies

 

However, Castro’s anti-communist campaign inevitably encouraged the Cuban landowning bourgeoisie’s resistance to his own land reform. Although a moderate capitalist reform, its operation and implementation lay effectively with the armed guerrillas of the Rebel Army in a situation where the peasants and rural proletarian masses expectations had been aroused by the revolution. The first attempt at nationalisation and the methods used to enforce them touched the US and Cuban companies and land owners to the quick. Confirming the thesis of permanent revolution that none of the fundamental tasks of the bourgeois revolution can be carried out in colonial or semi-colonial countries under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, or any alleged “national” or “revolutionary” fraction of it, the Cuban landowning and capitalist class passed in its totality into the camp of counter-revolution. Castro was forced to move against the most vociferous opponents of agrarian reform in his government. A group of bourgeois ministers were sacked in June. In July he mobilised the workers and peasants in a general strike and mass demonstration, to remove the bourgeois president Urrutia and to purge the air force.

Castro’s reluctance to break his ties to the bourgeoisie can be seen in his hesitancy to purge all the bourgeois ministers. However, the activities of US imperialism and their agents in Cuba were to leave him no choice. On 11 June the US issued a strong protest against the agrarian reform measures, demanding “prompt, adequate and effective compensation.” Castro was faced with a choice: either concede on the agrarian reform and strengthen the bourgeoisie and its alliance with US capital – thus alienating his peasant base – or push ahead with the reform and strike out against the right wing.

He chose the latter. The day after the US note, Castro demanded the resignation of various bourgeois ministers – Sori Marin, Minister of Agriculture; Elena Mederos, Minister of Health; Luis Orlando Rodriguez, Minister of the Interior, Angel Fernandez, the Minister of Justice and Agramonte the Foreign Minister.

All these ministers were replaced by trusted members of the J26M, often close intimates of Castro. While the “political representatives” of the bourgeoisie were purged, the “economic representatives” were left untouched – bourgeois figures like Cas Fresquet (Finance) and Bunilla (Commerce) remained in their posts, while Pazos remained in charge of the Bank of Cuba.

These actions forced Castro into close reliance on his own left wing and consequently back into a bloc with the PSP in October/November, counter-revolutionary activity by US and native Cuban capitalist sabotage forced Castro to strike decisively at the bourgeoisie outside and the J26M effectively ending the latter as a popular front or indeed as a “movement” at all. Hubert Matos was arrested and J26M purged of “anti-communists”. The army was reduced by 50 per cent and renamed the “Revolutionary Armed Forces”. The Defence Ministry was completely purged and put under Raul Castro’s command. The organisation of a mass armed militia of workers and peasants was launched and standing army was integrated with the militia. Castro, forced to act with the left wing of the J26M, his brother, Guevara and Rodriguez against political and military agents of the Cuban capitalists, drove all the bourgeois ministers from the government. Fresquet at the Finance Ministry was the sole exception, took over the National Bank, and effectively economic power and policy emanated from there. By November 1959 the popular front had been ended, along with the duality of power.

These actions all necessitated a rapprochement with the principal political force within the Cuban working class, the 18,000-strong PSP. Having ousted them from the CTC completely in February/March and formed a bloc with the pro-bourgeois labour bureaucrats in the Frente Obrero Humanista, in November/January 1959-60, Castro was now forced to strike a new alliance with them and purge his former supporters.

The left wing of the J26M were now in the ascendant and the process of founding a unified party apparatus to replace the movement began in December 1959. Whatever Castro’s differences with sections of the PSP leadership, he had now irrevocably cast in his lot with the PSP. This process of fusion with a politically petit-bourgeois Stalinist workers’ party did not however immediately mean a break with US imperialism or a conscious and determined march towards socialism. If the Castro fusion with the PSP gave the government the appearance of a workers and peasants’ government, it was not a revolutionary workers and peasants’ government.

It was not anti-capitalist in its actions or programme, and it was not under the control of democratic armed organs of workers’ power i.e. soviets and a democratic workers and peoples’ militia. It commenced its life as a bourgeois workers and peasants’ government, but one born under special circumstances. Firstly, the bourgeoisie had lost all vestiges of control of its armed apparatus (the fundamental bastion of the bourgeois state had been smashed.). Henceforward the bourgeoisie could only recover its rule by armed counter-revolution, i.e. by. revolt from outside the state machine. Secondly the bourgeoisie, aided and abetted by the right wing of the US bourgeoisie (Nixon and the CIA) were in fact renewing counter-revolutionary civil war. Thirdly, the workers and peasants were being armed, and whilst they had no effective alternative leadership to the left J26M/PSP leaders, they formed an armed bulwark against capitulation and a pressure for decisive measures against the counter-revolution.

This government was in effect a “government of the parties of petit-bourgeois democracy”. Its programme and the intentions of its leaders did not go beyond bourgeois limits, its social roots were the urban and rural workers and poor peasants. It was in this sense a bourgeois “workers’ and peasants’ government”, i.e. one which is described in the Comintern’s 1922 theses as being “tolerated by the enfeebled bourgeoisie in critical times as a means of deceiving the proletariat about the real class character of the state, or to ward off, with the help of corrupt workers’ leaders the revolutionary offensive of the proletariat and gain time”.

However the growing class conflict in Cuba, the increasingly organised expression of the expectations of the armed workers and peasants, the response via sabotage and guerrilla activity of the Cuban bourgeoisie and its agents in the state bureaucracy, and the hostile blows of US imperialism forced this government “to go further than they themselves wished along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie”. 7

Attempts by this government to ease the stranglehold of US imperialism over its economy by entering into a trade agreement with the USSR led to a dramatic worsening of relations with Washington. In June 1960, US oil companies (and the European controlled firm Shell) refused to refine Soviet oil. The Castro government replied by nationalising them. In July, the US responded by cancelling the agreement to buy the sugar crop – only an agreement with the USSR and China to buy sugar saved the economy from disaster.

Between August and October 1960, the government nationalised all the US-owned sugar mills, electricity facilities and telecommunications industry, all the banks and all American and Cuban-owned large and medium industrial concerns. By the end of 1960, 80 per cent of Cuba’s industrial capacity was nationalised and the agrarian reform had been dramatically speeded up. Under the pressure of imperialism, the Castro government had been faced with a choice: either to submit to imperialism, or take the measures necessary to break the power of imperialism and its agents in Cuba by expropriating it.

While the Castroite government was forced to break with the bourgeoisie and take anti-capitalist measures, the form that this took was different to that envisaged by Trotsky. From the summer of 1960, the Castro government had become a bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers’ government – a government forced to attack and break the economic power of the bourgeoisie, but through carefully controlled bureaucratic measures and mobilisations. The Castro government was able to carry out this expropriation relatively “peacefully” because it had already broken the political and military power of the bourgeoisie within the state, and was able to use the Revolutionary Armed Forces and militia against internal resistance. The major threat to the government came from intervention by US imperialism either directly with US troops, or indirectly through armed Cuban counter-revolutionaries.

 

Castro fuses with the Stalinists

 

It was this threat that necessitated the controlled mass mobilisations under the control of the Castroites (loyally supported by the PSP). The Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs) were set up in September 1960 while the militia, integrated with the RAFs, reached 50,000 by the summer of 1960. The militia, which was made up of workers who did military training after work, had at its centre the purged rebel army, its officers trusted Fidelistas. The heads of the militia in the provinces were often heads of G2, the military-political intelligence organisation. The CRDs were headed by Jose Matar, a leading PSP member.

The militia was downgraded as the threat from US imperialist intervention receded. After the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, a divisional command structure was reintroduced into the RA, and by 1964, the militia was disarmed, leaving the RAF as the sole armed force of the state.

By November 1960, a US trade embargo was in effect which completely cut off Cuba from its traditional markets of North and South America (80 per cent of Cuban imports came from the USA and from US oil companies in Venezuela). Only the support and aid from the Stalinist bloc (primarily the USSR) allowed the Cuban government to develop a workable economic strategy. At the end of 1960 Guevara led a trade delegation to the USSR and the Eastern bloc, which resulted in the entire 1961 sugar crop being taken up. At the same time (end of 1960), a team of Czech technical advisors arrived to help set up a planning agency.

In February 1961, the government departments and agencies were completely reorganised to fit in with the tasks of the new planned economy. JUCEPLAN was transformed into the central planning agency, which evolved the first plan which was in operation from the start of 1962.

The massive nationalisations of 1960, the expropriations of US holdings and of the Cuban bourgeoisie, and the establishment of the monopoly of foreign trade laid the pre-conditions and established the necessity for state planning. From the implementation of the first five year plan in 1962, we can speak of the creation of a degenerate workers’ state in Cuba.

The PSP cadres were central in the staffing of the administrative apparatus of this plan and this increased importance, plus their vital role in maintaining discipline within the trade unions was recognised in the fusion between the J26M and the PSP in the Integrated Revolutionary Organisation (ORI) in July 1961. This organisation was later to become the Cuban Communist Party in 1965.

The “fusion” in fact took the form of a takeover of the Stalinist party apparatus by the Castroites, a project which caused considerable conflict with “old guard” Stalinists. When the National Directorate of the ORI was announced, it consisted of 25 members: 14 from J26M, 10 from the PSP, one from the Revolutionary Directorate.8 By October 1961, offices of ORI had been set up in almost every town (100 out of 126 townships).

Anibal Escalante, the veteran Stalinist who had been given responsibility for organising the ORI, ensured that trusted Stalinists staffed the leading positions in the towns and provinces. Recognising this threat, Castro denounced Escalante for “sectarianism” and for creating a “counter-revolutionary monstrosity”, in March 1962. Escalante was expelled from the Directorate, having left hastily for Prague. A Secretariat of the ORI was set up with Fidelistas having five of the six places – Bias Roca being the only PSP member. PSP strength was further reduced in 1964 when the trial of Marcos Rodriguez, who had spied for Batista in the mid-1950s, but also worked for the PSP, was used to expose PSP complicity with Batista, and led to further explusions of PSP members.

When the Cuban Communist Party was set up in October 1965, the strength of the Fidelistas could be seen in the fact that of the 100 Central Committee members, 72 had military titles, i.e. were trusted Castroites from the Rebel Army. The entire eight-man Politbureau were Fidelistas. From 1961, the Castroites had consciously set out to construct a Stalinist party in their own image – taking over the PSP apparatus and purging it of its old guard leadership. The struggle with in the ORI explains the length of time it took to found the Cuban Communist Party.

By the summer of 1960, Castro had broken decisively with the remaining Cuban and US bourgeoisie. However, the absence of workers’ councils (soviets) and a revolutionary communist party comprising the vanguard of the proletariat, ensured that the outcome of these events was not a revolutionary workers’ government, i.e. a bridge to the full and direct political power of the proletariat, but a bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers’ government. This government under the Castro faction and the PSP, with the material aid of the Kremlin bureaucracy, became a bridge to a qualitatively bureaucratised workers’ state, one in which the working class and its vanguard were from the outset deprived of political power.

In a speech in February 1961, Guevara referred vaguely to “workers’ councils”, which could “approve plans and directives”.

These became technical councils which were to be transmission belts for government targets. In August 1961, the trade unions were reorganised to expedite work co-operation in fulfilling government production goals. By April 1962, Guevara was blaming the lack of labour discipline for the poor sugar harvest. In November 1962, the CTC congress and union congresses were held to “endorse” the government programmes. Guevara stated that the reluctance of some trade union leaders to endorse the new contracts “would not be tolerated”.9

In 1962 identity cards were introduced for workers and stringent laws on labour discipline were instituted. A law of 1964-1965 enforced sanctions for breaches of labour discipline. The Grievance Commissions established in 1961 were abolished as being “too lenient”. In the words of Martinez Sanchez, Minister of Labour, the law would,

“strengthen labour discipline and increase production and productivity. It will be applied to the kind of worker who is a residue of exploiting society. We still find workers who have not taken the revolutionary step and tend to discuss and protest any measure coming from the administration.”10

Whilst gains were made for and by the working class (the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, statified and planned economy, a state monopoly of foreign trade), the Castroite bonapartist clique and a privileged bureaucracy usurped power from the working class. The Cuban overturn had a predominantly counter-revolutionary character. It was not qualitatively different to the overturns that created the other degenerate workers’ states. In carrying through this programme, Castro proved himself a Stalinist. This regime from its foundation could only be removed by political revolution.

Many of the features of the petit-bourgeois populist origins of the Fidelista movement remained hybridised with the essential features of a Stalinist dictatorship. The People’s Power committees and so forth were never organs of working class power or proletarian democracy. Whilst the origin of the regime in an anti-imperialist revolution gave Castro’s power an overwhelming popularity, not seen in the USSR or Eastern Europe, the avenues for a peaceful transition to the political power of the working class do not exist in Cuba.

In this same period the Cuban supporters of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (IS) were at first hounded out, then imprisoned by the Castroites and PSP. At the 1960 Youth Congress in Havana, the delegates identifying with “Voz Proletaria”, the paper of the Cuban section of the IS, were denounced publicly in the PSP’s press as CIA agents. In 1961, the paper’s press and the plates of Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, which was being published, were smashed and the paper was suppressed. Later the supporters of Voz Proletaria were either imprisoned or deported as “counter revolutionaries”.

 

Is the petit-bourgeosie a ruling class?

 

The contradiction which might appear to exist between the positions of Lenin, Trotsky and the great revolutionary Marxists with regard to the role of petit-bourgeois political formations dissolves if the full dynamic of the Cuban events is understood.

The petit-bourgeoisie cannot be a ruling class – i.e. it cannot establish a state power defending its own class rule, just as petty commodity production cannot be a dominant mode of production, but is always dominated by a large-scale property belonging to another mode of production – slave, feudal or capitalist . The Cuban revolution in no way contradicts this fundamental Marxist assessment of this intermediate class.

Petit-bourgeois parties and their personnel can however be the instrument of the rule of other classes. By a process of internal differentiation, the grouping around Castro evolved from petit-bourgeois nationalism to petit-bourgeois Stalinism. The Fidelista clique assimilated themselves to the Stalinist party and programme whilst ousting most of the latter’s former leadership and hybridising its programme with elements of petit bourgeois nationalism (central role of the peasantry, rural guerrilla warfare), as Mao had done before.

Castro, who in 1959 was a bonaparte for the enfeebled Cuban bourgeoisie was, by 1962, a bonaparte “for” the politically expropriated Cuban working class. Trotsky considered in 1938 that “experience” (i.e. of Russia, Spain and France) confirmed the inability of the parties of petit-bourgeois democracy to create a “government independent of the bourgeoisie”. He thought that exceptional circumstances might force them to go further than they wished, that the establishment of such a government was “highly improbable” and that even if it occurred, it would be “merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat”.11

The realisation of this “highly improbable” alternative in Trotsky’s prediction and then in a manner and with a result not foreseen by him, does not undermine either the Marxist method or the fundamentals of Trotskyism. It demands the application of that method to understand these events, developing the programme as a guide to action for the proletariat in situations unavoidably only dimly foreseen by Trotsky himself.

The condition which opened the “Cuban road” to the establishing of a degenerate workers’ state was the continued existence of the USSR and indeed, the proliferation of degenerate workers’ states. Without the political, economic and military aid from the USSR, the Castro government would eventually have gone down to defeat – either at the hands of Cuban-US counterrevolution, or at the hands of the Cuban proletariat led by a Trotskyist vanguard party. The willingness of the Soviet bureaucracy to assist Castro in avoiding such alternatives was due to the Kremlin’s tactical disagreements with imperialism and its strategic counter-revolutionary hostility to the seizure of power by the working class.

The desirability of Cuba as a missile base was prompted by the severe disparity in military capability between the USSR and the USA at the end of the 1950s. The refusal of the US bourgeoisie to discuss arms limitation talks, despite Soviet concessions on the citing of offensive missiles in NATO countries in 1958, led to the USSR seeking a counter-weight. Actions such as the walk-out of the 1960 summit by Kruschev signalled not an abandonment of “peaceful coexistence”, but a search for a greater bargaining power. The Cuban revolution was just such a political counter-weight. The arms programme of Kennedy on assuming office in 1960 made this even more imperative. Hence, whilst the Kremlin oligarchy did not plan, or incite Castro to, the creation of a degenerate workers’ state in Cuba (any more than they did in Yugoslavia, China or Vietnam), they economically and military acquiesced, for their own state interests.

In many instances it can be seen that it was the Castroites themselves who pushed ahead faster than either the USSR or their agents in Cuba liked. The nationalisations of August 1960 were coolly received by the PSP. Escalante declared at the 8th Congress of the PSP that the revolution should try to keep the national bourgeoisie “within the revolutionary camp”. Bias Roca goes on record as saying “some nationalisations could possibly have Been avoided”, and that “private enterprise which is not imperialistic is still necessary.”12. While the PSP was trying to maintain its alliance with “peace-loving” sections of capital, Guevara was declaring at the first Congress of Latin American Youth:

“If I were asked whether our revolution is communist, I would define it as Marxist. Our revolution has discovered by its own methods the paths that Marx pointed out”. 13

The considerable mass base of the Castro regime, the treachery of the Kremlin leaders over the Cuban missiles crisis in October 1962 (the decision to remove the missiles and the offer of United Nations observers in Cuba – both made without the consultation or participation of the Cubans), together with the limited economic aid, predisposed Castro, Guevara and co to a relatively independent foreign policy, especially in the years 1966-68. In this period Castro advocated and Guevara practiced a guerrilla strategy aimed at producing regimes similar to the one in Cuba.

The policy led to sharp clashes with the Latin American Stalinists, and ended in complete fiasco. By 1971-72, this policy was completely abandoned in favour of support for an orthodox popular front in Chile, and a statement of the unique “national roads” to be followed in Latin America. From 1972, with Cuba’s entry into Comecon, Cuba came to provide in return for USSR economic aid, an interventionist strike force in Africa. In Angola 1975-76, the Cubans aided the MPLA against South Africa, but also stiffened the MPLA leaders’ crack-down on the left nationalists and on working class action. In Ethiopia in 1978, Cuban troops assisted the nationally oppressive Dergue to impose its domination over Eritrea.

In short, the Stalinism that Castro tried to disguise with populism became more and more overt. His recent support for the crackdown on Solidarnosc is entirely consistent with his political trajectory since the early 1960s.

 

Footnotes

1. Quoted in A.M. Ritter, Economic Development of Revolutionary Cuba, (New York 1974) p.66

2. Quoted in H.Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, (New York 1971) p.981

3. L. Huberman and P.M. Sweezy, Cuba: Anatomy of a Revolution, (New York 1960) p.78

4. T. Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice, (New York 1965) p.37 and H. Thomas, op. cit. p.1219

5. H. Thomas, op. cit. p.1199

6. Op. cit. p.1220

7. L Trotsky, Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution, (New York 1973) p.135

8. E.Gonzalez, Cuba Under Castro, (Boston 1974) p.102

9. Hispanic American Reports, (June 1962) Vol. XV, No.9

10. Quoted in P. Binns and M.Gonzalez, “Cuba, Castro and Socialism” in International Socialism (London, spring 1980) No. 8, p.18

11. L Trotsky, op. cit. p.135

12. H Thomas, op. cit. p.1212

13. Ibid, p.12

 


Chapter 7: Permanent revolution aborted

 

Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam and Cuba have all been cited by the USFI as living examples of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Here we have a series of revolutions in backward, overwhelmingly rural countries, all resulting in the establishment of workers states. For the USFI, at various times, Tito, Mao, Ho and Castro all became (and Castro still is) agents of the permanent revolution. To be sure they were all to a greater or lesser extent unconscious of this noble role, but the strength of the objective process, of the unfolding world revolution, compensated for this subjective deficiency. Hansen gives one of the clearest expositions of this version of permanent revolution:

“The question of the absence of direct proletarian leadership in the 1958-9 Cuba Revolution offers a complication, it is true, but on the main question – the tendency of a bourgeois democratic revolution in a backward country to go beyond its bourgeois-democratic limits – Cuba offers once again the most striking confirmation of Trotsky’s famous theory.

That the Cuban revolutionaries were unaware they were confirming something seemingly so abstract and remote makes it all the more impressive.”1

This interpretation is one-sided and therefore false. It is true that the objective factors of underdeveloped countries in the imperialist epoch create the essential objective conditions for the permanence of a revolution. It is not true that these objective factors, propelled in a revolutionary direction by their intrinsic features, can achieve a revolutionary communist outcome. Indeed one is forced to ask why the majority of anti- imperialist revolutions have not led to the establishment of workers’ states if the objective process is so all-powerful. The truth is that in all imperialised countries that have become workers’ states, the subjective factor, i.e. the working class’ political leadership, has been decisive. In Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam and Kampuchea Stalinism both in terms of the leadership of these struggles and the intervention of the pre-existing degenerate workers’ states, has played a decisive role in establishing the new workers’ states. Without Stalinism at the helm of government in such countries, the creation of a degenerate workers’ state would be impossible. In Cuba the non-Stalinist origin of the Castroites was overcome in the course of 1961 by the rallying to Stalinism of Castro and the assimilation and transformation of his own petit-bourgeois nationalist movement into a Stalinist party. In all of those countries where the Stalinists did not control the government – Algeria, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Iran etc., – far from growing over into socialism, objective factors have pushed the rulers of such countries back into the arms of imperialism to one degree or another. Without the conjuncture of world and local Stalinism the option of the conscious creation of a degenerate workers’ state does not exist. This was the stubborn fact that pushed Castro in a Stalinist direction.

However, while the creation of degenerate workers ’states in imperialised countries confirms the tenets of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, it simultaneously aborts the programmatic fulfilment of this theory. The goal of permanent revolution is not the creation of degenerate workers’ states that block the road to socialism, but the creation of healthy workers’ states as links in the chain of world revolution paving the way to international socialism. Thus Castro and Co. are not unconscious agents of permanent revolution – they are its conscious enemies. The strength of the objective process can do little to alter this because the fulfilment of permanent revolution rests in the final analysis on the subjective factor, on consciousness, on the revolutionary party and a self-organised, self conscious working class. This much is clear from all of Trotsky’s key writings on the permanent revolution.

Trotsky’s theory

Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution is not an abstract historical schema, not an objective process of History, it is a coherent strategy for the seizure of power by the proletariat based on a scientific appraisal of the laws of motion and contradictions of capitalism.

It is rooted in the theory of uneven and combined development. Out of the unevenness of the growth of capitalism in the world and the consequent existence of advanced and backward countries arises the phenomenon of combined development. The backward country does not simply follow the stages of development pioneered by the advanced, but is compelled to “leap over” stages of gradual evolutionary change. It does not thereby abolish its backwardness but combines it in a new formation. Tsarist Russia combined bureaucratic absolutism and semi-feudal agrarian relations with a small but modern proletariat. Concentrated in huge modern factories in certain strictly delineated areas, the Russian workers pioneered at the level of organisation and tactics all the key aspects of the modern class struggle.

They created the soviet; they developed the political mass strike. They gave their support to the most advanced Marxist party of the Second International – the Bolsheviks. Bolshevism learned all the lessons of the “advanced” West, of German Marxism and applied it critically and creatively to Russia – and hence developed Marxism on the question of the relationship between the bourgeois revolution and democratic tasks and the proletarian revolution and socialist measures.

Lenin disagreed with Trotsky’s theory before 1917, holding that the proletariat would have to share its dictatorship with the peasantry and consequently limit its programme initially to the most far reaching revolutionary democratic but not socialist measures. However life settled the dispute in Trotsky’s favour. Lenin’s April Theses and indeed all his major programmatic and tactical writings, (The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, Can the Bolsheviks retain State Power, etc.) express the clear recognition that the task facing the proletariat and its party was to seize state power. Whilst it had to limit itself in its agrarian programme to the “capitalist” programme of division of the large estates to the peasants, it was equally necessary to use the proletarian dictatorship to take measures transitional to socialism. Trotsky had warned in 1907 that:

“While the anti-revolutionary aspects of Menshevism have already become fully apparent, those of Bolshevism are likely to become a serious threat only in the event of victory.” 2

Trotsky’s words proved prophetic – not with regard to Lenin but certainly with regard to his “Old Bolshevik” disciples Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, at various points in 1917 and after 1923. Since Lenin fully accepted tactically the seizure of full power by the proletariat, an alliance with the peasantry socialist measures and reliance on and support for the international spread of the revolution no further disputes existed between him and Trotsky on this question. Indeed it seemed entirely a question of party history until the troika - Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev – started a campaign against “Trotskyism” based on unearthing all the disagreements between Lenin and Trotsky between 1903 and 1917.

This unprincipled factional onslaught, whose real social and political purpose was the defence of bureaucratism, of necessity focused on the theory which most clearly expressed the socialist and international goals of the Russian Revolution. The most consistent expression of this attack was Stalin and Bukharin’s theory of “socialism in one country.” No resurrection of Lenin’s “democratic dictatorship” slogan was possible – though Zinoviev tried to do so first against Trotsky’s theory then against Stalin’s. In fact, these two completely counter posed theories had developed and transcended Lenin’s theory. Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution expressed everything positive and revolutionary in Lenin’s theory, Stalin’s everything potentially retrograde. Indeed, it so developed the retrograde elements that it represented a complete Menshevik negation of Lenin’s theory.

The conflict within the International, the social dynamics and goals of the Chinese Revolution, obliged Trotsky to reassess the importance of his own theory. Prior to this he had regarded it as a historical question specific to Russia. His bloc with Zinoviev in 1926-7 both obliged and persuaded Trotsky to keep open or algebraic the question of proletarian supremacy or of the duality of power between workers and peasants in a revolutionary government in China. The Chinese revolution and counter-revolution convinced Trotsky of the general validity of the theory of permanent revolution in the imperialist epoch. Stalin and Bukharin’s stages theory led to murderous defeat for the Chinese proletariat at the hands of Chiang Kai Shek. In his work Permanent Revolution (1928) he summed up his theory thus:

“It is a question of the character, the inner connections and methods of the international revolution in general.” 3

With regard to colonial and semi-colonial countries, backward in terms of capitalist development, it meant that:

“the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses:”4

The vital importance of the peasantry arises not only from the agrarian but also from the national questions and necessitates an:

“irreconcilable struggle against the influence of the national liberal bourgeoisie.” 5

The peasant-worker alliance can only be led by the proletariat organised in the communist party and only the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve all the tasks of the democratic revolution. The peasantry has a great revolutionary role to play but not an independent one – “the peasant follows either the worker or the bourgeois.”6

There is no intermediate stage between bourgeois regimes like those of Kerensky or the Kuomintang and the proletarian dictatorship. The former are counter-revolutionary bourgeois regimes disguised in “democratic” or anti-imperialist colours.

In a backward country the proletarian revolution will triumph because of the need to resolve the national-revolutionary and democratic tasks but their fulfilment will be accompanied by an assault on private property:

“The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.” 7

Conquest of power does not complete the revolution but opens it – heralding a series of civil wars and revolutionary wars. The socialist revolution cannot be completed within national limits it:

“begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena and is completed on the world arena.”8

This is what Trotsky calls the “newer and broader” meaning of permanent revolution – i.e. its character as a world revolution. Whilst backward countries may arrive at the dictatorship of the proletariat sooner than advanced ones: “they will come later than the latter to socialism.”9

To say that this whole process is grounded in the law of uneven and combined development is not to say that this law operates and wins through independently of the actions of the leaderships of the various classes. A conscious revolutionary programme is needed to utilise the consequences and potential of the objective laws. Against those, such as the USFI, who would disagree with this and claim that the “laws of history” can successfully overcome subjective difficulties, we would repeat Trotsky’s criticism of the Chinese CP in 1928 who under the leadership of the Stalinist agent Lominadze, endeavoured to offload the responsibility of leadership onto History:

“Now, Lominadze has made of the possibility of a permanent revolution (on the condition that the communist policy be correct) a scholastic formula guaranteeing at one blow and for all time a revolutionary situation ‘for many years’. The permanent character of the revolution thus becomes a law placing itself above history, independent of the policy of the leadership and of the material development of revolutionary events.” 10

Hansen and the USFI seek to get round this problem by suggesting that the most conscious act in history – the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a bridge to the construction of communism – can be carried out by unconscious revolutionary communists. In saying this they in fact grant to Stalinism – the force that these unconscious agents invariably belong to or end up with – the capacity to carry out the programme of permanent revolution. This is a betrayal of revolutionary communism of the first magnitude.

As a political tendency Stalinism is absolutely opposed to the programme of permanent revolution. Instead, it deliberately subordinates the working class as a political force to the parties of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie, and in so doing espouses the petit-bourgeois utopia of a national-democratic stage in the anti-imperialist struggle. Stalinism thus seeks to divert the proletariat's objective propulsion towards the leadership of the revolution and does so either through enforcing political alliances with reactionary classes, or physical liquidation of revolutionary leadership within the working class, or a combination of both.

This programme for the anti-imperialist struggle is bloodily self-defeating. The bitter fruit of the subordination of the interests of the workers and peasants to “progressive” bourgeois politicians, petty bourgeois nationalist demagogues or military bonapartes has been seen in China (1925-7), Spain (1936), in Egypt and Iraq (1950s and 1960s), in Indonesia (1965), in Chile (1973) and in Iran in the 1980s.

But even should the Stalinists, exceptionally, outdistance their bourgeois “allies” and seize political power, as they did in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam and Cuba, then their political expropriation of the working class creates a counter-revolutionary obstacle blocking the road of permanent revolution.

Both of these courses of action form part of the ever pragmatic and eclectic programme of Stalinism, and both of them are diametrically opposed to the programme of permanent revolution. They utilise and abuse the objective basis of permanent revolution to abort its fulfilment and defend their own bureaucratic interests.

The revolutionary variant of the opportunities presented by the law of uneven and combined development within imperialism retains all its validity and urgency. The experience of the creation and history of the degenerate workers’ states have proven that the cost of aborted permanent revolution is not only a blocked path to socialism, but a savage defeat for the democratic tasks of the revolution.

The vandalism inherent in the forced collectivisation of the peasantry, the abolition of all freedom for progressive movements, the cultivation of national and ethnic oppression and the strengthening of the reactionary elements in the old bourgeois culture (e.g. family life and religion) testify to this fact.

 

Footnotes

1. J. Hansen, Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution, (New York 1978) p.291

2. L.Trotsky, 1905, (Harmondsworth 1973) p.332

3. L.Trotsky, Permanent Revolution, (New York 1965) p.152

4. Ibid. p.152

5. ibid. p.153

6. ibid. p.153

7. ibid. p.154

8. ibid. p.155

9. ibid. p.155

10. L.Trotsky, On China, (New York 1976) p.349

 


Chapter 8: Stalinism and the world working class

 

The Soviet Union and the other degenerate workers' states rest on property forms that are qualitatively different from, historically superior to, and globally irreconcilable with capitalism.

Capitalism's own remorseless inner logic drives it to attempt to subordinate the whole world to its laws and needs. Its survival ultimately depends on this. But the very existence of the degenerate workers states means that huge markets and vast natural resources are closed to direct imperialist exploitation. Capitalism's crises drive it to attempt to reconquer these areas of the world and subject them again to its exploitation.

Its entire history proves that Stalinism has no qualitatively new or distinct programme or ideology. As a petty bourgeois political tendency it borrows ideologically from the two fundamental classes on a world scale – the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Its programme of “peaceful coexistence” between social systems, of “peaceful competition” rooted in socialism in one country, is a petty bourgeois utopia, historically borrowed from social democracy. Its “peaceful” parliamentary road to socialism via social reform conducted in a series of stages is borrowed from bourgeois liberalism and its labourite or social democratic mimics.

The Stalinists attempt to conceal the counter-revolutionary content of their programme from the proletariat of the world with the emptied husks of Marxism and Leninism, which they have borrowed, or rather stolen, from the revolutionary workers’ movement. In the workers’ states it identifies its police state dictatorship over the proletariat and its vanguard – a dictatorship which is the principal obstacle to the advance towards socialism – with socialism itself. It identifies the dictatorship of the proletariat with a weapon of bureaucratic violence against the working class. It poisons the very goal of the Marxist workers’ movement before the workers of the world.

Stalinism necessarily has a highly contradictory character. The Stalinist bureaucracies and parties rest upon proletarian formations – either workers’ states or proletarian parties. The objective sharpening of the class struggle, which the bureaucracy is incapable of indefinitely avoiding, can force it, despite itself, to act against the bourgeoisie. When it acts thus it is forced to do so under the pressure of both the working class and the class enemy.

Whenever the bureaucracy is forced to fight against the bourgeoisie, genuine revolutionaries, if they are not able to immediately overthrow and replace the Stalinist bureaucrats, must act together with them in a united front in order to defend the interests of the working class. In such struggles the Stalinists do not cease to be a counter-revolutionary force. If their leadership is not broken in struggle then either the workers’ organisation or state will suffer defeat, or it will be defended or even extended, in a counter-revolutionary fashion.

By this we mean that the working class will be denied proletarian democratic control of their own organisation or state. They will be obstructed from utilising their conquests to serve their own historic goals. Their revolutionary communist vanguard and all tenacious defenders of the working class will be subject to brutal police terror.

All such bureaucratic “victories” have the effect on the working class of atomization, demoralisation and the strengthening of petty-bourgeois and lumpen proletarian consciousness in its ranks (i.e. religion, nationalism, racism). Despite the tactical victory of fending off an attack from the class enemy, the victory for the bureaucracy retains its counter-revolutionary character, judged from the perspective of the revolutionary consciousness of the working class.

It is wrong to characterise Stalinism as monolithically reactionary – “counter-revolutionary through and through” – in the manner pioneered by the SWP (US) in its anti-Pabloite period.

Such a view is dangerously undialectical. It can, and does, lead to thoroughly opportunist adaptations to Stalinism itself and to social democracy. Within the Fourth International in the 1940s this position led the movement to deny the Stalinist nature of the Yugoslav Communist Party under Tito because the YCP had led a revolution and because Stalinists were “counter-revolutionary through and through”, it was deduced that the YCP could not be Stalinist. This “logical” deduction ignores the fact that Stalinists can and do lead revolutions, and can, and do, carry out acts which, taken by themselves, are progressive.

However the predominantly counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism, which is a constant factor, means that where acts, progressive in themselves, are carried out by Stalinists, they are done in a counter-revolutionary manner and with counter-revolutionary results. The “victory” of the YCP and its transformation of the property relations in Yugoslavia (an act in itself progressive) was accompanied by the political expropriation of the working class and the creation of planned property relations that, in the hands of the bureaucracy, remained an obstacle to the transition to communism.

The position that Stalinist parties are “counter-revolutionary through and through” has another logic – equally dangerous for Marxists. It can lead to Stalinophobia – i.e. a differential hostility to the Stalinist parties as opposed to social democracy. This position is best exemplified today by the PCI (formerly the OCI) in France, an organisation whose hostility to Stalinism has led them, repeatedly, to adapt to social democracy.

But it is similarly wrong to argue that Stalinism has a “dual nature.” Theories of Stalinism’s “dual nature” lead to the petty bourgeois eclecticism of choosing the “good” or “positive” acts or aspects of Stalinist policy and supporting them uncritically while rejecting the “bad” or “reactionary” ones. The Spartacists with their “Hail the Red Army” position on the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan typify this position.

Stalinism came to power in the Soviet Union under the slogan of “socialism in one country” against the International Left Opposition. Its fundamental political platform (from which all other positions were derived) was that socialism could be constructed in the Soviet Union, without the victory of the proletariat in an advanced capitalist country as long as the Soviet Union was protected against armed intervention.

Turning their back on the International programme of the Comintern and the Leninist Bolshevik Party, the Stalin faction amalgamated with the philistine conservative Russian bureaucracy on the basis of a nationalist programme.

It follows inevitably that if socialism can be built “in one country”, then there must be a series of national programmes, of national roads to socialism. The theory of “socialism in one country” propounded for Russia, leads inevitably to each Stalinist party adopting national programmes for its particular socialism. Trotsky pointed this out as early as 1928 (in The Third International After Lenin):

“If socialism can be realised within the national boundaries of backward Russia, then there is all the more reason to believe that it can be achieved in advanced Germany. Tomorrow the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany will undertake to propound this theory. The draft programme empowered them to do so. The day after tomorrow the French will have its turn. It will be the beginning of the disintegration of the Comintern along the lines of social patriotism.”

The process of disintegration along the lines of social patriotism, of petty-bourgeois Stalinism, led it to accommodate to, and seek to amalgamate with, the labour bureaucracy in the metropolitan countries and both the labour bureaucracy and layers of the petty-bourgeois in the imperialised and semi-colonial countries. It means that the Stalinist parties cannot simply be understood as agents of the Kremlin.

In the imperialised and semi-colonial countries the Stalinists seek, via the labour bureaucracy, to bind the working class to alliances with the “national” or “progressive” bourgeoisie on a programme of realising the “stage” of national independence and “bourgeois” democracy. In practice such alliances can only mean the subordination of working class interests to those of the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie. In every instance where the working class has attempted to act in its own interests the bourgeoisie have immediately broken the alliance and meted out violence and repression against the workers, and their parties, including the Stalinist parties. From 1927 in China to Chile in 1973, this strategy has proved a death trap for the proletariat and its vanguard.

Stalinism has necessarily accommodated ideologically and programmatically to the petty-bourgeois of the imperialised world. Its Menshevik programme for a national democratic revolution gives expression to the utopian horizons of petty bourgeois nationalism. In concrete circumstances the model of the Soviet bureaucratic plan and economic assistance from the USSR can stand as a strategy for sections of the petty bourgeoisie in their struggle for freedom from imperialism’s yoke, and in order to overcome the massive unevenness and underdevelopment of the productive forces that imperialism has maintained in these countries.

 

Stalinism in the west

 

The communist parties of Western Europe are reformist in their domestic policies (i.e. bourgeois workers’ parties). Their political programme is one of peaceful transformation of the capitalist state via a reactionary utopian cross class alliance (“anti-monopoly alliance”, “historic compromise”, “new” or “advanced” democracy, etc.), a stage prior to “socialist” measures. A “peaceful” progressive anti-monopoly section of the Western bourgeoisie is appealed to for a common front to isolate the war-mongers. The origins of this policy of Stalinism lie in the Popular Front of 1935-39 and the war-time alliance of 1941-45.

The communist parties’ programmes are in essence similar to those of “left” social democracy with the addition of the central role of the Soviet Union as a force for world peace and socialism that must be defended. Powerful social democratic tendencies have developed within these parties (“Eurocommunism”) which involve the junking of the long-dead ideological baggage of Stalinism, such as the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

The Eurocommunists reject the “Russian model” and express criticism of the USSR’s “human rights” record. Carillo of the Spanish CP has developed this to the furthest point in an attempt to prove to the Spanish and the US bourgeoisie the governmental trustworthiness of his party. Both the Spanish and the Italian CP accept NATO and the Western Alliance. Yet the Western bourgeoisie will not trust them with governmental office except in an extreme revolutionary crisis and then only temporarily, as in 1945-47.

The objective basis for this lies in the continued Stalinist nature of these parties. To the extent that they recognise the USSR as socialist, i.e. a higher historical form of society than capitalism, to the extent that they recognise the USSR as the force for world peace, their patriotic fervour rings falsely in the bourgeoisie’s ears. They may peddle chauvinist poison to the working class in the place of communist internationalism but can they be relied upon to be patriotic against the USSR? Despite individual leaders’ statements, none of these parties has definitively and historically put itself at the service of imperialism against the Soviet bureaucracy.

In Spain, Italy and France, these parties have repeatedly aborted revolutionary situations and mass movements of the working class. But unless - like the social democracy - they effectively deny that the USSR and the other workers’ states are historic gains of the working class, i.e. deny their “socialist” or working class character, unless they espouse (bourgeois) democracy as a higher good to be defended against totalitarianism they remain Stalinist parties.

Are these parties then “defenders of the USSR?” No, they are defenders of the Kremlin bureaucracy and its international policy of class collaboration. They “defend the USSR” via the popular front and petty bourgeois pacifism and through the subordination of the class struggle in their own countries to these strategies. In so doing they abort the only decisive act against imperialist war and capitalist restoration - the over throw of the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries.

An important contradiction exists, however, within the make-up of these parties. Added to the contradiction that exists within social democratic reformism (i.e. between its working class base and the bourgeois programme of the labour bureaucracy) these parties are historically committed to the defence of the bureaucracies of the workers’ states. They are counter-revolutionary workers’ parties which serve the bourgeoisie to the extent that its interests are at one with the bureaucracy of the workers’ states.

The bureaucracies of the workers’ states strategically pursue collaboration with imperialism whilst tactically being forced to engage in actions which conflict with imperialism in order to buttress and extend its bargaining position. Imperialism, in its turn, has struck only a tactical compromise with the workers’ states – crisis and decay will force it to seize the opportunity to reverse the overturns in these states.

War presents the Stalinist parties with the decisive choice of loyalty to “its own” bourgeoisie, or the Kremlin. There can be little doubt that the largest section of the apparatus of these parties and their trade union and municipal functionaries indistinguishable in their social conditions and integration into bourgeois society from their social democratic peers within the labour bureaucracy with which they have historically amalgamated – will serve the fatherland in war as in peace. But large sections of the proletarian base of these parties consist of the more militant spontaneously class conscious sections of the proletariat. They are isolated from the bourgeois public opinion by the same bureaucratic apparatus that stifles workers’ democracy in their ranks.

They have not experienced the same degree of integration into bourgeois society via the labour bureaucracy.It is this section of Stalinism’s base, hardened by isolation in bourgeois society that will turn from the social patriotic apparatus with revulsion. The task of unfalsified Trotskyism is to provide the programme, the rallying point for internationalist opposition to the war drives of the bourgeoisie, for defence of the USSR and the other bureaucratically degenerate workers’ states, for unremitting struggle for a political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracies, for socialist revolution in the imperialist heartlands based on proletarian soviet democracy, and led by a Leninist democratic centralist party.

 


Chapter 10: Centrism and Stalinism - the falsification of Trotsky's analysis

 

Between the European conference of 1944 and the Third World Congress of 1951, no section of the Fourth International (FI), nor any tendencies within the sections, developed a correct appraisal of the role of world Stalinism in Eastern Europe. Up until the Second World Congress of 1948 this did not preclude the Fourth International from making a series of meaningful insights into the nature of and role of Stalinism.

Nor did it lead to the abandonment of the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism as counterrevolutionary. However the errors were to become amplified and extended, under the impact of the Stalin-Tito break of 1948, into a qualitative revision of the Trotskyist understanding of Stalinism.

The resolutions of the 1944 and 1946 gatherings of the FI made two interconnected errors on Stalinism and East Europe. On the one hand, they underestimated the counter-revolutionary role of the Kremlin in Eastern Europe; on the other, they overestimated the instability of Stalinism and the potential for its revolutionary defeat at the hands of the working class. The perspective of the coming “death knell” of Stalinism with which the Trotskyists entered the war continued to operate, unmodified after the war. In the theses passed by the 1944 Congress, the Fourth International declared:

“The war, sharpening intolerably the contradictions of the Russian economy, has sounded the knell of the inevitable liquidation of the Bonapartist Stalinist bureaucracy. The latter is destined to perish without fail, under the blows of world imperialism or under those of the proletarian world revolution.”1

This perspective was contradicted by events in Russia itself, in the buffer zone, in Italy, Greece and France. However the FI in its later theses, refused to abandon or even partially correct its original perspective. Consequently, although the FI recognised the counter-revolutionary role played by the Red Army in demobilising the independent struggles of the masses, they suggested that these struggles would quickly throw aside Stalinism. Trotsky’s statement that the “laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus” (true at a general level) was used to justify a prognosis for the immediate future. This prognosis left out of account both the subjective weaknesses of the masses (the absence of revolutionary parties) and objective difficulties (such as the armed might of the Soviet bureaucracy, and its enhanced prestige after the defeat of Nazism.) In short, it was a wrong prognosis. Refusal to acknowledge this led the F I to overestimate the “revolutionary” developments taking place in the buffer zone. In 1946 the FI argued:

“The Soviet occupation and control have given an impetus, although in varying degrees, to civil war and the development of a regime of dual power.” 2

This was untrue. The occupation checked and arrested the development of civil war. Moreover, the regime of dual power consisted of the Stalinists and the bourgeoisie, not the Stalinists and independent workers’ organisations.

This error of prognosis did not have an immediate programmatic consequence. The programmatic tenets of Trotsky still held good for the FI. The theses of 1944 and 1946 do clearly and unequivocally call for the revolutionary overthrow of Stalinist rule and the expropriation of the capitalist economies in Eastern Europe, and for the building of independent sections of the FI to lead such overthrows. In a resolution of the International Executive Committee published in the June 1946 issue of Fourth International, the FI made clear their refusal to compromise with Stalinism:

“The Fourth International demands the withdrawal of all foreign armies, including the Red Army, from all occupied territories.”3

Further, the FI raised a programme of transitional demands for the East and the West which argued for political revolution, defence of the USSR and the overthrow of capitalism in the buffer zone and the west by the independent organisations of the working class under Trotskyist leadership.

The leadership of the FI, particularly the young European leader Germain, developed an analysis of the buffer zone as capitalist states, but ones which could potentially become “structurally assimilated” into the Soviet Union. By this Germain meant that the states of the buffer zone could, under certain conditions, be geographically integrated into the USSR and at the same time be economically transformed – from capitalist into degenerated workers’ states like the USSR. But Germain, dogmatically clinging to Trotsky's analysis of the pre-war bureaucratic social overturn in Eastern Poland, insisted on maintaining that the condition for “structural assimilation” was the independent intervention of the masses.

“But in order to completely assimilate a given territory, that is to say, in order to expropriate and destroy as a class the landed proprietors and capitalists, the bureaucracy is compelled – even if in a limited way and with the aim of always controlling it and crushing it when necessary – to call upon the autonomous action of the masses. It is precisely for this reason, among others, and precisely because the bureaucracy fears the autonomous action of the masses like the plague, that it will be unable to accomplish assimilation except on a relatively limited scale.” 4

While such an intervention of the masses (free of Stalinist control) is a condition for the creation of a healthy workers' state, this is not as a general rule necessary for the creation of degenerate workers’ states. Germain, however, only approached the problem at a general level. He ignored the specific features of the buffer zone – dislocation from the world market, decimation of the indigenous capitalists, monopoly of control by the Stalinists over the repressive apparatus, demobilised working class – that were all crucial to facilitating precisely an overturn of capitalism without the intervention of the masses.

In circumstances where, as Germain rightly states in his document, the principal foreign policy objectives of the Kremlin were the creation of a military buffer to rebuild Socialism in One Country, his theses appeared plausible. However after 1947, when conditions changed dramatically and Moscow was forced to carry through overturns in the buffer zone to counter the plans of the imperialists, Germain’s maintenance of his preconditions for an overturn of capitalism proved his theory to be a rigid and useless dogma. This became apparent by 1948 and, disarming Germain in the Yugoslav question, led him to support Pablo’s revision of the Trotskyist position in 1951.

Germain’s insistence on the need for mass mobilisations to accompany an overturn had a definite opportunistic kernel. Tied to the prognosis of the imminent collapse of Stalinism, this analysis caused the F I to constantly look for and anticipate the development of such mobilisations. Further it was conceded that such mobilisations could lead to a turn in the policies of the communist parties themselves:

“All of these countries, including Yugoslavia, will however be exposed to an especially powerful pressure from imperialism. It is not excluded that in this case the Communist Parties, basing themselves firmly on the revolutionary aspirations of the masses, will move forward and abolish the remnants of bourgeois power and property.” 5

Such a development, it was thought, could only testify to the crisis of Stalinism. However, when the FI applied this prediction in practice to the Tito-Stalin split, they insisted that Tito had split from Stalinism. In so doing they believed that their prediction about revolutionary upheavals in the buffer zone had been fulfilled. This belief had serious consequences for the revolutionary integrity of the FI. The 1948 Congress and its resolution on “The USSR and Stalinism” did little to guard the FI from these consequences. In fact it merely codified all of the earlier errors of perspective. The theses detailed the counter revolutionary role of the Kremlin in the preceding years, yet still insisted on the same artificial pre-conditions for the carrying through of bureaucratic social revolutions as before (the need for mass mobilisations and geographical assimilation). They maintained their fundamentally erroneous perspective with regard to the crisis of Stalinism. At no point between 1944 and 1947 did the FI make an exception of Yugoslavia in its analysis of Eastern, Europe.

After 1948, the liquidation of the capitalist economies in Eastern Europe and the Tito-Stalin split propelled the FI leadership into a further re-examination of the nature of Stalinism.

Defining Stalinism narrowly as the subordination of each CP to the interests of the Kremlin, the 1948 Theses stated:

“under Stalinist leadership they have turned into organisations whose only function is to serve the diplomatic manoeuvres of the Soviet bureaucracy.” (our emphasis). The FI concluded that the Tito-Stalin split signified that the YCP had ceased to be Stalinist.

Unable, or unwilling, to recognise that Stalinism remains true to itself even while breaking up along nationalist, social-patriotic lines, the FI used the split to re-read events in Yugoslavia from 1943 onwards. The FI saw the split as a verification of their perspective with regard to the crisis of Stalinism. They saw it as the latest manifestation of a break with Stalinism that had been effectively completed when the YCP in 1945 was said to have led the masses, under pressure, in a genuine proletarian revolution, which successfully overthrew capitalism and created a “deformed workers’ state” not in need of political revolution.

Michel Pablo was the principal advocate of this position. In August 1948 Pablo hesitantly began to lay the foundations for his revisions of Trotskyism on the Yugoslav question. In the article The Yugoslav Affair he claimed:

“As against all the other Communist parties in the ‘buffer zone’ which won their power thanks to the direct support of the Kremlin and the Red Army, the Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) during the war led a real mass movement with distinct revolutionary tendencies which brought it to power.” 6

The revolutionary tendencies of the masses had imparted to the YCP a “special character”. At this stage Pablo did not claim that the YCP was as yet centrist.

He did, however, suggest that independence from Moscow gave the YCP, as a whole, the potential to break from Stalinism thus rendering the need for a new Trotskyist party in Yugoslavia obsolete. His programmatic conclusion in this article was that the Fourth International should seek to pressure the YCP onto the road of self-reform.

By September 1949, building on his incorrect appraisal of the potential for self-reform of the YCP, Pablo correctly designated Yugoslavia as a workers’ state. It was his definition of it as a deformed workers’ state that was fundamentally wrong. In using this term, Pablo implied that the bureaucratic deformation of the Yugoslav workers’ state was only qualitative. That is, political power to some extent lay in the hands of the working class:

“Within this framework of a workers’ state, defined in this sense, can be contained for a long time a partially bourgeois content both in the sphere of distribution norms as well as in several aspects of political power.” 7

Such a formulation is true for a healthy workers’ state as well. It will contain bourgeois features in its economy and its political superstructures. But what distinguishes a healthy workers’ state or even a workers’ state with bureaucratic deformations, is that political power still lies with the working class or in the hands of a revolutionary party, not in the hands of a consolidated bureaucratic caste set against the working class and with its own distinct interests.

The existence of such a caste, and one clearly existed in Yugoslavia, signified a qualitative difference between a healthy and a degenerate workers’ state and necessitated in the latter case a political revolution to take political power back into the hands of the working class. Failure to make this distinction led Pablo at first to fudge the question of political revolution in Yugoslavia and later to completely abandon the call for it.

Instead Pablo merely called for the extension of the world revolution as a means of gradually undermining the material base (backwardness) of bureaucratic deformations in countries such as Yugoslavia. In February 1950, therefore, he argued:

“between capitalism and socialism there will be an entire historic period and a whole gamut of transitional regimes which, while ceasing to be capitalist, will undergo various degrees of evolution with regard to one another and in relation to socialism in which the state (state apparatus) will be more or less deformed by the bureaucracy; in which the (deformed) laws of capitalism will continue to operate to some extent or another, and in which all these difficulties and obstacles will be overcome only by the extension of the revolution on the world arena.” 8

Not only was the programme of political revolution rendered irrelevant in this formula, so too was the Marxist programme for the struggle against bureaucracy in the transition period.

Pablo compounded these errors by claiming that, given the experience of Yugoslavia and the YCP (a Stalinist party transformed into a centrist party by the pressure of the masses). Stalinism generally could be transformed by such pressure. In his report to the 1951 Congress of the Fourth International he argued:

“We have made clear that the CPs are not exactly reformist parties and that under certain exceptional conditions they possess the possibility of projecting a revolutionary orientation.” 9

Pablo’s positions on Yugoslavia were adopted by the FI at its 1951 Third World Congress. It was subscribed to by all the major sections and leading figures of the FI. There was no revolutionary opposition to Pablo’s centrist position that:

“In Yugoslavia the first country where the proletariat took power since the degeneration of the USSR, Stalinism no longer exists today as an effective factor in the workers’ movement, which, however, does not exclude its possible re-emergence under certain conditions.” 10

Germain’s objections to this position had become obsolete in the face of the reality of the Yugoslav workers’ state, and useless in terms of explaining the counter-revolutionary nature of the party that brought that state into being. At the same conference the FI did recognise the rest of Eastern Europe as deformed workers’ states in need of political revolutions. But the resolutions of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia were seen as a complementary whole and this whole entailed a right centrist revision of the Trotskyist position on Stalinism.

This revision entailed redefining Stalinism as having a “dual nature”. The bureaucratic social revolutions in the buffer zone were seen as examples of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism. The progressive side of Stalinism is regarded as being the ability of some of the CPs, acting under the pressure of the masses, to break with the Kremlin and project a “revolutionary orientation.” This was what the FI claimed had happened in Yugoslavia and later in China. It fell to Germain, now obediently following Pablo’s line, to give this revision theoretical expression in his Ten Theses on Stalinism:

“The contradictory nature of the Soviet bureaucracy is only partially reflected in the Stalinist parties. The dual nature of these parties is of a different social origin; it does not flow from the special role of a parasitic bureaucracy in a workers’ state but from the dual function of these parties, which are working class because of their mass base in their own country as well as international instruments of the Soviet bureaucracy.” 11

It was only the latter characteristic that defined them as Stalinist. The former characteristic could, under certain conditions, serve to negate this Stalinism. Thus:

“The Yugoslav and Chinese examples have demonstrated that, placed in certain exceptional conditions, entire Communist parties can modify their political line and lead the struggle of the masses up to the conquest of power, while passing beyond the objectives of the Kremlin.

Under such conditions these parties cease being Stalinist parties in the classical sense of the world.” 12

That is, they became centrist parties.

We reject the view that Stalinist parties are defined as such exclusively by virtue of their relationship to the Kremlin. This forms only one important constituent part of a Stalinist party’s programme and overall nature. Further we reject the notion that Stalinism has a dual nature and that it can be pushed in a revolutionary direction without first breaking up and being replaced by a revolutionary party.

Against this notion of Stalinism as possessing both a progressive and counter-revolutionary side, each weighing equally in the scales and separated in time and space, we re-assert the Trotskyist conception of Stalinism as predominantly counter-revolutionary but with contradictory characteristics. We recognise this contradiction as an intensely dialectical one; that is, that Stalinism is capable of achieving (in exceptional circumstances) results which, taken in isolation are progressive (the liquidation of capitalism).

But Stalinism achieves these results by counter-revolutionary means. In recognising this we by no means equate the progressive and reactionary elements. We recognise that the progressive part is permeated and dominated by the counter-revolutionary whole.

By dissolving this dialectical understanding of Stalinism into a pair of formally opposed and separable elements – progressive and reactionary – the FI after 1951 opened the way to a liquidation of the revolutionary programme in favour of an orientation (deep entryism) which sought to pressure the national CPs into taking the progressive path.

Finally, the FI’s revisionism on the question of Stalinism cannot be fully understood without reference to the positions taken on the FI’s other major concern of the period – the continuing instability of imperialism. Up to 1948 this instability was understood in terms of chronic economic stagnation. After 1948 this instability came to be expressed, according to the FI, more and more in terms of preparations for a third world war against the USSR and Eastern Europe.

The errors on Stalinism and East Europe and on the prospects for imperialism came together in the 1951 Congress resolutions on Orientation and Perspectives. These argued that a new world war was imminent, that the balance of forces was weighed against imperialism in favour of the workers’ states, and that the newly discovered potentially progressive character of Stalinism would mean that the new war would take the form of an international civil war. The end result of this would be a series of revolutions at least as healthy and progressive as the Yugoslav one.

An opposition that purported to defend Trotskyism against Pablo’s revisionism on the question of Stalinism was the Vern/Ryan tendency inside the SWP(US) during 1950-53. This tendency argued that the FI had been wrong to delay for so long in characterising Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia included, as workers’ states.

They argued that the only decisive criterion for the characterisation of the class nature of a state was which class’s representatives controlled the repressive apparatus of the state machine. In Eastern Europe the entry of the Red Army (the repressive apparatus of a workers’ state) marked the establishment of workers’ states – i.e. as early as 1944-5. They reasoned that it was “Here in this superstructure of society, is where the revolution of our time takes place.”13 Stalinism is rooted in the working class – therefore the Stalinists in power always equal a distorted form of workers’ power. Stalinism could not possibly rest on capitalist property relations, or prop up a capitalist state, even for a limited period, because it itself rests on the post-capitalist property relations.

These undialectical positions of the Vern/Ryan tendency which failed to recognise the contradictory nature of Stalinism, foreshadowed many of the errors of the international Spartacist tendency (iSt) on the Russian question. Their position can be defined as Stalinophile.

It rests in the first place on an incorrect analogy with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Because the Bolsheviks in state power presided over private property in whole sections of the economy the Vern/Ryan tendency disregarded economic criteria altogether. They equated a healthy revolution, in which the capitalist state was decisively smashed by the direct action of the masses led by a revolutionary party and a new type of state established, with the Stalinist bureaucratic overturns of capitalism and the establishment of degenerate workers’ states.

The same criterion was applied to two distinct historical phenomena. This was done because the Vern/Ryan tendency regarded the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy as only qualitatively different from the early Bolshevik state functionaries. They define the bureaucracy solely as part of the working class, ignoring their nature as a caste within Soviet society – that is based on the working class but with interests distinct from, and opposed to, the working class. They deny the predominantly counterrevolutionary nature of the bureaucracy. They deny the reality of Stalinism in Eastern Europe after the war. They ignore the reality that Stalinism did defend capitalist property relations for a period and that it did hand back countries it controlled, like Finland and Austria to the imperialists rather than abolish capitalism in them. This tendency’s one-sided analysis of Stalinism grants to the Soviet bureaucracy a revolutionary dynamic it does not possess. The criterion for establishing whether a degenerate workers’ state exists is not, in the first place dependent upon whether the Stalinists have secured political power. As we have shown, this is a precondition for the creation of a degenerate workers’ state. But it does not follow that fulfilment of this condition will inevitably lead to the establishment of planned property relations. This fact was proved beyond doubt by Austria, Finland and Vietnam (in 1945).

In the period 1948 to 1953 (in 1953 the FI split into the International Committee (IC) and the International Secretariat (IS) there was no revolutionary opposition to Pablo’s revisionist positions on Stalinism. The American SWP, the British Healy group and the French PCI (all of which joined the IC) repeatedly expressed their support for the FI’s positions, up to and including the 1951 Congress documents on Yugoslavia. ostensibly the IC’s split with Pablo involved a rejection of his tactical orientation towards Stalinist parties and his organisational methods, not his analysis and understanding of Stalinism.

The Germain opposition to Pablo on the Yugoslav question was not able to sustain an alternative position.

Their dogmatism proved to be increasingly at variance with reality in Eastern Europe. Their conversion to Pablo’s viewpoint was made easy by the fact that throughout the debate they accepted all of the premises that Pablo drew his conclusions from – the exceptional nature of the Yugoslav revolution, the centrist nature of the YCP and the conception of the Tito-Stalin split as a “proletarian revolt against the anti-proletarian, counterrevolutionary policy of the Kremlin” (Germain).

At the 1951 Congress Pablo's centrist position on Yugoslavia and on Stalinism was passed, unchallenged by any section of the FI or even any section of a section, on a revolutionary basis.

This was quickly to take programmatic effect in the tactics and slogans raised by the FI. For example. in 1953 during the East German uprising, the FI (IS) refused to call for political revolution.

That is why we recognise the 1951 Congress as the point at which the FI – codifying its errors instead of rectifying them and abandoning the Trotskyist position on Stalinism – completed its collapse into centrism.

 

Mandel’s orthodox revisions

 

In the demonology of the “anti-Pabloite”, Fourth International International Committee (lC) tradition, the chief demon was, and remains, Michel Pablo. While it is certainly true that he ushered in the “theoretical rearmament” of the Fourth International (F I) that was to rob it of every vestige of authentic Trotskyism, he rapidly lost the role of principal theoretical revisionist of the FI after the 1953 split. The IC’s constant harping on “Pabloite revisionism” was actually a testimony to their own theoretical bankruptcy. It replaced any attempt to theoretically refute the chief spokesman for the FI’s International Secretariat (IS), Ernest Germain, later to become better known as Ernest Mandel.

He was the architect of the analysis of the crisis within Stalinism after Stalin’s death in 1953, and was chiefly responsible for formulating the IS programmatic response to the events surrounding the “crisis” of Stalinism at the 1954, 1957 and 1961 Congresses of the IS. He played a leading role in the re-unification discussions with the main grouping in the IC, the Socialist Workers Party (US), reaching agreement with its leader, Joseph Hansen over the analysis of the Cuban revolution. From the reunification in 1963 – when the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) was established – to the present day, Mandel has retained his position as the major USFI theoretician on Stalinism, the USSR and the degenerate workers’ states.

After 1950, Germain (Mandel) was forced to concede his error on the Yugoslav revolution. Pablo had been right to characterise Tito’s Yugoslavia as a “deformed workers’ state”. His defeat – or rather his collapse – on this question prompted him to carry out a task that has since become the trade mark of his books, pamphlets and articles. He set to work to disguise the FI’s revisions of Trotskyism with the gloss of Marxist “orthodoxy”. In 1951, he reaffirmed the Trotskyist position on Stalinism in the USSR, but revised it with regard to other Stalinist parties. In his Ten Theses, he argued:

“The contradictory nature of the Soviet bureaucracy is only partially reflected in the Stalinist parties. The dual nature of these parties is of a different social origin; it does not flow from the special role of a parasitic bureaucracy in a workers’ state, but from the dual function of these parties, which are working class because of their mass base in their own country as well as international instruments of the Soviet bureaucracy...For the Kremlin, the usefulness of this mass base consists exclusively in serving its diplomatic designs. But these designs periodically involve a political line diametrically opposed to the most elementary aspirations of the masses. From this flows the possibility of the outstripping of the Communist parties by their own base, which, in action, can go beyond the objectives set by the Kremlin and escape from its control. This possibility has always been one of the fundamental perspectives of the Trotskyist movement”.14

In the event of this happening, claims Germain, such parties cease to be Stalinist.

This analysis leads to a practical capitulation to what remain, in essence, Stalinist parties. Mandel uses the apparently orthodox analysis of Stalinism as contradictory to obscure the real nature of Stalinism behind a spurious “dual nature”, a bad side under Kremlin orders; a good side under mass pressure. When the latter becomes predominant, Stalinism turns into “centrism” or an “empirically revolutionary tendency”. This fails completely to comprehend why Stalinism is counter-revolutionary.

As we have shown, wherever a break with the Kremlin takes place and the indigenous Stalinists carry through an overturn of capitalism, as in Yugoslavia and China, this is prompted by the need for self-preservation on the part of the already-established bureaucracies of these parties, not as a result of pressure from their mass base. Where such pressure is involved, it plays only a secondary, coincidental role, and is usually accompanied by increased repression against the masses. While the possibility of such fractures within world Stalinism has indeed always been part of Trotskyism’s perspectives, the belief that parties breaking from Kremlin control thereby cease to be Stalinist has never been part of those perspectives.

Germain applied this position to the Chinese revolution. Mao became a second Tito.15 The position of the Chinese Trotskyists on the1949 revolution which attacked Mao’s Stalinist popular frontist project, was replaced by Germain’s analysis of the Chinese coalition government as a “workers’ and farmers’ government”, following the Yugoslav road:

“Many reasons permit us to hope for such a development (a left turn – Eds). More than any other Communist Party the Chinese CP has been obliged to keep a less bureaucractic and centralised structure, to maintain a constant metabolism between its own aspirations and pre-occupations and those of the masses. The objective situation pushes it along this road.” 6

In 1977, Mandel maintained that the Chinese CP, which had ceased to be Stalinist, did indeed take the sought-after left turn:

“The victory of the third Chinese revolution in 1949 was the most important gain for the world revolution since the victory of the October socialist revolution.” 17

This assessment, stemming from his false analysis of Stalinism’s dual nature, ignores the massive counter-revolutionary setback for the Chinese working class that this revolution involved. Since 1949 the Chinese Stalinists have excluded the masses from any real political power, but have rather used them as cannon fodder for their inter-bureaucratic faction fights.

The programmatic logic of this analysis of Stalinism in China (and Yugoslavia) was to return to Trotsky’s pre-1934 position, namely a position calling for the political reform of these Stalinist regimes. The 1954 Congress resolution, subscribed to (if not indeed written by) Germain, explicitly rejects political revolution for China and Yugoslavia together with the perspective of a new party. It argues instead for the creation of soviets, as forms of proletarian democracy, and factions inside the Chinese and Yugoslav CPs, whose objective should be to replace the “centrist” leaderships of those parties through a democratic process of reform:

“Since both the Chinese and to a certain extent also the Yugoslav CP are in reality bureaucratic centrist parties, which, however, still find themselves under the pressure of the revolution in their countries, we do not call upon the proletariat of these countries to constitute new revolutionary parties or to prepare a political revolution in these countries.”18

This position had the advantage of pre-1934 Trotskyist “orthodoxy”. But whilst Germain borrowed the term, his purpose was to wipe out the historical gain of Trotsky’s analysis of the Stalinism after 1934. Moreover, Germain’s position ignored the reality that the working class had been politically expropriated by a bureaucratic caste. It ignored the fact that in all fundamentals the ruling parties practiced the Stalinist programme of “socialism in one country”, the stifling of any independent political life for the masses, the bureaucratic operation of the plan, and the subordination of international revolution to the strategic deal of the bureaucracy with imperialism.

Since the 1950s, the brutal reality of Stalinism has impinged on Mandel’s consciousness, and has led him to change his stance on these countries. His method, though, remains exactly the same, and the USFI has on various occasions found replacements for China and Yugoslavia as non-Stalinist workers’ states, in Vietnam and Cuba.

With regard to Eastern Europe, 1954 witnessed the beginning of a new stage of the FI’s revision of the programme of political revolution. The crisis of Stalinism after Stalin’s death and the East German workers’ uprising, threw the bonapartist clique in the Kremlin into a turmoil, and led to a relative loosening of the bureaucracy’s stranglehold on the political life of the masses of Eastern Europe. Mandel recognised that the measures promulgated by Stalin's successors in the USSR and Eastern Europe were, in fact, measures of self-preservation, concessions designed to buy, them time for retrenchment.

Nevertheless, he did argue that the rumblings in Eastern Europe did open up a persepective of fragmentation in the national CPs, with a section (defined as being “closest to the masses”) placing themselves at the head of the struggle for political revolution. While the fragmentation has occurred, Mandel went further and argued that the IS programme should centre on developing such a split as the best means of achieving the political revolution. To this end, an entry tactic was advocated, and the “prioritised” programme of political revolution was reduced to the call for a series of reforms that would be palatable to a potentially revolutionary section of the bureaucracy:

“1. Freedom for working class prisoners.

2. Abolition of repressive anti-tabor legislation.

3. Democratisation of the workers’ parties and organisations.

4. Legalisation of all workers’ parties and organisations.

5. Election and democratic functioning of mass committees.

6. Independence of the trade unions in relation to the government.

7. Democratic elaboration of the economic plan by the masses for the masses.

8. Effective right of self-determination for the peoples.”19

The programme fails to link these demands to the struggle to overthrow the bureaucracy and establish genuine workers’ power. Indeed, calls for this course of action are not raised precisely because of the IS’s new view of the bureaucracy as containing within it potentially centrist elements.

Between 1954 and the Fifth World Congress in 1957, further enormous upheavals occurred in the degenerate workers’ states and the USSR. The 20th Congress of the CPSU “secret speech” by Kruschev and the ensuing concessions, the revolutionary uprising against the bureaucracy in Hungary and in Poland – all in 1956 – made a deep impression upon the IS’s perspectives. Mandel gave the report to the Congress on the crisis within Stalinism. The reactions of the YCP and the CCP leaderships to the Hungarian events, whilst uneven, were held to be progressive, confirming the perspective of reform.

Yet a major change in orientation to the buffer zone and the USSR was outlined by Mandel. For him and the IS leadership, the Hungarian and Polish events had proven that a wing of the bureaucracy would follow the Tito-Mao road: in Hungary – Nagy, in Poland – Gomulka. In the USSR the “centrist” faction of Kruschev was crowded on its left by Malenkov and Mikoyan, who whilst not of the Nagy-Gomulka mold, presaged the emergence of such a tendency.

In a bid to facilitate the development of such tendencies in the bureaucracy, the programme of political revolution for Eastern Europe and the USSR was completely revised. Since the prospect of political revolution was seen to depend upon a section or wing of the bureaucracy, soviets could not be organs of struggle against the bureaucracy. Political revolution was considered as (i.e. was replaced by) competition between an “FI faction” and the rest of the bureaucracy for the leadership of the working class.

From this point onwards, the notion of workers’ councils or soviets as revolutionary organs of struggle is lost, and replaced by the conception of soviets as organs of administration, for bringing the masses into democratic life, to participate in the plan. The political revolution is thus reduced to the peaceful withering away of the bureaucratic caste.

This programme of political “revolution” emerges from the Fifth Congress as a unified strategy for all workers’ states. It was merely a question of the ease and rapidity with which the objective crisis in Stalinism would produce the necessary tendencies and splits within the bureaucracies.

In 1961, the Sixth Congress, and again the 1963 Reunification Congress, merely repeated these same formulae, and added nothing new by way of programme.

During the last decade, Mandel has further revised the programme of political revolution. As we have shown, he first revised it by degutting the soviets as organs of struggle against the bureaucracy. At that time (1957), he was still clear that soviets should at least exercise the workers class’s dictatorship against restorationists. But in the 1970s, a social-democratic wing emerged within the Stalinist parties – “Eurocommunism” which identified Bolshevism with Stalinism, and advocated greater use of bourgeois parliamentary institutions as a guarantee against the “natural tendency” to dictatorial/bureaucratic abuse that is supposed to accompany rule by soviets.

Whilst Mandel has attacked such conceptions, he has made unwarranted concessions to this wing of Stalinism. He has done so by accepting that soviet power must include representatives of the bourgeoisie, at least in the transition period, if not in the struggle for political power. Mandel explicitly rejects Lenin’s and Trotsky’s justifications for such exclusion, a justification which he himself accepted in earlier years.

In short, Mandel, most particularly in his Theses on Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, passed at the USFI’s World Congress in 1979, obliterates the repressive character of the workers’ dictatorship, in a way similar to Kautsky’s denial of the repressive character of all political forms of the bourgeoisie’s dictatorship. Applied to the programme of political revolution, this can only mean support for open restorationists or counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucrats – sworn enemies of the proletariat – in the workers’ councils.

Mandel’s political perspective is intimately tied to his economic understanding of the Soviet Union and the degenerate workers’ states. Mandel laid down his basic position in Marxist Economic Theory. While not uncritical, he presents a picture of the Soviet economy as an ever-expanding one:

“This progress is not to be explained primarily by the enormous backwardness it had to overcome, in comparison with the industry of the most advanced capitalist countries. It has continued after this backwardness has already been, by and large, overcome. This progress is proceeding apace especially in the directions of increase and modernisation of the country’s stock of machines and of striving to automatise production.” 20

This process is, for Mandel, proof of the superiority of planning over capitalist anarchy. However, he does recognise that managerial self-interest and bureaucratic control of the state leading to hyper-centralisation – act as a fetter on the planned economy, particularly in the sphere of the production of consumer goods. But while Mandel accepts that the bureaucracy act as a fetter, he does not believe that they undermine the working of the plan and threaten to plunge it into reverse, opening the way to capitalist restoration. How this accords with his analysis of Kampuchea, which was a planned economy thrown into reverse, he has never deigned to explain.21

The planned economy of the USSR is not without its contradictions, and the chief contradiction is, for the “orthodox” Mandel, the one that Marx pointed out would inevitably exist in the period of the transition from capitalism to communism:

“In fact, Soviet economy is marked by the contradictory combination of a non-capitalist mode of production and a till basically bourgeois mode of distribution. Such a contradictory combination points to an economic system which had a ready gone beyond capitalism, but which has not yet reached socialism, a system which is passing through a period of transition between capitalism and socialism, during which, as Le nin already showed, the economy inevitably combines features of the past with features of the future.”22

In a 1979 work, Mandel elaborated on this point:

“Just because a transition is more complex and – to put it paradoxically less dynamic, since it transits less rapidly than expected, is no reason to say that it is not transitional.” 23

As well as planning, the other key feature in Mandel’s analysis of the USSR is that is is a transitional society in the classical Marxist sense.

A further element of his analysis to be noted is his position on the Soviet bureaucracy. He regards it, as a whole, as becoming objectively weaker, even redundant, as, the productive forces grow, since its social role as an arbiter in the distribution of scarce goods declines as production increases. The growth of the working class concomitant with this is a further objective factor operating against the bureaucracy. He developed the kernel of this position in 1952:

“The level of development of the productive forces has become incompatible with bureaucratic management”.24

Once again this position has the advantage of orthodoxy. It starts with Trotsky’s prognosis of Stalinism as a regime of crisis and objectively creating its own grave digger.

However, through the 1950s and 1960s, Mandel added his own prognoses to this orthodoxy, and built out of it constant predictions of developing centrist/reform wings of the bureaucracy, in turn citing this as evidence for his essentially “objectivist” view of the bureaucracy’s crisis.

Taken together, Mandel’s positions on planning, the transition and the bureaucracy constitute a thoroughly false, non-revolutionary Marxist understanding of the economic and political nature of the USSR and the degenerate workers’ states.

They lay the basis for his reduction of the programme of political revolution to a series of structural reforms which can, potentially, be carried out in alliance with a wing of the bureaucracy.

Mandel’s explanation of the progress of the Soviet economy is based on a one-sided assessment of the planned economy which ignores the bureaucratic and blind nature of the plan itself. By attributing this bureaucratic plan with the power of unlimited economic growth (albeit at a slower rate than would be possible with a democratic plan), Mandel overlooks the existence of a series of intrinsic contradictions that the planned economies of the USSR and of the degenerate workers’ states suffer from.

The bureaucracy, according to Mandel, undermines the efficiency but not the existence of the plan. In his view, the main threats to the plan are external to it – imperialism and the plan/ market contradiction inside the workers’ states.

But these threats would inevitably exist with regard to a healthy workers’ state. The problems facing the plans of the USSR and the degenerate workers’ states are of a different order. Poland, Yugoslavia, China, the USSR itself and other workers’ states have all suffered from serious economic crises that have included unemployment, wage cuts etc – features which Mandel suggests have been removed in these countries.

Of course the bureaucracy (and Mandel) disguise such crises with figures indicating overall economic growth. Nevertheless this growth is increasingly artifical in that it is not, and cannot be, short of political revolution, qualitative economic growth. The bureaucratic plan has proved itself incapable of outstripping the highest economic and technical achievements of capitalism. It lags behind the world’s largest imperialist power, the USA. This is an inevitable product of the plan’s internal contradictions its inability to mobilise the creativity of the masses, its tendency to increase disparity between branches of economic life, its tendency to increase inequality, and so on.

The dynamism of the plan that does exist (and has been shown by the industrialisation of backward countries) is strictly limited to the tasks of catching up with capitalism. Periods of economic growth in the planned economies, as Trotsky pointed out in The Revolution Betrayed, are those periods when the bureaucracy builds up industry by copying the industrial, achievements of the capitalist countries. While this frees degenerate workers’ states from the yoke of imperialism and facilitates growth rates that are unthinkable in imperialised countries, it does not enable those economies to create the material base necessary for socialism.

This is because the plan is not merely threatened by external factors. It is threatened by the caste that politically controls it the bureaucracy. Trotsky was clear on this in a period when the economic growth of the USSR was dazzling fellow-travellers and enemies alike:

“While the growth of industry and the bringing of agriculture into the sphere of state planning vastly complicates the task of leadership, bringing to the front the problem of quality, bureaucratism destroys the creative initiative and the feeling of responsibility without which there is not, and cannot be, qualitative progress”25

In other words, bureaucratism is not simply an inefficient fetter on the functioning of the planned economy. It actually blocks and threatens the existence of the planned economy.

Mandel’s inability to see this, his faithful retailing of official Soviet figures to prove his case, is tied to his position of the “transition” question. To accept that the Soviet Union is a transitional society is, necessarily to accept that it is still moving towards socialism. Mandel argues that this is so, but at a slower pace than expected by earlier Marxists. Mindful of orthodoxy on this question, Mandel justifies his position by arguing:

“First of all there is no ‘Marxist tradition’ on this subject in the real sense of the word”26. On the contrary! Marx, Engels and the Bolsheviks were clear on the key aspects of a transitional society, and on the programme necessary to direct the transition to socialism. Apart from the economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie, these aspects do not exist in the USSR or any of the degenerate workers’ states.

All the political features of a society transitional to socialism have been crushed except those which are left-overs of the old, corrupt, capitalist past. These features the bureaucracy have rapidly developed!

In other words, in these post-capitalist societies, the transition in the Marxist sense (from capitalism to communism) has been blocked and thrown into reverse by the bureaucracy. These states are degenerating back towards capitalism, a process that can, of course, only be completed by an actual social counterrevolution. For the transition to be restarted, a political revolution is required. Contradictions will continue to exist after the victory of the revolution, but the political rule of a bureaucracy fanning the flames of those contradictions and preventing their resolution by the workers, will not.

The ever-upward motion of the planned economy detailed by Mandel in his writings as proof of the continuing “transitional” nature of the USSR, facilitate his interpretation of the bureaucracy’s impending fate. To justify his old position on Yugoslavia, Pablo was forced to offer a different explanation of the power of the bureaucracy than the one put forward by Trotsky.

Trotsky had been clear that the functional roots of the bureaucracy lay in the backwardness of Soviet Russia and the scarcity of goods that such backwardness implied. The bureaucracy arose as a gendarme over the distribution of scarce goods. However, the nature of that bureaucracy was qualitatively transformed when, from being an agent of the workers’ soviets, it usurped political power and wielded it in its own interests, smashing the vanguard of the working class, the Left Opposition of the party, in the process.

Pablo ignored the political nature of the bureaucracy that this process resulted in (i.e. its counter-revolutionary nature), and analysed Stalinist bureaucracies purely from the standpoint of their functional roots. He was convinced by the colonial revolutions that the world revolution would spread from the periphery (backward countries) to the centre (advanced countries). Therefore, he concluded, bureaucratic deformations would be an inevitable, indeed necessary, feature of transitional societies for some time to come. However, as productive forces grew, and as the world revolution spread, so the material base of these bureaucracies would disappear as would the bureaucracies themselves. This conveniently left out the need for political revolution against the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy that rules in every existing post-capitalist society on the planet.

Pablo explained this revisionist position in polemics with no less a person than Ernest Germain:

“Thus in the historic period of the transition from capitalism to socialism we shall witness the rise not of normal workers’ states, but of more or less degenerated workers’ states that is, states with strong bureaucratic deformations which can reach the point of complete political expropriation of the proletariat.”27

But Pablo did not despair at this prospect since the forward march of deformed revolution is guaranteed by the objective situation and with it the withering away of the deformations.

Mandel’s position on the bureaucracy are taken straight from his one-time adversary and long-time master, Pablo. The plan guarantees growth. Growth guarantees that the proletariat will increase in size and culture and that the bureaucracy will weaken. When faced with this contradiction posed to it acutely, at times of crisis, a section of the bureaucracy will move closer to the masses and become a leading force in the process (Mandel's favourite word) of political revolution. Indeed, Mandel sometimes implies that the process has already made qualitative leaps forward:

“Can it be said that the Soviet Union in which oppositionists were found only in Gulag camps and the Soviet Union today with its ferment of political currents, samizdat and discussions at all sorts of levels (not only among intellectuals, but also in the unions) are one and the same thing”28

Trotskyists recognise that for a real change to take place in the USSR and the degenerate workers’ states, the power of the bureaucracy must be smashed decisively by the working class.

Therefore to Mandel’s question – flowing from his crass impressionism – the answer would be yes!; in essence the Soviet Union today is the same as the Soviet Union under Stalin. It remains the land of bureaucratic tyranny over the workers.

In his long-forgotten polemics with Pablo in the 1940s, the young and rash Germain argued vehemently:

“Any revision, either current or retrospective, of the results of this analysis [of the buffer zone as capitalist states – Eds] implying both a revision of the criteria employed and a revision of the Marxist theory of the state, could only have disastrous consequences for the Fourth International.”29

At that time, Mandel was wrong in his characterisation of Eastern Europe, but right in his estimation of the dangers of Pablo’s position. However, having been defeated by 1951, Mandel has spent over 30 years providing a theoretical justification for those “consequences” with a sophistry and alacrity of which Pablo was incapable. His responsibility for the destruction of the international Trotskyist movement as a revolutionary force is far greater then Pablo’s. And it continues up to the present. Authentic Trotskyism has no place for Mandel’s “orthodox” concoctions – they are a mockery of the Marxism of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

In the 1953 split within the FI the analysis of Stalinism developed by Pablo, and refined and modified by Germain (Mandel) was not really in dispute. Therefore once the immediate tactical issue in the dispute – orientation to national Stalinist parties became irrelevant, unification of the International Secretariat and the International Committee again became a possibility.

 

Hansen on Cuba

 

The Cuban Revolution showed that Mandel’s theories had an advocate within the Socialist Workers Party (USA). His name was Joseph Hansen.

In late 1949 Hansen emerged as a major protagonist in the debate on Eastern Europe arguing a line very close to that being defended by Pablo and against those who continued to regard Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe as “capitalist states on the road to structural assimilation”, principally Germain (Mandel):

“This degenerated workers’ state [the USSR – Eds] spilling over the frontiers fixed at the close of World War 1, has upset capitalist property relations in Eastern Europe and given rise to formations that are pretty much replicas of the USSR.” 30

Hansen observed that the European and American opponents of Pablo’s crude impressionism were wrestling with the “norms” of Trotsky’s programme – civil war, direct action of the masses, soviets, “real” planning. They were seeking to defend this programme against the revisions they instinctively felt would be ushered in by accepting these misbegotten Stalinist monsters as workers’ states.

Hansen, however, had no such misgivings and mercilessly mocked their “normative” method with quotes from Trotsky. He was easily able to trip them up in the contradictions of their own confused dialectic. After all, by 1949 capitalism and the capitalists palpably did not exist in Eastern Europe. Here, a good American pragmatist, unhampered by “dialectical” baggage, could see and say that “the Emperor had no clothes.”

In this assessment Hansen was not wrong. He utilised the empirical shrewdness which he later applied to Cuba. Against those who were inventing all sorts of new criteria for the existence of workers’ states, Hansen insisted:

“In my opinion, in a country where the rule of the bourgeoisie has been broken AND the principal sectors of the economy nationalised, we must place the state in the general category of ‘workers’ state’ no matter how widely or monstrously it departs from our norms. This change cannot occur without a civil war although this civil war may also be a mutilation of the type, differing in important respects from our norms.” 31

This position contains two key errors that laid the basis tor Hansen’s acceptance of Pablo’s revisionism on Yugoslavia and for his own application of that revisionism to the Cuban events.

Hansen is wrong to equate the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie and extensive nationalisation with the establishment of post-capitalist property relations. Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1948 showed instances where the political power of the bourgeoisie was broken (crucially their control of armed bodies of men defending their property, was gone), the economy nationalised the Stalinists in power and yet these countries (e.g. Poland and East Germany) remained capitalist.

For Hansen to be consistent he would have to date the creation of workers’ states in these countries between 194 and 1946, a position he did not hold. Thus his empiricism in 1949 did not enable him to isolate what was the defining attributez of the workers states, nor the means by which they were created. As we have shown, the political expropriation of bourgeoisie and nationalisation are pre-requisites for the establishment of a degenerate workers’ state. But only when the economies are planned on the basis of suppressing the operation of the law of value can we talk of degenerate workers’ states having been established.

Hansen’s second error, and one that he shared with his opponents in 1949, was his insistence on the need for “civil war” for the creation of degenerate workers’ states. Although he accepts that such civil wars can be of a “mutilated” type he does argue: “Overturns in property relations cannot occur without the revolutionary mobilisations of the masses.” 32

But Hansen’s dating of such mobilisations in Eastern Europe takes him back to the time of the entry of the Red Army not to the actual times of the overturns. Precisely because the workers’ states are degenerate from birth, their creation can be accomplished in the special circumstances detailed elsewhere in this book, without the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses by a Stalinist bureaucracy. Moreover, as Czechoslovakia showed, even where mobilisations do take place, they are completely bureaucratically controlled by the Stalinists. No organs of working class democratic power – soviets – are formed.

While Hansen in his 1949 document, The Problem of Eastern Europe attacks those who have a “normative” notion of civil war, it must be said that his alternative is really to operate with an idealist notion of civil war. That is, he is forced to invent civil wars where they did not take place.

The real weakness of this method was exposed when it was applied to Yugoslavia. Here there was a fairly “normal” civil war, though under a leadership “with Stalinist origins”, as Pablo afterwards put it. Such a war is essential to the overturn of property relations. The Yugoslav civil war ushered in a workers’ state before this had happened in the rest of Eastern Europe. Further, as this civil war only deviated slightly from the norm, so, the Yugoslav workers’ state itself must only have deviated slightly from the norm. That is, Hansen’s method led him, by 1951, to concede that the Yugoslav revolution and the workers’ state it created only deviated from the norm quantitatively not qualitatively.

Hansen rejected the normative method but not from the standpoint of the genuine materialist method which can evaluate what the deviations from the norm mean. Hansen effectively rejected the “norms” – soviets, proletarian democracy, direct participation of the masses in their own emancipation as “secondary”, “not essential” or merely “formal” questions. The full flowering of Hansen’s pragmatism was to take place over his analysis of Cuba.

In 1960 Hansen stepped forward to re-apply the method that had yielded these liquidationist conclusions with regard to Tito. The adaptation to Castroism copied the capitulation to Titoism. This methodology was unable to combat the petit bourgeois “anti-imperialism” and Stalinism and 22 years later blinds its followers to the necessity for a political revolution.

Nevertheless Hansen did empirically register the decisive political and “economic” events and even the stages of the Cuban revolution.

In this he retained the advantage over his “anti-Pabloite” critics. Mage, Wolforth, Healy all constructed lifeless abstract and idealist schemas – classless “transitional state”, “structural assimilation”, “capitalist state” – which not only involved serious revisions of the Marxist theory of the state but also blinded their authors to the major events and turning points of the Cuban revolution.

However, Hansen’s evaluation of the significance of the Cuban revolution, whilst able to perceive the breaks with imperialism and the Cuban bourgeoisie, the decisive importance of the material links with the USSR and the expropriation of capitalist property, was nevertheless hopelessly at sea when it came to the evaluation of political tendencies, governments and, consequently, strategy and tactics for the proletarian vanguard.

Whilst Hansen based his approach on the 1948-50 Fourth International analysis of Titoism, a “new” problem posed was the non-Stalinist origins of the July 26th Movement (J26M), indeed its non-proletarian origins both in social and political terms.

Hansen argued that the Castro movement was a radical petit-bourgeois movement with a bourgeois democratic programme. Its programme promised thoroughgoing agrarian reform and industrialisation to break Cuba’s dependent status vis-a-vis the USA. The Castroites however, were serious about their programme and as a matter of principle insisted on “revolutionary methods” to oust Batista.

During the civil war phase in the Sierra Maestra Castro mobilised the poor peasants and the agrarian proletariat, “the decisive sector of the Cuban working class”. By a reciprocal action the J26M leaders’ “outlook became modified.” 33 The urban workers on the other hand proved unable to bring their power to bear at this stage, but later rallied to Castro.

Castro destroyed Batista’s armed forces and took power in January 1959 inaugurating a process of smashing the bourgeois state machine. It was a “popular political revolution” but “appeared to be limited to democratic aims.”34 The government was a coalition with important bourgeois democratic elements. The attempt to carry through the agrarian reform and other measures led to a clash with US imperialism and its Cuban agents.

Castro broke with the bourgeoisie, expelled their representatives from the government and formed a “workers’ and farmers’ government” in autumn 1959.35 Cuba’s workers’ and farmers’ government could be so designated because of its firm resistance to imperialism and its Cuban agents; its resolute pursuit of the agrarian reform; its disarming of reaction and its arming of the people; its carrying out of pro-working class measures at the expense of the bourgeoisie; and its conflict with imperialism forced it to take increasingly radical measures.

The period of the workers’ and farmers’ government was completed by late 1960 with the establishment of a workers’ state. The decisive measures were: the establishment of a monopoly of foreign trade, the nationalisation of the latifundia, the expropriation of the US and Cuban capitalist holdings in all the key sectors of the economy. This process was completed in the August 1960 period and Hansen could therefore proclaim that “planning is now (December 1960) firmly established.” 6 In his view planning developed “concomitantly with the nationalisation of industry.” 37

The procedure for planning the economy was based on a study of the USSR and Eastern Europe and “thus in the final analysis the overturn in property relations is an echo of the October revolution in Russia.”38

The Castro movement and the state that it had created had however “unique” features. The Cuban workers’ state was neither degenerate nor deformed, indeed “it was a pretty good looking one.”39 However, it was “lacking as yet in the forms of democratic proletarian rule”.40 Though if it were to develop freely, “its democratic tendency would undoubtedly lead to the early creation of proletarian democratic forms.”41

There were no bureaucratic obstacles to the advance to socialism in Cuba or to the international spread of the revolution. The Castro leadership by their failure to “proclaim socialist aims” during the course of the revolution demonstrated that “the subjective factor in the revolution remained unclear.”42 Nevertheless, the Castro current was empirically revolutionary and above all not Stalinist, “a fact of world wide significance”43

The non-Stalinist and indeed profoundly democratic essence of Castroism meant that the Cuban CP could itself be purged of its legacy of Stalinism. There was no need to programmatically counterpose Trotskyism to Castroism since there was no need to build a separate Trotskyist party. Hansen rejected political revolution and a Trotskyist party for Cuba. He gives exceptionalist reasons to explain why a Trotskyist leadership is not necessary – capitalism is weaker in imperialised countries and there, a “socialist minded” leadership will do because of the strength of the objective process of revolution. 44

Hansen’s analysis is thoroughly liquidationist in its programmatic conclusions. In the first place by entrusting the tasks of a revolutionary communist party leading a working class organised in armed, democratic organs of direct power, to the Castroites his position represents a capitulation to an agent of the petit-bourgeoisie. Castro’s programme in 1959 was absolutely clear. He held back on developing institutions of democracy – bourgeois or proletarian – because his role was that of a bonaparte demagogically appeasing the masses but acting in defence of capitalism.

The fact that Castro had employed revolutionary methods – i.e. armed struggle – does not make him a communist, conscious or unconscious. Countless nationalists in the imperialised world – Chiang Kai Shek, for example – have used non-constitutional methods to achieve power. Hansen’s attempt to distinguish Castro from other nationalist leaders by referring to his base amongst the rural proletariat is equally spurious. The rural proletariat was never as well organised as the urban workers and was never as class conscious as them.

For this very reason Castro was able to utilise them in this guerrilla war in exactly the same way as he was able to use the poor peasants. That is, their form of struggle under Castro’s leadership was not a specific proletarian form of struggle. Indeed, against Hansen, we would argue that it was the very absence of the well organised urban working class led by a revolutionary party from the Cuban revolutionary struggle that made possible the bureaucratisation of the movement and the creation of a degenerate workers’ state.

His attempt to give the Castroites revolutionary proletarian credentials leads Hansen to ignore the popular frontist character of the J26M. In his Draft Theses on the Cuban Revolution in 1960 Hansen concedes that the initial government was a “coalition”, including in it “bourgeois democratic elements”.45 However this feature of the J26M, its limitation to a bourgeois programme, and the class polarisation that resulted when this coalition was placed under the combined and conflicting pressures of the Cuban masses and US imperialism, is completely ignored.

Castro can be portrayed as a revolutionary driven left simply by US imperialism:

“The conflict between American imperialism and the Castro forces precipitated a political crisis in Havana. This was resolved by a decided turn to the left.”46

The J26M becomes simply “the Castro forces”, an undifferentiated bloc. This is vital for Hansen’s analysis. This way he can paint Castro as a consistent revolutionary constantly evolving leftwards, albeit unconsciously. This obscures Castro’s real role as a bonaparte for capitalism in the first nine months of 1959. It also provides Hansen with an explanation of why Castro was eventually able to create a workers’ state. Castro’s liquidation of the J26M into Cuban Stalinism, which was possible because a pro-Stalinist wing existed in the movement, and the creation of a degenerate workers’ state by this force, are ignored in the interests of Hansen’s capitulationist schema of Cuba as a healthy workers’ state not in need of political revolution.

Hansen observes the anti-capitalist aspects of Castro’s “workers’ government” but assimilates it to the norm of the Comintern’s revolutionary workers’ government. He obscures the fact that the Cuban workers’ and farmers’ government was not under the control of or answerable to the proletariat and the poor peasantry. For it to have been so, democratic workers’ militia and workers’ and peasants’ councils would have had to have come into being. Such bodies did not come into being and in addition the existing workers’ organisations, especially the trade unions, were purged of their pro-capitalist bureaucracy.

This was immediately replaced with a Stalinist one. Whilst the anti-capitalist measures leading to the creation of a workers’ state are observed even if in a telescoped form by Hansen, the bureaucratic exclusion from political power of the working class is completely ignored. In fact, if this latter process is taken into account, one is forced to conclude that Castro’s government was not a revolutionary, but a bureaucratic workers’ and peasant’ government.

The reason Hansen feels able to dismiss the fact that the Cuban proletariat had no real self-organised, armed, democratic bodies, is because he reduces such bodies to mere “forms of proletarian democracy”:

“If the Cuban revolution were permitted to develop freely, its democratic tendency would undoubtedly lead to the early creation of proletarian democratic forms adapted to Cuba's own needs.”47

Not only can a healthy workers’ state be created without a revolutionary party, it can also be created on behalf of the masses, rather than by them, without soviets or a workers’ militia. If this is the case, then the task for Trotskyists should simply be to encourage petit-bourgeois nationalists leftwards, to coax them to act on behalf of the masses. There is no need for a party, nor for a programme based on the struggle for the seizure of power by the working class organised in soviets. These things, Hansen assures us, will some day eventually evolve naturally!

Against this distortion of Marxism it needs to be re-affirmed that soviets and a workers’ militia are not mere “forms of proletarian democracy”. They are the indispensable weapons that the working class has in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and they are the means by which the working class exercises its direct political rule in a healthy workers’ state.

Their temporary atrophy can be offset by the existence of a consciously revolutionary party (e.g. Russia 1920) but not by a petit-bourgeois nationalist movement that assimilated itself to Stalinism. Besides if the evolution of these democratic forms was really possible in Cuba then the followers of Hansen would have to explain why, twenty-two years later, such organs of power still do not exist in Cuba.

Hansen was unable to raise an independent revolutionary programme for Cuba. As happened with Yugoslavia, the SWP (USA), fooled by one of Stalinism’s disguises, reduced its own role to that of being friendly advisor to Castro. If this applied to Cuba then it would equally apply to a host of other imperialised countries. Hansen’s theory, building on and developing the Fourth International’s earlier errors, cleared the way for reunification with Pablo and Germain's International Secretariat. The United Secretariat of the Fourth International was founded on a programme that bore no resemblance to authentic Trotskyism’s characterisation of Stalinism.

 

The theory of structural assimilation

 

The theory of structural assimilation holds that the creation of workers’ states in Eastern Europe, Indochina and Cuba was, in essence, the result of the assimilation of these societies into the USSR. For the theorists of structural assimilation – most notably in the recent period, Tim Wohlforth – the process of the creation of new workers’ states has ultimately been the process of the extension of the property relations established by the workers’ revolution in Russia:

“Thus all post-war overturns were in essence extensions of the new property forms thrown up by the October Revolution and the bureaucratic caste which usurped these property forms.” 48

The superficial attraction of this theory lies in the fact that, within its terms, neither Stalinist parties nor petit-bourgeoisie nationalist forces are deemed capable of creating workers’ states. even of a form degenerate from birth. They can do so only as extensions of the degenerate October Revolution.

“The theory of structural assimilation explained a process of the creation of deformed workers’ states through the extension of the degenerated workers’ state. That is it answered the question of origins without in any sense undermining the revolutionary role of the proletariat.”49

By “proving” that the agency of social revolution remains, albeit in a highly refracted and degenerate form, the October Revolution, Wohlforth thought he had discovered a “theory” which would ward off the opportunist deviations of Pabloism.

Wohlforth’s position has changed significantly over the years, particularly on the question of China and Cuba. But a common thread of an erroneous and non-Marxist position of the state links his positions from 1961 to the present day.

Wohlforth is never absolutely clear as to what precisely happened to the capitalist state in the countries of Eastern Europe following the victories of the Red Army. or in China in 1949 or in Cuba in 1959. One can interpret his position in two ways: either the capitalist state apparatus was never smashed; or it was, but was immediately reconstituted by the Stalinists or petit-bourgeois nationalists, On Eastern Europe he argues:

“(structural assimilation) was not carried through by the destruction of the old bourgeois state in its entirety and the erection of a new working class state apparatus. Not only has much of the administrative structure been kept intact to this day, but a good section of the personnel of the old state administration has been maihtained.”50

While on China he states the following:

“Rather it [the CCP – eds] devoted its efforts to the creation of a coalition government with the remnants of the national bourgeoisie and petit bourgeois forces, guaranteed the sanctity of private property in the immediate period, and set to work to reconstruct the bourgeois state apparatus.”51

The confusion arises because Wohlforth defines the class nature of the state, not on the basis of what mode of production it defends (i.e. its class content), but on the basis of its form. What becomes important to Wohlforth in determining the class nature of these states is the fact that a standing army was recreated, and that the old personnel and administration were maintained. This also explains why he has no conception of the existence of dual power (except as “territorial” dual power in China) in this period of overturn.

The class nature of the state apparatus becomes subsumed by its form. Having relegated the question of which property form the state presides over to the level of a secondary question. the crucial events leading to the characterisation of these states as deformed workers’ states therefore takes place at the level of the superstructure, within the state apparatus:

“The actual social transformation was carried through in the state sector by a process of purging a section of the state bureaucracy, the inundation of the state apparatus with supporters of the Stalinists, and the fusion of the state and Communist Party bureaucracies.”52

This virtual separation of base and superstructure leads Wohlforth into a serious error on the nature of the nationalisations during this period. Wohlforth argues:

“The direct economic power of the bourgeois class in Eastern Europe had been basically eroded with the nationalisations which followed the war. And when it comes to social ownership therefore, the structural transformation process simply completed a process basically finished.” 54

But these nationalisations – by capitalist states in Eastern Europe in the period 1944-45 – did not decisively “erode” the economic power of the bourgeoisie, any more than they did for the Egyptian bourgeoisie under Nasser. What really “eroded” the power of the bourgeoisie in this period was the smashing of its coercive apparatus. The crucial question for Wohlforth in the creation of workers’ states therefore becomes, “In whose hands is the state power?”:

“The completion of the destruction of the economic underpinning of the bourgeois forces in these countries did not represent such a drastic change as the destruction of their political power. In most of these countries, by 1947, the commanding heights of industry were in the hands of the state, thus the critical question was in whose hands the state was, rather than the mopping up operation on the remnants of private capitalist holdings.”55

The introduction of state planning, we should note in passing, must have been part of this “mopping up operation”!

This gives rise to Wohlforth’s concentration on the fusion of the CPs and the Social Democrats and the “interpenetration of the monolithic party with the state apparatus” (tightening of the Stalinists’ grip on the state, and that state’s grip on society) as the decisive points that mark the creation of a workers’ state albeit of a degenerate form. As Wohlforth himself describes the process:

“Essentially structural assimilation is a combined process of the destruction of the political and social power of the bourgeoisie through administrative means, the consolidation of a monolithic party which is essentially an extension of the soviet bureaucracy, the purging of the state apparatus of bourgeois elements and the fusion of the party and the state bureaucracies into a single ruling bureaucratic caste.”56

Underlying Wohlforth’s theory of structural assimilation is a conception of the state, and therefore of the transition from one type of state to another, which owes more to Kautsky than to Marx.57

For Wohlforth it is possible for the proletariat, or a caste within it, to lay hold of the existing state machine and use it as an instrument for the creation of a workers’ state, as a means of carrying through the social revolution. At no point in this process is the bourgeois state “smashed”; rather it is “purged”.

There is no qualitative break, rather the bourgeois state grows over through an evolutionary process into a degenerate workers’ state:

“The problem of dating, like the problem of the destruction of the bourgeois state through ‘fusion and purging’, is a reflection of the very process of structural assimilation. Wherever this problem occurs – as long as it is crystal clear that a social overturn has taken place – one knows one is dealing with this process.”58

This method stands in sharp contrast to our analysis of the formation of degenerate workers’ states which analyses at every point the class nature of the state and the programmatic and tactical implications which flow from it. For Wohlforth, and presumably for any party which adhered to his theory, they could only know a workers’ state had come into existence, or even that the process had started, after the event!

Wohlforth’s explanation of the creation of new workers’ states is also based on an erroneous analysis of the nature of Stalinism and the Stalinist parties. In his original 1963 essay, the Communist parties were described as being in all essentials, extensions of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Hence it is the Kremlin bureaucracy, based upon the property relations established by a workers’ revolution, that is laying hold of these state machines and using them as a means for the transformation of bourgeois states into workers’ states through a process of “purgation”.

The degenerated workers’ state, which emanated from the October Revolution, has extended itself through its agents into large contiguous areas surrounding the USSR – a process we call “defensive expansionism”.59 And again, in argument with the bureaucratic collectivists:

“But Stalinism did not expand in the post-war world on this basis. It did not grow out of the managerial strata of capitalist society at all. Rather it extended itself from the USSR. Thus the identity of Stalinism with the USSR its extension through its own agents and in opposition to all strata of the countries in which the transformation took place cannot be explained through the theory of bureaucratic collectivism.” 60

This analysis is extended, but only with difficulty, to Yugoslavia and China. On the Yugoslav Communist Party he argues:

“Once the buffer in general is really understood there are no theoretical problems connected with the Yugoslav developments in particular. The basic point is to recognise the nature of the domestic CPs as essentially an extension of the Soviet bureaucracy itself. Once this is recognised then social transformations of a more ‘indigenous’ character like Yugoslavia can be comprehended. Yugoslavia differed only in degree in this respect – this was not a qualitative difference.”61

While on the question of the Chinese Communist Party the following analysis is put forward:

“To the extent that the CCP was and is independent of domestic social classes, it is dependent upon – is essentially an extension of – the bureaucratic caste of the USSR, the distorted product of a workers’ revolution.”62

This is a fundamentally undialectical and therefore false characterisation of the national communist parties. Ever since the beginning of the bureaucratic thermidor in the USSR which was carried through under the nationalist slogan of “socialism in one country”, the Comintern underwent a process of disintegration along the lines of national chauvinism. The national CPs accommodated to specific strata of the petit-bourgeoisie in the imperialised countries and to the labour bureaucracy in the imperialist countries.

This process of accommodation took an accelerated form in the civil wars in Yugoslavia and China. As Wohlforth himself in his second document points out, this process led to the crystallisation of a bureaucratic caste in those societies, with its own distinct interests, separate from, and counter posed to, not only the masses of its particular society, but also to the national interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.

The timing and speed of the social overturn in Yugoslavia, the very seizure of power in China, took place contrary to the immediate interests and desires of the Kremlin bureaucracy.

These Stalinist bureaucracies have been capable of making their own alliances with imperialism, against the Soviet bureaucracy, up to and including breaking from the Soviet bloc and entering into military alliance and cooperation with imperialism (for example, Yugoslavia and the Korean war, China’s relations with the USA in the late 1970s).

In a more recent document, Wohlforth appears to recognise the untenability of his previous analysis of Stalinism, as he attempts to grapple with the problems of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions. He states:

“I have proven that all the post-war social overturns have been initiated from on top by military-bureaucratic means and have led to the establishment of deformed workers’ states identical in all essentials with the USSR. However the path which led to these social transformations differed significantly in the case of the Chinese Variant and the Cuban Variant. Yet none of these processes were totally independent of the Soviet Stalinist State.”63

Historical reality has pushed Wohlforth from a position where these parties were seen as little more than “extensions of the Kremlin bureaucracy” to one where they are seen as not “totally independent” of the Kremlin. The theory of structural assimilation, which argued that Stalinist and petit-bourgeois nationalist movements were incapable of creating deformed workers’ states except as extensions of the Kremlin bureaucracy, has been stretched to breaking point!

It is false to see the Stalinist parties as simply extensions of the Soviet bureaucracy. The logic of this very argument led Pablo to conclude that the Yugoslav Communist Party had ceased to be a Stalinist one once it broke with the Kremlin! However, the ability of the forces of Stalinism to carry through bureaucratic social revolutions cannot be abstracted historically from the existence of the USSR and its strength vis-a-vis imperialism. In the case of Yugoslavia, China and Cuba, the bureaucratic revolutions were carried through in a situation where the world bourgeoisie was insufficiently strong in relation to the USSR to directly and successfully intervene to protect the native bourgeoisie and the capitalist property relations.

The very existence of the USSR can, of course, serve to materially aid the native Stalinist forces directly. That this will not always be the case, should those forces not be advancing the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy, is demonstrated by the Greek events of 1944-45.

The USSR can, by its very existence and armed might, undermine the possibility of internationally- backed capitalist retaliation and counter-revolution. It can serve as an alternative source of economic aid and cooperation to forces struggling to break the stranglehold of imperialism over their national economies, as in the case of Cuba. But such assistance will only ever be forthcoming from the USSR should the overturn potentially strengthen the bargaining position of the Kremlin bureaucracy without upsetting the Kremlin’s strategy of peaceful co-existence with imperialism.

Within Wohlforth’s theory of the state is a reformist political logic which stands outside the tradition of the Third and Fourth Internationals. This is most clearly seen in Wohlforth’s most recent article, Transition to the Transition in New Left Review.

Defining the class nature of the state according to its superstructural form rather than on the basis of what property forms it defends, has led him to question, like Kautsky before him, the soviet system itself. Hailing looked more closely at the “Soviet type of the early period of the USSR”, Wohlforth is obviously no longer sure as to whether it was “fundamentally different” from and superior to, the bureaucratic East European or Mussolini state types, which were both, for him, capitalist in form.

In this article, Wohlforth contents himself with attacking Soviet democracy as “undemocratic” and proposes instead a good dose of bourgeois democracy for the early Soviet State. If the early Soviet Union also has a “capitalist state form”, then it is only logical to argue for capitalist forms of democracy. Thus the “failure” of the early Bolshevik government to transform the Soviets into a “practical government structure” exposed the impossibility of directly combining the decentralised Soviet system with the needs of a modernised centralised state, as well as revealing the ambiguities (sic) in the Leninist counter position of “proletarian” versus “bourgeois democracy.”64

Wohlforth believes it is “utopian” to imagine the establishment of direct democratic rule and is only willing to defend “the vision and possibility” of such a system.65 The Bolsheviks were forced to use “much of the old administrative personnel” and were forced to watch over “what was in many respects the reconstitution of the old state apparatus.”66

Rather than the “expansion of democracy” (class character not given), democracy was “restricted.”67 Once again Wohlforth is allowing his preoccupation with the “form” of the state to totally blind him to the content of Soviet democracy. The early Soviet state represented the dictatorship of the proletariat; that was why the bourgeoisie were excluded from the suffrage, why the working class was given greater weight than the peasants in the soviets. Wohlforth, like Kautsky before him, empties democracy of its class content, protests against the violations of “democracy” in general.

Lenin had this to say when Kautsky complained of restrictions in democracy in the young Soviet Republic:

“It is natural for a liberal to speak of ‘democracy’ in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask, for what class?”68

Undaunted, the liberal Wohlforth continues:

“It is hard to view the young Soviet state as structurally superior to the systems of parliamentary bourgeois democracy excoriated in Leninist doctrine.’69

He then proceeds to recommend a constituent assembly as a stage on the road to soviets after the seizure of power by the proletariat:

“The specific function of representative democracy, therefore is to ensure that the power that still rests at the centralised summit of the state is elected directly through pluralistic competition, universal suffrage and the secret ballot. Representative Democracy is necessary to mediate the contradiction between Sovietism and centralism, and to guarantee the space for, the gradual transfer of power from centralised, representative institutions to decentralised, participatory bodies of a Soviet or communal type.”70

All this is nothing new of course; these were exactly the points on which Kautsky attacked the dictatorship of the proletariat in the young Soviet Republic.

Wohlforth now has agreement with Kautsky not only on the question of the state but also on rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1919 in Terrorism and Communism Kautsky defined the USSR as a “bureaucratic dictatorship” where the bureaucracy represented a “new ruling class presiding over a ‘state capitalist’ economy.” Having long had theoretical agreement on the state, it will undoubtedly not be long before Wohlforth reaches agreement with Kautsky on the class nature of the Soviet Union!

The Spartacist school of Stalinophilia

The Cuban Revolution created a new basis for agreement between the two principal camps of world “Trotskyism”. It enabled Joseph Hansen and the SWP (USA) and Ernest Mandel and the International Secretariat to reunite around similar positions on Cuba, that stemmed from their shared erroneous assessment of the Yugoslav revolution in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The SWP’s positions on Cuba did not, however, go unchallenged within that organisation.

During the latter half of 1960, a minority tendency within the SWP (USA) led by Mage, Wohlforth and Robertson, developed an alternative position to the SWP majority on the Cuban revolution. This led, in 1961, to the formation of the Revolutionary Tendency (RT – later to become the international Spartacist tendency iSt ). Wohlforth was quickly to abandon the positions he helped to develop within the opposition and, in alliance with Healy, was to side with the SWP majority in the bureaucratic expulsion of the RT.

The initial positions were further developed within the iSt and have by implication rather than through theoretical elaboration, been extended to cover Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia and China. (Indeed it is astonishing that over twenty years later barely a few lines have been written by the iSt on the Eastern European overturns). Motivated initially by a desire to avoid the chronic opportunism and liquidationism of the Hansen majority, the RT/iSt proceeded to make a series of major revisions of the Marxist theory of the state, which in their implications for the Marxist programme are no less erroneous and dangerous than those made by either Hansen or Wohlforth.

The core of the iSt’s error lies in the characterisation of the nature of the state that existed in Cuba between January 1959 and late 1960. For them the government which controlled Cuba was,:

“an inherently transitory and fundamentally unstable phenomenon – a petitbourgeois government which was not committed to the defence of either bourgeois private property or the collectivist property forms of proletarian class rule.”71

The government came to power in a situation where

“a capitalist state, namely armed bodies of men dedicated to defending a particular property form, did not exist in the Marxist sense.”72

The armed force on which this state rested was led by commanders who had had their

“previous direct connections with oppositional liberal elements broken and had become episodically autonomous from their class...the Cuban bourgeoisie”73

Despite the attempts to distance themselves from the original Mage/Wohlforth position of a “transitional state” with no defined class character – a position defined as “indefensible” in Cuba and Marxist Theory – this is precisely the characterisation the iSt itself used. Cuba and Marxist Theory declares: “at no point was there a classless ‘transitiona’' state in Cuba”, there was “a petit-bourgeois government – not a class neutral one.” The use of the term “petit-bourgeois government” does not get round this problem. Does this mean we have a petit-bourgeois state, based on a petit-bourgeois mode of production?

The iSt recoils from this further revision of Marxism by remaining silent on this interesting new state form. Instead it prefers to define this state negatively, as one which neither defends bourgeois private property nor proletarian property forms.

Either this is a “class neutral” state, or the iSt is trying to breed a unicorn. Such a position directly overthrows the Marxist analysis of the state as elaborated from the Communist Manifesto onwards, that the state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over others. It is an organ of class rule which defends, even in its bonapartist form, one set of property forms.

A state which defends neither capitalist nor proletarian property forms is therefore a classless state, a state which is no longer an organ of class rule, and a contradiction of the Marxist theory of the state!

The iSt further argue that a state is defined as “armed bodies of men dedicated to defending a particular property form” 74 [our emphasis]. This IS an idealist notion of the relationship between property relations and the state machine. We judge the class nature of a state by its actions, not by the “dedication” of the individuals who make up its apparatus. This revision is essential for the iSt in giving a theoretical gloss to their notion of a “petit-bourgeois government”, in which the property relations the state chooses to defend at any given time, depends upon indecision in the minds of those in political power.

This fundamentally false analysis has been extended to Nicaragua, where we are expected to believe that (at the time of writing) a government that has been in existence since the summer of 1979, presiding over an economy overwhelmingly in the hands of private capital, does not defend capitalism. It is, rather, not yet decisively “committed” to capitalism or to proletarian property forms!

Such an analysis of the Cuban events is unable to explain the class character of the popular front which came to power in January 1959, which the iSt assures was not capitalist. It ignores the pro-capitalist, bourgeois aspect of the July 26th Movement. When this aspect was dominant (i.e. during the popular front), the J26M crushed all attempts by the workers and peasants to go beyond the bourgeois limits set by the Castro leadership. Further, this analysis sows illusions in the petit-bourgeois leadership of the Rebel Army, declaring them to be somehow committed to no class interests, implying that the Army was somehow “neutral” between workers and peasants on the one hand and the capitalists and landowners on the other.

It therefore cannot explain the struggle – in the form of dual power between the bourgeoisie and its supporters in the army on the one side and the petit-bourgeois leadership around Castro representing, in however a distorted form, the demands and pressure of the aroused workers and peasant masses. The programmatic conclusions of such analysis are necessarily vague – because the Spartacists could not perceive the dual power situation, they had no programme for resolving it.

The basis on which Cuba is characterised as a “deformed workers’ state” by the iSt is also wrong:

“Cuba became a deformed workers’ state with the pervasive nationalisations in the summer and fall of 1960.”75

The equation put forward here: “Nationalisations = deformed workers’ state” is completely false. The monopoly of foreign trade, and most vitally the introduction of planning on the basis of the suppression of the law of value, as well as nationalisations, are the features which, taken together, define an economy as post-capitalist. Further, this position implies that a “petit-bourgeois government” can overturn capitalism and construct a “deformed” workers’ state merely through massive nationalisations.

On this basis, no real distinction can be made between Cuba and other “petit-bourgeois governments” which have followed a similar course, such as Algeria, Egypt, Burma, etc – expect on the basis of the percentage of the economy nationalised. Were all of these capitalist states “deformed workers’ states in the process of formation?” By answering “No”, the Spartacists are forced to contradict their own methodology.

The Spartacists also do not recognise in any form the essential role played by Stalinism in the Cuban Revolution. They do not recognise the proto-Stalinist wing of the pre-1959 J26M.

They do not recognise the alliance of Castro with the Cuban Stalinists from November 1959. They do not recognise the essential assimilation of Castroism to Stalinism, and the reliance on the PSP bureaucratic apparatus during the period of the bureaucratic workers’ government, complete by the onset of planning in 1962. Nor do they recognise that such a process would have been impossible without the economic and military support of the Kremlin. Consequently, they assign to the petit-bourgeoisie the ability. to form a “deformed” workers’ state – a revision of Marxism with regard to the fundamental characteristics of this class.

The fragmentary references of the iSt to the formation of “deformed” workers’ states in Eastern Europe imply the existence of similar periods of “classless states” or “workers’ states in the process of formation.” From the entry of the Red Army, the class nature of the state is indeterminate. The only flaw which the iSt sees in the Vern-Ryan tendency’s equation of entry of Red Army with formation of “deformed” workers’ state, is that in some cases the soviet forces withdraw – e.g. in Austria, leaving behind a capitalist state.76 But the preferred term “workers’ state in the process of formation” is a designation of no use. It can only be used after the event, as a description.

This is a position which, as in Cuba, will not define the class character of the state, its government, or what property forms its army defends at each stage, and thus fails to provide any coherent revolutionary programme during the period of dual power, or the period of an anti-capitalist bureaucratic workers’ government.

Not only a revisionist position on the state emerges from this analysis. In echoing the positions of the Vern-Ryan tendency, the iSt have made a fundamental revision of the Trotskyist understanding of Stalinism. For the iSt, Stalinism has a “dual character” – it has a “bad”, counter-revolutionary side, and a “good”, progressive one. Its bad side involves it in crushing workers’ democracy, expropriating the proletariat from political power; its good side is that it can overturn capitalism, and the two weigh equally in the balance.

This position is evidenced in the increasingly Stalinophile programme of the iSt, particularly with regard to Afghanistan and Poland. In these countries, the “dual” character of Stalinism is reflected in the supposed ability of the Stalinists to act as “liberators in a social as well as national sense” in particular countries, and in its inability to carry through the proletarian revolution on a world scale.77 Both Mandel (in his "Ten Theses" 1951) and the Vern - Ryan tendency (in their description of Stalin ism as centrist) articulated a similar position. This position is absolutely false. It has nothing in common with genuine Trotskyism.

Stalinism does not have two competing aspects, one of which at anyone time predominates over another. Rather, it has a contradictory character because its privileged caste existence in the USSR is based on the post-capitalist property forms established by the October Revolution. To defend these property forms, the very basis of this caste’s existence, the Stalinist bureaucracy is sometimes forced to carry through measures which, if taken in isolation from the way they are carried out and the effects they have on the international class struggle, would be considered progressive.

But these measures are never carried through in isolation, they are always carried through in a counterrevolutionary manner, and always involve the political expropriation of the working class in the country concerned. The Stalinist bureaucracies have a contradictory character, but form a predominantly counter-revolutionary whole. This caste does not have the potential for fulfilling the mission of the proletariat – genuine proletarian revolutions are the prerequisite for building world socialism.

The retreat from the revolutionary programme that the Spartacist position involves can be accurately gauged from the answers that they have offered to the Afghan and Polish masses.

In Afghanistan the iSt reject the perspective of permanent revolution for that country, because of its backwardness. They make a false analogy between the healthy Soviet workers’ state of the early 1920s that assimilated certain backward Asian countries, and the counter-revolutionary international designs of the bonapartist clique in the Kremlin. Events in Afghanistan are viewed not from the standpoint of international class struggle (which would link the struggle of progressive Afghans with that of their fellow Afghan workers resident in Iran, Pakistan etc as part of a struggle for a socialist federation of south west Asia), but from the abstract standpoint of “progress” “now led by Russian tanks”, versus “backwardness.”78

The Spartacists call on the bureaucracy to extend the social gains of the October revolution. They “Hail the Red (sic) Army” as the agent of this process. That is, behind the radical verbiage, they call for, as part of their own programme for Afghanistan, the establishment of a degenerate workers' state. This is not a tactical united front, it is an abandonment of an independent programme. This reliance on the Soviet bureaucrats as second best given the weakness of the Afghan working class, leads inexorably to a strategic bloc with Stalinism.

On the events in Poland 1980-81, the iSt have gone from simple hostility to the Polish workers’ movement right up to a bloc with the Stalinists to help crush that movement. They started their analysis of Poland not from the revolutionary possibilities that existed, but from a supposed threat posed by the Polish workers’ action to the property relations in Poland and the USSR. Their excuse for this stance was their exaggerated view of the immediacy of the Catholic church’s restorationist intentions.

After trying to square the circle – giving limited support to the misled Polish workers, and opposing a Russian invasion (by “hissing at tanks” as Workers Vanguard advised), by late 1981 the iSt gave up and decided that Solidarnosc was counterrevolutionary to the core, and should be crushed, by Kremlin tanks if necessary:

“Solidarity’s counter-revolutionary course must be stopped! If the Kremlin Stalinists, in their necessarily brutal, stupid way, intervene militarily to stop it, we will support this. And we take responsibility in advance for this; whatever the idiocies and atrocities they will commit, we do not flinch from defending the crushing of Solidarity's counterrevolution.” 79

When the Jaruzelski coup was launched on 13 December 1981, when Polish tanks moved to crush the 10 million strong movement of Polish workers, the Spartacists were quick to offer their support. They warned the Polish workers against any resistance, and cynically described the crackdown as a “cold shower” for the Polish proletariat. Upset by over a year of class struggle, these miserable pedants, who can only imagine winning the working class to their cruel caricature of Trotskyism in the sterile atmosphere of the propagandists’ school room (separate from the actual struggles of workers), called for a return to Gierek’s 1970s’ style of government:

“If the present crackdown restores something like the tenuous social equilibrium which existed in Poland before the Gdansk strikes last August, a tacit understanding that if the people left the government alone, the government would leave the people alone – conditions will be opened again for the crystallisation of a Leninist-Trotskyist party.” 80

The iSt have blood on their hands. The “good” side of Stalinism’s “dual nature”, the side that the iSt call on revolutionaries to support, has become its willingness and ability to crush the independent activity of the working class. Programmatic confusion on Cuba in 1960 has become metamorphosed into Stalinophile clarity in 1982. At no stage in this evolution did the Spartacists represent a revolutionary challenge to the bankrupt centrism of the USFI.

 

Footnotes

1. Fourth International, (New York, May 1945) p.153

2. Fourth International, (New York, June 1946) p.172

3. ibid. p.255

4. International Information Bulletin, (New York, March 1947) p.8

5. ibid. p.16

6. Fourth International, (New York,December 1948) p.241

7. International Information Bulletin, (New York, December 1949) p.27

8. International Information Bulletin, (New York, May 1950) p.18

9. Fourth International, (New York November/December 1951)

10. Class, Party and State in the Eastern European Revolution, (New York 1969) p.57 11. Towards a History of the Fourth International, (New York 1974) Part 4, Vol.l p.17 12. ibid. p'.1~

13. D.Vern, “Method, Doctrine and the Buffer States” 1951 , in Documents of the Vern -Ryan Tendency, (Communard Publishers n.d.) p.13

14. Towards a History of the Fourth International, (New York 1974) Part 4, Vol. 1 pp.17-18

15. cf C.L. Liu, “China: An Aborted Revolution” in, Fourth International, (New York, January/February 1950)

16. Fourth International, (New York, January/February 1951) p.24

17. E.Mandel, From Class Society to Communism, (London 1977) p.

18. The Development and Disintegration of World Stalinism, (New York 1970) p.20 19. ibid. p.23

20. E.Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, (London 1968) p.558

21. cf Intercontinental Press, (New York) Vol. 17, No.13

22. E.Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, op. cit. p.565

23. E.Mandel, Revolutionary Marxism Today, (London 1979) p.120

24. Fourth International, (New York, November/December 1952) p.192

25. L Trotsky,The Revolution Betrayed, (New York 1972) p.275

26. E.Mandel, Revolutionary Marxism Today, OR. cit. p.116

27. International Information Bulletin (New York, December 1949) p.2

28. E.Mandel, Revolutionary Marxism Today, OR. cit. p.136

29. International Information Bulletin, (New York January 1950) p.43

30. Class, Party and State and the Eastern European Revolution,op.cit.p.24

31. ibid. p.35

32. ibid. p.31

33. J.Hansen, Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution,(New York 1978) p.73

34. ibid.p.73

35. ibid. p.74

36. ibid. p.74

37. ibid. p.74

38. ibid. p.74

39. ibid. p.85

40. ibid. p.75

41. ibid. p.75

42. ibid. p.75

43. ibid. p.76

44. ibid. p.202-3

45. ibid. p.73

46. ibid. p.74

47. ibid. p.75

48. T Wohlforth, The Post War Social Overturns and Marxist Theory, (SWP-US internal discussion document, May 1979) p.72 (henceforth referred to as Wohlforth, 1979)

49. Quoted in T Kerry, “The Wohlforth Way: A Methodological Mutation” in, Class,Party and State and the Eastern European Revolution, OR. cit. p.6

50. T Wohlforth, “The Theory of Structural Assimilation”. This 1963 essay was reprinted in, Communists Against Revolution, (London 1978). All references are from this book, henceforth referred to as Wohlforth-1978

51. T Wohlforth 1963,p.28 51. ibid. p.71 (our emphasis)

52. ibid. p.47

53. ibid. p.23

54. ibid. p.31 (our emphasis)

55. ibid. p.24-5 (our emphasis;

56. ibid. p.35 (emphasis in original)

57. It is clear that Wohlforth’s position on the state both predates and underpins the theory of structural assimilation. Thus, he argues in 1961 in a document that predates structural assimilation: “It (the concept of the transitional state) is said to be in contradiction with the Marxist theory of the state as at all times the instrument of the ruling class of a particular society... I will expand on the challenge and state categorically all the emerging deformed workers’ states - Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba - went through transitional periods of more or less extended periods of time during which a bonapartist state apparatus administering a capitalist economy was transformed into a state apparatus, still bonapartist, administering a nationalised economy. (T.Wohlforth, “Cuba and the Deformed Workers’ States” 1961,p.12 in, Cuba and Marxist Theory (Spartacist League Pamphlet). Again we see a state which, because it is not defined in Marxist terms, i.e. in terms of property relations that it defends, is able to “float free” from its economic base and become, “transformed” from a bonapartist (capitalist) state into a bonapartist (degenerated workers’) state without that state ever being smashed. (This is, of course, also the origin of the iSt’s “transitional state” which owes more to the “Kautskyite Wohlforth” than they care to admit.)

58. T Wohlforth 1963, p.87 (emphasis in original)

59. ibid. p.82

60. ibid. p.85 (emphasis in original)

61. ibid. p.62

62. ibid. p.75 (emphasis in original!

63. T Wohlforth 1979, p.79

64. T. Wohlforth,”The Transition to the Transition” in New Left Review No. 130, p.69

65. ibid. p.68

66. ibid. p.76

67. ibid. p.78

68. V I Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow 1965) Vol.28,p.235

69. T Wohlforth, New Left Review op. cit. p.80

70. ibid. p.79

71. “Guerillas in Power” in Workers Vanguard No. 102

72. ibid.

73. Cuba and Marxist Theory op. cit.

76. cf. section of this volume on the Fourth International after the Second World War.

77. “Whose Poland” in Spartacist Britain No. 32

78. Spartacist (Theoretical journal of the Spartacist League) Winter 1979/80

79. “Stop Solidarity’s Counter-Revolution” in Spartacist Britain No.36

80. “Power Bid Spiked” in Workers Vanguard No. 295


Appendix: Marxism, Stalinism and the theory of the state

 

An internal debate in the League during the 1990s focussed on the question of the process of capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe. It concluded that some of the formulations in the Degenerated Revolution had been incorrect. This Appendix was printed in Trotskyist International Number 23 as a correction

 

In 1956 the Hungarian Uprising demonstrated to the world both the possibility of a political revolution against Stalinist bureaucracy and the character it would take.

It showed that the ruling Communist Party, the army, the secret police and the state administration would act as agents of repression against any working class attempt to establish its own control over a state which claimed to be proletarian. Newly created fighting organisations (workers' councils, a militia) would be necessary to forcibly overthrow Stalinist tyranny.

Even though the power of the Hungarian workers’ councils was crushed by Soviet tanks, these events put flesh and blood on the positive scenario contained in Leon Trotsky’s prognosis in the Transitional Programme that:

“either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the worker’s state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back to capitalism or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.”

Three and a half decades later, after further revolutionary crises and Soviet interventions or threats of them, a general and terminal crisis hit the states of Eastern Europe and spread to the USSR itself. Whilst events in 1989-91 vindicated Leon Trotsky’s analysis of these countries as degenerate workers’ states, they also confirmed the negative alternative prognosis he had made in 1938, that the Stalinist bureaucracy would be the main agent of social counter-revolution.

Events of such great historic moment should force revolutionaries to reflect upon the key aspects of their inherited doctrine and theory. Has it stood the test of great events? One aspect of this challenge has been to the Marxist theory of the state in general and more particularly Trotsky’s concept of the bureaucratic state machine in the post-capitalist societies of the USSR, China, S.E. Asia, Eastern Europe and Cuba. The last seven years have given us ample evidence of the impact the capitalist restoration process has had on the ruling parties and the different components of the state machine.

In 1982 Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group published The Degenerated Revolution, the Origin and Nature of the Stalinist States in which we set out the implications for Marxist theory and programme of the creation of a series of Stalinist states after World War Two. This book was a landmark in the theoretical rearming of Trotskyism and a break with previous centrist analyses of these events. It provided a revolutionary account of the way in which Stalinist parties and armies crushed or derailed the working class challenge to capitalism in the aftermath of World War Two, before bureaucratically overthrowing capitalism as a defensive measure in the face of imperialist aggression.

While the bulk of the book served to orient Trotskyists to the coming death agony of Stalinism, one aspect was—we have since decided—flawed: the book contains a false attempt at a re-elaborated Marxist theory of the state.1

 

What do Marxists mean by the state?

 

At its most general (and imprecise) level the term state is used by Marxists and non-Marxists alike to signify the whole “social formation”—to indicate the political superstructure, as well as the means of production and social classes that live within a definite territory. So, for example, when we speak of a “degenerated workers’ state” we have this totality in mind. This is a dialectical, a contradictory conception, one which reflects and expresses real socio-economic and political contradictions.

When we use the term state in this way and seek to define its fundamental class character we do so according to the property relations that are predominant and are actually protected by the political superstructure, no matter what class character this superstructure might have if analysed in isolation from this economic base. Hence, the USSR under Stalin remained a workers’ state despite the monstrous totalitarian character of its apparatus of repression.

When the occasion arises we are forced to be more precise, often to isolate our political tasks, or to differentiate our political from our economic tasks. Then we have to distinguish between the “state” and “civil society”. By the latter we mean the nexus of economic relations and the various social classes, and other cultural forms that arise out of them. In a market economy these economic and social relations operate “blindly” and do not need direction from any political, external force, though the political public force acts as a guarantor of their reproduction.

In this duality we use the term “state” in a narrower sense to mean the political superstructure. Within this category we include not only the essential core of the state—police, standing army, bureaucracy—but in addition, the governmental regimes: parliamentary assemblies, monarchies, republican presidencies, theocracies. For Marxists the latter, however important they may be, are not “the essence” of the state. Thus even the most representative of these institutions, subject to periodic elections under a system of universal suffrage, come and go, rise and fall, without anything fundamental changing about the essence of the “state”.

Finally, when we want to focus the discussion even more narrowly we can isolate the core institutions of police, standing army and bureaucracy, and designate these alone as the “state-machine”.

As early as the German Ideology (1845), but fully codified in the 1870s (Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State), Marx and Engels give us a consistent class and materialist account of the nature and origin of the state, in the second sense explained above, that is, a public force or political superstructure rising out of and above civil society.

Quite simply, it arises on two conditions: first, that there should be a condition of generalised scarcity of goods; secondly, that classes have appeared and that the level of material wealth has developed sufficiently so as to give rise to a large enough surplus for society to sustain an armed public force separate and distinct from the rest of the population. Such a public force is necessary when society is divided into antagonistic classes (i.e. exploiters and exploited) since otherwise the latter will use their weapons to overturn their exploiters. This ostensibly public force is an instrument of the ruling economic class and serves to perpetuate its domination.2 Through a historic process of revolutions and counter-revolutions in different class societies, the bureaucratic-military state machine core becomes more hypertrophied and powerful vis-a-vis other components of the state.

The more generalised and sharp the class conflict generated by this exploitation and oppression all the more does the state machine isolate itself from any democratic and accountable pressure. 3

In his early writings Marx had no clear idea of what the tasks of the working class were in relation to this public force. Could it be seized as it was and used to emancipate the working class? By the time of the Communist Manifesto (1848) Marx had concluded that economic emancipation would not be possible for the working class without winning “the battle for democracy”, i.e. to replace the state machine with the “proletariat organised as the ruling class”. That is, it had to win political power in order to liberate itself from its exploitation. But, as Lenin remarked, in the Communist Manifesto, “the state is still treated in an extremely abstract manner, in the most general terms and expressions.”4

Having lived through the bourgeois revolutions and counter-revolutions in Europe between 1848 and 1851 Marx was able, in Lenin’s words, to “take a tremendous step forward” in respect of his theory of the state. In 1851, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx analysed what had occurred during the ebbs and flows of the French revolution of 1848-51. Behind the frequently changing scenery of parliamentary and presidential republics, conventions and assemblies, and ultimately the restoration of a monarchy, Marx perceived the essence of the state, the “executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organisation”.

This executive or state machine was the prize over which revolutions were fought, around which parliamentary, bonapartist or monarchical institutions were assembled. Marx finally concluded what the proletariat’s tasks were in relation to this machine:

“All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge edifice as the principal spoils of the victor”.5

By 1871—with France once more in revolution—Marx re-affirmed this conclusion and elaborated upon it. For the first time the proletriat had seized power , in a great modern city. Marx believed that the actions of the Paris Commune had proved:

“The proletariat cannot, as the ruling classes and their various competing factions have done after their victory, simply take possession of the existing machinery of state and employ this ready-made machinery for its own purposes. The prime condition for retaining its political power is to reconstruct this inherited political machine and to destroy it as an instrument of class domination.”6

Lenin says of this: “This conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the state”.

Marx was now, after the Paris Commune, able to flesh out exactly what “smashing” the state machine, as opposed to “taking it over”, means. For Marx the idea of smashing the state signified above all the replacement of the bourgeois state institutions—standing army, unaccountable executive, unrecallable legislature—by institutions of proletarian democracy: a territorial workers’ militia, defending a body that fused a legislature and executive and which was in turn fully and immediately recallable by its electorate.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire Marx explicitly drew a fundamental dividing line between the classical bourgeois French Revolution and the nature of the impending proletarian revolution.

He argued that whereas the former had ultimately only taken over the old military bureaucratic apparatus of feudal absolutism and developed it anew, the task of the proletarian revolution was to smash that very apparatus of social and political oppression. Marx counterposed the most thoroughgoing bourgeois revolution from below to the programme of the proletarian revolution in that the latter will entail the “smashing” of the old state machine, whereas the former did not.

And yet the French Revolution involved the total destruction of the old absolutist army replacing it with a new revolutionary arming of the people. It involved the establishment of organs of popular bourgeois democratic dictatorship which routed the old aristocratic rule. Marx knew all this but still refused to grant that the old absolutist state machine had been smashed in the sense of his new conception.

Merely violently destroying and then recomposing the former institutions to serve a new master was, in his view, not smashing but rather, “taking hold of” the state machine. In an all out war for example one state machine can be totally destroyed by the actions of another state; one set of rulers thereby completely obliterated by another, without this conforming to the smashing of the state in the sense outlined by Marx. Human history is replete with such examples, involving the most diverse stages of development and the most diverse classes and nations in conflict.

Following the experience of the Paris Commune Marx began to elaborate the tasks of the proletariat in smashing the state. He saw the Commune as a specific form of republic that could end class rule, through implementing its programme:

“The first decree of the Commune (...) was the suppression of the standing army, and its replacement by the armed people.”

All officials were to be elected and subject to recall and to be paid the same wages as workers. Lenin argues that these changes may appear to be merely “fuller democracy”, but in fact they represent a replacement of state institutions by others of a “fundamentally different type.” He goes on:

“This is exactly a case of “quantity being transformed into quality”: democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper.”7.

Through the experience of the Commune, and later of the Russian Revolutions, Marx and then Lenin were able to make concrete the difference between the tasks of the proletarian revolution and those of earlier revolutions, that previously Marx had only been able to point to in abstract. These concrete acts–the replacement of the standing army with the armed people, and the subordination of all officials to the rule of the people–led to the qualitative transformation that is the essential difference between all previous revolutions and the proletarian revolution.

The proletariat does not “abolish” the state. Indeed it requires a force to suppress the inevitable resistance of the bourgeoisie and its allies. Why then does Lenin say that this is “no longer the state proper”? He argues that as the organ of suppression is the majority of the population, there is no need for a special force, and therefore the state, in its essence as a special force, necessarily begins to wither away. The proletarian state retains key tasks, but it is transformed into something qualitatively different from all previous forms of the state.

“(Marx) stated that the “smashing” of the state machine was required by the interests of both the workers and the peasants, that it united them, that it placed before them the common task of removing the “parasite” and of replacing it by something new”.

Lenin argued that the creation of this something new, the semi-state, must begin immediately upon the workers seizing power. He saw it as inseparable from the general tasks of the proletarian revolution, with the workers organising large-scale production based on their own experience and backed by the state power of the armed workers, alongside the reduction of the role of state officials to “modestly paid foremen and accountants”. This will inevitably lead to the gradual withering away of bureaucracy, and end a state with a separate and special function.

 

The Russian Revolution and the bourgeois state machine

 

In essence, Lenin adds nothing new to Marx’s theory except to show how the Russian Soviets of 1917 corresponded to the proletarian type of state that must smash the bourgeois state machine. As Lenin says: “The Soviet power is a new type of state, without bureaucracy, without a police force, without a standing army.”8

Trotsky echoed Lenin in this regard:

“Lenin, following Marx and Engels, saw the distinguishing feature of the proletarian revolution in the fact that, having expropriated the exploiters, it would abolish the necessity of a bureaucratic apparatus raised above society—and above all, a police and standing army.”9

In other words, the working class needs a state that is constructed in such a way that it immediately begins to die away—a semi-state. Moreover, this applied to all aspects of the state machine;

“This same bold view of the state in a proletarian dictatorship found finished expression a year and a half after the conquest of power in the programme of the Bolshevik Party, including its section on the army. A strong state, but without mandarins; armed power, but without the Samurai! It is not the tasks of defence which create a military and state bureaucracy, but the class structure of society carried over into the organisation of defence. The army is only a copy of the social relations. The struggle against foreign danger necessitates, of course, in the workers’ state as in others, a specialised military-technical organisation, but in no case a privileged officer caste. The party programme demands a replacement of the standing army by an armed people.”10

The army is the core of the state machine. In Engels’ words “in the last analysis the state is reducible to bodies of armed men.”11 Therefore, the smashing of this part of the state machine goes to the heart of the programme of socialist transition in a workers’ state. Trotsky, as head of the Red Army, naturally recognised that a workers’ state needs a “specialised military-technical organisation” to defend itself from threats. Yet Trotsky was in no doubt that the Red Army during 1918-23 was qualitatively different from the bourgeois standing army:

“The great French Revolution created its army by amalgamating the new formations with the royal battalions of the line. The October Revolution dissolved the Tsar’s army wholly and without leaving a trace. The Red Army was built anew from the first brick.”12

Trotsky located the special and unique character of a revolutionary army in a workers semi-state in the amalgamation of the regular forces with the militia system and the abolition of military ranks.

In March 1919 the 8th CPSU Congress argued for the creation of an army “as far as possible by extra-barrack room methods—that is, in a set-up close to the labour conditions of the working class.” Divisions in the army were to coincide territorially with the factories, mines, villages etc and through the closest connection with the working class a “co-operative spirit instilled by the barracks, and inculcate conscious discipline without the elevation above the army of a professional officer’s corps.”13

But Trotsky was aware that the programmatic norm—territorial militia—required for its fullest flowering a certain minimum material foundation in economic life; that is, the relative homogeneity between town and country, a minimum level of infrastructure. A considerable depth of economic foundations were required for the introduction and universalisation of the cheaper and more efficient and effective territorial militia system. But they barely existed. So:

“the Red Army was created from the very beginning as a necessary compromise between the two systems, with the emphasis on regular troops.”

This can also be seen in the Red Army’s experience with the officer corps. The standing army of the bourgeoisie needs one. It sets the officers aloof from the ranks and has a political and social function reflecting the class society it is based upon. With rank comes privilege and the chain of command that allows for the army to be set up against the people. Trotsky argued that in the Red Army, by contrast:

“The growth of internal solidarity of the detachments, the development in the soldier of a critical attitude to himself and his commanders will create favourable conditions in which the principle of the electivity of the commanding personnel can receive wider and wider application.”14

The fact that a professional armed force needs to be assembled and trained to fight to secure the borders of the workers’ state does not in itself make it a “standing army” in the Marxist sense of this term. A healthy workers’ state needs an army and an intelligence service to protect itself against imperialist aggression.

But such an army would be drawn from an armed people, would live for the most part among the people when not fighting, would not enjoy privileges over the rest of the population and while observing military discipline in the face of the enemy would not be hierarchically stratified with the usual privileges that goes with this in a standing army. A people armed always undergoing military training at some level and capable of being sent to the front in turn is the antithesis of the bourgeois “standing army”.

There is no doubt that the programmatic norm of the Bolsheviks and Trotsky after October was for such an army. But almost immediately they were thrown into a civil war and the norm was compromised with the reality as they inherited it—the Tsar’s army, with its ranks and general staff. Trotsky had to make use of this army. They did subject it to workers’ control—party commissars supervising generals etc—as the next best bet in the circumstances. But it was not what they aspired to.

This can be seen in the fact that at the earliest opportunity—in 1920—Trotsky proposed (and it was adopted) at the Ninth Conference of the CPSU that the Red Army be turned into a Popular Militia. Trotsky wrote years later on this attempt:

“In the Red Army the problem of shifting to a militia system played an enormous role in our work as well as in our military conceptions. We considered the question one of principle.

We believed that only a socialist state could allow itself to shift over to a militia system. ‘If we are carrying out this shift gradually,’ I wrote in May 1923, ‘it is not out of political apprehensions but for reasons of an organisational and technical nature: it is a new undertaking—one of immeasurable importance—and we do not want to advance to the second stage without securing the first’. All this great work came to nothing. The militia was abolished in favour of a standing army. The reasoning was purely political: the bureaucracy ceased to have any confidence in an army scattered among the people, merged with the people. It needed a purely barracks army, isolated from the people.”15

 

The Degenerated Revolution revises the Marxist theory of the state

 

The Degenerated Revolution analysed in detail the process of Stalinist expansion after World War Two. Faced with a revolutionary tide sweeping across central Europe after 1944, Stalin’s Soviet Armed Forces and national Communist Parties sought to contain its anti-capitalist thrust. The Stalinists came to the rescue of imperialism and constructed a series of class collaborationist governments across the region.

Where it was unavoidable these governments nationalised industries to take them out of the hands of the workers. They disarmed the popular militias or guerrilla bands that had been forged to fight occupying fascist or collaborationist armies. In short, they rebuilt the shattered foundations of the capitalist state machine and underpinned the much weakened capitalist economies.

Of course, this was no normal bourgeois state machine; military power was in the hands not of the national bourgeoisie but of Stalinist bureaucracies under the ultimate control of Moscow. The armed power of the bourgeoisie had been broken in East Europe as it was to be later in China, Cuba and Vietnam. The Degenerated Revolution is clear that the state machine reconstructed in 1945-46 throughout Eastern and Central Europe was bourgeois in form, and as such that it was an obstacle to the transition to socialism.

For a couple of years, until the political offensive launched by US imperialism in 1947-48, the form of this state machine and the content of the economy it defended – capitalism – were in an uneasy harmony. But under threat of being ousted by a resurgent national bourgeoisie with stronger ties with imperialism, Stalin’s national agents moved to bureaucratically overthrow capitalist social relations, dump their political representatives from the Popular Front governments and through the medium of bureaucratic workers’ governments, create degenerate workers’ states.

The result of this process embodied an enormous contradiction, between the bourgeois form of the state machine and the proletarian content of the social relations of production defended by this machine. One clear dynamic flowed from this contradiction, one already evident in the USSR. There could be no possibility of a transition towards socialism so long as an unaccountable and savagely repressive political machine towered over the working class. On the contrary, this machine would serve to destabilise the nationalised planned economic foundations of each country and would claim more and more of the surplus product to satisfy the life styles of those who ran it.

As a description of the course of events and a class characterisation of the structures that emerged The Degenerated Revolution is spot on. The problem lay elsewhere – in its theorisation of this process. Speaking of these 1947 social overturns in East Europe the book says:

“ . . . when the actual stages of these revolutions are examined it becomes clear that the abolition of capitalism by Stalinist parties did not contradict the Marxist theory of the state.

The capitalist state was smashed in each bureaucratic revolution, but in a manner not envisaged by Marx, Engels or Lenin, nor in a manner that is at all desirable from the standpoint of revolutionary communism.”16

This point is emphasised later when it said that The Degenerated Revolution rejects the idea:

“. . . that workers’ states can be created without the smashing of the capitalist state. The bureaucratic revolutions were only possible because in each case the coercive apparatus of the bourgeoisie had been smashed.”17

A further passage describes what this smashing consisted of:

“If the essential characteristic of the state is the existence of bodies of armed men in defence of property, then the essential element in the smashing of the state is the destruction of the armed power of the bourgeoisie. This is a fundamental law of proletarian revolution. By smashing the state we mean first and foremost smashing its armed apparatus.”

But since the state is also “a huge and powerful bureaucratic apparatus (civil service, judges etc) . . .”, then, “the smashing of the state must also involve the destruction of this bureaucracy.”18

Other parts of the bureaucracy (lower rank administrators, for example) would not have to be smashed but heavily purged and taken over and put to use under the control of the workers.

Thus, while the smashing of the capitalist state is a process that begins with destructive tasks and ends with the building of a state of an entirely new kind (soviet based), the essential moment of this proces, is that “the armed power of the bourgeoisie was physically smashed prior to each of the bureaucratic revolutions that marked the expansion of Stalinism in the post-war period.“19

Since the essential part of the smashing had been completed, the future creation of a healthy proletarian semi-state, while necessary, would not have to smash the state.

Without being conscious of it, in these formulations The Degenerated Revolution revised the Marxist theory of the state by reducing the process of the smashing of the capitalist state to what it has in common with earlier forms of political revolutions in class society rather than what is historically unique and specific about the process.

The position in The Degenerated Revolution laudably tried to avoid “formalism” with respect to the Marxist theory of the state by developing a more abstract concept of “smashing” that could be applied equally to the quite distinct historical experiences of 1917 and the period between 1945-49. We did not realise that in the attempt to deepen the concept we merely ended up regressing to a concept that had been rejected by Marx and Lenin.

We decided that “smashing” the state was an elongated process with several “moments”. But the essence of the smashing, the key moment as it were, was to be found in the violent destruction of the armed power, the destruction of the ability of the bourgeoisie to apply coercive power to defend its property relations.

But the book muddled the following distinguishable “moments” in the unfolding of a revolution: first, the defeat and disintegration of one standing army by another; second, the emergence of a dual power situation; third, the seizure of power by the proletariat by methods of armed insurrection; fourth, the smashing by the victorious proletariat of the old bourgeois state machine and its replacement by the armed people and popular self-administration of the soviets.

This last task, no matter how much it depends upon, or has been prepared for by the preceding moments, is what Marx and Lenin insisted was the qualitative difference with previous transformations. This is therefore the specific meaning of the “smashing of the state” required by the proletarian revolution in contrast to all previous revolutions.

The Degenerated Revolution confused the question of violent revolution with the task of state smashing, and then to fit it in with the actual events of the bureaucratic social overturns in 1947-48 (no soviets, militia etc.) it reduced the essential tasks of smashing to the violent seizure of power.

Obviously, for the proletariat to be able to set about the task of smashing the state presupposes a “violent revolution”, that is, forcibly depriving the bourgeoisie of its control over its “special bodies of armed men“. This can occur as a result of defeat in war, the mutiny and internal disintegration of the armed forces or by an insurrectionary rising by the armed workers—or all three in varying combinations.

Equally obviously, this can and usually does occur “in parts”, via a period of dual power. But none of these are what Marx and Engels referred to as the “smashing of the bureaucratic-military machine”. They constitute a violent revolution, no more and no less. All revolutions, bourgeois as well as proletarian, which are worthy of the name involve this forcible seizure of power.

But worse was to follow. In order to prop up this false idea the book looked again at the process of the Russian Revolution in order to see if the same sequence of events happened there too. And this is what we found:

“. . . the coercive machinery of the Russian bourgeoisie—its army and police—disintegrated prior to the direct seizure of power by the proletariat and to this extent was smashed before the October Revolution”.20

Thus to bolster one false idea Workers Power and the IWG were forced to revise an important part of the established understanding of the course of the Russian Revolution during 1917.

It is true that the February Revolution instigated a situation of dual power, or rather a twin set of dual power situations. First, between the Tsarist forces, the high command and much of the officer corps of the army on the one hand, and those opposed to Tsarism among the Russian bourgeoisie, the peasants and the workers on the other. More importantly, there was dual power between the soviets and the Provisional Government. Clearly the February Revolution took the army out of the undivided control of the high command and forced it to accept the abdication of the Tsar (and then the dynasty), putting the army at the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

This process obviously weakened the army, undermined the authority of the officer caste and strengthened the rank and file soldiers’ committees. Especially after the July-August offensive widespread disintegration of morale set in among the army. This made the job of the October Revolution easier, deepening and completing this disintegrative process. But October produced the qualitative watershed when the smashing of the state became the conscious act of a revolutionary party at the head of the masses; it did not “to this extent” occur before October.

The whole thrust of Lenin and Trotsky’s writings on this subject push in this direction. First Trotsky:

“. . . the destruction of the Tsarist bureaucratic and military apparatus, the introduction of national equality and national self-determination—all this was the elementary democratic work that the February revolution barely even addressed itself to before leaving it, almost untouched, for the October Revolution to inherit.”21

In this Trotsky was merely following Lenin who recognised that far from smashing anything in February the state machine was “taken over” by the Russian bourgeoisie and taken (half-heartedly) out of the hands of the Tsarist followers

Here is Lenin’s judgment on February:

“The development, perfection and strengthening of the bureaucratic and military apparatus proceeded during all the numerous bourgeois revolutions which Europe has witnessed since the fall of feudalism . . . Consider what happened in Russia during the six months following February 27, 1917. The official posts which formerly were given by preference to the Black Hundreds have now become the spoils of the Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nobody has seriously thought of introducing any serious reforms.

Every effort has been made to put them off ‘until the Constituent Assembly meets’, and to steadily put off its convocation until after the war! But there has been no delay, no waiting for the Constituent Assembly, in the matter of dividing the spoils, of getting the lucrative jobs of ministers, deputy ministers, governor-generals etc etc! (...) But the more the bureaucratic apparatus is ‘redistributed’ among the various bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties . . . the more keenly aware the oppressed classes, and the proletariat at their head, become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of bourgeois society. Hence the need for the bourgeois parties . . . to intensify repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e. the state machine.

This course of events compels the revolution ‘to concentrate all its forces of destruction’ against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it.”22

The conclusion could not be clearer. The February Revolution did not smash the state; rather the Russian bourgeoisie got its hands on it and began to purge it of Tsarist placemen and start to perfect the executive power which is nothing other than centralising the repressive apparatus against the popular classes even more. While they did not achieve much in terms of “perfecting” the state machine, this was the clear intent of the Provisional Government in its service of the bourgeoisie.

The Marxist programmatic conception of the smashing of the old state is historically and class specific. It is impossible to abstract it from its working class nature, from the nature of the class force and class state which carries out the smashing and replaces the old machine, without thereby transforming it into a bare ahistorical abstraction.

The Degenerated Revolution did this unconsciously, without even being aware of it and its implications. Its “false abstraction” was to hit upon a description of what the 1917 process and 1947-51 process had in common. Thus:

“These coercive bodies were smashed to the extent that the bourgeoisies were no longer able to deploy armed force in defence of their remaining property rights . . ”23

And there we have it.

The process of smashing is redefined so that it can embrace quite different historical processes and outcomes. Theoretical consistency was sacrificed for superficial historical description.

Against this we can now say that the capitalist state was not “smashed” in February 1917 nor in the post-war period in Eastern Europe. Between February and October 1917 the Russian bourgeoisie did have an armed force, albeit one that was in disarray due to the enormous pressure it was under from the contending forces of dual power.

After the Second World War the Stalinist bureaucracy, far from smashing the capitalist state, simply took hold of the old apparatus of political domination and, utilising bureaucratic, military, police measures transformed/purged its structures and functions in its own image and in its own interests. In the first period this state, controlled by the Stalinists, was used to defend and rebuild capitalism, and then later the same state machine was used as a lever for the economic expropriation of the bourgeoisie.

In some parts of Eastern Europe, for example in Austria, the Stalinists took hold of the state in the post-war period in exactly the same way as in Poland or Eastern Germany. However, in Austria that state, having been used to help rebuild capitalism, was never used to expropriate the bourgeoisie but rather handed back to the bourgeoisie. In this case the Austrian bourgeoisie did not have to carry out a revolution, or “re-smash” the state to make it work in their interests, as it had remained, throughout, a bourgeois state.

In those Eastern European countires where capitalism was abolished, the working class was excluded, through counter-revolutionary measures, from seizing state power in its own right. As a result the Stalinist bureaucracy was able to construct an apparatus which was a bourgeois organ in a workers’ state. 24

It can be argued that in “taking over” the apparatus of the bourgeois state machine the Stalinists continued to “perfect” it, as for example, in respect to the standing army.

The Stalinists everywhere introduced modifications such as the existence of controlled “popular” militias (e.g. Committees for the Defence of the Cuban Revolution) or party militias attached to party cells in factories, as supplements to or extensions of the standing army.

These modifications can be seen as further perfecting the bourgeois state machine in the workers’ state since they represent nothing other than a further method by which the state enforces repression, atomises and renders completely unaccountable the political administration.

In the Soviet Union the smashing of the Stalinist state machine had been a programmatic necessity ever since the counter-revolutionary political expropriation of the working class by the Stalinist caste. In Eastern Europe such a task was necessary from the moment of their creation as workers’ states.

 

Trotsky on the “bourgeois-bureaucratic”state machine

 

That The Degenerated Revolution could fall into these errors was in part conditioned by the fact that the legacy of Trotsky on the issue of the class character of the state machine in the USSR is at best ambiguous. Nowhere did he clearly point to the fact that, conceived in abstraction from the property relations defended by the bureaucracy, this state machine was bourgeois. To understand his thinking we have to establish the progression of his thought on this question.

In the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx argued that in the lowest stage of communism “bourgeois right” (i.e. bourgeois law) would still be in force in the sphere of the distribution of that part of society’s total product destined for individual consumption. He argued that immediately after the socialist revolution, in the lowest stage of communism, the state can enforce “only” equal rights in the sphere of consumption (from each according to their ability to each according to their work); that is to say, there is not as yet such material abundance that naturally unequal individuals can receive “according to their needs”.

In State and Revolution Lenin took Marx’s idea and developed it into a clear theoretical conclusion. He insisted that not only bourgeois right survives “but also even a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie” even in the healthiest, most prosperous case, even in America. In a backward country like Russia a workers’ state will not for some time be able even to introduce full equality. It will have to accord privileges to some (skilled workers, bureaucrats, army officers) in order to retain services which are essential to the survival of the workers’ state.

Trotsky found in this conclusion the key to a scientific understanding of the nature and dynamics of the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union:

“In so far as the State which assumes the task of Socialist transformation is compelled to defend inequality—that is material privileges of a minority—by methods of compulsion, in so far does it remain a bourgeois state even though without a bourgeoisie.”25

Both Marx and Lenin held that the state would wither away under the highest stage of communism when the productive forces of social labour had reached the stage of development where the objects of social and individual consumption could be distributed on the basis of human need alone. Lenin grasped that what this meant was not the withering away of voting etc. but the final withering away of this “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”, the final withering away of even the most democratic instrument of political and social repression.

This withering away would be achieved through a process of conscious political, cultural and social reform beginning in the transitional period of the dictatorship of the proletariat and culminating in the lowest stage of communism or socialism. However, soviet reality in imperialist-encircled and backward revolutionary Russia immediately started to come into contradiction with this perspective and the associated programme.

The bureaucracy of the new workers’ state, the very embodiment of the “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie” did not begin to wither away at all; it began to grow apace, assert its power and appropriate a large share of the social product. Lenin himself became increasingly alarmed about this growth of “bureaucratic deformations” within the workers’ state. His response was a programme of political reform designed to enable the proletariat to control this burgeoning bureaucracy through its soviets and its party.

Trotsky’s theory of the intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union was a further development of Lenin’s idea through to and beyond that point at which quantity passed into quality. The Stalinist apparatus of state power—the ruling bureaucracy within a workers’ state—strangled the soviets and the vanguard party which it once had to serve and with which it had shared power. The counter-revolutionary Thermidor was completed in 1927 with the expulsion of Trotsky from the party and the outlawing of the Left Opposition.

Trotsky had to chart the consolidation in power of a bonapartist bureaucracy which enjoyed more and more privileges whilst still defending the revolutionary social foundations established by the October Revolution. This led inexorably to a qualitative political degeneration of the Soviet state. These were no longer deformations which could be reformed if the Stalinists were displaced from power.

In the Revolution Betrayed Trotsky refers to “the crushing of Soviet democracy by an all-powerful bureaucracy”.26 But in his 1935 article, The Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism, Trotsky developed this brief formula in a way characteristic of his position both before and after 1936:

“the present-day domination of Stalin in no way resembles the Soviet rule during the initial years of the revolution. The substitution of one regime for the other occurred not at a single stroke but through a series of measures, by means of a number of minor civil wars waged by the bureaucracy against the proletarian vanguard. In the last historical analysis, soviet democracy was blown up by the pressure of social contradictions.

Exploiting the latter, the bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organisations.”27

Or again:

“The toiling masses lived on hopes or fell into apathy . . . Such power (of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could be obtained only by strangling the party, the soviets, the working class as a whole.”28

And, “The old cadres of Bolshevism have been smashed. Revolutionists have been smashed.”29

Organs of democratic workers’ power can also be said to have been “smashed” by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the other degenerate workers’ states after the second world war. In these cases this occured before the Stalinist bureaucracy could consolidate its own power, later used to expropriate the bourgeoisie. The Stalinist caste first crushed the workers, and then blocked their path to power.

The “smashing” of the political rule of the working class by the bureaucracy of the workers’ state cannot be seen as a simple mirror image of the smashing of the old bourgeois state through workers’ revolution. The smashing of a bureaucratic-military state machine cannot but differ in its very essentials from the destruction of democratic soviet power by a bureaucratic-military state machine.

Trotsky clearly enumerates these concrete differences in the course of his analysis of the evolution of the political expropriation of the working class in the Soviet Union. The basis of the whole process was the chronic backwardness of Russia exacerbated by the destruction and depredations of the civil war, the lack of culture, particularly political culture of the mass of Soviet workers increasingly drawn directly from the ranks of the peasantry. Capping this was a series of important defeats of the international revolution.

We should place the passages from Trotsky, written in 1935, against this background. These conditions explain the growing apathy and quiescence of broad layers of the Soviet workers and the stultification of the soviets from the early 1920s onwards as well as the growing isolation of the revolutionary vanguard in the party as represented by the Left Opposition. All this was both cause and, increasingly, effect of the continuously growing power of the bureaucracy. In these circumstances the momentum, or mobile inertia, of the centralised bureaucratic juggernaut led to a process of grinding down of activity, organisation and initiative on the part of the mass of the population.

The drawn out character of the process is one reason why it was so difficult for the Left Opposition, or indeed anyone, to determine the exact moment of transition from counter-revolutionary political quantity to quality in the life of the country. Nonetheless, the outcome of this process was clear enough to Trotsky long before 1935 – Soviet power had been comprehensively smashed or “blown up” and replaced by the absolutist rule of a totalitarian bourgeois bureaucratic-military state machine, but one which drew the source of its power and material privileges from nationalised property and planned economy.

The contradictions of the first degenerate workers’ state can be summed up thus: the dictatorship of the proletariat had taken the paradoxical form of a political dictatorship of “a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie” over the proletariat. It had taken the form of the rule of a politically counter-revolutionary bonapartist state machine which still rested upon the post-capitalist social foundations established by the October Revolution. That state machine was still the organ of a workers’ state because it defended those revolutionary property relations. But it defended them in its own way and in its own material interests, in order to maintain its caste privileges against the working class.

It is clear that after 1935 Trotsky completely understood the character of the state machine that arose on the debris of Soviet power—it was “bourgeois-bureaucratic”30 (even fascistic). But here then arises a further problem. Why then did Trotsky never argue that the Stalinist state machine should be “smashed” in the course of the political revolution?

Trotsky was aware that a bald counterposition between the state superstructure and civil society in the USSR was of limited value both theoretically and an insufficient guide to practical action. Why? Quite simply, because although there is a unity of form in regard to the state machine of a bourgeois state superstructure and a degenerated workers’ state there was no identity. It is clear if we ponder the significance of the following passages:

“In a number of previous writings we established the fact that despite its economic successes, which were determined by the nationalisation of the means of production, Soviet society completely preserves a contradictory transitional character, and measured by the inequality of living conditions and the privileges of the bureaucracy, it still stands much closer to the regime of capitalism than to future communism.

At the same time, we established the fact that despite monstrous bureaucratic degeneration, the Soviet state still remains the historical instrument of the working class insofar as it assures the development of economy and culture on the basis of nationalised means of production and, by virtue of this, prepares the conditions for a genuine emancipation of the toilers through the liquidation of the bureaucracy and of social inequality (...) Raising itself above the toiling masses, the bureaucracy regulates these contradictions... By its uncontrolled and self-willed rule, subject to no appeal, the bureaucracy accumulates new contradictions. Exploiting the latter, it creates the regime of bureaucratic absolutism.”31

Here Trotsky conceptually distinguishes between “state” and “society” in the USSR. The “state” includes within it both the progressive aspects of nationalised property relations and the wholly reactionary aspect of bureaucratic absolutism. In turn, this distinction flows from some important differences of the USSR as compared to capitalism. This he defines in the following way:

“Once liberated from the fetters of feudalism, bourgeois relations develop automatically (...) It is altogether otherwise with the development of social relations. The proletarian revolution not only frees the productive forces from the fetters of private ownership but also transfers them to the direct disposal of the state that it itself creates. While the bourgeois state, after the revolution, confines itself to a police role, leaving the market to its own laws, the workers’ state assumes the direct role of economist and organiser.”32

So political revolution in the degenerate workers’ state involves a dual task; on the one hand, the smashing of the “bourgeois- bureaucratic” state machine (police, standing army, bureaucracy). This Trotsky calls sometimes the “bonapartist apparatus”, sometimes “bureaucratic absolutism”; on the other hand, having smashed this apparatus the victorious proletariat in its soviets will rescue and take over the apparatuses associated with the monopoly of foreign trade, the administrative organs of planning, purge them, and wield them for its own purposes. Naturally, this clearing out process will be very far reaching since the apparatus of economic administration has also been distorted to reproduce bureaucratic privilege.

But did Trotsky still not at least formulate the task of smashing the state machine more narrowly defined? Yes and no. It is a fact that Trotsky’s theoretical and programmatic development lagged behind the evolution of the Soviet Union in some important respects, a fact he openly recognised himself.

In the first place Trotsky had to openly correct his initial analogy with Thermidor in the French revolution in an article written in 1935. He argued that Thermidor in the Russian revolution should no longer be regarded as the counter-revolutionary restoration of capitalism but as the politically counter-revolutionary consolidation of the bonapartist power of the Stalinist bureaucracy still remaining on the foundations established by October.

In other words Trotsky openly admitted that the Soviet Thermidor stood not in the future as he had previously thought but some eight years in the past. Without doubt this self-critical theoretical appraisal followed from the fact that Trotsky had been compelled to develop a dramatic new programmatic stance: the abandonment of a programme of political reform and the development of the programme of political revolution. But Trotsky’s new theory of the Soviet Thermidor which placed its completion in 1927 raised an obvious problem; namely, that the development of the programme of political revolution had been delayed for eight years.

Trotsky’s belated development of this programme retained a certain algebraic character up to his death. One reason for this was that nobody then had had the chance to go through the experience of an actual political revolutionary rising of the working class in a degenerate workers’ state. Trotsky knew that nobody could be exactly sure of the dynamics and overall character of the political revolution without the benefit of the experience of the class struggle itself. Hence, it is not surprising that he did not leap into print with the idea that the bonapartist state machine would be smashed in the classical Marxist sense in the political revolution.

Indeed, in the Transitional Programme of 1938 Trotsky still poses the tasks of the political revolution in a form that lies somewhere between the old reform perspective and the new revolutionary one. On the one hand, Trotsky recognises that the political “apparatus of the workers’ state . . . was transformed from a weapon of the working class into a weapon of bureaucratic violence against the working class”.

On the other hand, he calls for the “regeneration of Soviet democracy” and “democratisation of the soviets” as though the soviets existed but only needed to be purged:

“It is necessary to return to the soviets not only their free democratic form but also their class content. As once the bourgeoisie and kulaks were not permitted to enter the soviets, so now it is necessary to drive the bureaucracy and new aristocracy out of the soviets.”33

Yet it was clear that although they may have been called soviets they had nothing in common with the organs set up in 1905 and 1917. They were powerless “parliamentary” bodies made up of pre-selected members of the bureaucracy and labour aristocracy, subordinated entirely to the bonapartist clique around Stalin. As structures they needed to be smashed.

Indeed, later in May 1939 Trotsky drew the necessary inference in a passage for the first and only time:

“To believe that this [Stalinist] state is capable of peacefully “withering away” is to live in a world of theoretical delirium. The bonapartist caste must be smashed, the soviet state must be regenerated. Only then will the prospects of the withering away of the state open up.“34

This plays the same role in Trotsky’s theoretical development as did Marx’s observations in Eighteenth BrumaireBut Trotsky did not live to see the political revolution’s equivalent of 1871. If he had seen the Hungarian revolution of 1956, which generated Soviets outside of and counterposed to the existing state apparatus of Hungarian and Russian Stalinism, Trotsky would undoubtedly have recognised that the lack of sharpness in the Transitional Programme would have had to have been changed.

 

The Degenerated Revolution and the programme of political revolution

 

Faced with the challenge posed by Trotsky’s ambiguities The Degenerated Revolution opted for theoretical conservatism. Basing itself on the revision regarding the “smashing” of the state, it chose to interpret Trotsky’s 1939 formulation—“the bonapartist caste must be smashed, the soviet state must be regenerated”—in a very specific way when it came to its implications for the programme of the political revolution.

Since Trotsky did not say that the “state” must be smashed in the political revolution and given that The Degenerated Revolution had insisted that this had already been done in the process of overthrowing capitalism then, with Trotsky, we restricted ourselves to saying that while the castehad to be smashed the state could be “regenerated” (i.e. “taken over” and purged).

The counterposition of the “caste” to the “state” can as we have shown be given a meaning that does not impair the tasks of the political revolution; that is, providing we understand Trotsky to be arguing for the smashing of the military-bureaucratic core of the state machine and “regenerating” or purging the organs of economic administration.

But The Degenerated Revolution took us in an altogether different direction. Since the section on the nature of the state had argued that the state was essentially “bodies of armed men” then it must mean that Trotsky’s words could be interpreted to mean that the state as bodies of armed men must not be smashed in the political revolution but “regenerated”.

Even at first glance this idea was incoherent since it suggested that the bureaucratic caste could be smashed without smashing its armed power. But The Degenerated Revolution consciously rejected the simple idea that the whole standing army of the Stalinist bureaucracy must be abolished and replaced by a workers’ militia. Instead it argued:

“The bureaucracy maintains a massive standing army and specialised armed squads to defend its privileges in times of political revolutionary crisis. The working class will need to build its own workers’ militia to defend its organisations against police and military attack. It will in the course of the political revolution have to create armed forces capable of dissolving and defeating all armed forces loyal to the bureaucracy. It will seek its weapons in the arsenals, and from the hands of, the conscript army. To win the troops to the side of the political revolution the proletariat must advance the slogans:

• Full political rights for soldiers, culminating in the calls for soldiers’ councils to send delegates to the workers and peasants’ soviets.

• Dissolution of the officer corps, abolition of the titles and privileges of the generals and marshals – commanders, officers and NCOs to be democratically elected or selected.

• For the immediate dissolution of the paramilitary repression apparatus, the secret police and militia.

The victorious political revolution will arm and train all those workers capable of bearing arms. The workers’ state will rest upon the armed proletariat. For the military defence of the workers’ states against imperialism the maintenance of a standing army is necessary. The political revolution will, however, transform the existing armies – instruments of bureaucratic tyranny as well as defence – into Red Armies of the type founded by L D Trotsky.”35

This is quite clear and in line with the false view of the “necessary” character of a standing army in any workers’ state already outlined. The programme adds a further twist however, saying that it is necessary because one is needed to defend a workers’ state from attack.36 It is a conception that potentially bolsters illusions in the standing army of a Stalinist caste by suggesting that it is necessary to defend the workers’ state from restorationist attack, when in truth it is an agency perfectly suited to overseeing the capitalist restoration process – as we have seen since 1989.

The Degenerated Revolution subordinated a crystal clear formulation of the strategy of political revolution to formulations on the possible need for united fronts with the Stalinist standing army against imperialist attack. But the formulation that the standing armies of the Stalinist caste have a dual character – “instruments of bureaucratic tyranny as well as defence” surrenders too much to the Stalinists, above all in the light of events since 1989.37

The mistake was to believe that Lenin’s position, as expressed in Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? concerning taking over parts of the lower bureaucratic administration of the Tsarist regime and using them in the transition to socialism, could be applied to the standing army in a Stalinist state once those “loyal to the bureaucracy” had been defeated.

In truth what was needed was a clear statement that the armed struggle of the workers’ councils and militia against the bonapartist standing army is the process of smashing the state machine in the political revolution, essentially identical to the arming of the whole population in contradistinction to the maintenance of a standing army above the masses.

 

Trotsky on the state machine and capitalist restoration

 

The Degenerated Revolution could not find anywhere in Trotsky’s analysis the idea that the bourgeois state machine would not and could not be smashed in a bureaucratic social overturn. It did not draw a theoretical inference which flowed directly from the whole of the rest of his conception and which should have followed from an analysis of the actual events of the bureaucratic social overturns after Trotsky’s death.

Similarly, the book stuck rigidly to the letter of Trotsky’s programme on political revolution when a certain re-elaboration was needed. What then of an interconnected question; namely, what would happen to the Stalinist “bourgeois-bureaucratic” state machine in the context of capitalist restoration?

A moment’s reflection reveals that if it is legitimate to apply the Marxist category of the smashing of the state to the counter-revolutionary overthrow of Soviet power then the same line of thought surely indicates that in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and Cuba, the “smashing of the state” on the road to capitalist restoration stands not in front of us but far behind, in the counter-revolutionary consolidation of the bonapartist state power of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

In The Revolution Betrayed, written in 1936, we find three hypotheses concerning the possible future course of development of the Soviet Union:

“Let us assume first that the Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism, enriched moreover by the world experience of the recent period. Such a party would begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade unions and the Soviets. It would be able to, and would have to, restore freedom of Soviet parties. Together with the masses, and at their head, it would carry out a ruthless purgation of the state apparatus . . . But so far as concerns property relations the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution—that is the deposing of the bureaucracy—the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.

If—to adopt another hypothesis—a bourgeois party were to overthrow the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no small number of ready servants among the present bureaucrats, administrators, technicians, directors, party secretaries and privileged upper circles in general. A purgation of the state would of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration . . . would probably have to clean out fewer people than a revolutionary party. The chief task of the new power would be to restore private property in the means of production. . . Notwithstanding that the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward preparing a bourgeois restoration, the new regime would have to introduce in the matter of forms of property and methods of industry not a reform, but a social revolution.

Let us assume—to take a third variant—that neither a revolutionary nor a counter-revolutionary party seizes power. The bureaucracy continues at the head of the state. Even under these conditions social relations will not gel . . . it (the bureaucracy) must inevitably in future stages seek support for . . . itself in property relations . . . It is not enough to be the director of a trust; it is necessary to be a stockholder. The victory of the bureaucracy in this decisive sphere would mean its conversion into a new possessing class . . . The third variant consequently brings us back to the two first.”38

Trotsky asserts that both a political revolution and a social counter-revolution would involve a “purgation” of one and the same Soviet state apparatus. This is a curious argument because it strongly implies that the same state—while transformed in opposite directions—could preside over either a restored capitalist economy or—in the democratised form of a revived workers’ power—over the transition to socialism.

It was necessary to break with this suggestion and consciously revise the idea that the political revolution will involve the purgation of the Stalinist bureaucratic-military state machine. Rather, The Degenerated Revolution should have asserted that that the bonapartist state apparatus must be smashed by the armed working, class organised in its own democratic workers’ councils.

Only after the smashing of all the armed executive in the political revolution would the question of the “purgation” of its bureaucracy arise, i.e. the utilisation, where necessary, of some of the old officials in the apparatus of the new power.

On closer inspection Trotsky introduced a deliberate asymmetry into his hypothetical cases involving the “purgation of the state apparatus”. The political revolution, he asserts, will involve a “ruthless purgation” while capitalist restoration “would probably have to clean out fewer people”.

What is more, in his third hypothesis he goes much further. He assumes the possibility that the Stalinist bureaucracy “continues at the head of the state” and, through the destruction of nationalised property, converts itself into a “new possessing class”, that is, a bourgeoisie.

In the light of the experience since 1989 we can now assert that even in this, Trotsky’s third, case the Stalinist bureaucracy would undergo an internal purgation due to the inevitable splits and conflicts within its own ranks.

In any case, Trotsky argued that the overthrow of the degenerated workers’ state along the line of the restoration of capitalism would, in all events, involve a lesser transformation of the state superstructure than would a political revolution.

Since 1989 it is Trotsky’s third variant that has predominated, or at least a combination of the first and third.39 The successful counter-revolutionary bureaucracy/bourgeoisie coalition in Eastern Europe has taken hold of the bureaucratic state machine, purged it, and then used this to smash those elements of the state which were responsible for the system of economic administration.

The parliamentary forums that may or may not exist, may or may not have been the means by which the restorationists managed to take hold of the state machine is irrelevant in the last analysis. Also, that the “smashing” of the system of economic administration—planning organs, economic Ministries—is taking place with little violence has nothing to do with the essence of the matter. What is interesting is that this process involves a dialectical inversion of the process that would be necessary in the proletarian political revolution. In the latter case the soviets would have to smash the executive power and purge the organs of economic administration.

 

A healthy debate

 

It is a mark of the health of a revolutionary tendency that it can study its own past critically. If doctrine is not to be turned into dogma then revolutionaries are obliged to subject all theory to scrutiny in the light of major new events.

Serious debate with in the ranks of the LRCI over an extended period has allowed it to correct a mistake and thereby rearm itself politically. In the process all sides in the debate realised that despite their differences they were bound together in complete agreement on the programmatic tasks facing the working class after 1989.

We did not have any differences over the programme of political revolution from 1989 onwards which was based solidly on continued defence of these states against imperialism, the absolute necessity of soviets as instruments of the revolution, the smashing of the Stalinist states’ apparatus of repression and the erection of a Paris Commune or Russia 1917-style semi state.

Thus the Degenerated Revolution proved a strong enough pillar of the LRCI to bear the weight of an important but narrowly circumscribed theoretical difference.

 

Footnotes

1. When Workers Power and the IWG first wrote the book we had differences within our ranks over the question of what exactly happened to the bourgeois state machine during the overthrow of capitalism by the Stalinists. Was it “smashed” in the sense that Marxists use the term? The majority insisted that it must have been, believing that to say anything less was to suggest that a social overturn was possible by the road of reform, A minority argued the positions developed in this article. After a joint conference of the IWG and Workers Power which agreed the contents of The Degenerated Revolution the debate ceased for ten years.

Under the impact of the events in Eastern Europe, which raised the question “would the state machine, as distinct from the planned economy and the Stalinist parties, have to be smashed or would it be sufficient to drastically purge the “special bodies of armed men etc” the debate broke out anew in 1993. This time some members of the former majority joined the old minority. After four years of internal discussion within the LRCI including two congresses (1994 and 1997) and with many documents written on either side, this error was corrected. No side in the debate called into question for a moment Trotsky’s designation of the USSR (or the later Stalinist states) as degenerate workers’ states.

2. Moreover, the state public force also has its own interests and possesses certain caste-like features that set it off from classes in civil society. Hegel first spoke of these as being security of employment and guaranteed income.

3. The first species of standing army, dating from the end of the 15th century, although standing apart and opposed to the common people, still reflected its origins in feudalism. The standing army was not made up, as later was to be the case, by national conscripts. This was because the nobility rightly feared arming its peasantry which might exert revolutionary democratic pressure upon the ruling class. Instead they were primarily mercenary armies, made up of foreigners whose loyalty could be bought.

4. Lenin, State and Revolution, p30

5. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte – quoted in Lenin State and Revolution p411 CW vol. 25. It is worth noting in passing that when they talk of “perfecting” the bourgeois state machine, Marx and Lenin do not mean developing more representative forms of government (e.g. parliamentary democracy). Quite the opposite, for “perfecting” means purging it of the revolutionary-democratic aspects of the revolution and centralising the executive power against them. This is the whole point of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the rise and fall of the Great French revolution from Jacobin clubs to the centralising measures of Napoleon.

6. Draft of the Civil War in France

7. Quoted in Lenin State and Revolution, op cit:p.242.

8. E Mandel, From Class Sciety to Communism, London, p46

9. L Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, London 1973, p49

10. ibid, p50-51

11. F Engels, The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State, New York, 1978, p24

12. L Trotsky op cit, p209

13. ibid, p216

14. ibid p222. As Trotsky argued: “The right to a commanding position is guaranteed by study, endowment, character, experience, which need continual and moreover individual appraisal. The rank of major adds nothing to the commander of a battalion.”, p223

15. L Trotsky Writings Supplement 1934-40 p883

16. Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group, The Degenerated Revolution, Londn 1982, p48

17. ibid, p51

18. ibid, p49

19. ibid, pp50-51

20. ibid, p50

21. ibid, p54 This idea is nothing other than a restatement of permanent revolution; that is, far from carrying out a task which was the object of the proletarian revolution it failed miserably to carry out any serious task of the bourgeois revolution.

22. Lenin, State and Revolution op cit, pp31-32

23. The Degenerated Revolution, op cit, p50

24. Only under fascist bourgeois states (e.g. Hitler’s Germany) have we seen similar “perfections”. A standing army—just because this army defends post-capitalist property—does not thereby become a proletarian form of military technical organisation. It still needs to be replaced by “an armed people”.

25 Revolution Betrayed, op cit, p 58

26 ibid, pp268

27 ibid, pp172-73

28 ibid, p175

29 ibid, p178

30. L Trotsky Preface to Ukrainian edition of My Life, Writings 1938 p?

31. L Trotsky, Writings 1934-35 pl70-171; original emphasis

32. ibid pl79

33. L Trotsky, Transitional Programme, New York 1977, p145

34. L Trotsky, “The Bonapartist Philosophy of the State”, Writings, 1938-39, New York 1974, p325

35. The Degenerated Revolution op cit p79.

36. The Trotskyist Manifesto (1989) compounded this error with an even worse formulation: “For the standing army to be reduced to a size commensurate with the legitimate defence needs of the workers’ states against imperialism.” London 1989, p97 This was corrected in 1994.

37 The programme in The Degenerated Revolution singles out the secret police as needing to be dissolved but not the standing army, as though the former agency did not also have a role to play in defence of the workers’ state from imperialism. Eventually, in the Trotskyist Manifesto revised chapter on political revolution adopted in 1994, the LRCI removed all ambiguity in respect of the tasks of the proletarian revolution where it states that the workers councils will “smash the whole repressive machine of the Stalinist state apparatus”. See Trotskyist International 15 October 1994 p42.

38. The Revolution Betrayed, London 1973, p253-54

39. For example, Yeltsin’s split with the nomenklatura in 1990 helped realign the restorationist forces from outside the bureaucracy (e.g. Chubais) around his clique which after 1991 then isolated a hardline Stalinist faction, before co-opting decisive elements of the Stalinist bureaucracy (e.g. Chernomyrdin) into the restoration process. A similar combination occurred in Hungary. In Serbia, Croatia and Slovakia the whole bureaucracy is playing the decisive role in line with Trotsky’s third variant.

 

 

 

 

 

The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today

 

 

Note from the RCIT's Editorial Board:

 

This month, we celebrate the 80-years anniversary of the foundation of the Fourth International. The construction of the Fourth International has been one of the two most important achievements of Leon Trotsky (the other was the organizing and defending of the Russia Revolution in 1917 and the following years of civil war).

 

The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) is a Trotskyist organization and, hence, stands in the tradition of Trotsky’s Fourth International. We defend the revolutionary legacy of the Fourth International until its degeneration in 1948-52 under the leadership of the epigones. (i)

 

In order to provide our readers with an overview of the history of the creation of the Fourth International in 1933-40, we republish below an important book of our movement. This book has been published by our predecessor organization, Workers Power (Britain), in 1983.

 

In order to defend our revolutionary legacy, we had to fight against the subsequent degeneration of this organization into centrism for which we were bureaucratically expelled by the majority of its leadership in April 2011. (ii)

 

The struggle for a revolutionary future is impossible without defending the revolutionary gains of the past. This is both true for theoretical as well as practical achievements. In this spirit we recommend readers to study the following document and to join the RCIT in fighting for building a Revolutionary World Party!

 

 

 

Footnotes

 

(i) See on this e.g. Workers Power’s book “The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today”; see also Michael Pröbsting: Healy’s Pupils Fail to Break with their Master. The revolutionary tradition of the Fourth International and the centrist tradition of its Epigones Gerry Healy and the ”International Committee”, October 2013, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/healy-and-fourth-international/; Yossi Schwartz: The Lambertists - Road to Nowhere. The Pseudo-Marxism of the so-called “Fourth International” founded by Pierre Lambert and its historical background, November 2017, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-lambertist-road-to-nowhere/

 

(ii) We refer readers for a historical assessment of our predecessor organization and an overview of the political and organizational background of the RCIT to the following book: Michael Pröbsting: Building the Revolutionary Party in Theory and Practice. Looking Back and Ahead after 25 Years of Organized Struggle for Bolshevism, RCIT Books, December 2014, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/rcit-party-building/. There are also critical assessments of various so-called Trotskyist organizations in our books The Great Robbery of the South (Chapter 13) and Anti-Imperialism in the Age of Great Power Rivalry.

 

 

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Chapter One: Trotsky's defence and development of the communist programme, 1933-1940

 

Chapter Two: The epigones destroy Trotsky's International, 1940-1953

 

Chapter Three: The degenerate fragments of the Fourth International, 1953 -1983

 

Chapter Four: After the splits the splinters, 1961-1983

 

Chapter Five: A radical re-statement of programme is necessary

 

 

 

* * * * * 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

Forty-five years ago, Leon Trotsky wrote that the crisis facing mankind was reducible to a crisis of proletarian leadership. For Trotsky, this statement had a precise meaning. The old leadership of the working class - the social democratic and Stalinist parties - had paved the way for terrible defeats in China, Germany, Austria and Spain.

 

They were useless to the working class as the storm clouds of world-wide war gathered. Unless a new party, a new leadership for the working class could be built and could lead genuine proletarian revolutions, then the war would not merely lead to untold suffering for millions, but would set back the struggle of the international working class for decades. The building of a party, an international revolutionary party, capable of leading the proletariat, was the only hope of averting, or bringing to a speedy revolutionary conclusion, the crisis that engulfed the entire world in the late 1930s.

 

The new leadership was to be forged by the Fourth International.

 

This organisation, comprising the most dedicated fighters for the cause of the proletariat, was not compromised by the defeats and betrayals of the past. Its leader, ~on Trotsky, had waged a revolutionary struggle against the bureaucratic usurpers in the USSR led by Stalin. He forged a world movement that carried out a courageous and active defence of revolutionary communism under conditions of defeat which drove tens of thousands of militants from other parties to utter despair.

 

The Fourth International never became the leadership of the proletariat on a significant scale. The war shattered its weak structures. The fascists, the imperialist Allies and the Kremlin's army of hired assassins murdered its finest cadres. The Allied victory ensured that the world was shaped according to a pattern unforeseen (and unforeseeable) by Trotsky. The forces of the Fourth International remained marginal to the class struggle. They became disoriented by the falsification of Trotsky's perspectives. Their banner, alas, was not taken up by millions.

 

The problem of leadership remained unresolved, and capitalism gained a respite that, on a world scale, has lasted to this day.

 

These developments contributed to the destruction of the Fourth International. It was destroyed at two levels. First, its inability to develop the Marxist programme in the face of new developments undermined its adherence to that programme.

 

By 1951 it had embraced a programme at odds with Marxism. Second, the confusion in its ranks produced a muddled organisational conflict that led, in 1953, to a split in the Fourth International. Thus, it died in an organisational sense too.

 

The original, politically unclear, fragmentation of what had been the Trotskyist movement, inevitably bred further ideological confusion and further splits. What is patently clear is that no Fourth International in the tradition of Leon Trotsky exists today.

 

Certain organisations, for example the Socialist Workers Party (GB), use this fact to scoff at any talk of building "Internationals". The fragmentation of ostensible Trotskyists is a cause for philistine jokes inside such profoundly national sects. In contrast, we believe that the destruction of the Fourth International poses the urgent need to build a new International.

 

Today the relative social peace, engendered by the "long boom", has drawn to an end. Since the late 1960s, successive economic and political crises have rocked France, Britain and Italy. At the same time, the conflicts between imperialism, its agents and the anti-imperialist movements, draw the capitalist powers and the USSR ever closer to war.

 

The stockpiling of nuclear weapons; the struggles in the Middle East, Asia, Central America and Southern Africa; the belligerent stance by imperialism against threats to its interests, exemplified by Britain's war against Argentina, are all examples of the present unstable period. They are graphic reminders of Lenin's description of the imperialist epoch as one of wars and revolutions.

 

The danger is, that faced with this sharpening world crisis, the working class finds itself, once again, led by traitors and vacillators. Once again the revolutionary communists are in a tiny minority. The task of building a new leadership is inextricably linked to the struggle to pull the world back from the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. Imperialism will destroy the world, rather than let itself be destroyed. The working class must be won to a revolution against imperialism.

 

The task, therefore, is enormous. There is a world to win. In order to take that struggle forward, to build an international revolutionary party, it is necessary to look clearly and carefully at the history of the Fourth International, to examine the origins and nature of its political and organisational collapse. Many tendencies have attempted this task, some providing useful insights. Most have failed to "settle accounts" with the tendency from which they emerged, thus carrying with them the political errors which blinded their predecessors.

 

Workers Power's break from one of the fragments of the Fourth International (SWP-GB) was political as well as organisational. It has enabled us, we believe, to look at the history of the FI from its foundation to its collapse in 1951, without detracting from the achievements of its cadres, or refusing to criticise its errors.

 

The document is divided into five sections. The first looks at the development of the Fourth International's programme and method.

 

The second deals with the inability of the FI after the war to develop Trotsky's programme in the face of a temporary stabilisation of the imperialist world order and a strengthened Stalinism. It traces the origins of the 1953 split to this disorientation, showing clearly that neither side were able to offer a revolutionary perspective and programme for the class struggle: The third and fourth sections examine the political record of these major fragments, as well as the "splinters" which have been thrown off them. It demonstrates the centrist bankruptcy of the major currents, and the failure of any of the recent splits to fundamentally break with their politics and method.

 

However, this work is not simply a history of the FI. History is necessary as a guide to understanding; understanding is a guide to action. In the final section, we delineate the tasks that face genuine Trotskyists in fulfilling the goal that Trotsky set his followers - to resolve the crisis of leadership by building a World Party of Socialist Revolution.

 

Finally, a word on the origins and intention of this book. It was originally produced as a set of theses for discussion inside the Workers Power Group. At an extended National Committee of Workers .Power in January 1983, the theses were amended and adopted. They have since been agreed by the Irish Workers Group. For both organisations, they represent our most developed position to date on the Fourth International. Our intention in publishing them is to submit them for discussion amongst all those tendencies, internationally, who are committed to a thoroughgoing analysis of the Fourth International and the tasks that face Trotskyists today. We are committed to having such discussions on an open and honest basis. Unlike the centrists, we have nor fear of public polemic and criticism. We believe that it will be through discussion of the fundamental questions raised in this book that a new revolutionary banner can be raised.

 

March 1983

 

 

 

Chapter One: Trotsky's defence and development of the communist programme, 1933-1940

 

 

 

At its foundation in 1938, the Fourth International was the only consistent revolutionary communist tendency in the world. Other tendencies emerging from the degenerating Comintern either collapsed into reformism like the Right Opposition (Bukharin, Brandler, Maurin, Lovestone), or locked themselves up in ossified sectarianism (Urbahns, Bordiga). Many of the leading figures of the International Left Opposition - prominent founders of Comintern sections - failed to resist the pressures arising from the terrible defeats of the working class in the 1930s.

 

The defeats in Germany, Spain, France and above all the bloody triumph of Stalin's bonapartist clique in the USSR, propelled Left Oppositionists such as Nin, Sneevliet and Rosmer into centrist waverings. This included an unwillingness to support Trotsky's struggle to found a new International. Trotsky had hoped and expected to rally wider forces and a broader spectrum of historic communist leaders from the Leninist period of the Comintern into the new International. It was not to be. The International Communist League (ICL), and then the Movement for the Fourth International (MFI), alone held to the fundamental principles and tactics of the first four congresses of the Comintern. They alone developed these principles and tactics to face the enormous challenge of the 1930s.

 

The bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution had immediate repercussions beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. In the Comintern its negative effects were felt over the question of the KPD's failure to lead an insurrection in 1923. Under Zinoviev's leadership it went on to commit a series of disastrous ultra-left errors (e.g. the rising in Estonia). The Comintern sections were heavily bureaucratised under the slogan of "Bolshevisation". National leaderships were selected on the basis of their loyalty to the leading faction of the CPSU.

 

With the ascendancy of the Stalin-Bukharin bloc, the Comintern swung rapidly into I right opportunism in its relations to the British Trade Union bureaucracy. The bloc with them - the Anglo-Russian Committe – was maintained despite the betrayal of 1926 by the TUC. Then, in 1927, after a policy of liquidating the Chinese CP into the bourgeois nationalist Kuornintang led to a catastrophe in Shanghai, the Comintern veered left again. It launched the Canton Commune. This ill-prepared rising was brutally suppressed by the former honorary member of the Comintern, Chiang Kai Shek. In Russia itself the emerging bureaucratic caste - headed by Stalin - crushed party democracy, used police methods against all oppositions and vacillated wildly in its economic policies.

 

On all of these issues, the Left Opposition, led by Leon Trotsky, waged a determined struggle to return the Comintern to the revolutionary course it had followed at its first four congresses. Originating in the Russian Party, the Left Opposition, after Trotsky's expulsion from the Soviet Union, established itself as an International (external) Faction of the Comintern, with the expressed aim of reforming the International, its sections, and the one state where a section held power - the Soviet Union.

 

The positions of the International Left Opposition on the Soviet Union, Germany 1923, Britain 1926 and China 1927, were based on the programmatic gains of the Bolshevik party and the Theses and Resolutions passed by the first four congresses of the Comintern.

 

The Comintern, built in the post-war revolutionary period of 1919-1923, developed an organisation and a political method that stand as models for communists to this day. Its Congresses were democratic forums where the best communist leaders of the day could debate their tactics. Its Executive Committee (ECCI) and its network of agents were the centralised structure through which the decisions taken at those Congresses could be effectively implemented internationally.

 

The Comintern systematised the method of democratic centralism as the form of organisation for revolutionary combat parties and the world party of communist revolution. It drew a sharp line between communism and reformism by generalising from the experience of the Russian Revolution, and making its goal the revolutionary conquest of power by the proletariat and the internationalisation of the revolution. Not content with a mere declaration of aims, the Comintern sought to build up a number of strong active sections, capable of achieving these aims through the use of revolutionary tactics.

 

To this end the Comintern from 1919-22 subjected the ever changing world political and economic situation and the balance of class forces thus engendered, to constant scrutiny. It operated with an understanding of the imperialist epoch as one of capitalist decay, wars and revolutions. But it also understood the importance of periods within this epoch - revolutionary or pre-revolutionary periods, periods of stability or retreat, counter-revolutionary periods, etc. On the basis of its understanding of perspectives as a guide to action, it was able to re-focus its programme and adjust its tactical line as different periods opened up after the war.

 

Thus at the first two congresses the principal slogans were rightly directed at the formation of Soviets and the struggle for power. The victory of the Russian Revolution, the upheavals in Germany, the Hungarian events all pointed to the viability of this line of advance.

 

However, with the defeats of 1919-20 in Germany, Hungary and Italy, thanks to the treachery of the Second International parties and the vacillation of the centrist USPD and PSI, the Comintern immediately re-examined its perspectives. At the Third Congress in June 1921 these defeats, their impact on the working class and the temporary respite they gave to the principal capitalist governments were acknowledged.

 

The line of advance was changed from the immediate conquest of power to "conquest of the masses". The sections utilised the method employed by the Bolsheviks in February to September 1917 - the method of the united front with reformist parties and the demand that they break with the bourgeoisie and base themselves on the masses.

 

This method led directly to the "workers' government" slogan and to transitional demands as a means of winning the masses to communist leadership. These positions were embodied in the Third Congress' Theses on Tactics. They were elaborated further in the Fourth Congress' Theses on Tactics (December 1922), the Programme of Action in the Unions (Third Congress) and the Theses on the United Front (Fourth Congress).

 

In addition to its general tactical and programmatic guidelines, the Comintern developed positions on a whole range of specific questions. On the National Question, and later the Anti-Imperialist United Front, its Theses pointed to the progressive nature of national liberation struggles, and the duty of communists to support them against' imperialism. But at the same time it stressed the centrality of maintaining the independence of the working class in the oppressed nations.

 

National liberation for the Comintern was not the end goal. It was a component part of the struggle for proletarian revolution.

 

Work amongst the oppressed masses - women, youth, blacks, the unemployed, the peasantry - was stressed by the Comintern as obligatory for Communists. In this the Comintern broke resolutely with the labour aristocratic aloofness of the Second International which had given scant attention to the colonial masses and the oppressed' nationalities.

 

At the centre of all of the Comintern's positions lay two fundamental principles - the political independence of the working class, that is to say, of its programme; and the use of tactics like the united front as a means to win the masses to the communist goal, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The first condition of a tactical compromise was that the Communists publicly express their strategic positions and retain the freedom to criticise their temporary allies.

 

The Comintern never completed its work of re-elaborating the Marxist programme. The bloc of restorationists and bureaucratic centrists under Bukharin and Stalin eventually enshrined their reactionary slogan of "socialism in one country" in the Comintern's degenerate programme.

 

The failure of the Comintern to complete its tasks of programmatic re-elaboration and re-focusing was to be of enormous significance to those communists who fought to refound a communist international after the degeneration of the Comintern.

 

All of these principles were sacrificed by the Stalinised Comintern.

 

In Britain the Trade Union leaders were praised, not fought in, 1926; in China the banner of the proletariat was pulled down by the communists while that of the bourgeois nationalists was hoisted up.

 

In the ultra-left "Third Period" the Comintern committed opposite, but equally disastrous errors. The programme of the Sixth Congress in 1928 infused with the theory and practice of "Socialism in One Country", abandoned the internationalism of the early Comintern.

 

Sections became pawns of Stalin's foreign policy. The united front was rejected in favour of the Red Front, of “United Front from below" a tactic predicated on the idea that Social Democracy and Fascism were twins. The programme itself was confined to abstract generalities about capitalism. It failed, as the positions of the early Comintern had not, to base itself on the most recent vital experiences of the international class struggle.

 

The Sixth Congress highlighted the thoroughgoing Stalinisation of the Comintern. The rotten fruit of this process was finally borne in 1933 when the pride of the Communist International, the KPD, was destroyed by fascism without a fight. It was not primarily the guns and knives of the fascists that defeated the German working class.

 

It was the treachery of the Social Democracy and the ultra-left politics of the KPD. Their abandonment of the united front led directly to the defeat in Germany. This event was decisive. It exposed the criminal policies of Stalinism. Yet not one single Comintern section acknowledged this.

 

Stalin's line on Germany was endorsed retrospectively by all of them.

 

The Comintern thus proved definitively incapable of learning from its errors. It was dead for revolution.

 

Trotsky and the left Opposition held a position that, up to 1933, the German defeat and its aftermath, the Comintern could have been reformed. The International Left Opposition repeatedly requested to be re-admitted to the Comintern as a faction. This in no way hindered the International Left Opposition from raising its position on Britain, China and later on Germany and the rise of fascism. Trotsky was clear that the Comintern had abandoned the revolutionary programme at its Sixth Congress, when it adopted Bukharin's programme.

 

Thus the programme of the Comintern was not decisive for Trotsky's reform perspective. At the same time the definitive class collaborationist turn (crossing of class lines) of the Comintern did not come until 1935 with the Stalin- Llval pact and the turn to the Popular Front policy in France, and later internationally.

 

For Trotsky, what was decisive in the reform perspective was that during its revolutionary period, the Comintern had, in certain key countries, organised a mass revolutionary vanguard. The existence of this vanguard, particularly in Germany where the fate of Europe was being decided, was seen by the International Left Opposition as a potential lever of reform in the Comintern. It was potentially a very powerful force that could be turned against the Stalin clique. But the condition of this was that it could remove its leaders before their policy led to its own destruction at the hands of fascism. This consideration, the existence of a mass vanguard, determined the Left Opposition's orientation up to 1933. The destruction of the mass KPD and the failure of any other section to respond correctly to this event, undermined the basis of the reform perspective.

 

The other communist parties had, themselves, withered under the impact of the policies of the "Third Period". The loss of membership was dramatic, reducing many of the parties to small sects. In France the PCF, which in 1924 claimed 110,000 members against the SFIO's 35,000 was down to a claimed membership of 30,000 in 1932, with probably no more than half of that number being active members. In Britain the same process, on a smaller scale, was evident. By 1930 party membership had slumped to 2,500, less than half the number claimed in 1922. It was a relatively huge drop in numbers from the 1926 highpoint of 10,000 members.

 

The perspective of reform had to be changed. Max Shachtman, a leading member of the International Left Opposition in 1933, spelled this out in his foreword to "The History and Principles of the Left Opposition". 'The collapse of the German Communist Party removes from the dwindling ranks of the Communist International the last of its sections possessing any mass following or influence...Suffice it to say that the German events, and the bureaucratic self contentment and unconcern, deepening of the errors and disintegration of Stalinism and its parties which have followed them bring us to the ineluctable conclusion: That the Communist International has been strangled by Stalinism, is bankrupt, is beyond recovery or restoration on Marxist foundations". 1

 

Thus it was the ability of the Stalinist bureaucracy to strangle the Comintern and the masses grouped within it, that proved that those masses were not, and could not become, a lever for reform. Henceforth the Trotskyists set out to rebuild new parties and a new International.

 

The task became one of breaking the masses from the Comintern, social democracy and all forms of centrism, and winning them to a new International. In a period of defeats (the 1930s), this proved enormously difficult. However, the ILO/ICL/MFI forces kept alive the traditions, methods and theoretical conquests of the communist movement. As such their struggle was a pledge for their future. Trotsky himself realised the importance of this achievement, limited as it may seem to those who, impatient to become leaders of the masses, end up regarding communism as an obstacle between them and the masses:

 

"How the new International will take form, through what stages it will pass, what final shape it will assume - this no-one can foretell today.

 

And indeed there is no need to do so: historical events will show us.

 

But it is necessary to begin by proclaiming a programme that meets the tasks of our epoch. On the basis of this programme it is necessary to mobilise co-thinkers, the pioneers of the new International. No other road is possible".2

 

Under Trotsky's guidance the International Left Opposition and its descendants (ICL/MFI) had correctly analysed the class nature, role and dynamic of fascism - a mass movement based on the petit-bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat, whose service to finance capital was to crush into atoms the proletariat's organisations. The revolutionary tactical answer to this threat was the anti-fascist workers' united front.

 

Such a tactic could have allowed the communists to expose the bankruptcy of the reformist leaders without jeopardising the united struggle of the working class. It could have crushed fascism, allowed the communists to win the leadership of the working class and thereby enabled them to go forward to the seizure of power. The Trotskyists analysed the degenerative process in the USSR. The isolation of the Soviet state and the extreme material and cultural backwardness of Russian society at the time of the revolution had provided fertile soil for the growth of a vast parasitic bureaucracy. This caste, headed by the Stalin faction, had usurped political power from the working class, terrorising and annihilating its vanguard.

 

The Trotskyists explained this degeneration at each stage and formulated the strategy of political revolution against the bureaucracy as the only means of restoring proletarian political power in the degenerated workers' state. At the same time, the ICL/MFI correctly maintained a policy of unconditional defence of the remaining gains of the October Revolution (statified industry, monopoly of foreign trade, planning) against the capitalist restorationist efforts of the imperialists.

 

In France and Spain, the Trotskyists analysed and fought the Stalinist and Social Democratic class collaborationist policy of the Popular Front, which subordinated the organisations and interests of the working class to the policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Trotsky guided the small groups of the Fourth International movement in the use of tactics adapted to conditions in the more stable imperialist democracies Britain and the USA. In these countries and in France he developed "entryism" as a short or medium term tactical manoeuvre aimed at placing revolutionaries at the head of vanguard elements of the proletariat unwilling (temporarily) to break with the mass reformist organisations.

 

This tactic involved the creation of a revolutionary communist wing and a sharp 'struggle .against left centrist "revolutionary" opposition as well as the right-wing bureaucratic leadership. Whilst the development of centrist tendencies by the reformist parties was the context of entry, in no sense was it the task of Trotskyists to create such a centrist bloc or themselves to advance centrist policies. No inevitable stage of centrist leaderships or parties was envisaged, let alone advocated, by the Fourth Internationalists.

 

Trotsky also developed the tactic of splits and fusions in relation to leftward moving centrist organisations, on the basis of winning them to a clear revolutionary programme. In the colonial and semi-colonial countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa), the Trotskyist movement, even where it participated in the Anti-Imperialist United Front with non proletarian elements, fought for the programme of proletarian, permanent revolution, against the "stages theory" - a Menshevik theory resurrected by Stalin, which subord1nated the independent interests of the proletariat to the national (bourgeois) revolution.

 

By 1938, with the second imperialist world war imminent, Trotsky drew together the fundamental doctrines and method of the communist tradition (from Marx to the first four Congresses of the Comintern) extending, developing and enriching them with the lessons learnt by the Trotskyists since 1923. This resulted in the production of a programme 'The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International' - the Transitional Programme.3The FI was founded on the basis of this programme. We affirm the absolute correctness of the FI's formation in 1938.

 

Indeed, had the FI not been founded in 1938, there would undoubtedly have been an even greater dispersion and weakening of revolutionary forces during the war and even less possibility for the voice of revolutionary internationalism to be heard. Neither the organisation nor the 'internationalism' of the centrists (British ILP, French PSOP, Spanish POUM etc) stood the test of war. In no way can the later disintegration be attributed to the FI's 'premature' formation.

 

We also reject the linked error that only mass national parties with deep roots in the proletariat of their respective countries can form an International. This conception is a thoroughly nationalist, Second Internationalist one.

 

Faced with the degeneration of the Second and Third Internationals and the hesitations of the centrists, the internationalist revolutionary programme of the Trotskyists required an international party. The centrists who argued against the founding of the FI had themselves set up national parties. This double standard showed how, for the centrists, an international party was a luxury, thus betraying their nationalism. If the party is the programme then this applies also to the World Party.

 

As soon as a developed international programme exists, as soon as a stable international leadership, united around this programme has been established, then there can be no cause for delay. This was the case in 1938. Even though the political leadership of the FI existed mainly in the person of Leon Trotsky, this was initially sufficient in the period of the FI's formation. He was, in many respects, an embodiment of the FI's continuity with Bolshevism.

 

The FI was an "International" which unlike the First, Second and Third did not consist of mass workers' organisations. It comprised in most countries propaganda groups struggling to escape the isolation that their numbers and the murderous hostility of the Stalinists forced on them. Partial exceptions were the USA where the SWP had developed systematic agitation in the blue collar unions and led sections of workers on a local basis (Minneapolis), and the deep roots of the Vietnamese Trotskyists in the proletariat of Saigon.

 

But, if the Fourth International was weak in numbers it was in Trotsky's words "strong in doctrine, programme, tradition, in the incomparable tempering of its cadres. Trotsky's perspective was that the national sections of the FI and the international itself were posed to develop rapidly into a serious force within the proletariat. In the proletariat's crisis of leadership which the imperialist war would immeasurably sharpen, the FI would, given the correct programme and a firm and seasoned international leadership, develop into a decisive mass force capable of resolving the crisis. That this perspective did not materialise in no way invalidates in our view the decision to found the FI in 1938. Trotsky's FI, its programme, its theses and its cadres, despite the later degeneration, saved and communicated to a later generation the precious heritage of Marx, Engels and Lenin.

 

We stand in the tradition of the FI founded by Trotsky. Its programme, the Transitional Programme, represented the culmination of the programmatic work of previous generations of revolutionary Marxists. It was developed on the shoulders of all previous Marxist programmes - the Communist Manifesto, the programmatic declaration of the Bolshevik Party, and above all, on the principles and tactics developed by the revolutionary Comintern.

 

It represented a transcending of the old Social Democratic programme, divided into minimum and maximum demands, which in the imperialist epoch enshrined the reformist practice of the Second International, and developed instead, on the basis of work already started in the programmatic debates of the revolutionary Comintern, a system of transitional demands.

 

The Transitional Programme was, after Trotsky's death, both misused and misunderstood by his supposed disciples. As we shall see it was eventually liquidated as an operative programme and worshipped as a lifeless idol. Unlike the Third International, the Fourth had no proletarian masses grouped beneath its banner. Its integrity and its ability to survive was concentrated in the scientific correctness of its programme and in its cadres' ability to win the' proletarian vanguard to it.

 

Defence of the programme against its vastly stronger opponents; utilisation in the class struggle; the development and re-elaboration of it to meet new situations and new tasks, were heavy responsibilities for a cadre weak in numbers with limited class struggle experience and with few theoreticians of stature. A correct understanding of the Transitional Programme - its nature, doctrine and method is thus vital to Trotskyists who seek to rediscover and re-appropriate these historic gains - long distorted and obscured by the 'theory' and practice of Trotsky's epigones.

 

Trotsky's programme marked the successful resolution of programmatic problems that originated with the Erfurt Programme of 1891. It represented the programmatic resolution of the problem of the disjuncture between the struggle over immediate and partial demands and the struggle for power.

 

The old minimum programme was limited to demands within the framework of capitalism. These included demands for the amelioration of the proletariat's conditions - the 8 hour day, measures of social welfare, improvement of wages, and a series of democratic demands universal suffrage and a sovereign assembly, an elected judiciary, the dissolution of the standing army and the creation of a people's militia etc. These demands did not transcend the concessions possible within the framework of bourgeois society though in many countries the most militant, indeed revolutionary, methods of struggle would be necessary to win them.

 

In the early 1890s, Engels, who supported the Erfurt Programme with reservations, hoped that the mobilisation of the masses by parliamentary and trade union means to fight for these goals would result in a decisive struggle that would crack the framework of the capitalist state and the bureaucratic, semi-absolutist regimes of many continental states, opening the road to proletarian power. Engels' successors (Kautsky, Bernstein, Bebel etc) transformed this perspective into one of peaceful evolutionary growth in the present, combined with an inevitable collapse or catastrophe for capitalism at some time in the distant future. They thus falsified Engels' perspective and the strategic and tactical methods of the founders of Marxism.

 

In practice, in a period of capitalist expansion (the opening phase" of the imperialist epoch) significant concessions were made to the working class simply on the basis of the threat posed by the growth (in numbers and in votes gained) by the workers' parties and in response to trade union action. The leaders of the social democracy, for their part, were content to achieve piecemeal reforms and build up the parties and unions - ie to struggle for reforms outside and apart from the perspective of proletarian power. The latter became a distant 'final goal', the subject of abstract propaganda. The strategy of the conquest of power was replaced by the isolated tactic of social reform.

 

Thus a chasm opened between the maximum and minimum programme. Bernstein, the father of revisionism argued that this contradiction should be resolved by Social Democracy daring to appear as what it was - a democratic party of social reform. The 'final goal' was nothing, the 'movement' was everything.

 

The radical left of Social Democracy, especially Lenin and Luxemburg, argued for revolutionary tactics in pursuit of the major demands of the minimum programme (ie mass strike, armed insurrection etc to attain the democratic republic). They fought to purge the ranks of the workers' parties of the revisionists and reformists. They noted and analysed the gathering forces within modern capitalism making for reaction at home and wars abroad (Imperialism).

 

In a partial manner the prewar Social Democratic Left posed the necessity of transcending the Erfurt style programme and the associated parliamentary and pure trade union tactics. They raised the 'final goal' as the strategic object of revolutionary tactics. Within the left, Trotsky, despite a series of vacillating positions, particularly on the question of the Party and Bolshevik/Menshevik unity, came nearest to completely transcending the minimum/maximum divide. The theory of Permanent Revolution, at that time applied only to Russia by Trotsky, raised as the immediate goal of the proletariat (with the mass strike and insurrection to achieve it) a proletarian revolution and a workers' government that would not stop at solving the democratic tasks, but would press on, to fulfil the tasks of a socialist revolution. In a backward country like Russia, made up pr~ominant1y of peasants, Trotsky recognised that the proletarian revolution would have to win the support of the peasants and would have to be linked to the internationalisation of the revolution. However even Trotsky did not develop a fully rounded programmatic alternative to the Erfurt programme.

 

The "Marxist Centre" of Social Democracy, represented by Bebel and Kautsky, refused to unite theory and practice as Bernstein and Luxemburg, in different ways, wished. They defended an increasingly abstract inevitabilist Marxism against Bernstein. They defended parliamentary and trade union cretinism against Luxemburg.

 

The sharpening crises, economic and political, of the pre-war period, heralded an epoch of wars and revolutions, that made the Erfurt synthesis a disguise for the rise of a conservative, counter-revolutionary bureaucracy within the workers' organisations. The Second International, under pressure from the proletariat and the Left, was committed to opposing any European war (which it defined in advance as imperialist On the part of all the major powers) and of transforming any such war into the occasion for struggling to overthrow capitalism. In August 1914, the voting of war credits by. the German SPD indicated the renunciation by the leaders of that party ( and they were soon followed by all the major parties of the Second International) of their formal Marxism, in favour of social chauvinism.

 

The Bolsheviks were the only major party to carry out their pre-war promises and obligations via the policy of revolutionary defeatism ("Turn the imperialist war into a civil war";" Defeat of one's own country is the lesser evil"). Elsewhere minorities fought the social chauvinists (Liebknecht - "The main enemy is at home"). Bolshevism developed an understanding of the real roots of the war in the theory of imperialism as a new epoch of capitalist crisis, war and revolution.

 

The Bolsheviks also developed revolutionary methods of struggle for power - the united front, the mass strike, armed insurrection - and an understanding of the nature of proletarian state power - the smashing of the bourgeois bureaucratic military state machine and its replacement with soviet power, the commune-type state etc. These theoretical and practical conquests made Bolshevism by 1917, the crucible for the creation of a new programme - a programme dominated by the posing of the need for the proletariat to seize power as an immediate task.

 

This did not obliterate the need to raise immediate and partial demands, but it posed the question of revolutionary methods of struggle, and of demands which met vital and immediate needs (war, famine, unemployment, inflation, economic chaos - all caused by the convulsive crises of imperialism). The struggle for such demands organised and directed workers towards the struggle for power. These transitional demands utilised by the Bolsheviks in 1917 (see Lenin's programmatic pamphlet "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat it") became part of the international proletariat's armoury as a result of the work of the Comintern between 1919 and 1923.

 

In the Third and Fourth Congresses the CI systematised the United Front tactic, the action programme of immediate and transitional demands, the workers' government as means of overcoming the ideological subjective weakness of the proletariat evidenced by the existence of reformist leaderships, in order to facilitate its struggle for the conquest of power.

 

The CI broke resolutely from the Kautskyian heritage of the Second International. First of all it recognised the nature of the epoch as transitional - transitional between capitalism and socialism. This was not an objective process. It existed thanks to objective conditions, but its resolution depended on a struggle between parties and classes. From this analysis the CI concluded: "The character of the transitional epoch makes it obligatory for all communist parties to raise to the utmost their readiness for struggle.

 

Any struggle may turn into a struggle for power. Thus, in the imperialist epoch, where immediate demands clashed with capitalist priorities, direct action for such demands posed the possibility of developing into a struggle for power. Therefore, revolutionaries has to stress the interlinked nature of all proletarian demands, and the need to fight for all demands and to organise itself at. every level for this. Because this confronted capitalism it was necessary to state the consequence: destroy capitalism to defend ourselves.

 

"The communist parties do not put forward any minimum programme to strengthen and improve the tottering structure 'of capitalism. The destruction of that structure remains their guiding aim and their immediate mission. But to carry out this mission the communist parties must put forward demands whose fulfilment is an immediate and urgent working class need, and they must fight for these demands in mass struggle, regardless of whether they are compatible with the profit economy of the capitalist class or not."6 And again, "'If the demands correspond to the vital needs of the broad proletarian masses and if these masses feel they cannot exist unless these demands are met, then the struggle for these demands will become the starting point of the struggle for power.

 

In place of the minimum programme. of the reformists and centrists, the Communist International puts the struggle for the concrete needs of the proletariat, for a system of demands which in their totality disintegrate the power of the bourgeoisie, organise the proletariat, represent stages in the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, and each of which expresses in itself the need of the broadest masses, even if the masses themselves are not yet consciously in favour of the proletarian dictatorship."7

 

The Comintern developed the idea of a bridge to facilitate the transition from the struggle within capitalism to the struggle against capitalism. Clearly this bridge, this system of demands, this programme, had to correspond to objective conditions - the state of the economy, the actual needs of the masses, the nature of the period, the recent experiences of the international class struggle and their impact on the masses. These considerations guided, for example, the various action programmes developed by the CI. .

 

However, by the time that the CI came to debate its programme the authors of the Theses on Tactics - the CI's "Transitional Programme" had been expelled. The "scholastic" Bukharin, acting as hired scribe for the bureaucratic philistine Stalin, drew up the programme. In order to cover over the Comintern's errors and justify the reactionary theory and practice of "Socialism in One Country" the programme was reduced to being an abstract, redundant document. The transitional method was gone. The need to relate the programme to objective conditions went with it. Trotsky in his critique of Bukharin's document defended and developed the Comintern's earlier position:

 

"But a programme of revolutionary action naturally cannot be approached as a bare collection of abstract propositions without any relation to all that has occurred during these epoch-making years. A programme cannot, of course, go into a description of the events of the past, but it must proceed from these events, base itself upon them, encompass them, and relate to them. A programme by the position it takes, must make it possible to understand all the major facts of the struggle of the proletariat, and all the important facts relating to the ideological struggle within the Comintern. If this is true with regard to the programme as a whole, then it is all the truer with regard to that part of it which is specifically devoted to the question of strategy and tactics. Here, in the words of Lenin, in addition to what has been conquered there must also be registered that which has been lost which can be transformed into a 'conquest' if it has been understood and assimilated. The proletarian vanguard needs not a catalogue of truisms but a manual of action. "8

 

Confronting the task of developing a new International, Trotsky had to develop a Transitional Programme. The fundamental features of the 1938 programme, "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" embodied the lessons of the Comintern and its collapse. In the first place it was a programme that corresponded to the objective situation - acute economic crisis, impending war, the rise of fascism, the collapse of the Communist International.

 

It was sharply focused towards resolving the crisis of leadership within the pre-revolutionary situation that these factors were bound to create. Those who accuse this programme of "catastrophism" should consider the magnitude of the catastrophe - the war - that followed its publication. like Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, it anticipated a sharp crisis and tried to orient the working class towards a revolutionary outcome. In this sense it was not fatalist, but imbued with the spirit of revolutionary optimism and the will to triumph over the most daunting obstacles.

 

It proceeded from the experience of the class struggle over the preceding ten years. Unlike Bukharin, Trotsky had nothing to hide in his programme. The lessons of the German defeat. the Popular Front in France and Spain, the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, the anti imperialist struggle in China were all encompassed in the programme.

 

Its slogans flowed from the experience - positive and negative - of these momentous events.

 

The programme was an international programme. The impending war pointed to the urgent need for an international line of march. Trotsky provided it, drawing on the experience of the MFI's sections, analysing the contradictions and inter-connections within the world capitalist system and the USSR. In the Transitional Pogramme is a codification of Permanent Revolution. That is, the revolution must internationalise itself or go down to defeat. In backward countries the tasks of the democratic revolution can only be solved by proletarian revolution.

 

This whole strategy can only be fulfilled if the crisis of leadership is resolved by revolutionary communist parties winning the loyalty of the masses and leading them into permanent revolution against imperialism.

 

Most important, the Transitional Programme was - like the famous Section Two in the Communist Manifesto, the Theses on Tactics of the Comintern, the "Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It" of the Bolsheviks - an action programme, focused towards the tasks of the period ahead. It was truly a guide to action. In the "Review of the Founding Conference" in 1938, the FI recognised this crucial aspect of the programme: "What a contrast it offers to the vague generalisations and deceptive abstractions which the official leaderships of the working class offer as guides to action in the present tumultuous world situation!

 

It is not, or rather is not so much, the basic programme of the Fourth International, as it is its programme of action for the immediate period in which we live" 9

 

Its programme of action for the proletariat was transitional. Its demands were interlinked and allied to the same goal - the seizure of state power by the proletariat. For this reason every demand designed to meet the needs of the masses (against unemployment, for example), is linked to the struggle for workers' control, the formation of factory committees, mass action, factory occupations, etc. These fighting organs of the proletariat culminate in the keystone of the programme, the call for Soviets as organs of struggle against the capitalist regime.

 

The demands for a sliding scale of wages and hours, for the opening of the books, etc, expose the anarchy of capitalism, pose the essence of the planned economy and create the organised forces both to win and exercise the state power necessary to effect a transition to a fully planned economy.

 

Only such a programme allows the fight for socialist revolution to be linked to the everyday struggles of the proletariat. Trotsky spelt this out in the programme itself: "The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism, but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat - all its layers, occupations and groups - should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not because it frees the revolutionary party from day to day work but because it permits this work to be carried out indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution". 10

 

The means for doing this was the system of transitional demands, demands which start with today's needs (not today's mentality of the workers, a fact Trotsky repeated to SWP (US) members) and lead to the revolution. Since Trotsky's death, many avowed Trotskyists have used individual demands, plucked from the system of transitional demands, either as isolated trade union demands or as part of a programme for reforming the institutions of the capitalist state (Ernest Mandel of the USFI put them forward in the 1960s as a series of "structural reforms").

 

Others like the British "Militant" group advance them as a trick - "fight for these demands now" is what they shout; "and later we'll reveal that they're directed against capitalism" is what they whisper amongst themselves. Both views lead inevitably to opportunism. Trotsky himself was clear that Transitional Demands were neither reforms nor tricks, not one of our demands will be realised under capitalism. That is why we are calling them transitional demands.

 

It creates a bridge to the mentality of the workers and then a material bridge to the socialist revolution. The whole question is how to mobilise the masses for struggle...The revolutionaries always consider that the reforms and acquisitions are only a by-product of revolutionary struggle. If we say that we will only demand what they can give, the ruling class will only give one tenth or more of what we demand.

 

When we demand more and can improve our demands, the capitalists are compelled to give the maximum. The more extended and militant the spirit of the workers, the more is demanded and won. They are not sterile slogans; they are a means of pressure on the bourgeoisie, and will give the greatest possible material results immediately". 11

 

Thus they are both a means of winning real concessions and a means of mobilising the masses on the basis of their own needs against capitalism in a struggle that can easily turn into a struggle for power.

 

Of course the use of the Transitional Programme and its demands inevitably varies in different circumstances. The emphasis on particular demands, the refocusing of the programme itself, will depend on the state of the class struggle, the state of the economy, the state of political life and so on. But what remains valid, in periods of boom as well as crisis, periods of retreat as well as of advance, in backward countries and in advanced ones, is precisely the method lodged within the Transitional Programme - that the goal of revolutionaries is to take workers across the "transitional bridge" from their present situation to the socialist revolution. All of these features were embodied within the Transitional Programme. This programme was not the invention of Trotsky. In his words: "It is the summation of the collective work up until today".12

 

After Trotsky's murder in 1940, preceded by the Stalinists' extermination of his closest collaborators (his son Sedov, Rudolf Klement, Erwin Wolf etc), and the desertion of leading members of the International (Serge, Leonetti, Muste, Zeller, Fischer, Naville, Rous, Shachtman, etc), the central leadership of the FI effectively ceased to exist. The Trotskyists were responsible for acts of unparalleled heroism during the war, but as an international organisation the FI disintegrated.

 

This collapse, exacerbated by war-time dislocation, might be the fate of any revolutionary organisation without mass parties or state resources at its disposal. Initially the sections had the Transitional Programme and the FI's declarations on the war and other issues, as their basis for unity. However the sections soon began to diverge from these positions and from each other.

 

 

 

Chapter Two: The epigones destroy Trotsky's International, 1940-1953

 

 

 

The general decimation of cadre before and during the war (including the loss of some 40 per cent of the SWP(US) in the split with the Shachtmanites) was paralleled by a series of opportunist and sectarian deviations that politically weakened the forces of Trotskyism. In the USA the SWP, led by Cannon, distorted Trotsky's proletarian military policy when faced with the actual entry of the US into the war in late 1941.

 

The SWP placed their entire emphasis on the tar-Heal compromise involved in this policy (acceptance of bourgeois militarisation programmes, but combined with a fight to place them under workers' control), but obscured the strategic context that Trotsky always set this policy in - that is a clear and unambiguous struggle for the policy of revolutionary defeatism when confronted with the actuality of imperialist war. Using the pretext of the need to maintain its legality at all costs, Cannon delayed the party from issuing a statement on the war when it broke out.

 

Only under pressure from oppositionists, largely inspired by the Spanish-Mexican Trotskyist Grandizo Munis, did the SWP issue a statement. It was first published in the January 1942 issue of "Fourth International", the theoretical organ of the party. It was not published in the party's newspaper, "The Militant", despite the wider circulation of that paper. The statement was however unequivocally against the war and raised the banner of internationalism against the mad stampede towards the slaughter. However it did not spell out, at any point, that American Marxists regarded the defeat of the American bourgeoisie's armies as a lesser evil. It was an internationalist anti-war statement, but. not a Leninist defeatist statement.

 

The party went even further, suggesting on a number of occasions that fascism, and not the American "democratic" imperialists, was the American workers' main enemy. The Transitional Programme had laid down the guiding principles for the FI in the imperialist countries:

 

"In this struggle the basic principle is 'the chief enemy is in your own country' or 'the defeat of your own (imperialist) government is the lesser evil". 13

 

The Frs Manifesto on War had stated in 1940: "The Fourth International builds its policy not on the military fortunes of the capitalist states but on the transformation of the imperialist war into a war of the workers against the capitalists".14 Indeed, Trotsky had had occasion earlier to denounce his Palestinian co-thinkers for deviating from this line.

 

The SWP, in the heat of war and with prosecutions looming, retreated from the FI’s positions. In "Socialism on Trial" Cannon refused to make clear, in a mass sale pamphlet, that the main enemy was at home: "Q. Is it true that the party is as equally opposed to Hitler as it is to the capitalist claims of the United States?

 

A. That is unanswerable. We consider Hitler and Hitlerism the greatest enemy of mankind. We want to wipe it off the face of the earth. The reason we do not support a declaration of war by American arms is because we do not believe the American capitalists can defeat Hitler and fascism. We think Hitlerism can be destroyed only be conducting a war under the leadership of the workers".15 There are three centrist waverings in this short exchange: 1) Hitler, not the "Sixty families", becomes the US workers' greatest enemy;

 

2) Cannon proposes a war - presumably an invasion of Germany - as the way of defeating Hitler. Trotsky, on the other hand, rightly told the Palestinian group who proposed a similar war: "No, in this way we shall not help the German workers to rouse themselves from their stupor. We must show them in action that revolutionary politics consists in a simultaneous struggle against the respective imperialist governments in all the warring countries. This 'simultaneity' must not of course be taken mechanically...For Hitler and Mussolini the success of a socialist revolution in anyone of the advanced countries is infinitely more terrible than the combined armaments of all the imperialist 'democracies'.16

 

3) Cannon talks merely of the "leadership" of the workers. This is so vague as to be meaningless. We say, only when the government is our government, a real workers' government, will we "defend the fatherland". On that there can be no equivocation. Yet the SWP did equivocate. They transformed the revolutionary defeatist slogan of "Turn the imperialist war into a civil war" into the evasive democratic slogan: "The real solution is to transform the imperialist war into a war against fascism".17 This slogan was raised even before the entry of the US into the war.

 

The significance of this vacillation was that it reflected the SWP's tendency to submit to national pressures and considerations, allowing them to override internationalist ones. All of Cannon's justifications for his careful phraseology (in fact policy), are couched in terms of reaching out to the consciousness of the" American workers" - as it currently existed. This, in itself correct and commendable desire, was not combined with a recognition of the need for the SWP to i) stand against that consciousness which was in the first phase of the war, chauvinist, ii) to fulfil its internationalist duty as the strongest party of the Trotskyist movement, operating in the best conditions, to speak out to the world working class in clear revolutionary defeatist terms.

 

While the SWP members in the merchant navy and armed forces made courageous efforts to establish international contacts, the party did not act as an international organising centre for the FI. Nor did it establish such a centre in a neutral European country to liaise with the fragmented European sections. Such a project, though difficult, was not impossible.

 

As it turned out, the Europeans themselves were able to re-establish contact in 1943, when they held international gatherings in countries occupied by the Nazis. An international centre, in Switzerland for example, would have made this process of regroupment less difficult. The SWP did not act decisively to arrest the organisational dislocation caused by the war. Had they done so some of its ill-effects might have been offset. The SWP further abdicated its responsibilities as leading section of the world movement (which despite its being legally debarred from actual membership of the FI it nevertheless was) when, after the war it willingly ceded leadership to the young and inexperienced Europeans - Pablo and Germain (now Mandel).

 

As well as the errors of the SWP, the wartime history of the FI saw a number of other sections veer away from a consistent revolutionary line on the war. In France there existed no official section of the FI at the beginning of the war.

 

Former members of the POI (official section - dissolved by the International Executive Committee in June 1939), grouped under the name of "the French Committees for the Fourth International", adopted social-patriotic positions and nationalist demands faced with the German occupation of France. They saw the national struggle of a section of their own imperialist bourgeoisie as progressive. These concessions by the POI to the nationalism of the' petty-bourgeoisie were particularly significant in that, at the beginning of the war, the French proletariat had not yet been infected with the "anti-boche" chauvinist poison that the PCF was later to propagate.

 

The other main group was the CCI (which stemmed mainly from Molinier/Frank's pre-war PC!). This group, while holding fast against the tide of petit-bourgeois nationalism and refusing to support the struggle of the Gaullist section of the French bourgeoisie, fell into abstract propagandism and a sectarian attitude towards those struggles by French workers and peasants which brought them into confrontation with the armed forces of German imperialism.

 

In France, a Provisional European Secretariat of the FI was set up under Pablo's leadership in 1943. In February 1944 it organised a conference of European sections. One of the aims this conference gave itself was to secure the unification of the two main French groups. The Conference criticised the nationalist deviation of the POI; but accepted the false contention of the PO I that it had been infected by the nationalism of the masses at the start of the war. Furthermore, the Conference also criticised what it saw as the sectarian attitude of the CCI towards the partisan movement i in such a way that they implied that the CCI's sectarianism was on a par with the nationalist opportunism of the POI. (Indeed centrists such as Mandel still today argue that the principal mistake was not to have fully participated in the Gaullist/Stalinist-led military resistance movements against German imperialism).

 

There was no attempt to search for the real roots of the CCI's sectarianism. In a desire to achieve unification, no mention was made, for example, of the CCI's incorrect perspectives and its confusion over the relationship between party and class. Its attempt to set up ."workers' groups" as embryonic soviets was similar to Molinier/Frank's centrist position, developed in 1936/36, of Revolutionary Action Groups as embryonic soviets (see Braun's "The Mass Paper" in "The Crisis of the French Section").Therefore a complete and honest balance sheet of the war period was not drawn up in France.

 

The German section, the IKD, veered in a Menshevik direction, arguing that the victory of the Nazis had, once again, placed the "democratic revolution" on the agenda, as against the proletarian revolution.

 

In Britain the two Trotskyist groups committed similar errors. The Workers' International League (WIL), while it carried out good work in the factories, leading strikes etc, eventually fell in with the line advanced by Cannon. Prior to the fall of France, the WIL maintained a clear defeatist position. In December 1938, the WIL argued that the "only way to act is to show the German working class that we struggle against our own bosses and by example encourage them to overthrow Hitler".18 Indeed, foreshadowing the errors later to be committed by the Revolutionary Socialist league (RSL), the other Trotskyist group, the WIL adopted a sectarian approach to practical problems posed by the onset of war. They argued that demands for adequate air-raid shelters for workers was tantamount to aiding the war effort. However, after the fall of France in 1940, the line began to change. With the "enemy at the door", the WIL began to buckle before chauvinist pressure.

 

Defeat was no longer an abstract "lesser evil". It was a real possibility.

 

The WIL declared, in February 1941, that the task was "turning the present imperialist war into a real struggle of the workers against Nazism".' The WIL linked this more explicitly than the SWP did, with a struggle against the British capitalists. However their slogan was not a consistently revolutionary defeatist one. The smaller official section of the FI, the RSL, maintained a harder defeatist position. However, 'like the CCI, they exhibited definite sectarian tendencies, particularly in their tactical application of this policy.

 

It would be wrong to give equal weight to sectarianism and opportunism in time of imperialist war. Lenin, during World War 1, was precisely prepared to bloc with sectarians (without endorsing their overall politics) in a bid to rally the most consistently internationalist forces.

 

We think the FI in its post-war fusions in Britain and France, was wrong to condemn the two errors as though they were of equal weight. The opportunist errors of the POI, the SWP and the WIL reflected the pressure of social chauvinism. Where the sectarian trend did not involve passive abstention from struggle (as it clearly did not in France), it was clearly superior. Also ominous was the failure of the FI or the SWP itself to draw up an honest balance sheet accounting for and correcting the SWP's war-time errors.

 

In 1944 several of the European sections of the FI regrouped at a conference held inside Nazi-occupied Europe. They adopted the "Theses on the Liquidation of World War 2 and the Revolutionary Upsurge".

 

These testified to the continuing revolutionary potential of the sections of the Fourth International. The theses, written at a time when anti German chauvinism and pro-allied sentiments were growing rapidly in Europe, espoused a defeatist position in the war. They indicated that the reconstruction of the FI on a revolutionary basis was a real possibility. However, severe disorientation over the crucial question of perspectives, obstructed this development from taking final shape.

 

The aftermath of the Second World War was not as Trotsky had predicted it. Key elements of his perspectives, when he wrote the Transitional Programme, for the period ahead were:

 

a) a massive revolutionary wave - particularly in Germany, Italy, France, Britain and the USA;

 

b) the qualitative transformation of the FI into a mass force able to use the Transitional Programme to relate to and win leadership in the revolutionary upsurge;

 

c) the death agony of capitalism or its survival only on a totalitarian basis;

 

d) the destruction of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR either by political revolution or by a victorious imperialism;

 

e) the disintegration of the old leaderships of the working class - the social democrats and the Stalinists, as their material roots disappeared crumbs from the table of imperialism and bureaucratic privilege in the USSR.

 

As we have shown, the Transitional Programme was not a collection of timeless Marxist truisms, it was a "manual of action"'. As such it was necessary to constantly test its demands, tactics and perspectives against reality, and to develop the programme accordingly. The followers of Trotsky repeatedly failed to do this after the war.

 

Trotsky's perspective at the beginning of the Second World War was that it would engender revolutionary upheavals as great as or greater than, those succeeding the First World War. Capitalist economy, bourgeois society and its reformist parasites would be thrown into mortal crisis.

 

Likewise, the Stalinist bureaucracy, if it survived a military debacle at the hands of the imperialist aggressor, would succumb to the political revolution of the proletariat aroused by revolutionary events in the west.

 

Criticisms can certainly be made of Trotsky's telescoped timetable for the historic exhaustion of US monopoly capitalism. However, this is an error Marx, Engels and Lenin made before him, and is a risk of error inseparable from revolutionary optimism.

 

Thus Trotsky considered an earlier error of perspective (at the Third World Congress of the Comintern) in the following way: "We had not predicted a solar eclipse, i.e. an event beyond our will and entirely independent of our actions. Involved is an historical event which can and will occur with our participation. When we spoke of the revolution resulting from the world war, it meant that we were and are striving to utilise the consequences of the world war in order to speed the revolution in every way possible".20

 

Trotsky's perspective was falsified by events after the war. Firstly, by powerful objective factors of the first magnitude. Whilst Britain and France, two of the three "democratic imperialisms" proved as rotten and prone to instability as Trotsky had observed, this was far from being the case with the United States. The colossal scale and dynamism of its productive forces enabled it to sustain the moribund British Empire and raise French imperialism from the grave - as client or subordinate powers, unable to challenge their Wall St masters.

 

Likewise in the Russian workers' state, planned economy proved stronger than the sabotage and bungling of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

 

Though Stalin and his clique brought the' workers' state to the edge of the abyss in 1941, the heroic resistance of the proletariat and the rallying to the workers' state of the peasantry and the nationalities, despite Stalin's crimes, and because of fascist atrocities, gave the USSR victory. This victory, however, strengthened not only the state but also the bonapartist bureaucracy. The advance of American and Russian armies across the European continent placed foreign armies hostile to proletarian revolution amongst the proletariat of France, Italy and Germany. The victory of Stalinism and Anglo-American (democratic) imperialism, strengthened the political forces dependent on these tendencies.

 

On the one hand, the openly bourgeois parties and social democracy were revivified due to the victory of the "democracies". On the other hand, the Stalinist parties with the weight of Russian victory and their own partisan struggles were likewise strengthened. Far from these forces facing the loss of their material basis, or suffering political demise and organisational disintegration, they emerged from the war much stronger than they were in the late 1930s.

 

Moreover, the politics of class collaboration - established via the Popular Front before the war, and having behind it the prestige of the Second and Third Internationals, were not disrupted until 1946/7, when the post-war crisis had been overcome. The whole weight of bourgeois democracy and Stalinism was thrown into the scales against proletarian revolution.

 

Once the immediate potentially revolutionary situations were weathered, the enormous economic power of the USA was brought to bear in the West through Marshall Aid, and the Kremlin bureaucracy sealed off its East European glacis and began the process of transforming them into degenerate workers' states, having expropriated the proletariat politically in advance. In Germany the working class upsurge was very weak and was suppressed immediately by Allied and Russian military means. In Italy and France the Stalinists demobilised the partisan militias. In Central and Eastern Europe a varied combination of Soviet forces and indigenous Stalinists and their popular frontist allies were able to prevent any revolutionary upsurge from occurring.

 

Thus not only were the Trotskyists weak and disorganised, but the conditions for them to emerge from the situation of marginalised propaganda groups did not materialise. Instead, the counter-revolutionary social democracy and Stalinist parties grew in strength, isolating the Trotskyists yet again. Thus social democracy and Stalinism exerted tremendous pressure on the tiny and disoriented forces of the Fourth International.

 

Whilst it was certainly possible to expect renewed political and social crisis with a further capitalist crisis - clearly by 1946/7 a new assessment of perspectives, an accounting for the failure of the previous ones, was necessary. Had this been done, it is unlikely that such a one sided, false perspective would have emerged based on catastrophic crisis, an immediately renewed war and the delayed revolution. The transformation of the Marxist understanding of crises, of war, of revolution from events into long processes was the result of a purblind empiricism which sought at all costs to prolong the "revolutionary perspective".

 

The isolated and defeated FI leaders could not face the fact that they were passing from an aborted revolutionary period (1944/5), to a counter-revolutionary period, albeit one of democratic counterrevolution in the principle imperialist countries, rather than bonapartist or fascist reaction. The majority of the old FI leaders simply shut their eyes and held on to "orthodoxy".

 

However the new European and then International leadership around Michel Pablo and Ernest Germain began to transform Trotsky's tactics, strategy and programme in a piecemeal and empirical fashion under the cover of an apparent fidelity to his revolutionary perspectives. To preserve these, "revolution" became a world objective process which chose here the Stalinist bureaucracy, there the Titoite partisans, elsewhere the Bevanite parliamentarians, as its agents for a whole historic stage. It was only a matter of time before this piecemeal revision was systematised. This Pablo attempted in 1950 - 1951.

 

The FI developed perspectives for after the war based on a combination of dogmatism and blind optimism. This dogmatism spawned a series of errors which oscillated between sectarianism and opportunism. In time the political vibrations broke up the FI into two factions both equally tainted with these errors. Despite the signs of economic boom in the USA, Cannon insisted that the American revolution was imminent. Furthermore the perspective of a third world war meant that the world tottered on the verge of a permanently pre revolutionary situation. The documents of the 1946 International Congress clearly reveal this tendency in the FI. Thus in "The New Imperialist Peace and the Building of Parties of the FI", they argued:

 

"The war has aggravated the disorganisation of capitalist economy and has destroyed the last possibilities of a relatively stable equilibrium in social and international relations". 21 And again: "If the war did not immediately create in Europe a revolutionary upsurge of the scope and tempo we anticipated, it is nevertheless undeniable that it destroyed capitalist equilibrium on a world scale, thus opening up a long revolutionary period".22 This "long revolutionary period" became an ever-expanding one, and as such ceased to have any useful specific meaning.

 

The potential for rectifying these errors of perspective and of reconstructing the FI on a revolutionary basis existed within the forces of Trotskyism. There were challenges to the leadership's rigid adherence to Trotsky's perspectives. In the SWP, for example, Felix Morrow led an opposition that argued: "Trotsky tried to teach us to understand that it is necessary to make a prognosis but equally necessary to understand that it is impossible to guess the tempos in advance for a prolonged period, and hence one must introduce the necessary correctives into it in the course of experience" .23 Similarly the British RCP (a product of a 1944 fusion between the RSL and the WIL) argued against the "New Imperialist Peace" document, that Stalinism had been strengthened and not thrown into mortal crisis. It pointed to the danger of disorientation that the failure to recognise this could lead to. The SWP contended in 1946 that the war was still on. The FI hesitated before calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from occupied territories. Initially, it rejected a British amendment to this effect, though it later corrected its position. The French section argued that the USSR, in 1946, was more threatened than at the darkest hour of the war. Perhaps more astonishing was the answer the Trotskyist "Neuer Spartakus" gave to the question: "Why does Stalin rob? Because he lost the war".24

 

Also on the question of the immediacy of imperialism's own economic crisis, the RCP contended "But in a resolution that seeks to orientate our own cadres on immediate economic perspectives - from which the next stage of the class struggle will largely low, and thus our immediate propaganda and tactics - the perspective is clearly false... For the second time in a generation capitalism has been enabled to gain a breathing space. The theory of spontaneous collapse of capitalism is entirely alien to Bolshevism".25

 

Both the Morrow and RCP oppositions made correct criticisms of the FI's line. Neither matured into a Left Opposition, however. This fact is decisive in understanding why later errors were able to go by unchecked. The Morrow opposition drew from its conclusions that a return to the democratic - as opposed to the transitional - programme was necessary in Europe. Further their hostility to the Stalinist counterrevolutionary occupation of Eastern Europe, catapulted them into adopting "New Class" theories and abandoning defencism altogether.

 

The SWP's leadership's insistence that the entry of Soviet troops saw the commencement of a classical dual power situation did little to offset Morrow's "New Class" tendencies. The end result was that this tendency drifted out of the SWP and into the renegade Shachtman group.

 

The fate of the RCP was different. As a result of its criticisms of the Frs perspectives and its refusal to accept the "deep entry" policy into the Labour Party that the International Secretariat favoured, it incurred the emnity of Pablo and Germain. Cannon and the SWP had their own grudge against the Haston/Grant leadership of the RCP dating from the fusion negotiations before the war. Against this leadership the SWP and the IS sponsored a faction, led by Gerry Healy and John Lawrence, who split in 1947 to carry out the deep entry perspective. This effectively wrecked the RCP, weakening and demoralising the old leadership and strengthening the Healy group. With Cannon and Pablo's blessing the two wings were re-united in 1949, but with the old Minority being given a majority on the leading committees. With a vigour that was later to become his trademark, Healy set about expelling his former opponents and turned the RCP, now called "The Club", into a Pablo/Cannon loyal section.

 

Thus, the critics of the 1946/8 period were removed from the FI by the time it was thrown into a new crisis of perspectives in the early 1950s. In 1951, no force existed which was able to argue for the correction of earlier errors as the basis for avoiding new ones.

 

Under the leadership of Pablo, and with the approval of Cannon and the SWP, the Second World Congress of the FI in 1948, systematised its erroneous perspectives and tentatively suggested that the imminent world war would be transformed into an "international civil war" 26. This perspective, put forward as a possibility that did not rule out "other important factors in the political developments in other countries" 27, was later turned into the over-riding perspective of the FI by Pablo. He used the false positions of the FI to suggest that a war between imperialism and the USSR was imminent and inevitable.

 

Thus the perspectives document of 1948. which had been used as a justification for a mass party building turn by the FI, later became a tool in Pablo's hands when he developed the perspective of liquidating Trotskyist factions into social democratic and Stalinist parties. This later abuse of the earlier perspective was absolutely connected to its essential falseness. The optimism about the likely spontaneous transformation of a war into a civil war embodied a key methodological error committed by the post-War FI. Trotsky's perspectives and prognoses were turned into a prophecy that had to come true in the short term. The collapse of capitalism and the eruption of a revolutionary tide were designated as the inevitable outcomes of an unfolding objective process to which Trotskyists had to relate.

 

However, whilst capitalist crises and upsurges of working class struggle clearly do arise out of the objective contradictions of capitalism, there is no "objective process" which resolves such crises. Without the victory of the subjective factor - the revolutionary party - there can be no lasting victories for the working class, courtesy of the "objective process" alone.

 

The FI did not lead the working class in any country in 1948.

 

Furthermore, the revolutionary or pre-revolutionary crises of the immediately post-war period were clearly over. Yet the FI held to its perspectives. At the 1948 FI Congress, the Theses on Stalinism did not describe the events in Eastern Europe (including Yugoslavia) as part of any revolutionary process. This retention of the earlier perspectives was what allowed the FI to maintain its orthodox political standpoint.

 

As such we stand by the programmatic declarations of the 1948 Congress as well as of the 1938 Congress. However, as the FI leadership's world view became increasingly at variance with reality, so their orthodoxy became ever more fragile. All that was needed to dislodge the F. from the orthodox positions it held until 19-48 was a sharp twist in world events.

 

That twist in events came almost immediately after the 1948 Congress. In the summer of 1948 the Tito-Stalin split was made public.

 

The Yugoslavian Communist Party (YCP) was expelled from the Cominform and was denounced as, variously, "Trotskyist" and "Fascist".

 

Out of the Yugoslav events the FI developed centrist conclusions and positions. They saw in them only a confirmation of their wrong perspectives. Thus, according to the FI leadership, Yugoslavia demonstrated the crisis of Stalinism that they had been predicting since 1944.

 

Further the whole development was a part of the successful revolutionary upsurge that had always been a key component of their perspectives. The partisan war was now described, post facto, as a "proletarian revolution" (initially only by Pablo, but, by 1951, by the whole of the FI leadership). The state established by that "revolution" was a workers' state which was seen to be suffering from merely quantitative deformations, it was not seen as a qualitatively degenerate workers' state. Tito's parasitic bureaucracy was, correspondingly, not a counterrevolutionary factor but a "Leninist" friend who needed the FIs advice - not its revolutionary opposition. The Open Letter from the International Secretariat requesting attendance rights at the YCP Congress of July 1948 declared 'We understand exactly the tremendous responsibility weighing upon you, and we consider it our

 

Michel Pablo, the leader of the FI at the time, used the Yugoslav affair to attack a number of key positions of the Trotskyist movement; on Stalinism, on the revolutionary party, the nature of revolutions and on the tactic of entryism and, through a distortion of this tactic, he attacked the communist premises of the united front tactic. Further, he argued that the process occurring in Yugoslavia (which was genuinely revolutionary according to him), would also take place in the rest of the Eastern European "buffer zone" as well; indeed, he already saw it taking place in China.29

 

Pablo's positions on Yugoslavia were adopted by the FI at its Third World Congress in 1951. They were subscribed to by all the major Sections and leading figures of the FI. There was no revolutionary opposition to Pablo's centrist position that "In Yugoslavia, the first country where the proletariat took power since the degeneration of the USSR, Stalinism no longer exists today as an effective factor in the workers' movement which, however, does not exclude its possible re-emergence under certain conditions".30

 

Essential to Pablo's position was a revision of the Trotskyist understanding of Stalinism, i.e. that it is invariably a counterrevolutionary force. This does not mean that Stalinism can never carry out progressive measures, even up to the transformation of property relations. What it does mean is that always, under all conditions, the Stalinists will obstruct the working class from taking political power directly into its own hands and using that power in its own class interests. In place of this appraisal of Stalinism, Pablo argued in his Report to the 1951 Congress that "We have made clear that the CP's are not exactly reformist parties and that under certain exceptional conditions they possess the possibility of projecting a revolutionary orientation ". 31

 

Pablo combined this revision with an attack on Lenin's theory of imperialism as the epoch of wars and revolutions. He replaced this with a formula that was ridiculous both as an immediate perspective and as a description of a defining feature of the epoch: "In their stead, it is the conception of Revolution-War, of War-Revolution which is emerging and upon which the perspectives and orientation of revolutionary Marxists in our epoch should rest". 32

 

Using this theoretical "rearmament" (i.e. revision) as his pretext, Pablo embarked upon a tactical course which involved the complete liquidation of the Trotskyist programme. This liquidation was necessitated by the organisational and political concessions that were involved in Pablo's "entrism sui generis" ("entryism of a special type", based on long-term entry and the hiding of the revolutionary programme). Pablo argued that the imminent War-Revolution left no time to build Trotskyist parties, but that this was no longer a crucial problem because in the coming period a variety of political formations could embark on the struggle for power. The Stalinists, for example, could be forced as parties to project a revolutionary orientation. Entryism was needed in order to generate the necessary pressure. In other formations, such as social democracy or petty bourgeois nationalism, the perspective was one of centrist splits away from the parties. Here entryism was necessary in order to prepare and develop such a split. In both cases the entryism that was to be undertaken was not that advocated by Trotsky, around the time of the "French Turn", that is entryism conceived of as a united front tactic to win leftward moving workers to the communist programme, a tactic that could not be a long-term one. The entryism "of a special type" had to be deep and long term, the open fight for the revolutionary programme had to be "temporarily" abandoned.33

 

This thorough-going opportunism propelled the FI along a sharp rightward-moving centrist course. In 1951, Pablo characterised the Peronist movement in Argentina as "anti-capitalist". The Chinese Communist Party soon became, like the YCP, a revolutionary factor.

 

In Britain, the left reformist Aneurin Bevan became' a "left centrist". In 1952, Pablo instructed the French section to make a deep entry into the PCF, to integrate itself into the working class movement "as it was".

 

Such concessions inevitably entailed the abandonment of any fight for principled politics against the leaderships of the parties or movements into which the Trotskyists entered.

 

By 1953 the Pablo-Ied International Secretariat (IS) was leading the International into headlong programmatic liquidation: "entryism sui generis', the "revolutionary" nature of Stalinism, the epoch of "War Revolution" , the subordinate role of the Party; all of these were Pablo's contribution to the FI's centrist collapse.

 

The principal forces who organised the 1953 split with the Pablo-led IS - the SWP (US), the PCI (France) and the Healy group in Britain were not a revolutionary "Left Opposition". The International Committee (lC) that they formed does not constitute a "continuity" of Trotskyism as against Pabloite revisionism. They failed to break decisively with the liquidationist positions of the 1951 Congress which paved the way for Pablo's tactical turns. They did not criticise (i.e. including self-criticism) the post-war reconstruction of the FI and the undermining of Trotsky's programme and method that this involved.

 

The IC embodied the national isolationism of its three largest components, each of which only opposed Pablo's bureaucratically centralised drive to implement the perspectives of the 1951 Congress when it affected them. In the IC itself they rejected democratic centralism outright. Moreover, by not going beyond the framework of a public faction, they refused to wage an intransigent fight against Pablo-Mandel.

 

The split of 1953 therefore, was both too late and too early. Politically it was too late because all the IC groups had already endorsed and re-endorsed the liquidation of the line in the period 1948-51. It was too early in the sense that it came before any fight within the framework of the FI to win a majority at the following congress. Indeed, the decision to move straight to a split pre-empted such a fight. The IC groupings had no distinct and thoroughgoing political alternative to Pablo-Mandel and, therefore, they remained immobilised in' a position where factional heat was a substitute for political light.

 

Despite acceptance of the 1948/51 revisionism, the IC was able, on occasion, to make isolated but valid criticisms of the IS. However, such criticisms, born out of both factional point- scoring and revulsion at IS betrayals, only occasionally went beyond a sterile defence of what they called "orthodoxy". In reality this was a revisionist melange of catastrophism, Stalinophobia and softness on social democracy - a mixture that Cannon, Bleibtreu-Favre and then Lambert and Healy had long pioneered. An examination of each of these groups' record before and during the split proves this conclusively.34

 

The SWP had political agreement with Pablo right up to 1953. On Yugoslavia they had fully supported Pablo's orientation to Tito, and endorsed the 1951 Congress resolution on Yugoslavia. As early as 1948, an SWP NC statement insisted that Tito had been "compelled by the logic of the struggle" and had ceased to be a Stalinist. 35 Thus when the PCI contacted Cannon to help them resist Pablo's policies and bureaucratic manoeuvres, he had no hesitation in replying: "I think that the Third World Congress made a correct analysis of the new post-war reality in the world and the unforeseen turns this reality has taken...It is the unanimous opinion of the leading people that the authors of these documents have rendered a great service to the movement for which they deserve appreciation and comradely support, not distrust and denigration".36

 

This was the same leadership that was to declare in the "Open Letter': of November 1953 (the de facto split document) 37 that this very same leadership was "an uncontrolled, secret, personal faction in the administration of the Fourth International which has abandoned the basic programme of Trotskyism".

 

Yet the SWP document "Against Pabloite Revisionism" 38accepted all of the tenets of Pablo's positions. The Second World War produced a revolutionary wave of "greater scope, intensity and resistance than the First World War" we are told. This produced "the revolutionary victories in Yugoslavia and China". 39

 

The principled positions against Stalinism that the "Open Letter" took were compatible with the SWP's centrism. Their opposition to the Stalinists' betrayal of the French General Strike, their position for the withdrawal of Russian troops from East Germany after the 1953 rising there, and their refusal to accept the post-Stalin liberalisation in the USSR as good coin, were all in themselves principled positions. A revolutionary opposition would have shared these positions.

 

However such an opposition - unlike the SWP and the IC - would not have pretended that the failure of the IS to hold these positions was the result of the influence of one man - Pablo - as the Open Letter insisted. On the contrary, they would have located these errors in past errors. This the SWP would not do in 1953. These issues, as can be seen by the later unity overtures made by the SWP towards the IS, were merely the pretext for the split.

 

The real cause was, in fact, an organisational one. The SWP turned against Pablo only as a result of his "interference" in the SWP (via the Cochran-Clarke faction). True to their national-isolationist tradition (revealed previously during the war) the SWP leaders refused to be treated as a "branch office" of the FI; that is, they refused to undertake a tactical decision that had been agreed by the majority of the leadership of the FI at an International Executive Committee meeting. The breaking point came when Pablo supported the Cochran Clarke faction. The SWP leaders discovered a number of political disagreements and went straight for a split. Prior to this Cannon had believed that his previous support for Pablo would ensure that the SWP would not be subjected to IS discipline. That discipline had been alright for the PCI in France, but not for the SWP. He declared in May 1953:

 

"But what if Pablo and the IS should come out in support of the minority. If such a thing could occur - and I'm not saying it will; I'm just assuming that the absolutely incredible arrogance of the Cochranites is based on some rumour that they are going to have the support of the IS - if that should occur, it would not oblige us to change our minds about anything. We wouldn't do so".40

 

When this did occur a few months after Cannon made this speech, he was true to his word. But even then he failed to nail the methodological and programmatic errors of the IS and the Cochran-Clarke faction. In true IC fashion, he criticised them and their degeneration from a purely sociological standpoint. The Clarke group were petit bourgeois (true). The Cochran group were tired workers in retreat (true). Both were intent on liquidating the party (true). All of these failures were important and Cannon was right to point to them. But he was wrong to conclude that these factors contained the essence of the problem and by extension the essence of "Pabloism”. For when it became clear that Pablo had not liquidated – i.e. organisationally dissolved - the FI, the road back to the Pablo-led IS was again open.

 

The essence of Pablo's politics was to be located in his programmatic premises first, his tactical conclusions second, and his organisational methods last. On the SWP's part, therefore, the split stemmed from national considerations and centred for the most part on organisational questions. It was not a definitive, principled political split, despite Cannon's oaths to the contrary.

 

With the Healy group in Britain the American pattern was followed almost exactly. The lack of serious political differences on the issues at stake was reflected in more than just the fact that Healy, like Pablo, had a portrait of Tito in his office! Healy himself had been Cannon's man in the RCP from 1944/7. He worked closely with Pablo to destroy the Haston Grant leadership - a process urgently speeded up after Haston had expressed criticisms of the softness shown by Pablo towards Tito. In particular, Healy could make no "root and branch" criticism of "entryism sui generis" since he and Lawrence had actually pioneered this from 1947 onwards.

 

This "tactic" flowed from a "perspective" which foresaw the evolution to centrism of the left reformist leaders. Behind them a mass movement would be created which would force the removal of the right-reformist leaders. The task of Trotskyists in all this was to amalgamate with the left and assist in this development. To do this required the public abandonment of the Transitional Programme, the FI and the revolutionary party, and it meant not producing a specifically revolutionary propaganda organ. In their place there was to be a highly secret faction and a public left-centrist grouping publishing a newspaper which would express the politics appropriate to such a formation. This policy was put into practice by Healy after the collapse of the RCP.

 

The British section was turned into "The Club", a secret Trotskyist grouping. The broader, public grouping known as the Socialist Fellowship included Labour MPs and union bureaucrats, gathered around the newspaper "Socialist Outlook".

 

Pablo approved of this tactic and embodied its experience in his "entryism sui generis" which applied to Stalinist parties as well as to social democrats.41

 

This new type of entryism was explicitly demarcated and distinguished from that advocated by Trotsky. That had been based on the open building of a revolutionary tendency within a reformist party in circumstances where the evolution of the class struggle and the influx of subjectively revolutionary proletarian elements made it possible to unfurl the banner of the FI, at least temporarily. Trotsky recognised that such an entry would last for a limited period, possibly a mere episode.

 

When one comes to look at the Healyites' own account of their split with Pabloism, the political questions are less than clear.42

 

The dispute arose when Lawrence (like Clarke in America) became a direct agent for Pablo and challenged Healy's leadership. Over the Korean war he pushed a pro-Stalinist position on the Editorial Board of "Socialist Outlook", in alliance with the "centrists" (Healy's term for left reformists). This breach of discipline and its consequences form the substance of "The Struggle in the British Section". 43

 

No political documents appeared at the time of the split itself. It was an organisational battle in which the number of legal shareholders in "Socialist Outlook" counted for more than the errors of the 1951 Congress and before.

 

However, the political differences underlying the split were real enough With the advent of the Korean war in 1950, Pablo saw the realisation of his "war-revolution" perspective as imminent. The British section made sure that Socialist Outlook followed the Pablo line, with a number of pro-Stalinist articles appearing. Healy and Lawrence coexisted peacefully at this time. However, after the tactical turn towards entryism into Stalinist parties in 1952, Pablo, having succeeded in wrecking the French section, began to foist his tactic on other sections. By 1953, Lawrence, in cahoots with Pablo, was pushing for a much more definite pro-Stalinist orientation in Britain. Healy's longstanding' and long term orientation to the Bevanites conflicted with this tactical turn. Fearing a Pabloite victory, Healy threw in his lot with Cannon, who feared similar moves in the US. He moved against Lawrence in Britain and, eventually, Pablo internationally.

 

The PCI in France differed from the SWP and the Healy group insofar as it had waged a limited political fight against Pablo from 1951 onwards. For their efforts, the leadership of the PCI were connived against by Pablo, Healy and Cannon! But the politics that the PCI fought on were not revolutionary politics.

 

In June 1951 the PCI leader .Bleibtreu-Favre, supported by Pierre Lambert and the majority of the organisation, produced a response to Pablo's revisionist document "Where are we going?". The French document "Where is Comrade Pablo going? " was delayed in its publication by Germain (Ernest Mandel).44, 45

 

He had duplicitously pretended to oppose Pablo on "democratic" grounds, but warned Bleibtreu-Favre against provoking Pablo into taking disciplinary measures by putting out the document. Because Bleibtreu-Favre, Lambert and the others supported Germain's document "What should be modified and what should be maintained in the Theses of the Second World Congress of the Fourth International on the Question of Stalinism? " (the famous "Ten Theses")46, the French accepted his advice. The result was that Pablo, in collaboration with Germain, built up a Pabloite minority faction around Michel Mestre.

 

Pablo effectively isolated the French majority after refusing to circulate Bleibtreu-Favre's document before the Third World Congress.

 

The French were left declaring their support for the "Ten Theses", which were not voted on at the Congress. In January 1952, Pablo proposed that the PCI should carry out an "entryism sui generis" tactic in the PCF - then in a leftist phase. The French majority, preferring an orientation to the looser SFIO, opposed this turn on tactical grounds.

 

After a struggle, in June 1952, Pablo, Germain and Healy (with Cannon's approval) expelled the majority of the French Central Committee!

 

However much we would sympathise with the PCI as a victim of bureaucratic methods, their struggle was, in the end, a vacillating, politically incorrect one. First, by supporting what we have described elsewhere as Mandel's "Orthodox Revisionism,,4 ~ Finding the idea that Stalinist parties had led what the FI regarded as healthy revolutions to victory in Yugoslavia and China, unpalatable from an "orthodox" standpoint, Mandel revised the Trotskyist position on Stalinism.

 

It had a "dual character" - a good side and a bad side. The pressure of the masses could serve to allow the good side to win out. Thus: "The Yugoslav and Chinese examples have demonstrated that, placed in certain exceptional conditions, entire Communist Parties can modify their political line and lead the struggle of the masses up to the conquest of power, while passing beyond the ob.iectives of the Kremlin, Under such conditions these parties cease to be Stalinist in the classical sense of the words".48

 

Bleibtreu-Favre's document expressed an identical view, particularly with regard to the Chinese bureaucracy. They bitterly attacked the Chinese Trotskyists for failing to enter the CCP (which was imprisoning Trotskyists at the time) quickly enough. In other words, the French accepted Pablo's analysis of Yugoslavia and China. What they could not accept was that these states were dominated by Stalinist parties. It was for this reason that they, like everybody else in the FI, were prepared to endorse the 1951 Congress position on Yugoslavia, a position that liquidated the programme of Trotskyism.

 

Criticising Pablo's "objections", the French introduced their own.

 

China, they argued, proved that "The reality of the class struggle will prove more powerful than the Kremlin apparatus, despite the non existence of a revolutionary party".49 The reason was because the CPs were subordinated to the Kremlin. If they went against the Kremlin then they could not be Stalinist: "In any event it is absurd to speak of a Stalinist party in China, and still more absurd to foster belief in even the resemblance of a 'victory of Stalinism in China' ".50

 

Trotsky's analysis of Stalinism as contradictory but predominantly counter-revolutionary even when it breaks up along social patriotic lines was junked. The PCI leadership capitulated to Stalinist parties and then, to save their "Trotskyist" souls, conveniently concluded that these parties were not Stalinist at all.

 

In 1951 the centrist positions of the Third World Congress on Stalinism, on Yugoslavia, and general perspectives (the impending "civil war" perspective) proved, beyond doubt, that a programmatic collapse of the Fourth International had taken place. The fact that no section voted against the Yugoslav resolution - the cornerstone of all the errors - is a fact of enormous significance.

 

The FI as a whole had collapsed into centrism. From this point on, the task facing Trotskyists was the refoundation of a Leninist-Trotskyist International on the basis of a re-elaborated programme of revolutionary communism. Manoeuvres to replace the leadership of the FI were entirely insufficient. The programmatic basis of the FI had to be changed. The manner by which this could have been done in the early 1950s is a matter of tactical speculation. What is decisive for us is that it was not done. The historical continuity of Trotskyism was shattered - as was evidenced by Pablo's use of the Congress documents at the Tenth Plenum of the International Executive Committee in February 1952, to usher in "entrism sui generis" The opposition in America, Britain and France that did emerge in 1952-3 was subjectively committed to opposing Pablo. However, they have to be judged not by their impulse but by their politics. Their "orthodoxy" was both sterile and based on post-war revisionism, prompted by the Yugoslav events. It was not authentic Trotskyism.

 

Thus we cannot view either component of the 1953 split as the "continuators" of Trotskyism. Both were centrist.

 

The IC, itself developing in a rightward direction (e.g. Healy's work in the Labour Party) was distinguished from the IS by the pace of its development. It recoiled from the most blatant expressions of liquidationism issuing from the IS, but not from the right-centrist documents that underpinned that liquidationism. Therefore the IC did not constitute a "left centrist" alternative to the IS.

 

The IS was a right-ward moving centrist group using the 1951 positions to draw what were entirely logical conclusions. The correct positions on East Germany and Hungary taken by the IC may have determined the tactics of a Left Opposition if it had existed. It could not have determined its estimate of the IC.

 

Disorientation after the war led to a programmatic collapse of the FI. After the CI's programmatic collapse, Trotsky's Left Opposition maintained a reform perspective because the Cl contained within it a mass movement. After the FIs programmatic collapse, and the failure of an Opposition to materialise, the FI was left without a programme and had never contained a mass vanguard within it.

 

The FI, unlike the CI, was in an essential sense its programme. That is why we say that after 1951, whatever the tactics that may have been employed, authentic Trotskyists had to elaborate a new programme and thus build the International anew.

 

 

 

Chapter Three: The degenerate fragments of the Fourth International, 1953 -1983

 

 

 

The principal tendencies that emerged from the 1953 split failed either then or subsequently to raise themselves out of the centrism into which the FI as a whole had sunk. Neither the international Committee nor the International Secretariat, nor any of the tendencies claiming continuity with them, have proved capable of regenerating a democratic centralist international based upon a transitional programme re-elaborated to encompass the new circumstances and tasks of the last thirty years.

 

The Pablo-led IS had given definitive proof of its centrism during the events in Bolivia in 1951-2. In this country the FI had an organisation that enjoyed mass influence - the POR, led by Guillermo Lora.

 

The POR's positions and the IS' attitude to these positions indicated that the revision of the Trotskyist programme had been a question of deeds and not merely a theoretical question in the period leading up to the Third World Congress in 1951. Pablo, in his report to the 1951 congress stated that: ".....the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist mass movement often assumes confused forms, under a petty bourgeois leadership as with APRA in Peru, with the MNR in Bolivia." 51

 

This description of the MNR, which was undoubtedly a bourgeois party, gave the seal of approval to the POR's conciliatory attitude to this movement, particularly when it assumed government. In the crucial test of revolution the POR failed to advance an independent communist programme.

 

The revolution in Bolivia on April 9th 1951 brought to power the bourgeois nationalist MNR, under Pal Estensorro. This capitalist government presided over a situation approaching dual power. Its position was highly unstable. Increasingly the question of class power was being posed. A determined revolutionary policy could have won the masses from the MNR, in whom they had illusions, to the Trotskyists.

 

The POR chose a different line of advance however the MNR government was not characterised clearly as a bourgeois obstacle to a genuine revolutionary workers' and peasants' government. Lora offered the following alternative view: "Today, far from succumbing to the hysteria of a struggle against the MNR, whom the pro-imperialists have described as 'fascists' we are marching with the masses to make the April 9th movement the prelude to the triumph of the workers' and peasants' government. "

 

It was for this reason that the POR raised as a central slogan: "Restoration of the constitution of the country through the formation of an MNR government which obtained a majority in the 1951 elections".53 By this method the POR claimed to facilitate a "differentiation" within the MNR mass base, between revolutionary and reactionary elements. In fact it capitulated to the illusions of the masses in the MNR. It led to disastrous tactical conclusions. Lora put forward the demand for "worker ministers" from the COB (Bolivian Trade Union Central) to be admitted to the capitalist government. The POR did not call for a workers' and peasants' government based on soviets and a militia.

 

They did not demand that the COB leaders break with the bourgeoisie and take the road of struggle against it and the MNR government. Instead the POR posed a workers' and peasants' government as a future "natural emanation" from the left wing of the MNR and the workers' organisation, which would follow the "prelude" (in other words, stage) of an MNR government.

 

Instead of combining opposition to, and non-confidence in, the MNR government with independent support for its progressive measures and military defence of it against imperialism and domestic reaction, the POR gave it "critical support": "The POR began by justifiably granting critical support to the MNR government." 54 This formulation can only mean political support for the government, not simply critical support for its actions.

 

The POR's justification for giving a bourgeois government a form of political support and not just defence against reaction (an important distinction as Lenin showed in relation to the Kerensky government during the Kornilov coup) was the supposed "exceptional" nature of Bolivia and its revolution. The government was a petit- bourgeois government (defending whose class interests?). In addition it was declared to be an example of "Bonapartism sui generis". This latter neologism was quite in keeping with Pablo's method vis-a-vis "entrism sui generis." Lora's view of Bonapartism sui generis was that it rested on the proletariat against imperialism - and vice versa. This happy duality meant that one could support it insofar as it struggled against domestic reaction and imperialism. This was, in essence, the same policy that Stalin and Kamenev applied towards the Provisional Government in Russia before the appearance of Lenin's April Theses, and that Stalin applied in China in 1926.

 

The POR operated throughout 1951-2 under the slogan "For total control of the Cabinet by the Left". Even in 1953 Lora still referred to the Pal Estensorro government as "the transitional government of the Bolivian revolution." 55 In 1954 the majority of the POR followed the logic of the organisation's position, broke from it and joined the MNR.

 

Neither the IS nor the IC carried out any serious analysis or drew up any balance sheet of these events, so rich in experience and mistakes.

 

Their silence at the time and since can only be interpreted as approval of the POR's line. Thus the international leaderships, like the POR itself, failed the test of revolution. For its part the POR, dislocated from the FI after the revolutionary events, was abandoned to its fate.

 

Lora remained without international links until the late 1960s and played no role in the 1953 split. Under these conditions the POR developed a Bolivian-centred "national Trotskyist" outlook.

 

The Pablo-Mandel IS consistently failed to raise Trotsky's programme of political revolution in the repeated crises and upheavals that wracked Stalinism in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. In the early '50s, it held out hopes for a process of reform led by Tito-ite tendencies from within the bureaucracy. Consequently it failed to advance the political revolutionary programme at the time of the East German workers' rising of 1953.

 

Although the document, "Rise, Decline and Perspectives for the Fall of Stalinism" passed at the "Fourth World Congress" in 1954 did contain certain "orthodox" statements (as a result of amendments from the LSSP) with regard to the necessity of political revolution, it is nevertheless based upon a shallow optimistic fatalism: "What is entirely new in the situation is that we have reached the stage, forecast in the transitional programme, where the 'laws of history' reveal themselves as 'stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus'.

 

Of the two forces determining the orientation of the masses - the death agony of capitalism which unleashes immense revolutionary forces on a world scale and the policy of the reformist and Stalinist bureaucratic apparatuses, which play the role of a brake upon the masses - it is the first which is coming more and more to the fore." 56

 

The "Soviet bureaucracy" it is stated, "is no 10l~er capable of smashing and arresting" this "revolutionary tide." The suggestion that Trotsky believed that at some future stage "objective processes" would of themselves resolve the balance of forces between the proletariat, imperialism and Stalinism is a complete travesty of his position. What Trotsky did see was that the objective conditions of capitalist decay and crisis together with the treacherous and self defeating policies of Stalinism and social democracy, created a "crisis of leadership".

 

Because the "revolutionary will of the proletariat" cannot, historically, be obliterated, despite the strength of the old apparatuses, then this crisis, "can be resolved only by the Fourth International". Trotsky's dialectical understanding of the relationship between objective and subjective factors in the class struggle was replaced in the Pablo-Mandel schema by an evolutionary optimism which was more akin to the method of Kautsky - but so much the more false and ridiculous in that it came fifty years post festum. This method derived directly from the false analyses of the post-war bureaucratic revolutions.

 

The International Secretariat applied exactly the same method to the crisis of Stalinism in the 1950s. Furthermore "splitting from the Kremlin" a la Tito, was identified as tantamount to a movement from counter-revolutionary Stalinism to mere "centrism" or "opportunism". Thus, from the starting point that the Yugoslav and Chinese CPs had "led victorious revolutions" and "in these instances ceased to be Stalinist parties in the proper meaning of the term" the inescapable conclusion was drawn that "since both the CCP and to a certain extent the YCP are in reality bureaucratic centrist parties which, however, still find themselves under pressure of the revolution in their countries, we do not call upon the proletariat of these countries to constitute new revolutionary parties or to prepare a political revolution in these countries." 58

 

Even in the Russian and East European states a strategy of entrism in the state parties was advocated. The programme of political revolution was reduced to eight "democratic" demands entirely devoid of any tactical or strategic orientation. Whilst de-Stalinisation and the "New Course" were seen as having positive effects in that they promoted differentiation and were a motor of change, no attention was paid to the strategy and tactics of political revolution, the tasks posed by the overthrow of the bureaucracy. The role and function of soviets, the general strike, the arming of the working class, the struggle against restorationist forces - none of these are even mentioned.

 

The proposed programme of reforms was intended to be palatable to the ever hoped for "centrist" section of the bureaucracy:

 

"1. Freedom for working class prisoners.

 

2. Abolition of repressive anti-labour legislation.

 

3. Democratisation of the workers parties and organisations.

 

4. Legalisation of the workers parties and organisations.

 

S. Election and democratic functioning of mass committees.

 

6. Independence of the trade unions in relation to the government.

 

7. Democratic elaboration of the economic plan by the masses for the . masses.

 

8. Effective right of self-determination for the peoples." 59

 

This programme fails to link any of these demands to the struggle to overthrow the bureaucracy and establish proletarian power. Indeed, a strategy for this goal is not raised, precisely because of the IS's view of the bureaucracy as containing potential centrists within it.

 

Between 1954 and the Fifth World Congress in 1957, further enormous upheavals occurred in the degenerate workers' states and the USSR.

 

The 20th Congress of the CPSU "Secret Speech" by Khruschev and the ensuing concessions, the revolutionary uprisings against the bureaucracy in Hungary and Poland - all in 1956 - made a deep impression on the IS leadership. Mandel gave the report to the Congress on the crisis within Stalinism. The reactions of the YCP and the CCP to the Hungarian events, while admitted to be uneven, were held to be progressive, confirming the reform perspective.

 

Whilst the revolutionary upsurge in Hungary produced an apparent move to the left by the IS leaders – i.e. they openly supported it, they accompanied this with a full-scale and explicit revision of the programme of political revolution. For Mandel and the IS leadership the Hungarian and Polish events had proven that a wing of the bureaucracy would follow the Tito-Mao road: in Hungary-Nagy, in Poland - Gomulka. Even in the USSR the "centrist" faction of Khruschev was crowded on its left by Malenkov and Mikoyan, who, whilst not of the Nagy/Gomulka mould, presaged the emergence of such a tendency. In a bid to facilitate such tendencies in the bureaucracy, the programme of the political revolution for Eastern Europe 'and the USSR was completed revised.

 

Since the prospect of political revolution was seen to depend upon a section or wing of the bureaucracy, soviets could not be posed as organs of struggle against the whole bureaucracy. Political revolution was considered as (Le. replaced by) peaceful competition between an "FI faction" and the rest of the bureaucracy for the leadership of the working class.

 

From this point onwards the notion of workers' councils or soviets as revolutionary organs of struggle is lost and replaced by the conception of soviets merely as organs of administration, for bringing the disembodied "world, revolution'" masses into political life, and to ensure that the plan is agreed in a democratic forum.

 

The political revolution is thus reduced to a peaceful withering away of the bureaucratic caste. This programme of "political revolution" emerged from the Fifth Congress as a unified strategy for all workers' states. It was merely a question of the ease and rapidity with which the objective crisis within Stalinism would produce the necessary tendencies and splits within the bureaucratic castes. The later congresses of the IS and then the USFI merely repeated these formulae, adding nothing by way of programme.

 

The Leninist Comintern and Trotsky's Fourth International operated with an understanding of the imperialist epoch as one of wars and revolutions, the epoch of the historic decline of capitalism. The Leninist CI clearly recognised the existence of revolutionary periods and pre-revolutionary situations as well as their opposites. The "world revolution" did not mean for the CI some disembodied objective process, it was the combination of the proletarian revolutions in the developed imperialist countries and the anti-imperialist upheavals of the colonies and semi-colonies.

 

Likewise Trotsky understood the "Permanent Revolution" as a strategy for the winning of working class power in the imperialised countries. The basis of this strategy was a programme and tactics to enable a party to lead the working class and the oppressed masses from the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic and national revolution to the proletarian and international revolution.

 

By contrast, in the Pablo-Mandel method the "World Revolution" was elevated into a "process", a demiurge which was always advancing somewhere or in some form. In addition to the "World Revolution" this process was given equally spurious regional or pan-national character, for example the "Central American" revolution or the "Arab" revolution. This not only confused the "laws of history" with the strategic objectives for which the party had to organise the struggle but, in addition, it threw into the melting pot the democratic, anti-imperialist and proletarian goals. Consequently, instead of developing "perspectives" in which the tasks of revolutionaries were identified on the basis of scientific analysis, the Pablo-Mandel IS reduced "perspectives" to speculation, often highly fanciful, about what direction history would take next and, as a result, to which political formation they should next adapt themselves in order not to be left behind.

 

The "historical process" could now drive Stalinists, left social democrats, petit-bourgeois nationalists and anti-imperialists to act as the revolution's unconscious agents. It could force them, as its "blunt instrument", to follow a "roughly revolutionary" orientation. Accordingly the Pablo Mandel leadership turned the IS into a specialist at adapting to all such currents. The inconvenient shattered remains of Trotskyist groups in China, Vietnam and Cuba were ignored and even slandered, so that the IS could play the role of friendly critics to their Stalinist gaolers and executioners.

 

In the imperialist countries, "deep entry" or "entrism sui generis" survived several different "perspectives" which were supposed to justify it at particular times. First the post-war revolutionary crisis, then the impending "pre-World War 3 " crisis were supposed to create a mass left-centrist current which could be helped to evolve towards Trotskyism by friendly criticism and organisational assistance. 'To ensure this, however, Trotskyists had to avoid frightening this current or isolating themselves from it. Hence it became urgently necessary to hide the Trotskyist programme. Whilst Pablo acted as advisor to the petit bourgeois nationalist FLN, Mandel edited the paper of the Belgian left reformists.

 

Both of necessity, acted as apologists for their respective employers. In the early 1960s the transitional demands of the programme were diluted into a series of "structural reforms" centred on a left reformist version of "workers control" (self-management or autogestion). Both the Leninist Party and the Trotskyist programme were liquidated. The policy of this period can only be characterised as right centrist. That IS to say it was at the level of practice indistinguishable from left reform ism or petty bourgeois nationalism (in the metropolitan and colonial countries respectively). Yet the IS tendency (and later the USFI) was still centrist capable of swinging towards revolutionary positions under the external pressure of events. Under its existing leadership, however, the tendency was not capable of developing a stable leadership based o~ a re-elaborated revolutionary programme.

 

Both the Pablo-Mandel IS and, later, the Mandel USFI were capable of left and right zigzags; to the right from 1963-68, left from 1969-74 and then again to the right.

 

At the IS Fifth Congress (October 1957) a hardening of the position towards the Kremlin had taken place. This was a shift away from Pablo and towards Mandel, Frank and Maitan. The IS was now increasingly orienting itself towards the Algerian revolution and Pierre Frank's theses on the "Colonial Revolution" stressed the importance of the colonial world as the epicentre of world revolution.

 

Two years later the Cuban Revolution solidly confirmed the IS\in its turn away from adaptation to reform currents within metropolitan Stalinism in favour of Third World guerrilla, nationalist movements. Frank pioneered the revision of "Permanent Revolution" into a semi-automatic process whereby, as a result of the weakness of the colonial bourgeoisie, a blunt instrument was enough to cut down Third World Capitalism. This coincided exactly with the response from Cannon and Hansen to the Cuban Revolution. It was this rapprochement which broke up the SWP – Healy/Lambert non-aggression pact within the IC. The SWP could not ignore developments in Cuba and they could only analyse the overturn of property relations there by using the method that had been used for Yugoslavia i.e. Pablo's method.

 

With both the IS and the SWP undertaking identical liquidationism with regard to Castro the only remaining block to unity was Pablo and his "personal regime" in the international. However Pablo was a waning force in the IS and was greatly weakened by the defection of his Latin American lieutenant, Posadas, in 1962. Pablo did not survive the 1963 re-unification, leaving the USFI the following year.

 

Whilst the SWP's adhesion to the United Secretariat marked the acceptance of all the fundamentals of "Pabloism", the IS dropped its attempts to impose 'any discipline on the SWP. Thus, the latter's view of "internationalism" prevailed in the new formation. The political basis of the USFI is well expressed in "The Dynamics of World Revolution Today" (1963). It centres on the Third World "epicentre"; it divides World Revolution into "great ethnographical zones" each with its own sub-revolution. Within these zones, Permanent Revolution becomes an automatic process whereby the anti-imperialist and democratic struggles are driven over into socialist struggles: "continual mass movements have drawn one backward country after another into the process of permanent revolution"60.

 

The "strategy" and tactics that the USFI drew from this were characteristically chameleon-like. If in the Stalinist states they should take on the colouration of democratic reformers or "reform communists" and in Western Europe they were to take on the appearance of "centrist" social democrats or Stalinists then, in the colonial world, they became artificial petit-bourgeois populists. "The Dynamics of World Revolution Today" solemnly writes off the "industrial factory workers" as not the "main strength" of the proletariat, which is now seen as "miners, plantation hands, agricultural workers and the largely unemployed" 61. '

 

It cheerfully "admits" that Marxist theory did not forecast the radical and decisive role of the peasantry, i.e. it accepts the Stalinist slander that Trotskyism "underestimates the peasantry". It remarks that peasants, living under tribal conditions, will, "remain an ally of the proletariat throughout the whole process of permanent revolution." 6 Again "The Dynamics of World Revolution Today "asserts the possibility” of coming to power with a blunted instrument,,63. It is conceded that guerrilla warfare, on the basis of the Cuban model can "play a decisive role".

 

Thus the USFI was founded upon an aggravated repetition of the adaptation to alien class forces that had been pioneered in the period from 1948-51. The main target then was petit-bourgeois Stalinism; the new one was petit-bourgeois nationalism and the various forms of Stalinism in the colonial world; Maoism, Castroism-Guevarism etc.

 

Once again the inability of this brand of degenerate Trotskyism to prove itself a communist current, in decisive events, was demonstrated. In Ceylon the IS and then the USFI had, in the LSSP, a section with a mass following. As in Bolivia in the early 1950s,it was possible to test the USFI leaders in action. Once again it was a story of failure on the part of the section and complicity in that failure by the international leadership.

 

In Ceylon the LSSP was more like a social democratic party than a Leninist one, as regards both its structure and the consciousness of its lower cadre. Mandel himself was later to acknowledge this: "While being formally a Trotskyist party the LSSP functioned in several areas comparably to a left Social-Democratic party in a relatively 'prosperous' semi-colonial country." 64 Obviously the leaders of the FI knew this all along, but they saw no reason to drastically correct it. After all, if a left social democracy could itself project a revolutionary orientation then so could the "social democratised" LSSP.

 

Further, if in the semi-colonial countries a "blunt instrument" was sufficient for revolutionary purposes, then it would be stupid for the FI to cut itself off from the LSSP and the prestige of its electoral successes and mass base just for the sake of some of the "old Trotskyist" principles. Thus it did not matter that N.M. Perera, a leading trade unionist and MP, was clearly a reformist, with whom the Marxist centre of the LSSP had split in 1942. When the same centre wanted to re-unite with him in 1950 the proposal was given the blessing of Pablo and Mandel.

 

Throughout the 1950s the practice of the LSSP was increasingly limited to elections and trade unionism, not revolutionary agitation. In 1960 when the SLFP of the Bandaranaike family gained the largest number of seats and the LSSP lost two of their previous 12 seats, the "Marxist" leaders, Leslie Goonewardene, Colin de Silva and .Bernard Soyaa were thrown into crisis. In 1956 they had given the bourgeois SLFP (which had enjoyed widespread support amongst the peasants, whom the LSSP had largely ignored) "responsive co-operation" when it was hi government.

 

In 1960 they opted to give the new Bandaranaike government "critical support". Here again, as in Bolivia, an FI section went beyond the defence of a government, which was carrying out democratic or anti-imperialist measures against domestic or imperialist reaction, to political support for that government (albeit with "criticisms"). Only in 1961 did the IS and its World Congress call for a radical change in the political course being carried out by the LSSP, after the LSSP had voted for the SLFP's budget in 1960. This criticism was too little, too late. The failure of the IS and later the USFI to support the building of a fraction of the left in the LSSP, paved the way for the later treachery.

 

In the context of what was to happen in 1964, Pierre Frank's explanation of why the IS refused to call a left faction into being is nothing short of disgraceful. In his oily and deceitful history of the FI, he says that the left, in the persons of Edmund Samarakoddy and Bala Tampoe, "defended correct, principled positions, but in a political form that the International considered sectarian".65

 

This "sectarianism" consisted of a refusal to go peacefully along with the class collaboration being cooked up by Perera and not properly opposed by Goonewardene. Obviously too much for Trotsky's former foe, the unreconstructed opportunist Frank, to stomach. The results of the IS's refusal to give wholehearted support to the left, and the left's own failure to organise an independent faction fight, quickly followed.

 

In 1963 the LSSP formed a popular front with the Stalinists and a small party called the MEP, which was predominantly petit- bourgeois in composition, on the basis of a government programme of limited reform demands. This United Left Front, as Mandel and Frank termed it, was the policy argued for by the FI leaders. In April 1964 the USFI wrote to the LSSP: "The United Front of the left, strengthened by mass struggle and directed to the - establishment of its own political power on a genuinely socialist programme, provides a means of stemming the tide of reaction and uniting the masses and ranks of our own party for the ultimate realisation of our perspectives, Ceylon can provide another Cuba or Algeria and prove to be of even greater inspiration to revolutionary minded workers throughout the world," 66

 

The goal of the "Trotskyists" had thus become to provide the world working class with another Castro or Ben Bella! For the LSSP the choice soon became one between a popular front in government with the SLFP, or a popular front out in the cold against the SLFP. The USFI were not able to provide any principled timely guidance.

 

When mass strikes threatened to topple the SLFP government strikes in some cases led by LSSP left wingers - in the spring of 1964, the LSSP leader Perera entered into negotiations with Mrs Bandaranaike who, since her husbands' death, was leader of the SLFP. An agreement was struck, The LSSP congress voted by a big majority in favour of a deal and Perera entered the government as Finance Minister. The arrival of Pierre Frank armed with the FIs belated threat of expulsion one day before the LSSP's conference could not stop the LSSP leaders.

 

In Ceylon, as in Bolivia, Pablo, Mandel, Frank and the SWP leaders' politics were carried into life and revealed as thoroughly Menshevik in nature. The semi-colonial bourgeoisie (or an anti-imperialist wing of it) and thoroughly bourgeois nationalist parties were given "critical support" in the manner of the Stalin-Bukharin Comintern.

 

The 1966/7 "left turn" of the Castroites (OLAS, Guevara's intervention in Bolivia etc) had a dramatic effect on the USFI. By the time of its 1969 Congress the adaptation had reached the stage of espousal of guerrilla warfare as the strategy of the Third World "revolution'~ Such armed struggle was stressed "not merely as one of the aspects of the revolutionary work, but as a fundamental aspect on a continental scale." 67 In this way the whole programme of this "Fourth International" amounted to nothing more than a carbon copy of Guevarism.

 

The central and leading role of the proletariat, its tactics and methods of struggle, soviets, democratic and transitional demands, the Leninist Party, everything was thrown unceremoniously overboard. It was only the chaos that this policy wreaked in the Latin American sections, together with the failure of Guevarism and Castro's return to "orthodox" Stalinist tactics in the early 1970s that brought an end to this experiment.

 

The SWP(US) and its allies in the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency/ Faction, were able to mount many formally correct "orthodox" criticisms of this policy. The SWP and its European supporters were motivated, however, by a desire not to see the ultra-leftism associated with guerrillaism applied in the metropolitan countries. They were strengthened in their opposition by support from the Latin American USFI leaders who knew from bitter experience the suicidal consequences of Guevarist schemas.

 

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s the evidence against the 1969 decision mounted. The Argentine PRT (Combatiente) actually set up a guerrilla force, the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) in 1970.

 

It suffered terribly from state repression and evolved politically towards populism/terrorism and broke from the USFI in 1973. Similar events occurred in Bolivia. From 1972 to 1977 the USFI was divided by factional strife over the issue. Eventually, in 1979, the 11th World Congress blandly announced that "the Fourth International promoted an incorrect political orientation for several years." 68

 

In the years 1968-74, in response to the major class struggles in France, Italy and Britain, the USFI made a sharp "left" turn. But this did not escape the orbit of left centrism, that is, it saw no return to the Leninist- Trotskyist programme or tactics. From 1969, in the metropolitan imperialist countries the USFI adapted to the consciousness of the student movement under the slogan of the "New Youth Vanguard".

 

This was based on an impressionistic "theory" of the May '68 events in France; that students could act as a "detonator", that colleges and universities should become "Red Bases", that the struggle was "from the periphery to the centre." These theories only aII1iounted to an excuse for stunts among the radical petty-bourgeoisie and an adamant refusal to orient the newly radicalised youth towards the working class and its traditional parties and trade unions.

 

In essence this "leftism" was an opportunist avoidance of the need to combat reformism in the working class. The USFI sections were consequently on the sidelines of the class struggle eruptions of the early'70s (e.g. in Britain 1972-4.) It was in this period (1972-4) that the Mandel-Frank-Maitan "European" majority developed their theory of a "New Vanguard of a Mass Character." This was to be an amalgamation of the youth (students) of the late 60s with the struggles of the Italian, Spanish and British workers. It was defined, conveniently, as "the totality of forces acting independently and to the left of traditional bureaucratic leadership of the mass movement." 69

 

The "Women's Movement" was to be added later. The perspective of this vanguard was the "creation of situations of dual power." The events in Portugal in 1974-5 completely wrecked this centrist policy and revealed the political bankruptcy that had devised it. In Portugal the "new mass vanguard" of young soldiers, workers, and students certainly existed and it was towards this formation that the IC (the' 'majority" USFI section) adapted itself. This milieu was characterised by illusions in the MFA(the Armed Force Movement) particularly in its charismatic leader Carvalho. When the Socialist Party of Mario Soares, excluded from power by the CP/MFA, turned to inciting counter-revolutionary attacks on the CP in the Summer of 1975, the LCI joined a popular front in support of the left-Bonapartist 6th Provisional Government. After the fall of that government they swung to the left and became involved in the "insurrection" that was provoked in November of that year.

 

Meanwhile, the pro-SWP section in Portugal supported Soares' counter-revolutionary campaign throughout the period on the pretext of "defending democracy". Neither section was actually able to pose a consistent defence of democratic rights against both the MF A and the counter-revolution, neither could utilise the united front tactic to win the proletarian rank and file of the CP and the SF. Thus, Portugal revealed in a particularly stark fashion the bankruptcy and inveterate centrism of the USFI, even in its leftward oscillations. Their positions amounted to a complete inability, indeed unwillingness, to fight against the misleaders of the working class, whether they be Stalinists, social democrats or petit-bourgeois nationalists.

 

The shipwreck of the majority's leftist position in the mid to late '70s resulted in a turn to the right and, therefore, to a certain rapprochement with the SWP. This turn was reflected in the 1979 Congress Documents. Once again it was the more circumspect and verbally more orthodox Mandel who pulled back from the leftist phase and prepared for a new adaptationist turn towards the "traditional bureaucratic leaderships" which the earlier phase had attempted to bypass. The. banner of the 1979 Congress was adaptation to left social democracy and Eurostalinism on the one hand and to petty bourgeois nationalism (the Sandinistas) on the other.

 

The USFI leaders prepared an adaptationist response to the development of "Eurocommunism". Mandel's "Theses on Socialist Democracy" discuss the question in an entirely formal, abstract and therefore fundamentally false and centrist fashion. His starting point is not the class struggle, particularly the struggle for power, but a debate on the desirability of an "extension of democratic rights for the toilers beyond those already enjoyed under conditions of advanced bourgeois democracy". 70

 

Thus, he envisages Soviets, first and foremost, as instruments of self-administration and not as instruments of struggle. From this angle he is anxious to defend the democratic rights of all parties, including bourgeois ones, provided they "in practice respect collective property and the workers' state constitution",71

 

This utopian recipe is served up as the only way to convince workers that communism is "democratic". In this the 1979 Congress, following Mandel, obscured the whole period of civil war that precedes and follows the seizure of power. In his eagerness to soothe the democratic illusions of the western proletariat and radical petit-bourgeois, Mandel covers over that "most authoritarian thing" - the revolution. He obscures the nature of parties as organs of class combat, he obscures the class nature and limits of proletarian democracy.

 

In Nicaragua the USFI's concern for democracy, bourgeois or proletarian, is, however, conspicuous by its absence. Here, after the Sandinistas took power, the USFI unceremoniously dropped its previous programme in favour of gentle advice to the FSLN that it should follow the "Cuban Road" (a policy strongly argued against by none other than Fidel Castro himself). The USFI informed the world that "The character and history of the leadership of the FSLN ...show that it would be an error to place any a priori limits beyond which decisive sectors of the FSLN leadership cannot go as the process of permanent revolution unfolds." 72

 

For this reason the GNR government, with its bourgeois ministers was supported by the USFI. This government was clearly a popular front Le. a class collaborationist one based on a programme of capitalist reconstruction and the demobilisation of the committees and spontaneous armed militias that had formed in the anti-Somoza insurrection. The USFI and the SWP offer, at best, a "Cuban" resolution to the situation. That is a controlled Stalinist overturn of property relations after the democratic workers' and peasants' organs of struggle have been converted into bureaucratic tools of the FSLN. There would be no question of proletarian democracy or of a healthy workers' state.

 

Thus the USFI confirmed once again that it had no programmatic alternative to the Castroite Stalinist programme. It therefore followed that the USFI intervened directly in Nicaragua to prevent the formation of a "Trotskyist" party, provoking a split with the forces of Moreno's Bolshevik Fraction on the eve of the 1979 World Congress.

 

In summation, the consequence of the ingrained centrism of the leadership of the USFI has been the dissolution of the principles of a disciplined combat party and of democratic centralism. The national section and the international itself are loose coalitions of permanent factionalists. In every serious pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situation the "sections of the International" have failed to maintain any strategic or organisational unity (Portugal, Iran, Nicaragua). The USFI sections systematically adapt to petit-bourgeois forces within and without the workers' movement. In the trade unions they baulk at the task of organising a communist-led movement of the base, of the rank and file, against the trade union bureaucrats of left and right.

 

The term "class struggle tendency" becomes a cover for a political bloc with the "left" elements of the bureaucracy and an alibi for not raising a communist action programme for the transformation of the unions and the throwing out of the bureaucrats. With regard to movements of the oppressed: women, nationalities, blacks and immigrants, gays, the USFI advocates "autonomous movements". It thus advocates "all class", i.e. class collaborationist movements, and dissociates itself from the struggle for proletarian and communist leadership in these struggles. It rejects the perspective of a party-led mass working class women's movement or rank and file movement in the trade unions. Furthermore it adapts to the petit-bourgeois ideologies within these spheres and struggles.

 

As we have seen neither the IC nor any of its principal components constituted a revolutionary opposition to the Pablo led IS.

 

They constituted one of the degenerating fragments of world Trotskyism, not a force for principled regeneration. Certain groupings today claim that the IC in 1953 did represent, albeit in a partial and inadequate manner an attempt to regenerate Trotskyism. Further, they would argue that the "IC Tradition" represents the continuity of Trotskyism, not withstanding the criticisms that might now be made of that tradition with hindsight. Not surprisingly it is groups emerging from or at some point involved with, the IC tradition that hold to such positions the British WSL, the iSt, groupings within the OCRFI/FI OCR) tradition etc. These judgements stem from a refusal to recognise that "Trotskyism': if it means anything, is the continuity of revolutionary communism. The formal adherence to dogma that characterised the IC was not revolutionary communism; in tactics, strategy and programme the IC groupings subverted communism.

 

The first thing to note about the "IC Tradition" is that it is a myth. It simply does not exist. The IC was never a coherent, programmatically united and democratically organised tendency. In the name of "orthodox Trotskyism" which was defined at the purely abstract level of being in favour of the building of Trotskyist parties (something the "Pabloites" had never had any real difficulty in accepting and articulating) - the IC groups split the Fl without a political fight in the sections or at the scheduled World Congress.

 

Apart from the SWP's Open Letter" and a handful of documents from the French and the Americans against "Pabloite Revisionism" - all of which actually centre on conjunctural events and do not draw up a political balance sheet of the method and emergence of "Pabloism" - no major documents of the IC were produced in 1953 or for a long time after. Several short resolutions were produced in 1954 and 1955 on Vietnam and Algeria, but that was all. The large sections of the IC- the SWP, the French and the British-gave no central direction to the smaller groups in Canada, Chile, New Zealand, Argentina (Moreno's FOR), Iceland, Switzerland, Greece and the Chinese exiles. The French, and then the British held the secretaryship but were unable or unwilling to galvanise the IC into active life as an international organisation.

 

In fact, the IC's lack of democratic centralism, or even a common internal or external organ, resulted in its sections being, in reality, national sects which developed along their own lines and adapted to the peculiarities of their respective countries on the basis of the Pablo/Mandel method. The smaller groups tended to suffer political colonisation by one or other of the larger ones; the Latin Americans by the SWP, the Europeans by either the British section (Socialist Labour League SLL - after 1959), or the French PCI (OCI after 1966, PCI again in 1982!). The SWP, the group with the largest resources published only six international discussion bulletins in ten years and "led" the IC much in the same way that it had "led" the Fl after Trotsky's death.

 

There was only one IC congress whilst the SWP .were members. It was held in Britain in 1958. On behalf of the SWP, Farrell Dobbs attended but refused to participate on a political basis. By this time the SWP was manoeuvring to cut loose from the IC and reunify with the IS . The Healy group produced no major attack on the politics of Pabloism until 1957 with W. Sinclair's (Bill Hunter) "Under a Stolen Flag". This belated reply to the Pabloites' analysis of Stalinism repeats the need for political revolution, warns against making concessions to the bureaucracy, but fails completely to trace the roots of Pablo's analysis of Stalinism. The failure to do this later allowed the SLL to accommodate to the Chinese Stalinists during the Cultural Revolution and sowed the seeds of Healy's support for the Mao wing of the Chinese bureaucracy. By this time the SWP, hungry for unity, had ceased criticising the IS publicly at all. Indeed public polemic was halted in June 1954!

 

Thus the "IC Tradition" as such cannot be said to have existed as a coherent body of politics in the 1950s at all. To all those who point to this non-existent tradition as the "continuity of Trotskyism" we throw back the question - in what documents, theses or positions?

 

The incoherent nature of the IC was demonstrated by the fact that a principal leader, Cannon, re-opened discussions with Pablo and the IS (via the LSSP) in 1954 (seven months after the split). He wrote to Goonewardene in May 1954 that "there.. . . . is still a chance" for reunification if only the world congress were postponed 7 3. That is, reunification was now only blocked by an organisational consideration.

 

This, despite the fact that the 1953 split was described thus, in the "Open Letter" "The lines of cleavage between Pablo's revisionism and orthodox Trotskyism are so deep that no compromise is possible either politically or organisationally." 74 In a word, this was rhetoric purely for public consumption. By 1956, Cannon and the SWP were again pushing for unity. In 1957, Cannon proposed a "sweeping organisational compromise, which would permit the formal unification of the international movement before the dispute is settled. This organisational compromise cannot be left to the chance decision of a Congress." 75

 

In fact, from early 1957, while Cannon and the SWP had nor changed their mind about Pablo's intolerable regime, they were drawing closer to the Mandel/Frank/Maitan axis, whose greater "formal orthodoxy" and verbal anti-Stalinism was gaining ground in the IS after the Hungarian revolution. This event rudely disturbed illusions of an uninterrupted process of reforms within Stalinism.

 

Khruschev and company were starkly revealed as the butchers of the Hungarian proletariat; Nagy and Gomulka as the treacherous misleaders of powerful political revolutionary movements. This did not, however, prevent the IS from describing the Gomulka-ites as "a centrist tendency evolving to the Left".

 

The triumph of Mandel's "harder" positions convinced Cannon that a deal could be struck. This, however, would have seriously endangered the separate national projects of Lambert and Healy who, consequently now revived their interest in the fight against "Pabloism". It was this Cannon opens the door to unity with the Pabloites in 1954 that prompted Healy to print Hunter's "Under a Stolen Flag" which declared that" the gulf between Pabloite revisionism and ourselves grows wider and wider.76

 

Healy pushed for a conference of the IC. When it took place in 1958, the one thing the SWP did ensure was that it did not proclaim itself "The Fourth World Congress of the FI" as the British proposed.

 

What did unite the IC groups in the '50s was their enmity towards Pablo and their resistance to his attempts to interfere with their national tactics. The Lambert La Verite group had been expelled by him in 1952. The British and Americans had witnessed his agents at work trying to foist a Stalinist oriented perspective on their organisations, at a time when they were working with union "progressives" in the US and left reformists in Britain. They all saw him as a challenge to the "constituted" national leaderships - Cannon, Healy and Lambert.

 

Thus the SWP talked endlessly of the "cult" of Pablo. Gerry Healy explained to the SLL in 1966 that:

 

"Then, in 1951, came Pablo". 77 Actually Healy had, at that time been working closely with Pablo for at least five years. The interminable series of splits that were later to take place within the IC arose because there was no common political basis to this "anti-Pabloism”. Each group had their own view of what the "essence of Pabloism" was. For the SWP, Pabloism equalled the "liquidation" of the party that is the organisational dissolution of the party. Whatever else Cannon proved himself willing to junk, he was determined to hang onto "the party". The problem for the SWP arose when the IS did not liquidate the FI or its sections. The barrier to unity was effectively removed.

 

For the Healy group the essence of Pabloism was an ever changing variety of things. It was capitulation to Stalinism, failure to build parties, an "objectivist" view of the revolution. All of these assessments changed as the Healyites own activities and political positions changed, often into what had once been characterised as "Pabloite" by Healy.

 

Thus, Healy was driven to discover the "roots" of Pabloism. His post1959 discoveries concentrated on the question of "method" and "dialectical materialism".

 

Building on Trotsky's strictures to the SWP to fight against pragmatism, Healy developed an abstract "philosophical" critique of Pabloism and of the Americans' later submission to it. This enabled him to turn his back on questions of programme and tactics where his own record was so compromised that it would not bear any serious inspection.

 

In 1966 he argued: "The differences between revisionism and revolutionary Marxism today boils itself down to the differences between idealism and dialectical materialism and not what this individual or that individual is supposed to have done".78 Very convenient for Healy! His "method" enabled him to wipe his own slate clean. But it was a far cry from Trotsky's method which always started with and returned to, experience, the supreme criterion of human knowledge.

 

For the French, the Lambert-led QCI, Pabloism was in essence neither liquidation of the party, nor a wrong philosophical method. Their initial and abiding hostility to Pabloism lay in their Stalinophobia. In their most refined definition of Pabloism, the OCI declared that Pablo's "formal" Marxism and his mechanical application of Trotsky's perspectives "had its finished expression in the conception of a finished Fourth International and parties, endowed with a pryramid style hierarchy, with world congresses, of ultra-centralist status, which had only to strengthen itself progressively". 79

 

This definition - a systematisation and' a defence of the IC's history of complete federalism - was elaborated, as usual, to suit a factional purpose. The OCI had no intentions of falling under the "democratic centralist" control of an SLL-dominated IC in 1966.

 

In all three groupings we find a shifting analysis of "Pabloism". The definitions produced were virtually all motivated by conjunctural, factional considerations. Of course there were a number of shared assumptions. The ridiculous idea that all evil stemmed from the person of Pablo, and that this was due to his petit-bourgeois class origins was a common thread inside the IC.

 

This was merely a useful means of diverting attention from the programmatic issues at stake. We assess the nature of somebody's political positions first and then deduce and demonstrate the class origins of those positions. This was how Trotsky dealt with the Burnham/Shachtman faction. The IC inverted Trotsky's approach, yelling petit- bourgeois at Pablo first, and giving his political positions only scant attention second.

 

In sum, we can see that "anti-Pabloism" is a meaningless term, an unscientific, non-political term. To assess the worth of the IC, therefore, it is necessary to look at the separate politics of its constituent parts.

 

As we have shown, from 1954 onwards the SWP lapsed from a position of fighting the IS, to one of fighting to re-unify the IC with the IS. Only organisational considerations were raised as an obstacle to early reunification. Ignoring the supposed political issues of the 1953 split, the SWP hagiographer Les Evans explained: "By 1956 their public line (i.e. the IS's -Eds) became very close to that of the International Committee, and the leadership of the SWP concluded that, on the political positions on which the two sides stood, continuation of the split could not be justified. It was time to consider re-unification".80

 

Following this "turn" by the SWP, Joseph Hansen carried out pioneering work to show that the SWP could outdo the IS in its capitulation to Stalinism. In 1958 he crisply summed up what the IS had obfuscated with sophistry - namely that the political revolution was merely a series of reforms. In his "Proposed Roads to Soviet Democracy" he wrote: "It is much closer to reality to view the programme of political revolution as the total series of reforms, gained through militant struggle, culminating in the transfer of power to the workers".81 Hansen really got his teeth into this theme after the Cuban revolution. Empirically registering the existence of an economy which was in essentials identical to Eastern Europe in Cuba, and noting the absence of a "Stalinist" leadership in the July 26th Movement, Hansen concluded that Cuba was a healthy workers' state.

 

Strong on pragmatism, but not too hot with dialectics, Hansen decided that there was no need for a Trotskyist party in Cuba, that Castro was an "unconscious Trotskyist" and that, therefore, the programme of political revolution did not apply to Cuba. We have dealt elsewhere with the Cuban revolution and Hansen's analysis of it.82 Suffice it to say that Hansen "overlooked" the absence of independent working class action and organisation in the Cuban revolution - soviets, a real workers' militia, workers' control in the planned economy, etc. He overlooked the stages of the Cuban revolution during which Castro became assimilated to Stalinism, he overlooked the demobilisation of the working class consciously carried out by Castro after the Bay of Pigs invasion. In short, he held a completely anti-Trotskyist view of the Cuban revolution.

 

This particular piece of revisionism not only cleared the way to re-unification with the IS in 1963. It provided a theoretical justification for the guerrilla-ist turn of the USFI in the late 1960s (despite Hansen's opposition to that turn). Today it has brought the SWP to the threshold of an abandonment of even the trappings of formal "Trotskyism".

 

Attacks on the theory of Permanent Revolution by Doug Jenness, a leader of the SWP, is a sign of things to come. The SWP is lurching ever closer to crossing into the Stalinist camp via the "Cuban road".

 

By 1963, with agreement on Cuba and the "Dynamics of World Revolution Today", the SWP quickly and unceremoniously cut loose from Healy and Lambert. Cannon, who had praised Healy's Labour Party work in 1962 was denouncing that same work as "Oehlerite" in 1963. A tirade against ultra-leftism was launched, and the United Secretariat of the Fourth International was formed.

 

The history of the IC after the desertion of the SWP in 1963 to form the USFI, and the history of the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCRFI - CORQI) after the split between Lambert and Healy in no way represents the continuity of the Fourth International of Trotsky. It was not a more healthy current than the USFI. The topic at the heart of the split with the SWP - Cuba - was itself inauspicious. Healy and Lambert were unable to differ in method from the Hansen-Mandel analysis and were, therefore, forced simply to deny that an overturn in property relations had taken place in Cuba.

 

Healy and Slaughter insisted that Cuba was state capitalist, and Castro a bourgeois bonaparte like Nasser or Peron. To defend this curious and inconsistent position, they borrowed "normative" arguments from the new class theorists, and hid them under a barrage of Hegelianised "dialectics". The OCI, on the other hand, decided that a "phantom bourgeoisie" held power in Cuba, via Castro.

 

Such positions prevented any serious or searching analysis of the roots of the degeneration of the FI after the war. The SLL and the OCI, therefore, built into their politics different elements of the 1948-5 I revisionism. Whilst the IC was united only by the hostility to the USFI, and expressed this in a vacuous "anti-Pabloism", the two key organisations within it, the OCI and the SLL, were politically very different organisations which were moving in different directions.

 

Each filled the vacuum of "anti-Pabloism" with its own content. To understand the later turns of these organisations, to understand the entire process of their degeneration, it is necessary to trace their history prior to the split.

 

The Healy group, after the 1953 split, carried on for a short period with their own version of entryism sui generis, around the paper "Socialist Outlook". From 1954 when the paper was banned, Healy had no problems in switching his group into the Tribune milieu, selling Tribune until 1957 when the group supported the launch of "The Newsletter", supposedly an independent newspaper.

 

After the Hungarian revolution, defections from the British CP and the creation of loose socialist forums provided Healy with a new audience and recruits. After 1957, the Newsletter also served to rally a number of rank and file trade union militants around it. The theoretical journal "Labour Review" attracted some able intellectuals. Originally, Healy had insisted that both publications were not "sectional Trotskyist publications". This was in line with his earlier "deep entry" project.

 

The prospect of recruitment from the CP, however, modified this perspective and pushed the Healy group to more of an independent orientation. In 1959 the Socialist Labour League (SLL) was founded as an independent group, although 100 of its 159 founding members were still in the Labour Party. A relatively open and pugnacious campaign followed in the Labour Party's new youth organisation, the Young Socialists. It was led by SLL members, and resulted in the closing down of the YS and mass expulsions in 1964.

 

The same period had seen the SLL carrying out active trade union work, attracting 700 delegates to a rank and file conference in November 1959. The SLL also grew as a result of its active intervention within the CND. Here it dropped criticisms of the "disarmament" slogan in order to recruit, despite having levelled sharp criticisms of the IS in 1954 for having supported similar disarmament slogans.

 

By 1963, flushed with success, the Healy group returned to catastrophist perspectives of the type that Pablo had pioneered in 1950.

 

The difference lay in the conclusion drawn from the imminent collapse.

 

Healy substituted for Pablo's and his own former deep entry, a hysterical "third period" style fetishisation of "building the party". At its Fifth Annual Conference in 1963, the SLL Perspectives declared: "The problems of the British economy are so acute, and the relations between capital and its agents so full of contradictions, that the problem of power is in fact continually posed, provided there can be built a leadership".83 This involves a total confusion of the objective and the subjective.

 

A revolutionary situation in which the question of power is posed can materialise without a revolutionary leadership having been built in time to resolve the question in a communist direction. Furthermore, the suggestion that there was an immediate possibility of a revolutionary situation developing in Britain in 1963 was laughable. No matter, both parts of this formulation served to justify a dramatic turn towards "building the leadership" - an exaggerated party fetishism that was justified by the "impending catastrophe". The fact that reality repeatedly confounded this perspective was overcome by "philosophy".

 

That which had exorcised Pablo proved useful in exorcising reality from the SLL's perspectives documents. Such philosophy 'saved' the SLL from allowing "surface reality" (i.e. the continuing long boom and its effects on the working class) to obscure its "understanding" of the impending revolutionary crisis out of which the SLL would be ready to lead the workers. Hence the daily paper, hyper-activism and a huge turnover in membership.

 

Error began to turn into paranoia. Bad philosophy not only meant mistakes, it resulted in its adherents becoming enemies of the SLL, and therefore the raw material for...police infiltration. The SLL's/WRP's ludicrous elevation of "philosophy" in the name of party building, to a level way beyond the real world, inevitably produced not only sectarianism, but also twisted fantasy: "From time to time it is possible for the method of subjectivism and gossip to make an impact on cynics and tired refugees from the class struggle, but this is purely temporary...It is also very easy to exploit those tendencies who slander and gossip. The police do this constantly. They simply send agents into these groups (reference to the Cliff and Grant groups - Eds) who will be prepared to join heartily in condemning the SLL...It is simply that the irresponsible anti SLL factional climate in their group assists the police".84 By a sleight of hand, opposition to the SLL becomes assistance to the bourgeois state - and thus absolves the SLL from political debate with its opponents.

 

The SLL's catastrophism led inexorably to pronounced sectarian practice. From 1964 the SLL's perspectives were coupled with a profound misunderstanding of the socio-economic roots of reformism and a grossly schematic view of the "betrayals" of the Labour and trade union leaders. These leaders were presented as being constantly on the verge of completely discrediting themselves. As a result the party had to be fully ready to take over, and could be built by exposure (i.e. by purely literary means) of those leaders. The united front was rejected on the spurious grounds that it was only possible between mass parties.

 

They defined it as "a relationship between mass workers' parties of a temporary character for the purpose of winning the masses to the communist party".85 This was a narrow, one sided and false view of the united front. It led directly to the abandonment of organising a rank and file movement in the unions. In place of this, the SLL built the All Trades Union Alliance as its very own trade union organisation that put on impressive rallies, attracted unsuspecting militants and tried to rope them into the party.

 

This sectarianism was also extended to the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC). By the late 1960s, the VSC was mobilising thousands on the streets against US imperialism's slaughter of the Vietnamese. The masters of the dialectic, however, understood better the real nature of such demonstrations. In his "Balance Sheet of Revisionism", SLL/WRP "theoretician" Slaughter declared: "The content of the October 27th demonstration, the essential aim of the VSC and its political directors was, remains, the rallying together of some alternative to the building of the Socialist Labour League as the revolutionary Marxist party, and its daily paper". 86

 

Such sectarian hysterics did not stand in the way of profoundly opportunist politics. The Healyites supported the Mao wing of the Chinese bureaucracy during the "Cultural Revolution", They refused to recognise the struggle as one between wings of the bureaucracy with the masses being demagogically used as a stage army. After the Arab/Israeli war, the SLL began to venerate the "Arab Revolution" as part of their factional struggle with the OC!. By the 1970s, this veneration had turned the SLL/WRP and its press into the cheerleaders of the national bourgeoisies in Syria, Iraq, and most of all, Libya.

 

After the Iranian revolution' in 1978/9, the WRP's newspaper, "Newsline", became a constant apologist for the butcher Khomeini. The evolution of the SLL was a living proof of Trotsky's understanding of sectarianism, divorced from reality, leading to extreme factional irritability. This led, in the mid 1970s, to a full-scale conspiracy theory, which included an explanation of all the major problems of the FI as being the result of the activities of GPU and FBI agents in the SWP(US).

 

The La Verite group, later OCI, now known as the PCI, gave its own particular stamp to "anti-Pabloism", Under Lambert's leadership, the French group developed a thorough-going Stalinophobia, as an antipode to Pablo's Stalinophile revisionism. This was combined with a remarkable softness towards social democracy. Under the pressure of the Cold War, they turned to (and to this day remain active within) the anti-Communist union federation, Force Ouvriere.

 

Despite their "anti-Pabloism", the OCI capitulated to non revolutionary communist forces in the anti-imperialist struggle. During the Algerian war of independence, the Lambertists supported the MNA of Messali Hadj. The French inspired the 1955 resolution of the IC which declared: "In the person of Messali Hadj, the oppressed and exploited of the world possess a living symbol of this (anti imperialist/working class- Eds) struggle". 7 They supported the MNA against the Moscow-supported petit bourgeois nationalist FLN, on the grounds that the MNA had a proletarian orientation.

 

La Verite offered to defend "the genuine Algerian revolutionaries against FLN killers". 88 Their "anti-Pabloism" thus led the OCI to support a group of vacillating nationalists around Hadj against the more consistent nationalists of the FLN. The truth was that the MNA soon became a pawn in the hands of the French government against the FLN and the national struggle. The MNA ended up in a block with the OAS. Their "working class" orientation, presented by the Lambertists as a token of their revolutionism, did not prevent them from betraying the anti-imperialist struggle.

 

The Lambertists belatedly were forced themselves to admit this. However, it led them into a sectarian position with regard to anti-imperialist struggles. They refused to call for the victory of the NLF in its battle with American imperialism in the Vietnam war. In the 1967 Arab/Israeli war, the OCI condemned both sides as bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, and took a dual defeatist position.

 

A product of the OCI's Stalinophobia and softness on social democracy, was its chronic tendency to substitute democratic programmes for the Transitional Programme. In France after de Gaulle's 1958 coup, Lambert advanced "Defense des Acquis" - a strictly democratic programme. In the colonial and semi-colonial world, the Constituent Assembly demand was turned into a strategic demand. In the 1980s this demand was advanced in a potentially counter-revolutionary way in the context of the political revolution in Poland. In Nicaragua after 1979 it was used as the central slogan, at the expense of demands focusing on building soviets and the struggle for workers' power.

 

Furthermore, the OCI/PCI has, in a number of cases, supported forces of reaction against Stalinism. In 1969, it refused to support the CP Presidential candidate who was then the left's main candidate against Pompidou. In 1980, they supported the pro-imperialist Mullah-led Afghan rebels against the PDPA/Soviet troops.

 

Flowing from these positions is the transformation of the United Front into a strategy. The OCI/PCI calls for the "unity" of the workers' parties, for a CP/SP government, which they characterise as a workers' government, for class against class. However, by using these slogans in a strategic: sense, the OCI/PCI present them in purely literary terms. The "workers' government" and united front slogans bear no relation to working class action. They are passive slogans and can lead to abstentionism.

 

Thus, where unity in action was posed in the stormy days of May 1968, the OCI raised class unity slogans as an alternative to joining the battles against the state. On the night of the barricades, the OCI held a meeting and decided to march to convince the students not to continue fighting. When the students refused, the OCI marched off, consoling themselves with chants of working class unity.

 

This policy was an equal and opposite response to the SLL's abandonment of the united front. Dramatically opposite, it was equally removed from a revolutionary communist position. Thus the OCl's Central Committee- declared in 1971 of the united front: "It is a strategic line in the sense that it is always (that is, independent of circumstances, relationship of forces, tactical considerations in the strict sense of the word) present in a revolutionary party".89

 

Finally, the OCl's inveterate hostility to any centralism in the IC indicates their essentially "national Trotskyist" outlook. Using the pretext that the FI was destroyed by Pabloism - a discovery only announced at the Third Congress of the IC in 1966 - the Lambertists insisted that democratic centralism had no place in the IC, as it was not the FI.

 

They admitted the existence of federalism, arguing: "The SLL has had its own international activity, so has the OCI. Germany and Eastern Europe have remained- the "private hunting grounds" of the QCI in co-operation with the Hungarian organisation".90

 

They wanted to keep things that way so as not to come under SLL control, and keep their channels open to the "Pabloite" USFI.

 

Undoubtedly, it was Healy who led the IC until the late 1960s and imposed the SLL's views upon its public pronouncements. Lambert was increasingly opposed to Healy and- Banda as they inclined more and more towards Third Worldism. Lambert himself would have preferred to reject the Arab revolution in favour of accommodation to Zionism (recognition of the" self-determination" of the Jewish workers). Lambert, to boost himself, sought to bring into the IC Guillermo Lora's POR of Bolivia.

 

Healy at first stalled the 4th Congress of the IC, and then staged a split at the International Youth Rally at Essen. Healy seized on the pretext of Lora's concessions to the CP in the Popular Assembly and the two groups engaged in a ludicrous argument over whether dialectical materialism or the transitional programme was the golden calf to be worshipped by the IC faithful: "Is, or is not, the transitional programme of the FI the highest expression of Marxism?", asked Lambert. 91 After the 1971 split, the IC existed solely as a backyard to the SLL (WRP after 1973),whilst the OCI set up the loose, federal OCRFI, rechristened the Fourth International (International Centre of Reconstruction) after a failed fusion with the Moreno split from the USFI.

 

The Transitional Programme of 1938 was not re-elaborated to meet the tasks of the post-war period. It was however revised piecemeal and, by 1951, systematically in a series of theses and documents which were accepted by the whole International. None of the breaks and splits from 1953 onwards has disavowed these revisions or traced to its roots the centrism into which the FI collapsed.

 

The revolutionary, programmatic continuity of the FI was decisively broken. The task of developing a new programme based on the fundamental doctrine and method of the 1938 programme is a task which directly faces us. Only on this basis can a new Leninist-Trotskyist International be founded.

 

 

 

Chapter Four: After the splits the splinters, 1961-1983

 

 

 

Since the early 1960s various splits from the IC and USFI have attempted to found international tendencies. The slogans of each tendency with regard to the Fourth International differed, but all shared a fundamental error. The calls to "reconstruct", "reunify" or even "for the rebirth of" the Fourth International, were all based on the premise that the continuity of Trotskyism had been safeguarded by one of the two sides in the 1953 split. Thus, each tendency inevitably defended the tradition that they had emerged from up to the point at which they broke from it.

 

None were prepared to radically re-evaluate these traditions. Calls for "reconstruction" etc., therefore, were calls for a return to one or other post-1953 tradition. Yet those who will not learn from the errors of the past are condemned to repeat them, often in the manner of Marx's famous dictum. Without tracing the errors of the epigones to their roots in the post-war programmatic collapse, no basis for a lasting break with "Pabloism" and "Healyism" existed.

 

Thus all attempts to "reconstruct" or "reunify" the Fourth International were calls on the existing degenerate fragments to return to their practice prior to the emergence of the particular tendency in question. Even the apparently more far-reaching call for "the rebirth of the FI" put forward by the Spartacist League (US), was an appeal for the reincarnation of an already degenerate (post-l 951) FI.

 

Not surprisingly, despite making valuable contributions on specific questions and despite offering valid, if partial, criticisms of the IC and USFI, all of the tendencies to emerge since the sixties have failed in their attempts at "reconstruction".

 

All of them have been hamstrung by their failure to understand the nature of the programmatic tasks that face authentic Trotskyists in the struggle for a new International. In this section we will deal with the main splits from the IC and the USFI. The purpose of examining these tendencies is to demonstrate why the failure to take on the key task of re-elaborating the Trotskyist Programme as the basis of a refounded Trotskyist International has meant that these tendencies have been unable to transcend the centrism of their parent organisations. We cannot here deal with every grouping that claims to be Trotskyist. However, in dealing with the principal splits we will demonstrate the failures that need to be avoided in the construction of an international tendency.

 

The earliest major split from the IC was the group later to become the international Spartacist tendency. Originating in the SWP(US) as the Revolutionary Tendency (R T) in 1961, the Spartacist grouping saw itself initially as the defender of IC orthodoxy inside the SWP.

 

The group centred on a number of ex-Shachtmanite youth around lames Robertson, Shane Mage and Tim Wohlforth. It emerged in opposition to the Dobbs-Hansen SWP leadership over the question of the Cuban Revolution. While it recoiled in horror from the SWP's liquidationist positions on Cuba, the RT did not develop a coherent alternative to them. Wohlforth, the author of the "Theory of Structural Assimilation" - the only serious attempt to look at the pre-1951 FI positions critically - was later to join Healy in regarding Cuba as state capitalist. Robertson and the Spartacists insisted, in an idealist fashion, that the Cuban workers' state had been ushered in by a "petit bourgeois government" (the Castroites) who, from 1959-60 presided over a state, the class character of which was indeterminate. Such a standpoint in Cuba would have left Trotskyists without an operative programme (for soviets and a workers' militia) in this period.

 

The RT grouping itself was soon to split under the impact of Hansen's bureaucratic onslaught on it. Robertson linked the SWP's positions on Cuba to a series of errors the party was committing. He argued that it was necessary to characterise the SWP as centrist ,and did so in the document "The Centrism of the SWP and the Tasks of the Minority." This produced a rupture with Wohlforth and Healy. Hitherto Healy had seen the RT as a means of exercising pressure on the SWP leadership, thus preventing it from decamping to the IS. As such Healy could not tolerate the Robertson group characterising the party he wanted to keep in the IC, as centrist. Healy's loyal agent Wohlforth therefore split with the RT and even supported its bureaucratic expulsion. The document on the reorganisation by Healy of the Tendency in 1963 argued:

 

"The tendency must recognise that the SWP is the main instrument for the realisation of socialism in the US....The tendency must not make premature characterisations of the leadership of the SWP, except those, such as Weiss and Swabeck, who have clearly revealed their Pabloism in theory and practice “.....The tendency shall dissolve and shall re-establish itself on the basis of the preceding points." 92

 

Wohlforth himself was, thereafter, to find himself outside the SWP after the 1963 split in the IC.

 

Clearly the Robertson group were correct to characterise the politics of the SWP as centrist, though they were over ten years late in their dating of this collapse. Hansen's line on Cuba represented a centrist capitulation par excellence but it was entirely of a piece with the 1948 capitulation to Tito.

 

Healy absolutely refused to make even such a belated characterisation. The political questions involved were, as always, entirely subordinated to factional manoeuvres. The claim by Wohlforth that to characterise the SWP as centrist was to abandon its "proletarian kernel" was pure demagogy. Latter day attempts such as that by John Lister in his "Spartacist Truth Kit" 93 to suggest that this concern for the workers was at the heart of Healy and Wohlforth's attitude to the SWP, tell us more about Lister's unbroken links with Healyism than about the history of the events in question.

 

Apart from the fact that the SWP had almost entirely lost its worker base, was a much depleted organisation whose only left elements were youth won from the petit bourgeois radical milieu, political characterisation is not an optional extra made or withheld for diplomatic purposes. Trotsky had a thousand times more reason for seeking to win the proletarian kernel of the Russian CP and the sections of the Comintern. It did not prevent him from clearly characterising the Stalin-Bukharin leadership as centrist.

 

Healist position (and Lister's defence of it) is entirely consistent with the USFI's current practice. "Centrism" is the forbidden word - utter it and all discussion stops. Thus these gentlemen confirm Trotsky's observation "centrism does not like to be called by its name." The centrist "views with hatred the revolutionary principle: state what is. He is inclined to substitute for a principled policy personal manoeuvring and petty organisational diplomacy" .94

 

However correct the Robertson group were in relation to their characterisation of the SWP they were profoundly wrong in their attitude to the IC. The Robertson group, which became the Spartacist League in 1964, saw its place as being within the "orthodox", and increasingly sectarian, SLL-dominated IC. Thus it failed, not only on Cuba but also on the question of the IC, to develop a fully rounded programmatic alternative to the degenerate fragments of Trotskyism.

 

Its call for the "rebirth" of the Fourth International was thus founded upon an acceptance of the political method of the SLL and the QCI as good coin. The Spartacists were not completely uncritical of the SLL and I but their criticisms were premised on the belief that there was a qualitative difference between the IC and the IS. Thus Robertson's remarks to the IC conference in April 1966 stated: "We are present at this conference on the basis of our fundamental agreement with the International Resolution of the IC; moreover, the report of Comrade Slaughter was for us solidly communist, unified throughout by revolutionary determination." 95

 

This sycophancy to Healy's chief intellectual hack availed them little. The conference ended with Healy expelling the SL from the IC, in essence because of the polite criticisms of the IC raised by Robertson.

 

The failure to go beyond a negative response to "Pabloism" over Cuba, and their loyalty to the IC, prevented the Spartacists from developing towards revolutionary communism. Their errors became codified into a bad method, marked henceforth by a rabid and increasingly rightwing sectarianism. The Spartacist conception of a "fighting propaganda group" is passive and propagandist in nature and therefore sectarian. It is most precisely expressed as follows: "We recognise that a currently embryonic party organisation must necessarily constitute itself in the form of a 'fighting propaganda group' in order by destroying ostensibly revolutionary organisations, to initiate and for drive forward a regroupment process in order thereby to build up one's own organisation." Combined with the demolition squad approach to rival tendencies is the most utter abstention from the class struggle or the organisations of the labour movement. The fig-leaf of a little "exemplary" work is maintained but even here it is stressed that this is not real leadership of real struggles.

 

"In doing so the character of this work must always be regarded as exemplary, rejecting out of hand any voluntaristic notion of intervening as a propaganda group into all the daily struggles of the working class inasmuch as this would lead to dissipating one's own forces and to liquidating the programme." 96

 

There are two distortions of the concept of a fighting propaganda group here. First, the fighting propaganda group is portrayed as a stage during which the main task is to "destroy" other groups. Note the choice of words. The Spartacists seek not to win leftward moving centrists to communism, but to destroy them. This perspective leads characteristically to politically disloyal manoeuvres and provocations. In place of political debate, political combat and the destruction of opponents' political arguments, Spartacist groups have engaged in a vicious circle of disruptions, physical confrontations, occupations of meeting rooms and pickets of other tendencies' events. The iSt has consequently developed from a sect into a bizarre cult, well on the road to auto destruction.

 

Integrally linked to this mission to "destroy" all other tendencies is their adamant refusal to get involved in what they consider to be "minor" struggles of the working class. Their tasks are conceived of in rigid stages; first destroy the left groups, then and only then, turn to the class.

 

Thus, although as an organisation they do intervene in strikes they consider to be of national importance, .individual members (unless they are carrying out exemplary work) abstain from any union activity at work. During the Health Strike in Britain in 1982 their members in the NHS studiously refused to get involved in any activity around the strike. This story is repeated in many other instances. The Spartacists' notion of a fighting propaganda group is a thoroughly abstentionist one. The fighting is only with left groups, not with the class enemy and its agents in the mass organisations of the working class, and the propaganda bears no relation to the key struggles of the proletariat.

 

The fighting propaganda group is not, for the Spartacists, a vehicle for programmatic re-elaboration (they do not do any), a vehicle for carrying focussed propaganda into the working class (they de-prioritise such propaganda) or a painful but necessary step which communists strive to outgrow (they revel in remaining a propaganda group). The Spartacist conception of a fighting propaganda group is not ours. Ours is rooted in the methods of Lenin and Trotsky 97. Their conception is alien to the communist tradition.

 

The content of the Spartacists' propaganda is, as we have said, mainly abuse. Where they do have distinct positions the Spartacists show a complete lack of understanding of the basic tenets of the Marxist programme.

 

The Spartacists have developed scandalously right-wing positions on the national question in backward countries. They reject Lenin's theory of imperialism (tacitly) and its understanding of oppressed and oppressor nations. In its place they have put concepts such as states consisting of "interpenetrated peoples". The national rights of all "interpenetrated peoples" weigh equally for the Spartacists. Thus in Northern Ireland the Protestant community are "interpenetrated" with the Catholics.

 

Their "national" rights have to be carefully protected. The Spartacists are therefore unsparing in their criticisms of the Republicans' "sectarian" violence. Attacks in which civilians are killed, such as the Ballykelly pub bombing, are described as "indefensible." 98 This position ignores the fact that one section of these "interpenetrated peoples" - the Catholics -have been imprisoned in a pro-imperialist, artificially imposed statelet. They are subjected to pro-imperialist rule with the complicity of the other people - the Protestants. The national rights of the whole of the Irish people have been subverted by the creation of the Northern statelet. Those fighting to smash that state - the Republicans - despite the inadequacies of their programme, should be supported unconditionally, though critically, by Marxists in Britain. They cannot be equated with the agents of imperialism in the North, the Protestants, as just another side of the same sectarian coin.

 

The concept of "interpenetrated peoples" is little more than a gloss for the Spartacists ' abstentionism in the conflict between the oppressed and their imperialist oppressors. The Spartacists, not surprisingly, apply this method to Israel. The Zionist state becomes a case of "interpenetrated peoples" - the Hebrew masses and the Palestinians - whose national rights have to be respected. The blacks and the Boer Afrikaaners in South Africa are another case in point.

 

In all cases they ignore or minimise the role of imperialism and refuse to adopt Lenin's fundamental standpoint of the difference between oppressed and oppressor nations. In-' deed their great sensitivity to the "national" rights of the Zionist colonists, Protestant bigots land; Afrikaaner racists contrasts sharply with their venomous attacks on the latters' victims. Underlying all of these positions is a metropolitan chauvinism and an aversion to petit-bourgeois led nationalist movements and an identification with labour aristocrats and privileged strata of the proletariat - Protestants in Northern Ireland, Jews in Israel, whites in South Africa.

 

These positions led to the most pronounced case of abstentionism in the Iranian revolution of 1978/9. Here the mullah-led movement was equated with the Shah in the self-confessedly inoperable slogan "Down with the Shah! Down with the Mullahs! ". The Spartacists completely abandoned the tactic of the anti-imperialist united front, which they also reject in theory, stigmatising it as a "Popular Front". Here again they revealed an inability to distinguish between imperialist countries and their semi-colonial victims. In its place they argued for a strategy of ideological combat against the religious ideas of the Iranian masses.

 

They ended up, once again, holding an abstentionist position in the test of revolution, and justified it with rationalist, idealist arguments that owed more to Voltaire than Marx and Lenin.

 

A refusal to identify with the struggles of the oppressed also results in a reactionary identification with the bosses' attempts to keep immigrants out of the metropolitan countries. The Spartacists advocate a racist position on immigration controls: "However, on a sufficiently large scale, immigration plans could wipe out the national identity of the recipient country....If, for example, there were unlimited immigration into Northern Europe, the population influx from the Mediterranean basin would tend to dissolve the continued identity of small countries like Holland and Belgium." 99 The job of Leninists is to protect this national identity according to the Spartacists!

 

As well as scab positions on the national question, the other distinctive feature of the Spartacists is their Stalinophilia. Starting from the anti-Trotskyist position that Stalinism has a dual nature - a good side and a bad side - the Spartacists see their role as encouraging the good side which has increasingly come to the fore. In Afghanistan this meant "Hailing the Red Army", as the agents of revolution for this backward country - the masses of which get treated to a tirade of chauvinist abuse from the Spartacists.

 

The political revolutionary situation in Poland in 1980/81 was also not to the liking of the Spartacists. Fearing Catholic restorationism, they decided that the best outcome to the crisis was a Soviet invasion to crush the Polish working class. When this didn't materialise they were more than ready to applaud the bloody Jaruzelski coup and the clampdown on the Polish workers' organisations that came with it.

 

They argued: "If the present crackdown restores something like the tenuous social equilibrium which existed in Poland before the Gdansk strikes last August, a tacit understanding that if the people left the government alone, the government would leave the people alone - conditions will be opened again for the crystallisation of a Leninist-Trotskyist party.,,100 What a confession of bankruptcy. Stalinist "social equilibrium" is preferred by the iSt to a political revolutionary crisis, as the best conditions for building a party.

 

The iSt are a Stalinophilic right-sectarian cult. They have reproduced in a bizarre parody Pablo's Stalinophile positions of 1949-51, a living proof that they never understood "the roots of Pabloism." The Spartacists, as a neo-Bordigist sect, reject transitional demands such as nationalisation under workers control in favour of calls to"'seize and sell" bankrupt firms. In Chrysler they argued that the sale of stocks and plant should be shared out as redundancy pay. The alibi offered for this unheard of reactionary petit-bourgeois utopia was the backwardness of the American workers!

 

The Spartacists are totally incapable of developing action programmes and tactics for the present period of crisis and intensified class battles. However, they occasionally seize upon and fetishize one tactic to beat the detested rivals over the head. Under the apparently innocuous (and for communists, banal), slogan "Picket lines mean don't cross" they "elevated" the picket-line to a principle.

 

Thus they attack workers (or more probably members of the groups they wish to destroy) for "crossing picket lines" where only pickets of supplies are mounted or where the picket is aimed at a different section of the workforce. Their venom against "scabs" and their posing as defenders of picket lines rings rather hollow given their systematic abstentionism from most workers' struggles and their restriction of their "activities" to so-called exemplary cases (Le. situations where they can directly attack rival groups). Thus, their class struggle activity turns out, on insl'1ection, to be merely a sub-category of their demolition job aimed at ostensibly Trotskyist organisations. They totally reject the united front tactic. In practice they are incapable of advocating any tactics based on it, apart from clownish ultimatums to rival groupings to join their demonstrations and pickets.

 

They reject all applications and extensions of it; critical electoral support of workers' parties, where they pose as a prerequisite areas of programmatic agreement; work within the proletarian organisations involved in a popular front to achieve a "break with the bourgeoisie"; the workers' government, which they treat as a pseudonym for the proletarian dictatorship; the Labor Party slogan which they present as an ultimatum ("Dump the bureaucrats!") and use as a pseudonym for the revolutionary party. In all these cases sectarian intransigence covers gross opportunist appetites. Thus whilst they refused critical support to Labour in 1979 and 1982 they found Benn on the right side of a "class struggle line" on the question of Soviet defencism! All this represents a complete break from the Transitional Programme, and the Comintern and ILO heritage on which it was founded.

 

The degenerating sections of the iSt are little more than branches of the SL/US - a reversal of the situation pertaining in the Healyite IC but in essence the same. The iSt is manifestly a dead sect totally incapable of furthering (and increasingly incapable of hindering) the fight for a new International.

 

In. March 1976 a number of organisations to the left of the USFI launched the Necessary International Initiative. These groups saw the USFI as qualitatively better than the IC or OCRFI and saw their initiative as an attempt to orient towards the USFI. These groups were the FMR (whose main organisation was the La Classe group led by Roberto Massari in Italy), the Spartacusbund (BRD), and two Austrian groups who were later to become the IKL. In September 1976 the British I-CL joined the NIL.

 

The NII was based on a common assessment of the defects of the major international "Trotskyist" tendencies on the Portugese revolution of 1974/5. It was not, however, based on a positive and fully defined programmatic position on that revolution. The NII was in fact in agreement only on a series of negative positions. It never had any common programmatic positions beyond very general state" ments about Portugal. It was also marked by an adaptationist attitude to the USFI which it characterised as "centrism sui generis." The main inspirers of this position, Roberto Massari's FMR, maintained that of all the fragments of the Fourth International the USFI was the healthiest and the one that could- through external pressure rather than internal reform - find its way back to revolutionary Marxism, while it could never, in its present state, pass over to reformism. The FMR's self-critical balance sheet of the NIl made this clear when it argued:

 

"In particular we didn't keep in account that the programmatic declarations of the FMR states very clear that the best energies which pledge allegiance to Trotskyism are today those inside the USec...” 101

 

The substance of "centrism sui generis" (with which the British I-CL made known their disagreement while they were in the NII) was that formal adherence to Trotskyism prevented the USFI from going the way of previous centrists such as Kautsky -i.e. into reformism. In other words here was a species of centrism which, unlike any other, did not vacillate between reform and revolution with the consequent possibility of its going over definitively to reformism. Such an analysis is based on a shallow interpretation of the FI's post-war history. There have been cases of sections going over to reformism - the LSSP in Ceylon. Under Pablo the IS went very near to complete capitulation to Stalinism and petit-bourgeois nationalism.

 

Today it is declared that no section of the USFI is needed in Nicaragua. All of these experiences clearly indicate that the possibility of the USFI as a whole passing into the camp of social democracy, Stalinism or petit-bourgeois nationalism does exist and will be decided by the march of events. The only real difference between t~e USFI and a centrist like Kautsky is that since the USFI , unlike the SPD and the Second International, does not lead mass forces it has not et been put .to a decisive test. This has allowed its international leadership 0 enjoy a prolonged existence as a vacillating centrist organisation.

 

While the CL held back from describing the USFI as "centrism sui generis" the nevertheless maintained an equivocal position that it was the "mainstream" Trotskyist current. That is, they refused to characterise it clearly as centrist or indeed to give it any political characterisation. Sean Matgamna of the I-CL wrote in 1976 that: "The I-CL continues to believe that the USFI is the mainstream that has emerged from the communist tendency personified by Leon Trotsky." 102

 

The real weakness of this position - its potential accommodation to the USFI- was offset in the fusion document between Workers' Fight and Workers Power which argued clearly that the USFI was: "a centrist obstacle to the building of such an International." 103

 

However, even this document contained the flaw built into the "mainstream" position which we would now criticise. We emphatically reject the view that the USFI represented a qualitatively better tradition than that of the IC. Any choice between these two tendencies reflects a failure to analyse their common origin in centrist degeneration and prepares a repetition of their chronic errors.

 

Lacking any common programmatic positions as a basis for their Initiative, the tendencies in the NII descended into manoeuvres against one another followed by fragmentation. The I-CL and IKL formed a bloc to resist the FMR's utilisation of the NII as a vehicle for recruitment to itself. Having plundered the Spartacusbund and IKL for recruits the FMR left the NII complaining that discussion was impossible because the I-CL and IKL had failed to produce an internal bulletin.

 

After a period of independent existence the FMR, which still had as its aim a return to the USFI set its course firmly towards liquidationism.

 

The Italian section disappeared into Democrazia Proletaria, a group emerging from the break up of the semi-Maoist tradition in Italy with the expressed popular frontist aim of building a "broad democratic opposition" in Italy.

 

The I-CL became increasingly an Anglo-centric sect burying itself ever deeper in the Labour Party (until later it ended up in the TILC via its fusion with the WSL - an indication of how seriously it takes international regroupment is that it now belongs to a body that it had previously sharply criticised e.g. at the TILC summer 1980 rally.)104 The IKL/Spartacusbund maintained the fiction of an international tendency without having established a programmatic basis or an international leadership.

 

The unreality of this tendency's existence was cruelly exposed when, in late 1980, it was thrown into disarray by the desertion of key leaders within the IKL. These leaders left because they claimed that the tendency was not capable of developing politically. The remainder of the IKL has continued to exist since the split and, on the question of the basis for an international tendency, does recognise that programmatic clarity and agreement has to come first. The Spartacusbund, savaged by a series of splits (to the FMR, the iSt') were unable to maintain the tendency under their leadership, being basically immobilised by adherence to a collection of established positions (e.g. on Social Democracy) that they were unable to develop or apply tactically in the BRD.

 

Consequently the organisation dissolved in the course of 1981 into a discussion grouping in Berlin and a group which established itself in May 1982 as the Gruppe Arbeitermacht.

 

The lesson of the NII experience is clear. Any international regroupment has to be based on far more than just a series of appraisals about what the centrists are doing wrong. We are convinced that it has to be based on a clear statement of common goals and a firm intention to re-elaborate the programme.

 

The Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT) has its origins within the Lambertist OCRFI. The two principal organisations within the FIT, Politica Obrera (PO) of Argentina, and the Partido Obrero Revolutionario (POR) of Bolivia, were amongst the founding organisations of the OCRFI.

 

The POR joined the International Committee during the factional struggle between Healy and Lambert. It was the first time the POR, led y Guillermo Lora, had established even the semblance of real international links since the 1952 revolution in Bolivia. For Lambert the POR were a valuable weapon in the struggle against Healy. Thus, while some criticisms of the POR's positions in the 1971 revolutionary turmoil were made at the OCRFI's founding conference, the debacle of 1952 was not examined. Furthermore, the criticisms of the POR's role in 1971 were made within a context of overall agreement with its policy in 1971: "The organisations present affirm first of all their total agreement with the policy carried out by the POR in the course of the Bolivian revolution of 1970-71".105 The criticisms of the POR centred on the distinction that it made between the "national bourgeoisie" and the "imperialist bourgeoisie".

 

They did not deal with the programmatic and practical consequences of this distinction. Lora's policies in the 1970-71 revolutionary crisis in Bolivia represented a continuation of the same fatal opportunist positions he had developed in 1952. Once again, he gave critical support to a left nationalist government, used the united front tactic in an opportunist manner and, as a result, failed to organise the workers and peasants to seize power.

 

This time there could be no excuse about the influence of the "Pabloites". The Bolivian supporters of the USFI had formed their own separate organisation, POR (Gonzales), which was pursuing an equally disastrous policy for the Bolivian working class, through its concentration on guerrilla struggle as a road to socialist revolution.

 

The revolutionary situation opened in October 1970 when Regelio Miranda's military coup against General Ovando's government was thwarted by a massive general strike called by the Bolivian Trade Union Centre (COB). Armed workers controlled the capital, La Paz, and a "Comando Politico" was formed by the trade unions and various left political parties.

 

Both the Bolivian Communist Party (PCB) and the POR(Lora) were important forces within this command. At the same time the "leftist" General Juan Jose Torres declared himself in rebellion against both Miranda and Ovando.

 

What should a revolutionary party have done in a situation where the army was so divided and fearful of the masses that it was forced to put forward its most "leftist" figure at the head of the struggle'? Within the Political Command it would have argued for the workers and peasant~ to take the power. As a result it would have fought for a call for every factory, mine and workplace to elect delegates to local soviets and to a national soviet, convened by the Political Command. It would have called on the workers to form their own committees and (or the formation of soldiers' committees in the army, these to send delegates to the soviets. It would have fought for a workers' and peasants' government directly accountable to the soviets, in order to open the road to the formation of a proletarian state.

 

Recognising the strength of the nationalist parties and groups, the overwhelming weight of the peasantry in Bolivia, and the history of suppression of democratic rights, it would have been in favour of the convening of a Constituent Assembly under the most democratic conditions.

 

Measured against these tasks the POR (Lora) miserably failed its second test. In discussions between the Political Command and Torres, POR supported the entry of "worker ministers" into the Torres government. Lora makes this clear in his own description of events:

 

"But the opportunist tendency was brought under control since the Comando Politico was persuaded (by the POR? . Eds) to attach such conditions for accepting the ministries that they would have been effectively removed from the control of the President. Thus the ministers would be appointed by the Comando, which would mandate them and could recall them at any time; a political advisor would work alongside each minister etc. However this experiment was never put to the test, since Torres withdrew his offer'" 106, This interesting "experiment" as Lora chooses to call it, was nothing new at all. It was no more than an agreement to enter a bourgeois government and was no different from the Menshevik entry into the Russian Provisional Government; and this after the experience of "worker ministers" in 1952!

 

The Political Command effectively ceded power after the aborted negotiations on "power sharing". POR posed no alternative to this. In fact there is evidence that the POR did little to challenge the illusions of the Bolivian masses in the left Bonapartist Torres. As in 1952, the POR confused the defence of a government against the threat of a right wing coup, with giving political support to such a government, through the creation of worker ministers.

 

Lora expected the "force of events" to compel Torres to arm the workers. This he makes clear when he declares "Everyone (including the POR? Eds) supposed that Torres, a friend of Ovando, would in view of the difficult situation he confronted have no alternative but to arm the people, as the only way to strengthen his own position. But as time passed the hope grew fainter and fainter that a clash between opposing sectors of the military would enable the masses to arm themselves".' 107

 

Instead of fighting for a workers' and peasants' government based on soviets, the POR showed a fatal reliance on left Bonapartism. As the quote above shows, Lora and the POR were waiting for a clash in the army between "progressive" and "reactionary" forces, rather than raising slogans for the arming of the workers and the organisation of the soldiers for a sharp clash with Torres. By the time the POR came to the conclusion that Torres was not going to fight or arm the workers, it was too late.

 

In January 1971, the right wing struck back and attempted to overthrow Torres. The move deepened the revolutionary crisis in Bolivia.

 

The plot was discovered and massive mobilisations culminated in miners, armed with dynamite, virtually occupying La Pal.

 

In the face of the right wing threat, the "Popular Assembly" was formed on the initiative of Comando Politico. The Assembly was a hybrid body. It was a proto-soviet which could have been transformed, under the correct political leadership, into a real leading soviet based on La Pal. A majority of its delegates represented workers' organisations (132, or 60%). A further 23 came from the Independent Peasants Confederation. A large block of delegates (53) were allocated to petit bourgeois elements such as professionals, teachers, students, etc.

 

As the name "Popular Assembly" implies, the forces of the Bolivian left saw the Assembly as representative of an anti-imperialist united front. The Stalinist PCB wanted to build it as a popular front on the Chilean model in order to mobilise support for Torres. The POR(Lora) saw it as part of a "Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Front", but at the same time declared it an organ of "dual power and soviet type organisation, which has made for the predominance of the proletariat in the revolutionary process".' 0 Whether the Popular Assembly actually became a "soviet type" body depended on how the revolutionary forces within it fought to build it.

 

Again there is no evidence that Lora's POR fought to turn the Assembly into a leading soviet in Bolivia. At the same time, their line on the Torres regime remained the same, with the POR even opposing the slogan "All Power to the Popular Assembly".

 

Revolutionaries would have fought for the Assembly to be transformed into a real soviet, and for all delegates to be elected by rank and file factory and workplace committees (many delegates were elected by the trade union leaderships). They would have called for the construction of soldiers' committees, and for them to send delegates to the workers' 'councils. They would have supported all land seizures and occupations, and called for the building of committees of poor peasants. They would have raised the slogan "All Power to the Popular Assembly" and counterposed the call for a "Workers' and Peasants' Government" to the Bonapartist regime of Torres. Above all, they would have fought for the arming of the workers, and the formation of a workers' militia.

 

This was not the perspective of the POR(Lora). On the 19th August the army struck back, led by General Banzer and backed by the Brazilian government. As late as the 23rd August, the Comando Politico and the POR were still pleading for arms from Torres: "That night discussions in the Comando Politico revolved entirely around the problems of arms. Torres and his ministers had promised time and again that they would, if the need arose give arms to the people...the Comando resolved to send one last commission composed of Lechin, myself (Lora -Eds), Mercado, Lopez, Reyes and led to the Presidential palace.

 

We were to inform the President that if he failed to keep his promise and hand over the arms, the Popular Assembly would take action into its own hands".109 This with the rightist forces already in control of several centres!

 

The results were predictable. Torres refused to give arms on the ground that it would split the army, and troops moved on La Pal. Despite heroic resistance from poorly armed workers and students in La Pal, the military crushed all resistance, ushering in a period of black reaction in Bolivia.

 

As a leading force within the Bolivian working class, the POR (Lora) has to bear a major responsibility for the crushing defeat inflicted on the Bolivian masses. Lora has yet to make one self-criticism of the policies pursued in 1970/71. Worse still, having learned nothing after the coup, the POR proceeded to form in exile another of their "Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Fronts" (the FRA). This popular front included not only the pro-Moscow and pro-Chinese CPs, and both the PORs, but also the MIR (a petit-bourgeois guerrillaist group) and General Torres.

 

The FRA, which within its ranks bound all organisations to the "fundamental line of the founding documents", declared in its Manifesto:

 

"the need is undeniably to build a fighting unity of all the revolutionary, democratic, and progressive forces so that the great battle can be begun in conditions offering a real perspective for a popular and national government". 110

 

The FIT has never examined, let alone criticised, the opportunist record of the POR. Neither has it carried out a proper critical evaluation of its own past in the OCRFI. They regard the OCRFI (and before it the IC) as the guardian of the Trotskyist programme up until the end of 1978/beginning of 1979, when Politica Obrera was expelled from the OCRFI. The founding document of the FIT, issued after the founding conference in April 1979, makes this loyalty to the OCRFI clear.

 

Denouncing the fusion manoeuvres between the OCRFI and the USFI the FIT say of the OCRFI: "We denounce this as a shameful capitulation on the part of those who, up until yesterday were raising the banner of struggle against revisionist Pabloism." 11. This banner was, in fact, a tattered and centrist one. The OCRFI was founded in July 1972 on a federalist, revisionist basis. In the Stalinist states and the imperialised countries the OCRFI advocated a purely democratic rather than a clear transitional programme. This liquidation was, and is, covered up by endless references to the correctness of the theory of Permanent Revolution. According to the OCRFI the national bourgeoisie and the Stalinist bureaucracies were incapable under all circumstances, of establishing or co-existing with bourgeois democracy.

 

For the OCRFI therefore the fight for Permanent Revolution is reduced to a fight for bourgeois democracy against the bourgeoisie and bureaucracy. This twaddle is a travesty of Trotsky's theory which advocates democratic demands within the context of a clear programme for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The OCRFI, and it would seem the FIT, advance a democratic programme as their goal.

 

Thus on Palestine, the founding documents of the OCRFI advanced not the call for a Workers' Republic of Palestine but merely argue that a 'Constituent Assembly of Palestine is a necessary condition for the struggle against reactionary Zionism and the no less reactionary concept of the Arab nation." 112

 

This position is in fact still held by the FIT, through its Palestinian group the Workers' League of Palestine, who advocate a "democratic and secular state in Palestine". Thus they set in advance a democratic outcome for revolutionary struggle in Palestine as a "stage" on the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

The corollary of the OCRFI's democratism was its strategic view of the united front. This manifests itself in the FIT in their strategic conception of the anti-imperialist united front, evidenced particularly in the politics of the POR.

 

The FIT does claim to have waged a struggle within the OCRFI against Lambert's OCI. Certainly there was a dispute in 1978 over work in the Argentinian unions. Politica Obrera were correct, against Lambert, in recognising that despite Videla's coup, these unions remained workers' organisations and not fascist unions. Indeed this was the issue that led to the split in the OCRFI. However apart from this issue we have, as yet, come across no evidence to support the view that the FIT groupings had advanced a revolutionary critique of the OCRFI. To this day they have not renounced the revisionist founding documents of the OCRFI. Indeed many of their positions represent a political continuity with this tradition. Furthermore like the OCRFI, the FIT appears to adhere to a non-democratic centralist and federalist basis for their international tendency.

 

The FIT do, correctly, reject the term "world Trotskyist movement" as a meaningful political label. However, in its place they have erected a theory that the USFI is, in fact, counter-revolutionary. Their founding document states: "If the OCRFI has ceased to be the channel by which the party of world revolution may be constructed, the ill-named United Secretariat has already moved over to the camp of the class enemy and has abandoned the Trotskyist programme." 113

 

Like all of the other fragments, the FIT shy away from calling things by their right name. Yes, the USFI have abandoned the Trotskyist programme. Yes, indeed, the sections of the USFI, as the case of the LSSP showed, can go over to the camp of the class enemy. However to classify the USFI as a world organisation as "counter-revolutionary" is to totally misunderstand its nature. The USFI remains centrist and capable of vacillations to both left and right.

 

To characterise it as counter-revolutionary is to say in advance that in all revolutionary crises and class struggle situations it will as a whole side with the class enemy against the working class. This puts it in the same camp as the Stalinists and reformists and says in advance that they will act as the Social Democrats in Germany did in 1918/19 or as the Stalinists did in Spain in 1936/7. To say as we do, that the centrist vacillations and programme of the USFI help to disarm the working class and can in periods of revolutionary crisis therefore objectively aid the counterrevolution is one thing. But to label the USFI as counter-revolutionary is quite another. It might make FIT militants feel better or be used as a block to any section moving too close to the USFI but it is politically incorrect and will tactically disarm FIT militants in relation to centrism.

 

In common with all of the major currents that we have discussed the FIT militants do not have a dialectical grasp of the character and meaning of centrism.

 

While our assessments of the FIT's positions have necessarily a provisional character we believe the FIT have adopted a number of centrist positions which we think flow from their failure to break from the politics of the OCRFI.

 

On the Nicaraguan revolution the FIT was clear that the FSLN did not represent the proletariat's own revolutionary party. They castigated the USFI, quite rightly, for its liquidationism and capitulation to the FSLN. They raised the call on the workers' organisations to break with the bourgeoisie and for a workers' and peasants' government. However in their July 1979 statement on Nicaragua, at a time when the revolution was nearing its climax, the FIT lapsed into the democratism that had characterised the OCRFI. Thus, their central slogan was: "Against the tendency of the bourgeois leadership to build a government for reconstructing the state and to put off indefinitely the expression of popular sovereignty, the FIT calls for the convocation of a sovereign and democratic constituent assembly as being the form of the further development of political democratic aspirations and, in the end to expose the democratic demagogy of the bourgeoisie. For the FIT it is a question of a policy of. transition which is part of the strategy of proletarian revolution." 114

 

The problem with this formulation is twofold. The idea that the Constituent Assembly is a "policy of transition" implies that it is a necessary stage for the Nicaraguan revolution to pass through. While we would have agreed with the call for a Constituent Assembly we would not (and did not) pose it as a necessary, transitional stage. This points to the second problem in the FIT's slogan and its use. Who do they address their call for an Assembly to? There is no mention in their statement of the need to build soviets of workers and peasants, as the only force that could guarantee the convocation of an assembly. There is no mention of the fact that such soviets could supercede the democracy of an Assembly and be the only force that could lay the basis for the transition to a proletarian state.

 

This omission also leaves the FIT's call for a workers' and peasants' government abstract. What is such a government to be based on, soviets or the Constituent Assembly? We do not propose counterposing the call for soviets to the call for an Assembly. In the context of the crumbling Somoza regime and the Sandinista revolution this would amount to equally abstract ultimatism. We do argue, however, that it was necessary to make clear how the struggle for soviets could be combined with the struggle around democratic demands thus making concrete the strategy of Permanent Revolution.

 

The failure to pose the question of the Constituent Assembly and soviets in this fashion was, in our view, to follow the dangerous path of turning the tactical slogan of the Constituent Assembly into a strategy.

 

It appeared to address only the FSLN and not the masses. It failed to warn that without soviets there could be no guarantee of an Assembly being convoked. Indeed this has been proven by the course of the Nicaraguan revolution.

 

On the whole question of soviets and what they are, the FIT is in our view, confused. This was apparent in their position on Poland and Jaruzelski's coup d'etat. The FIT argued that the trade union Solidarnosc was a developing soviet: "By its own organic law of development, the movement which erupted in August 1980, has broken all possibility of national accord. The FIT has shown how Solidarity has more and more taken on the character of a soviet.

 

Starting from immediate demands, the workers' organisations were transformed into a veritable independent power, opposed to the state power and with a growing influence in other strata of the population." 115

 

The logic of this position expressed itself in the FIT's call for "Solidarnosc to Power." This position is wrong, and the characterisation of Solidarnosc as a soviet-type body is at odds with reality. The inter-factory strike committees (MKS) that were thrown up in August 1980 were the potential embryos of soviets. They were replaced by Solidarnosc which was clearly a trade union, not a soviet, organisation. Solidarnosc's structure and methods of decision making, local organisations etc., were not of the soviet type. Therefore to call for "Solidarnosc to Power" is in no way analogous to "All power to the Soviets".

 

Worse, the call for "Solidarnosc to Power" is premised on an incorrect estimate of the leadership of Solidarnosc. If the fault of the iSt was that it equated the movement with the leadership, then the fault of the FIT was that it equated the leadership with the movement. It failed to recognise that the dominant factions within the leadership advocated programmes that were either directly or indirectly restorationist.

 

The call for "Solidarnosc to Power" must mean the call for the implementation of its leadership's programme. But, if implemented, the programme of the Solidarnosc leadership would have strengthened the forces of capitalist restoration in Poland. We do not advocate that restorationists take the political power from the Stalinists or that the working class should struggle to make this possible. The introduction of the programme of Walesa, Kuron etc., would not represent a gain for the proletariat but would have meant the implementation of measures directly counterposed to the programme of political revolution and the transition to socialism. In our view, therefore, the FIT's advocacy of such a slogan ~represents a serious error on the part of that tendency.

 

The unrepudiated legacy of the OCRFI, the centrist record of Lora's POR, the federalist conception of an international tendency and the positions on Nicaragua and Poland lead us to regard the FIT as no alternative to the principal tendencies of the degenerated Trotskyist movement.

 

An international tendency based on such a record and such politics is unlikely to be able to grapple with the programmatic questions that need to be resolved in the struggle to rebuild an International. Whether or not constituent organisations within the FIT, such as Politica Obrera of Argentina, can be won away from the FIT's methods remains to be seen. Certainly their willingness to debate serious issues of programme with other tendencies, including ourselves, makes this a possibility. But such discussions, if they are to move forward, must eschew the diplomacy and manoeuvring that characterised, for example, the Parity Commission 'discussions., For our part we intend to press for such honest political discussions with groupings within the FIT such as Politica Obrera.

 

Not long after the formation of the FIT the OCRFI was busy playing master of ceremonies in yet another unprincipled attempt to "reconstruct" the Fourth International. The USFI's blatant liquidation of party and programme in Nicaragua in 1979 and its connivance in having the "Trotskyist" Simon Bolivar Brigade expelled from Nicaragua, was a dramatic confirmation of the lengths to which these centrists will go in their accommodation to petit-bourgeois nationalist groupings. Their positions conflicted with those of the Bolshevik Faction which, together with the L TT, split from the USFI on the eve of the 1979 World Congress. This split, which was led by the BF's major party, the Argentinian PST led by Nahuel Moreno, undermined the USFI's ludicrous claim to represent the Fourth International. Immediately following their split the BF and the L TT majority joined forces with Pierre Lambert's Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International.

 

Having won such a prize Lambert unceremoniously wound up the unity discussions that he had been having with the USFI - without of course providing any political accounting of his move! Together Moreno and Lambert launched the Parity Committee (Commission). Its expressed aim was to call an open conference of "the world Trotskyist movement" aimed at "rooting out revisionism" through a "democratically organised and exhaustive discussion". In the event no open conference took place. Workers Power, the Irish Workers Group and other tendencies that applied to attend this mythical conference were effectively barred from what became a "unity" congress between the Morenoites and Lambertists in December 1980. This conference produced yet another misbegotten parody of Trotsky's FI - the Fourth International (International Committee.)

 

It was precisely in such a period of flux and disorientation amongst (subjectively) revolutionary militants that it was necessary for communists to be absolutely clear about the nature of the split and the history and direction of the component parts of the Parity Committee.

 

To do otherwise, despite the apparent left criticism of the USFI by the Morenoites, would have sown illusions in the Committee and its constituent organisations.

 

Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group pointed to the record of the two major groups - the OCRFI and the Morenoites. We catalogued the deeply opportunist politics of Moreno and his organisations their history of adaptation to Peronism, Castroism and even Maoism.

 

We pointed to the fact that the OCRFI offered only a stagist democratic programme for the Nicaraguan masses, in line with their constant refusal to distinguish between democratic and socialist demands. We were clear that such an amalgam forming an international tendency with the declared aim of reconstructing the Fourth International could "have no common programme which can be applied in a revolutionary situation." 116 Having done this we did not ignore the proposed "open conference", but applied to attend it in order to argue our positions at it. Needless to say these many-times-over opportunists were not interested in the prospect of such an honest and searching discussion.

 

The sorry history of the Parity Committee/Fourth International (IC) demonstrated that our criticisms of the forces involved retained all their validity. The Parity Committee itself was marked by the Stalinophobic views of the OCRFI, hailing the imperialist-backed Islamic rebels in Afghanistan as vanguard fighters in "the development of the proletarian revolution in the whole area." 117

 

The declarations of the Committee centred exclusively on areas of general agreement between the participants, brushing under the table former slight disagreements (such as over the class character of Cuba). Not surprisingly when declarations were made on key issues of the class struggle they remained general, vague and entirely insufficient as guides to action.

 

This exercise reached its peak with the formation of the FI(IC). The OCRFI who had formerly claimed criticism of Moreno for his adaptation to Peronism was an "indispensible task" for Trotskyists, brushed this reservation aside when the leader of its largest section (the French OCT) Pierre Lambert, declared of the formation of the FI(IC): "The only comparable advance in the history of the world's workers' movement is the one that led to the formation of the Third International after the victory of the Russian Revolution." 118

 

This bombast could not long conceal the politically flimsy basis of the FI(IC). The"Forty Theses" of the FI(IC) were marked by centrist evasions or generalities. They did not in any way account for or explain the differences on Peronism, Cuba and Portugal that had formerly divided Moreno and Lambert. They destroyed the possibility of agreement over perspectives by substituting windy generalisations about the imminence of revolution and the continuity of the world revolution since 1945. The depth of opportunism to which the FI(IC) was prepared to sink was revealed by the Theses' attitude to trade unions in Argentina.

 

While the OCI's characterisation of the Argentinian unions as "fascist" was important enough to use as a pretext to expel Politica Obrera from the OCRFI in 1978, the accommodation by the Morenoites to work in these very same unions was swallowed with consummate ease: "But the discussion whether we can transform these organisations or have to create others is a wasted discussion which will be solved by history." 119 At the time of its foundation we argued that such an unprincipled basis for the fusion would inevitably produce new splits and further disorientation of subjectively revolutionary militants trapped in these bankrupt groups: "The formation of the FI(IC) merely lays the basis for new splits in the future." 120 Within a year we were proved right.

 

In the summer of 1981 Moreno suddenly "discovered" that on the question of the Mitterrand Government "We have differences of 180 degrees." 121 Moreno claimed that he wrote to Lambert on July 13th describing the French Section's orientation towards the Mitterrand Government as being one of "critical support" for a Popular Front:

 

"The leadership of the OCI(u) does not dare to put a name to its policy but it accords uncritical and almost total support to a popular front government." 122

 

A reading of the OCI(u)'s paper "Informations Ouvrieres" from May to September 1981 reveals that this is a justified criticism. But nothing in the OCI's past record of adaptation to social democracy could have led one to expect any other response. Since serious programmatic differences had not been discussed openly before the FI(IC) was founded it was unlikely that Lambert would do so after fusion had been achieved.

 

Doubtless Moreno, a seasoned and cynical factionalist, knew this very well. Indeed, Moreno's supporters within the OCI(u) had supported Lambert's adaptation to social democracy, which existed before the May 1981 Presidential election. This took the form, for example, of the OCI(u) refusing to stand its own candidate (in case it took votes away from Mitterriand) and calling for a vote for Mitterrand (in preference to the Stalinist candidate, Marchais) from round one of this (two round) election.

 

When on September 22nd 1981 Moreno submitted a long article attacking the OCI's position on Mitterrand, for publication in Correspondence Internationale, it was tantamount to a declaration of a split. Events thereafter took on a familiar ring to those who have experienced or studied the splits and fusions of the "Fourth Internationals" since 1953.

 

Lambert began to level accusations at supporters of Moreno in France that they were involved in a Stalinist, LCR, fascist, Morenoite provocation against the OCI Napuri, a leader of the Peruvian tendency that had been part of the OCRFI, the POMR, was expelled and denounced as a bourgeois agent- because he opposed the expulsions of the Morenoites. This method of denunciation is an old tactic. Enemies are bourgeois agents.

 

They need to be dealt with organisationally not politically. As a result of these moves the Morenoites boycotted a General Council of the FI(IC) in the Autumn of 1981 whereupon Lambert declared that they had therefore split. Moreno then decamped to form the International Workers League, having achieved a foothold in Europe.

 

We confidently predict that this organisation will tread the opportunist path already pioneered by its leader. For Lambert the exercise was not too rewarding. However despite a steady loss of members the OCI have changed their name to the PCI - Parti Communiste Internationaliste declaring themselves a party. They have continued their adaptationist approach to Mitterrand and in Poland put forward a purely democratic programme for political revolution. At a meeting on 21-23 December 1981 with the rump of the OCRFI this farce was continued with the declaration of the "Fourth International - International Centre of Reconstruction" !

 

The whole episode reveals the degenerate nature of both elements in the split. They are both led by centrists who continue to constitute road blocks to the building of a revolutionary International and the reelaboration of a revolutionary programme.

 

The Trotskyist International Liason Committee (TILC) formed at the end of 1979 represents an attempt by the WSL (Workers Socialist League) in Britain and various other groups in Italy, the USA and Denmark to form an international tendency aiming to "reconstruct the Fourth International". Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group attended the international pre-conference of the TILC in December 1979 as observers. At that meeting our groupings expressed disagreement with the basis and method on which the TILC was initiated. The WSL, the largest organisation and the main political influence within the TILC, originated out of a factional struggle in the Healyite Workers Revolutionary Party, British section of the International Committee. Crystallised around the evident gap between the WRP's perspectives - economic collapse and imminent military coup - and the real state of the class struggle the central theme of the opposition was the call for a "return to the transitional programme." 123

 

In the formative period during and immediately after the split in the WRP, the leaders of the WSL were considerably influenced by the OC!.

 

In particular they adopted the OCI's fetishistic use of the Transitional Programme as the highest possible and entirely sufficient formulation of communist principles. They added to this a home grown view of the "fight for the transitional programme" which was largely posed in terms of resolutions on the sliding scale of wages to trade union conferences.

 

Thus the WSL conducted propaganda for those transitional demands which were closest to the current wage struggle.

 

On the Labour Party they adopted wholesale the old methods and slogans of the Socialist Labour League including a version of Healy's "Make the left MPs fight", cut down to "Make the Lefts fight". This slogan presented itself as a sharply polemical exposure of the lefts with calls on them to kick out the right-wing leaders. It had however beneath its "left" appearance a right adaptationist essence. Was this an inevitable stage; first the left reformists, then our turn? Was there a fundamental difference between the "left" and "right" social democratic leaders? The WSL privately said "no" and that this was "proved" by the MP's refusal to fight. But what if the left leaders did "fight"? What if they even moved to kick out Healy and the right wing? In 198081 Benn and a small nucleus of left MPs put themselves at the head of the Labour Party Democracy movement. The WSL criticism of them weakened and collapsed. Simultaneously they fused their organisation with the ever more opportunist I-CL. The old slogan has not been raised by the new organisation despite the retreat of Benn and Co and their manifest failure to carry their "fight" to a decisive conclusion. 54. Whilst the WSL rejected the WRP's early'70s sectarianism it returned to all the fundamentals that had led it in that direction. Their work was conducted in the old 1960s Healy style.

 

As the "alternative leadership" the WSL was built as a miniature version of a future mass party (mini-mass party). The WSL indignantly rejected the role and tasks of a fighting propaganda group. Consequently it developed all the classic faults of 1960s Healyism - a rapid turnover of members, a low level of cadre training and development, and inflated expectations that led to demoralisation and collapse. Raided twice by the Spartacist sectarians who took off their "left" elements the demoralised WSL collapsed into a fusion with the right-centrist I-CL in 1981.

 

The WSL's sponsorship and foundation of TILC was a product of its declining years. In essence the WSL failed to break from the IC's fetishisation of the Transitional Programme and their turning of it into abstract principles - i.e. dogma. This approach necessarily separates programmatic principles from tactics, and directs attention away from the tasks of programmatic re-elaboration. This in effect denies both the programmatic degeneration of the FI and its collapse into centrism.

 

Thus the WSL argued in March 1978 that the route to building a principled basis for a reconstructed FI lay not in: "the arithmetical piecing together of the existing splintered fragments, but as a process of reaffirming both in theory and practice the fundamental principles on which the Fourth International was founded." 124 All groupings which claim to stand on the "principles" of the Transitional Programme are therefore part of a "world Trotskyist Movement" and simply have to be won back to an existing fundamentally correct programme.

 

The WSL's original conception of the Transitional Programme as "valid today" has done nothing to prevent it from sinking into an opportunist quagmire on its own national terrain. Small wonder that this understanding of programme is incapable of guiding the creation of an international tendency.

 

The collapse of the Fourth International is seen simply as a period of "prolonged disorientation." 125Here the WSL has recourse to some crude sociology. The leaders of the post-war FI were unfortunately petit-bourgeois and therefore incapable of defending the revolutionary programme. This is most clearly expressed in the WSL's submission to the XI World Congress of the USFI, "The Poisoned Well". It describes "Pabloism" thus: "It reflects the ideological approach of the petit bourgeoisie," 126

 

Fair enough. But then it continues: "The danger of such a method emerging remains acute whenever (and for whatever reasons) Trotskyism becomes dependent for its existence upon middle class intellectual forces with little experience and few links to the working class- forced to contemplate the class struggle from the outside, and more than ever dependent upon an analysis which finds it difficult to penetrate beneath the surface of events," 127

 

Now while it is true that a revolutionary organisation needs to become in class composition as well as in political character, a party of the proletarian vanguard, it is not true that the failure to do this was decisive in the FI's collapse. Whilst Pablo and Mandel were the principal theorists, the "proletarian" leaders Healy and Cannon were equally complicit in its practice. One group that blocked with Pablo, the Cochran Clarke faction, had a large proletarian base. The real problem with this one-sided sociological analysis is that it leads the WSL to defend the IC tradition. It does this on the spurious grounds that the IC maintained a working class orientation. But then so did the LSSP in Ceylon, yet it joined a popular front. So did Lora in Bolivia, yet in two revolutionary situations he took a Menshevik not a Bolshevik position. To make a fundamental distinction between the IS and the IC on the basis of a supposed working class rather than a petit-bourgeois orientation, is at bottom an apolitical way of viewing the split in the FI and the nature of the IC.

 

We reject the WSL's view, built into the founding document of the TILC that: "We critically defend these forces - initially in the International committee - that took, however partially and inadequately, a stand in defence of the primacy of the task of constructing independent Trotskyist parties as the sole guarantor of the political independence of the working class." 128 Neither politically nor organisationally is it true that the IC groups maintained "independence". Was Healy's anonymous club selling Tribune defending proletarian independence? The TILC was founded on the notion: today we have "The Programme" - the task is to win the Trotskyist movement back to it. This approach leads to a false conception of the operative basis for unity, regroupment and. fusion, both nationally and internationally.

 

The basis for unity becomes generalised abstract principles rather than agreement on programme, tactics, strategy and perspectives. This approach was mirrored in the positions of the GBL(now LOR) of Italy. In their "Theses on the Crisis of the Fourth International and the tasks of the Bolshevik Leninists" (Nov.1979) and drawn up for the TILC pre-conference, the GBL put forward a similar view of the "world trotskyist movement" . Thus they argue: "The FI is not dead, nor was it destroyed. It underwent a political degeneration process, leading to organisational scattering. Today it lives in its different factions." 129

 

The GBL proceeds to define why the tradition of the FI still "lives" in this world Trostkyist movement: "Firstly they do cluster the most conscious portion of (the) world proletarian vanguard. The politics is generally centrist in nature but with special features. Actually it still does not reflect a complete break from the programmatic basis of Bolshevism - even less does it constitute a direct reflection of social forces foreign to the proletariat (worker aristocracy, Stalinist parasitic bureaucracy, petit-bourgeois intelligentsia and so on) unlike Stalinist, social democratic and partly also centrist politics." 130

 

As well as talking of centrism "with special features", the document also frequently characterises the FI fragments as "centrist type" organisations. In fact the GBL (LOR)'s position is just a repetition of Roberto Masari's "centrism sui generis" - a form of centrism which is somehow incapable of going over to reformism. Firstly, there is no evidence to support this rosy prediction. Indeed the GBL itself excludes the LSSP and the Posadists from the "world Trotskyist movement" because they "definitively entered the counter-revolutionary camp". What is to stop other centrist fragments following? Secondly, it is a mistake to argue that the centrism of the FI fragments is "special" because it does not "constitute a direct reflection of social forces foreign to the proletariat".

 

All centrism precisely reflects the social weight of the petit-bourgeoisie, a stratum which vacillates between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

 

Since the labour aristocracy in the imperialist countries has, due to its sharing in the feast of super profits, the life conditions of a comfortable petit-bourgeois, such consciousness is not (as the WSL theoreticians like to think) limited to shop-keepers or people with a college education.

 

The history of the FI after 1948 is the history of capitulation to these forces, either to the petit-bourgeois utopian programmes of the Stalinists - e.g. the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist Parties, or to petit-bourgeois nationalists - e.g. Algeria, Nicaragua. The suggestion that these antics and betrayals do not represent a "complete break from the programme of Bolshevism" is to besmirch the programme of Lenin and Trotsky.

 

From this misunderstanding of centrism, the LOR and WSL have developed a set of tactics to relate to the "world Trotskyist movement" through "regenerating" it, all of which are fundamentally wrong. TILC is seen as relating to this world movement in the manner of an "orthodox" international faction of it. An analogy is made with the struggle of the International Left Opposition: "It is necessary instead to engage (in) a struggle for regeneration and Bolshevik reorganising of the FI, similar to the struggle of the Left Opposition 1929-33".131

 

This analogy is a false one. Trotsky and the ILO related to the Communist International in this way because it represented the mass vanguard party of the proletariat. In no sense do any of the fragments of the FI represent this. They are not mass organisations anywhere in the world, neither do they encompass the proletarian vanguard in the obvious sense that the CI did between 1923-33. Of course, important numbers of subjectively revolutionary militants are attracted by these groups (as they are to other centrist groups defined by the WSL as outside the "Trotskyist movement" - the PRP in Portugal, Avanguardia Operaia and Lotta Continua in Italy in the mid 1970s, and the SWP in Britain, for example). This may make an orientation to such groups essential. This necessitates polemic, theoretical debate, united action etc.

 

However, to be principled it must be on the basis of a clear recognition of their centrist character. In contrast the -TILC sees itself as a faction of this "movement", sometimes inside it, sometimes outside it, desperately trying to bring it together in "open conferences" and willing to diplomatically tailor its criticisms to do so.

 

Two conditions govern a communist approach to centrist organisations. Firstly, in what direction is a centrist current moving - to the left or the right? Trotsky was absolutely clear about this in his advice to the British section of the ILO to enter the leftward moving centrist Independent Labour Party: "Centrism as we have said more than once, is a general name for the most varied tendencies and groupings spread out between reformism and Marxism. In front of each centrist grouping it is necessary to place an arrow indicating the direction of its development; from right to left or from left to right".132

 

Of course communists would orient to, even enter, leftward moving centrist groups, attempting to bring them to a fully communist position as Trotsky did with the Block of Four. But this method does not inform the TILC method of relating to the FI fragments. The TILC prefers to relate to the "whole movement" and proceeds to do so either on the basis that it is not centrist (WSL), or that it is centrism with "special features" (GBL LOR).

 

The second condition which determines a communist organisation's ability to relate to centrism is a firm grasp of, and determination to fight for, its own programme. Without a clearly worked-out programme which guides strategy and tactics in a democratic centralist fashion, an international tendency is disarmed in the face of centrism. Again, when Trotsky was discussing the question with the British LO, he emphasised that the ILO criticised the Walcher-Frolich group not for entering the left centrist SAP, but "because they had entered it without a complete programme and without an organ of their own...The great advantage of the Left Opposition lies in the fact that it has a theoretically elaborated programme, international experience and international control".133

 

The great "disadvantage" of the TILC is that it has none of these things, but could still found itself on the perspective of entering centrist organisations. In these circumstances this was nothing short of a liquidationists' charter. In fact its founding "programme" was inadequate even to guide or hold its own tendency together, let alone enter combat with much larger centrist formations.

 

The founding document of the TILC - "The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle" explicitly confines itself to "revolutionary principles", leaving the tactical application of these principles by the

 

[...]

 

For the TILC, what crucially separates these tendencies from centrism is their formal adherence to the Transitional Programme. The TILC declaration of intent speaks of this world movement "oscillating around the Trotskyist programme' 137 . In saying this the TILC is in fact covering over the real nature of these organisations and their leaderships. They are failing in the elementary Marxist duty hammered home by Trotsky in his struggle against the centrists "to say what is".

 

Motivated by a healthy desire to relate to the "militants who aspire to be, and regard themselves as revolutionary Marxists" the TILC will end by making concession after concession to the unhealthy desire to be involved in discussions of the "world movement" at the cost of putting aside their criticisms. We know of course that the only basis that the gentlemen who lead the USFI, the FI(ICR) and the IWL etc., will allow discussion to take place is the precondition of not calling them centrists.

 

The dangers of this method were shown by the TILC’s attitude to the Moreno Lambert Parity Committee and Open Conference. Clear characterisations of the nature of these tendencies - as inveterate centrists and misleaders of the working class - was replaced by a refusal to be drawn on the political nature of these currents. Instead the TILC's major criticism of these professional tricksters was over their failure to live up to their promises of calling an "open conference".

 

In this way TILC sacrificed its political criticisms, and along with them the necessity of issuing warnings to militants following the Parity Committee down the same old centrist cul-de-sac, in the interests of holding a "discussion" with part of the "world movement." These developments in the short life span of the TILC have confirmed the criticisms made by the IWG and Workers Power at the TILC preconference in 1979. The TILC, founded on a wrong method and without having established real programmatic unity, has proved incapable of surmounting its first major international test - an imperialist war against a semi-colony.

 

It remains to be seen whether the sections of the TILC will draw the necessary conclusions from this debacle and break from this fundamentally centrist method. For our part we will continue to debate issues with the TILC, try to help its sections to break from that method, but we will do so by keeping to the forefront our criticisms and disagreements. We do this not out of a fanatical desire to disagree but out of a desire to achieve the sort of 'programmatic clarity that is absolutely necessary for the building of a genuinely democratic centralist Trotskyist international tendency.

 

 

 

Chapter Five: A radical re-statement of programme is necessary

 

 

 

We have characterised the principal forces who lay claim to Trotskyism as centrist. This term has been abused, distorted or ignored by these forces. As Trotsky said centrists hate to be called by their real name. It is important therefore to understand what centrism is, and how it can be fought.

 

Historically, centrism has emerged from either Marxism or reformism.

 

It is a vacillating, transitional phenomenon between the two. Centrism that emerges from Marxism has normally arisen either as a result of serious defeats or prolonged apathy amongst the working class. It reflects both of these things. Thus the centrism of the Second International grew out of the relatively stable years prior to 1905. It maintained a formal Marxist orthodoxy but practiced limited, largely electoralist tactics. The strategy of socialist revolution was relegated to the distant future.

 

The early centrism of the Comintern (typified by Zinoviev on the left, Stalin in the bureaucratic centre, and Bukharin on the right), arose out of the defeat of the post-war revolutionary upsurge and the bureaucratisation of the revolution. Both of these species of centrism existed for relatively lengthy periods. Their decisive crossing over to the camp of counter-revolution was the end-point of their centrism, an endpoint that genuine Marxists did not passively wait for, but one they fought. The end-point came when these formations were forced to choose the path of revolution or the path of democratic counter revolution.

 

[…]

 

there has been not one, but several centres claiming to be the FI, and that none of them represented revolutionary, programmatic continuity with Trotsky's FI, are doomed to failure. Our approach to building an international is to state-"Programme First". We regard the principal epigone tendencies of the FI (USFI, IC,FI (ICR» as definitely centrist.

 

However, the FIs centrism, whilst sharing the general characteristics of all centrism, has to be seen as distinct in form from the pre-1914 Second International or the pre-1935 Comintern. We call the centrism of the post-war FI petrified centrism that is a centrism which is paradoxically relatively stable, in that it has continued to exist for over 30 years. This form of centrism is not new. Trotsky observed the same phenomenon in the old London Bureau of the 1930s, which included the ILP and which he designated "a petrified centrism without masses"141.

 

This centrism is divorced from the masses, and as. a result can remain relatively immune to the pressure of the masses during great social upheavals. It can thus constantly postpone making decisive choices.

 

The Second and Third Internationals were rooted deep within the working class. The Second International came to reflect the privileged social layers of the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy. The Comintern leaders were based upon a privileged social caste within the Soviet Union, with the resources of state power at their disposa1. In the last analysis their politics became anchored, through these layers, to the conservative interests of states, capitalist in one case, degenerated workers' state in the other.

 

The magnetic pull of these counter-revolutionary social forces proved irresistible to the incoherent politics of centrism. The Fourth International movement has never directly rested upon such privileged social forces. In the 1930s and 1940s its cadres were courageous individuals capable of swimming against the tide of fascist, Stalinist and reformist persecution. These cadres came from the ranks of advanced workers and from those intellectuals willing and able to break from their class of origin. In the years 1933-1948 the FI deepened its proletarian roots. This greatly assisted its programmatic firmness.

 

With the recovery of US and European capitalism and the onset of the cold war the FI sections were increasingly isolated from any revolutionary proletarian forces. The proletariat of the principal imperialist powers sank back into reformism, political apathy, economism. New revolutionary recruits became fewer and fewer. Within the thinning ranks of the Trotskyist groups, conservative older workers and petit-bourgeois came to predominate. The isolation from the masses sealed the Trotskyists from having to take decisions, yet the social pressure on them was increasingly from a petit-bourgeois milieu and petit-bourgeois movements.

 

It would be merely vulgar materialism and crude workerism that sought to identify the causes of the FIs degeneration in either its leaders' petit-bourgeois class origins (the SWP leaders' class credentials were impeccable) or in the class composition of its membership, but given the political collapse of the FI into centrism, alien class forces nourished and preserved this. Where the centrist "Trotskyists" had a mass base and where decisive actions were required of them by developments within the class struggle (e.g. the LSSP in Ceylon) right centrism collapsed into open reformism. This petrified centrism is defined by more than just its lack of a mass base. Its programme is a mutation, a hybrid of revolution and reform.

 

The ILP's distinctiveness was its pacifism but this was embroidered by strong elements of pro-Stalinist positions and concessions to social democracy (e.g. parliamentarianism). In the case of the FI after the war, its "Trotskyism" became increasingly disfigured by Stalinist social democratic or petit-bourgeois nationalist influences. The FI and its fragments have prevented this hotch-potch from being torn apart into its constituent elements because it has never, as an International, been in the leadership of large sections of the working class in pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situations.

 

In the imperialist countries the predominant drift of this centrism in the 1950s and 1960s was to the right. All the fragments became reconciled to the 'social peace' of the post war boom, politically adapting themselves to the dominant hold of Stalinism or social democracy. Even in the upheavals in the semi-colonies during this period, right opportunism was apparent in the attitude of the fragmented FI to petit-bourgeois nationalism.

 

Yet centrism would not be centrism if it was incapable of shifts to the left. The Healy grouping in the IC was pushed to the left by forces breaking from the CPGB under the impact of a crisis within Stalinism after Hungary 1956. The anti-war struggles, the general strike in France, the Italian and British strike waves of the late 1960s and early 1970s produced left-centrist turns in the USFI and in various national sects. This 'left' turn was riven with errors and contradictions and soon resulted in a turn back to the right. This in turn produced smaller leftward breakaways, to one of which, in the SWP(GB) we owe our origins. Future sharp turns in the class struggle are likely to generate more such splits. Moreover, we recognise in "left" centrist splits potential recruits to communism. But for that to take place, the banner of communism has to be raised once again as an alternative to the numerous banners of centrism that parade the FIs symbol.

 

The organisational disintegration of the FI reflects nothing less than the programmatic disintegration of that organisation in the period after the Second World War. The subsequent history of all of the FIs fragments since the early 1950s confirms this analysis to the letter. For this reason we understand the refounding of a revolutionary International in programmatic terms.

 

For us the task is not to "reunify" or "reconstruct" the Flout of the degenerate fragments of Trotskyism, but rather a task of rallying the best elements within those fragments to a new, unspotted programmatic banner. In the first place this means that genuine Trotskyists must set as their central task the re-elaboration of the Trotskyist programme, refocusing it towards the new period of economic and political crisis that has opened up in the 1970s/80s.

 

It is precisely this political instability in the world, the hallmark of the epoch of imperialism, the epoch of wars and revolutions, which gives revolutionary strategy and tactics their central importance as guides to action for millions. There is no room for vagueness or ambiguities within such strategies and tactics. We live in a period of dramatic fluctuations in the class struggle where revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations can rapidly turn into periods of black reaction, as in Chile, Iran, or Turkey for example. Only with a clear programme, that includes precise tactics which flow from and are subordinated to a revolutionary strategy, is it possible to build a revolutionary party and International which can lead the working class to power and defeat the threat of reaction.

 

There is no brick wall between principles, strategy and tactics. Serious and persistent errors of tactics, which remain uncorrected, inevitably lead to a liquidation of the programme. This was the road along which the post-war FI travelled. All the centrist fragments, the USFI, the Healyites, Lambertists, Morenoites, and national based groups like to claim adherence to the Transitional Programme.

 

They can do so with impunity because they have turned that programme into abstract principles which do not in any sense guide or inform their strategy and tactics. The Transitional Programme is for them an icon to be brought out every now and then to reassure their followers of their 'continuity' with Trotsky's FI. This explains the collapse of democratic centralism without real programmatic unity. Democratic centralism is replaced in the case of the Healyites and the iSt with bureaucratic centralism (i.e. subordination of the small groups to one large group), and in the case of the USFI and the Lambertists by federalism and the principle of non-interference in the respective national sections' "spheres of influence."

 

For us, therefore, revolutionary credentials are not valid if they are based on a formal declaration of loyalty to the Transitional Programme. Such formal adherence has, as we have shown, disguised opportunist and sectarian distortions of the programme and the method underlying it. The Transitional Programme was developed on the basis of the whole tradition of revolutionary Marxism. It represented the continuity and development of that tradition since the publication of The Communist Manifesto. Embodying the method of its predecessors it stands on the shoulders of these programmes as a document of enormous historic significance. However, like the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin, whole elements of it were specific, necessarily so, to its immediate period.

 

Trotsky himself was clear that all programmes are specific to some extent precisely because they are a summation of the general lessons of the preceding period of class struggle and revolutionary thought and practice. Programmes develop a strategy of action for the coming period based on an analysis of the lessons of the preceding period. Writing in 1937 Trotsky reminded his followers of this important rule with regard to revolutionary programmes:

 

"What other book could even be distantly compared with The Communist Manifesto? But this does not imply that after ninety y.....of unprecedented development of productive forces and vast social I struggles, the Manifesto needs neither corrections nor additions. Revolutionary thought has nothing in common with idol worship. Programme and proposes are tested and corrected in the tight of experience..which is the supreme criterion of human thought. The Manifesto too required...corrections and additions. However, as is evidenced by historical experience itself, these corrections and additions can be successful. Only by proceeding in accord with the method lodged in the foundation of the Manifesto itself."142

 

This method guided Marx and Engels themselves. They said of their own "Transitional Programme":

 

"That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today. In view of the gigantic strides of Modem Industry in the last twenty five years, and of the accompanying improved and extended party organisation of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some respects become antiquated."143

 

Forty four years after the publication of the Transitional Programme we have to maK~ "corrections and additions" to it, in the same way as Trotsky made "corrections and additions to The Communist Manifesto. We must re-elaborate Trotsky's programme by proceeding according to the method lodged within it. This involves more than just 'bringing the Transitional Programme up to date'.

 

The Transitional Programme itself was not the complete programme of the FI in two senses.

 

In the first place it represented the "summation" of the collective work and struggles of the Left Opposition, the ICL and the MFI over 15 years. In these struggles, against Stalinism, social democracy, centrism, fascism, imperialism etc., the Trotskyists developed the programme of the International Tendency in polemics, declarations, resolutions, documents and theses:

 

"The Left Opposition, therefore, has a colossal experience of an international character. There was not a single important historic event that did not force the Left Opposition to counterpose its slogans and methods to the slogans and methods of the bureaucracy of the Comintem.” 144

 

In the struggles around questions of the Soviet economy, the regime of the CPSU, the Chinese Revolution, the Anglo Russian Committee and later the Spanish revolution, the struggle against fascism and war etc., the Trotskyists hammered out an international organisation based on a common programme and method that was rooted in a common analysis of actual revolutionary events. In this sense, therefore, the Transitional Programme was rooted in agreements over far more than a set of general principles.

 

Secondly, the Transitional Programme was a focused programme heavily oriented towards providing an action programme for the rapidly developing crisis. It was based on a perspective of immediate war and resultant revolution-"The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International". That is, as with "The Action Programme for France" the programme concentrates heavily on short term perspectives and tasks, without fully analysing epochal developments, such as the changes within world imperialism. Trotsky himself recognised this shortly after drafting the programme he pointed out that not only - the beginning section on modern capitalism in the imperialist epoch not complete but:

 

"Also the end of the programme is not complete because we don't speak here about the social revolution, about the seizure of power by insurrection, the transformation of capitalist society into the dictatorship, the dictatorship into the socialist society. This brings the reader only to the doorstep. It is a programme for action from today until the beginning of the socialist revolution. "145

 

Thus the programme reflected the necessary turn of the FI towards mass work. This turn was based on the perspective of impending revolutionary upheaval with the FI coming to the head of the masses during the war and the programme becoming the guide to millions. As we have shown this perspective did not materialise, and its failure to do so clearly has programmatic implications. It required of Trotskyists that they test and correct their programme in the light of experience.

 

In his discussion of the Transitional Programme with the SWP, Trotsky had insisted that the programme was directed towards expected upheaval. He, more than anyone, realised that if this perspective was not realised, a review of the programme would be necessary:

 

"You can raise the objection that we cannot predict the rhythm and tempo of the development, and that possibly the bourgeoisie will find a political respite. That is not excluded-but then we will be obliged to realise a strategic retreat. But in the present situation we must be oriented for a strategic offensive, not a retreat."'46 Trotsky's perspective, unlike that of the post-war FI, had an alternate character.

 

The task of re-elaborating the programme has to start from a recognition that, in the light of world developments since 1945, new lessons and experiences of the class struggle need to be analysed and understood before a new programmatic summation can be made. This is all the more necessary since, unlike the FI in 1938, we do not have an unbroken series of correct positions and documents to look back to and build upon. From 1945/46 when the FI reconstituted itself, its documents were only partially correct analyses and programmes for the new world situation. Since the 1951 Congress the documents of all the fragments, of all the sections, have been fatally flawed by centrism, sectarianism and opportunism. Re-elaboration involves a review of the post war period, of the responses to that period by the centrists and a restatement of programme in the light of this analysis. Trotsky used an analogous approach in relation to the period of centrist degeneration of the Comintern:

 

"The Left Opposition. . . considers necessary a radical restatement of the programme of the Comintern, whose Marxist gold has been rendered completely worthless by centristic alloy."147

 

The first stage of re-elaboration is to develop clear positions on the key questions that have caused chaos within or been thoroughly revised by the post war degenerated Trotskyist movement:

 

a) Imperialism- Trotsky's perspective was based on the view that all the imperialist powers would face collapse and catastrophe as a result of a prolonged and unimaginably destructive war. The outcome would be a profound revolutionary situation from which capitalism if it survived would do so at tremendously reduced levels of production and under fascist or bonapartist regimes. This proved a false perspective. US imperialism emerged from the war immensely strengthened-the expansion of its productive capacity, its enormous export of capital led the way to a prolonged boom. Democratic regimes were re-established in the major imperialist powers. Social democracy maintained or regained its hold on the working class of Britain and Germany. Stalinism dominated the French and Italian labour movements. A new relationship of forces, unforeseen and unforeseeable by Trotsky emerged. The long boom, the period of unchallenged US hegemony in the imperialist world, the armed truce with the Stalinist bureaucracy, replacement of the Franco British colonial empires by a system of semi-colonial client states, the emergence of new areas of Balkanisation (the Middle East) all necessitate perspectival and programmatic analysis. Only thus can the period of renewed crisis, class struggle and war, preparations for which have characterised the 1970s and '80s, be understood and acted upon.

 

b) Stalinism-Trotsky predicted the destruction of Stalinism either by an imperialist victory or as a result of political revolution. Neither eventuality occurred. Indeed a process of Stalinist expansion took place which, occurring through a number of stages, resulted in the establishment of workers' states, degenerate from birth. In these states, rather than in the USSR itself, the most acute political revolutionary crises have occurred-Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia. The real nature of the Stalinist expansion and the lessons of the various political revolutionary crises were never understood by the FI's fragments.

 

Pablo, Mandel, Cannon and Healy all capitulated to various shades of Stalinism at different times, while others, like Cliff and CLR lames turned their backs on the Trotskyist analysis of the USSR. A revolutionary understanding of Stalinism, its expansion, the dynamics of its crises and of the strategy of political revolution will be integral elements within a re-elaborated programme.

 

c) Permanent Revolution-The Transitional Programme was extremely condensed in its tactical conclusions for the struggle in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, although it was supplemented by Trotsky's writings on India and Latin America. The extensive capitulations to petit-bourgeois nationalism by the Healyites, the USFI and other tendencies, all highlight the urgent need for a restatement of the tactical conclusions that flow from Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution.

 

Permanent revolution itself needs to be defined, not as an ever forward moving 'objective process', but as a strategy that has to be fought for by a conscious revolutionary party. Its tactical conclusions (anti imperialist united front, democratic demands etc) need to be understood as being premised on the maintenance of the independence of the working class and the refusal by it to subordinate its struggles or interests to the needs of a 'national democratic' (i.e. bourgeois) stage of the revolution.

 

d) Work in the unions and reformist parties -In the Transitional Programme Trotsky wrote that the crisis of leadership in the trade unions should be resolved in the following way:

 

[...]

 

working class in Germany, and the role of the Comintern and ;social democracy in that defeat. This call drew sharp distinctions between all those who could be won to revolutionary politics through making a clean break with the old Internationals and those who wished to keep their bridges open to the twin camps of reformism (social democracy and Stalinism). In other words Trotsky urged an alliance around something that was a burning question facing the international working class and all those who claimed to represent its revolutionary interests. But in urging this alliance Trotsky always made clear that taking it forward meant developing an international programme that would seal the uncertain elements (OSP, SAP, RSP) to clear revolutionary action:

 

"Not only are denunciations of the Second and Third Internationals insufficient to advanced workers but the bare admission of the necessity of a new International does not suffice either. It is necessary to say clearly what International we have in mind: the restoration of the miserable Two and a Half International or the unification of the international proletarian vanguard on the basis of a revolutionary programme that actually corresponds to the problems of our epoch. "'48 The fight for this programme meant that the ILO (ICL) kept its programmatic positions intact and promulgated them within the programme commission that was established by the Four (but did not get very far).

 

The ICL entered the Bloc of Four well aware that its allies were leftward moving centrists. But at no time did Trotsky fail to criticise the politics and leaders of these organisations on every vacillation they made to the right. He also made clear that the Bloc did not mean that the ICL took any political responsibility for the other groups positions. Thus Trotsky could write in March 1934 when his allies were backtracking from their declaration:

 

"With regard to the OSP, as in all other cases, we draw a distinction between the centrism of the workers, which is only a transition stage for them, and the professional centrism of many leaders, among whom there are also incurables. That we will meet with the majority of the OSP workers on the road to the Fourth International-of this we are quite certain."149

 

This does not mean that today we regard all forms of centrism alike. In fact it is only by recognising centrism in all its variegated colours and stages that we can distinguish between a left break from centrism, to which we must reach out and win individuals or whole groupings to revolutionary Marxism, from the left vacillations of the inveterate centrists. We say quite openly that the history and record of the leaderships of all the centrist currents, Healy, Lambert, Mandel, Barnes, Moreno etc., have shown them to be incurable centrists, incapable of learning through their mistakes. A revolutionary international will be built with the best elements from within these currents but only through an implacable struggle against their leaders.

 

For us a necessary and inevitable stage in the struggle to re-found an International is the stage of building fighting propaganda groups. This term is profoundly misunderstood. Organisations such as the WSL insist that it is the equivalent of a sectarian turn away from the working class: the programme exists, the task is to win the "world Trotskyist movement" back to applying it. For the iSt on the other hand, the fighting propaganda group has been turned into a barren sectarian concept. Divorced from class struggle and programmatic re-elaboration, the Robertson cult has turned it into a provocation machine aimed directly at breaking up opposition tendencies.

 

The essence of a fighting propaganda group is neither of these things. It is a recognition of two real, fundamental and interrelated problems facing genuine Trotskyists. First we do not, and cannot yet have, full programmatic clarity. We have around us chaos, confusion and fragmentation. In these circumstances, genuine Marxists cannot bury their heads. Confusion on programme and theory leads to practical errors.

 

The fighting propaganda group's raison d'etre is to solve these theoretical problems. Lenin was clear on this during the Bolsheviks' period as a type of fighting propaganda group.

 

"Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement".

 

This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opposition goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity. . . our party is only in the process of formation, its features are only just becoming defined and it has as yet far from settled accounts with the other trends of revolutionary thought that threaten to divert the movement from the correct path. . . Under these circumstances what at first sight appears to be an "unimportant" error may lead to most deplorable consequences and only short sighted people can consider factional disputes and a straight differentiation between shades of opinion inopportune or superfluous."150

 

The confusion in the post-war FI was even greater than that in the RSDLP in 1902. It is vital that our first task is to understand and overcome this confusion. But while it is our first task, it is not our only task. The second fundamental problem facing post-war Trotskyism was its continuing isolation from the working class. This was related to its programmatic weakness. The fighting propaganda group, therefore, does not turn its back on practical work.

 

It attempts to focus its programmatic work towards the fundamental needs, interests and concerns of the working class. This is its only method of avoiding sectarianism. However, our size and implantation, and, we would contend, the size and implantation of most ostensibly Trotskyist groups, mean that a direct orientation to mass work is severely limited, not by choice, but by the conditions we find ourselves in. Thus our work has to be of an exemplary communist nature. Where circumstances allow-and we search such circumstances out actively-we fight for our communist politics inside the working class. We utilise tactical compromises, (e.g. the united front) to win support for revolutionary strategy and tactics and to win a hearing for our propaganda.

 

The question of whether a group is a propaganda group is not, in the first place, a question of numbers. It is rather a question of the stage of development of the Marxist nucleus and the working class movement. Thus an organisation of thousands can be a propaganda society a grouping of a few hundreds, a party. The reduced numbers in the underground circles of the Bolsheviks in 1914-17 represented the nuclei of a vanguard party that had led the workers in revolutionary mass struggles (in 1905 and 1912-14). It was consequently able to become a mass party within months of the restoration of legality.

 

Propaganda circles represent the first stage, the embryo stage of party building. In situations of illegality and repression this work would be heavily dominated by "discussion type activity" 151 It is the period of the development of programme and the training of cadres.

 

Marxists however, are characterised by the striving to unite theory and practice, to enrich each with the other. Therefore they seek always to find every possible avenue to the working class in struggle. The stages of growth of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and its Bolshevik wing have rich lessons for communists at all stages of party building. As the RSDLP passed from the period of propaganda circles to that of creating the framework of an illegal party, Lenin had cause to attack sharply those who wished to utilise this vital transition to dissolve or liquidate the programmatic gains and dilute the training of cadres (the Economists and the Mensheviks).

 

These stages and the transition between them are not however historical curiosities or unrepeatable events. The defeat or degeneration of parties and internationals can and do represent these problems.

 

Trotsky himself passed from circle-propagandist to clandestine party leader, to mass agitator, to leader of a mass party and International in the first twenty years of his political life.

 

In Trotsky's last exile he was again obliged to turn to the task of leading what were in effect propaganda groups and indeed to founding an International - most of whose sections were still propaganda groups. From 1929 to 1933 the International Left Opposition considered itself an expelled faction of the Comintern. It therefore devoted the overwhelming bulk of its activity to propaganda against the programmatic degeneration of the Comintern (against Socialism in One Country) and against the disastrous "Third Period" tactics. After the German catastrophe, the International Communist League was formed to openly address the workers aroused to struggle by the Fascist menace.

 

Trotsky had to purge the ICL's ranks of the sectarian traits which had developed in the imposed isolation and propagandism of the "Third Period." Trotsky therefore stressed the need to turn to the masses, to involve the small ICL nuclei in the mass organisations of the class - the trade unions and between 1934 and 1936 the Socialist Parties, where these were destabilized by the political and economic crisis. Yet Trotsky realised that the ICL sections remained propaganda groups, but ones that sought to orient to the class struggle. At the time of the French Turn he stressed that the French section was not a party, but only the embryo of one -i.e. its leadership was the first layer of cadre. It had yet to win a leading role within the proletarian vanguard.

 

Trotsky more than once characterised the ICL after 1933 as "instruments for the creation of revolutionary parties". 152 We can put this another way, namely, propaganda groups seeking to transcend their existence as propaganda groups. At no time did Trotsky abandon this characterisation, although given the favourable position of the SWP(US) in the American labour movement and the inevitability of war, Trotsky emphasised the great prospects enjoyed by the FI after 1938 for becoming a mass party through the convulsions brought on by the war.

 

The fighting propaganda group is thus a dialectical concept. It puts programme first not merely in theory, but in its practical struggle within the working class, albeit forced to do so on a small scale. This way we seek to win and train future cadres for the movement real leaders who understand and can apply communist politics. A return to this stage of work has been imposed upon us by the post-war collapse of Trotskyism. It cannot be wished away or jumped over. Faced with the collapse of the Comintern in the 1930s, Trotsky understood the importance of such a stage in the development of .new revolutionary parties: "The real initiators of the FI begin with Marxist quality and turn it afterwards into mass quantity. The small but well-hardened and sharply ground axe splits, hews and shapes heavy beams. We should begin with an axe of steel. Even here the means of production are decisive." 153

 

However we reject absolutely any attempt to justify abstract propagandism. We do not advocate study circles divorced from the class struggle. Our programme is for the action of millions, not for saving our souls. We focus our propaganda on the key issues of the international and national class struggle. We take our place in the mass organisations of the working class, we orient to every major struggle - strikes, campaigns around democratic rights, the struggle of the unemployed, democratic reform in the unions, or the mass reformist parties.

 

We reject with contempt any attempt to turn Marxism into a sterile dogma justifying separation from or indifference to the struggles of the working class or other progressive forces. The neo-Bordigism of such groups as the iSt is absolutely foreign to us.

 

Nevertheless no small groupings in the present conditions can jump over the stage of focused propaganda. Those that attempt to do so, to pretend to be a party, to involve their members in constant shallow agitation, to engage in "mass" recruitment simply dig their own grave. The results are a leadership with primitive politics which develop sectarian and eventually cult-like features; a membership with no education unable to check or criticise the leadership. The "party" or league will eventually develop a rapid turnover of membership.

 

We stand by Trotsky's posing of the question in a similar stage:

 

"Our strength at the given stage lies in a correct appreciation, in a Marxian conception, in a correct revolutionary prognosis. These qualities we must present first of all to the proletarian vanguard. We act in the first place as propagandists. We are too weak to attempt to give answers to all questions, to intervene in all the specific conflicts, to formulate everywhere and in all places the slogans and replies of the left opposition. The chase after such a universality, with our weaknesses and the inexperience of many comrades, will often lead to too hasty conclusions, to imprudent slogans, to wrong solutions. By false steps in particulars we will be the ones to compromise ourselves by preventing the workers from appreciating the fundamental qualities of the Left Opposition. I do not want in any way to say by this that we must stand aside from the real struggle of the working class. Nothing of the sort. The advanced workers can test the revolutionary advantage of the Left Opposition only by living experiences, but one must learn to select the most vital, the most burning, and the most principled questions and on these question engage in combat without dispersing oneself in trifles and details." 154

 

The present world situation makes the building of an International and in the first place an international tendency, an urgent task. The 1980s are witnessing profound crises that indicate nothing less than a disruption of the world order achieved by imperialism after the Second World War. The renewed period of cold war by the USA against the USSR, the turmoil and wars in the Middle East, the attack on Argentina by Britain, revolutionary upheavals in Asia and Latin America all reveal this.

 

These events demonstrate that Lenin's characterisation of the epoch as one of wars and revolutions is becoming a generalised feature of the coming period. These events find their reflection also in the degenerate workers' states. The upheavals in Poland show that the new period will see challenges to the stranglehold of Stalinist bureaucratic rule in these states. The job of revolutionary Trotskyists is to lead the revolutionary upheavals that occur to success - to the conquest of power by the working class. This can only be achieved by building revolutionary parties and an International firmly united around an international revolutionary programme. Such a programme will, in the sharp test of practice, win workers from Stalinism and social 'democracy and centrism only if it is re-elaborated for the new period.

 

The destruction of the FI after the war and its fragmentation and disorientation, make the job of building an International a more difficult one. But we are not fatalists. The class struggle will act as a constant spur to new layers of the proletariat, both within and outside of the existing movement that claims to be Trotskyist. It will propel these forces into a search for revolutionary answers. The task of the hour is to develop these answers. All talk of leading the masses without specifying exactly what programme they are to be led on is to lay the basis for further confusion and defeats.

 

We recognise that the development of a communist programme is an international task. A grouping isolated in one country will invariably succumb to national pressures - the SWP(GB) are a classic example of that. The Irish Workers Group and Workers Power have jointly attempted to begin these programmatic tasks.

 

Together we work as fraternal organisations. The aim of our two groups is ultimately to achieve a degree of programmatic agreement sufficient to facilitate the establishment of a genuine democratic centralist international tendency.

 

This in turn needs to be done through international discussion with other tendencies and groupings. We wish to seek out other groups who agree with our method and tasks. We wish to establish fraternal relations with other groups so that the work can be carried forward. We invite groups and individuals who agree with the positions and propositions in this document to enter into programmatic discussion with us, with the aim of jointly pursuing these programmatic tasks. It is precisely through the successful completion of these tasks that an international tendency based on a common method and programme and on democratic centralism, will be forged.

 

Within the disintegrating fragments of the Fourth International political disagreements have either been "overcome" by bureaucratic dictat or federalism. Both traditions represent a travesty of the traditions of democratic centralism pioneered by the Bolsheviks, the Comintern and the Fourth International.

 

In the process of forging an international tendency it is obvious that fully fledged democratic centralism will not arise simply though formal agreement on basic position documents or through joint work alone.

 

Democratic centralism itself will develop as part of the process of establishing operative agreement only all key programmatic, strategic and tactical questions. It will be preceded by a period of collaboration, of fraternal relations.

 

The construction of a democratic centralist international tendency will at first entail the establishment of a series of international conferences representing nationally elected leaderships. To the extent that binding agreement on programme and operative questions of principle can be reached an authoritative international leadership will be forged out of the national sections.

 

It will then be possible, finally, to elect an international leadership, invested with executive political power over the decisions of the national sections. By establishing democratic centralism in this manner real debate and decisions over the national tactics of constituent organisations can take place. Obviously an international leadership would take the opinions of a national section into serious consideration. It may even allow tactical experiments where minor differences of orientation or emphasis exist. However the international leadership would carefully oversee national work, check it against international developments, and ensure that it was carried out in a strictly principled communist fashion.

 

This is not "bureaucratic interference" or mere "collaboration". It is the common discipline that is built as a result of programmatic agreement.

 

The majority of subjectively revolutionary militants who we as a communist tendency can hope to relate to, remain within the centrist groups who claim to be Trotskyist. While we have no illusions in the leaderships of these tendencies, the international class struggle will continue to throw these organisations into crisis, leading to splits.

 

An international communist tendency would aim to win the best cadres from these groupings through intransigent criticism, programmatic debate and where possible common action against the class enemy. We do not hide, however from the fact that all of the FI's fragments are caricatures of Trotskyism.

 

This testifies to the fact that the Fourth International no longer exists as a revolutionary international. It is necessary to build a new world party of Socialist Revolution.

 

Whether that new International will be able to take up the banner of the Fourth International once again is not yet decided. It has not yet been proven whether the various fragments will travel along the reformist road of the LSSP. It may be that the hammer blows of the class struggle and the criticisms of an international communist tendency will break up the centrist amalgams and allow for a principled regroupment under the banner of a programmatically and organisationally rebuilt Fourth International.

 

It is possible that the so-called Trotskyists will openly abandon even formal adherence to the Fourth International and become qualitatively indistinguishable from social democracy or Stalinism - as the SWP(US) appears intent on doing. Should this happen with the major international fragments, then it may be possible for revolutionaries to , re-appropriate the banner of the Fourth International as their own.

 

What we can say is none of the existing claimants to the banner of the Fourth International represent the basis for the rebuilding of a revolutionary international. If they succeed in definitely liquidating the banner of the Fourth International into the camp of either social democracy or Stalinism in the full view of significant sections of the international working class then we will not flinch from pronouncing the Fourth International to be dead in number as well as in programme.

 

At present our perspective and tasks point to one inescapable conclusion - the FI no longer exists as a revolutionary international:

 

FORW ARD TO THE REFOUNDlNG OF A LENINIST TROTSKYIST INTERNATIONAL!

 

FOR A NEW WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES

 

 

 

1. M.Shachtman, Ten Years - History and Principles of the Left Opposition (New York,1974) p.5.

 

2. L Trotsky, Writings 1935-36 (New York,1977) p.159.

 

3. This will be referred to hereafter as The Transitional Programme. All references are to L Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (New York, 1977).

 

4. ibid., p.152.

 

5. Jane Degras, The Communist International 1919-1943 (London,1971) Vol 1, p.250.

 

6. ibid, pp. 248-9 7. ibid, p 249 (our emphasis) 8. L Trotsky The Third International After Lenin (New York,1970), p.79.

 

9. Documents of the Fourth International 1933-1940 (New York,1973), p.161.

 

10. L Trotsky, The Transitional Programme, op.cit., p.114.

 

11. L Trotsky, "The Political Backwardness of the American Workers" in ibid., ppI59-160.

 

12. L Trotsky, "Completing the Programme and Putting it to Work", in ibid, p.1I2

 

13. L Trotsky, ibid, p.l3!.

 

14. L Trotsky, Writings 1939-40 (New York, 1973), p.222.

 

15. J. Cannon, Socialism on Trial (New York,1973), p.52. (Our emphasis).

 

16. L Trotsky, Writings 1938-39 (New York,1974) p.213.

 

17. Militant (New York, 15th March 1941).

 

18. Workers International News (December 1938) 19. Youth for Socialism (February 1941).

 

20. L Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International (New York, 1972) Vol1.. p: 179.

 

21. Fourth International (New York, June 1946), p.169.

 

22. ibid., p. 175.

 

23. Felix Morrow, "International Report (Minority Report)" in SWP Internal Bulletin Vol III No.8 (1945), p.32.

 

24. All examples given are quoted from RCP Conference Documents (September 1946), pp. 6-7.

 

25. ibid., p. l0.

 

26. Fourth International (New York, June 1948), p.l01.

 

27. ibid.

 

28. Fourth International (New York, August 1948), p.181.

 

29. see M. Pablo, "The Yugoslav Affair", in Fourth International (New York, December 1948) 30. Class, Party and State in the Eastern European Revolution (New York, 1969) p.57.

 

31. Fourth International (New York, November/December 1951) (original emphasis).

 

32. M. Pablo, "Where Are We Going?" in International Secretariat Documents 19511954 (New York, 1974) Vol1. p. 7 (original emphasis).

 

33. See the advice to the Austrian section "not to push forward programmatic and principled questions" (International Information Bulletin, New York, December 1951).

 

34. Theories abound as to whether Bleibtreu-Favre (or Favre-Bleibtreu - the name has been printed both ways) was one or two people. Further, it seems that Favre is a pen-name of Pierre Lambert. We do not know the truth behind this mystery. Nor do we care - the politics pioneered by Bleibtreu-Favre provided the (incorrect) basis for the Lambert group.

 

35. Fourth International (New York, October 1949), p.259.

 

36. "Letter from James. P. Cannon to Daniel Renard", May 29th 1952, in International Committee Documents 1951-54 (New York 1974), Vol1. p.23.

 

37. "A Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World" in ibid, Vol 3. p 152.

 

38. ibid., pp. 138-152, 39. ibid., p. 139.

 

40. J.Cannon, Speeches to the Party (New York, 1973) p. 89.

 

41. For a more detailed treatment of this period, see Workers Power 7,39 and 40.

 

42. Trotskyism versus Revisionism (London 1974-5) Six volumes.

 

43. ibid., Vo!. 2, pp 72-84.

 

44. See footnote 34.

 

45. International Committee Documents 1951-54 (New York, 1974) Vo!. 1. pp.9-20.

 

46. International Secretariat Documents 1951-54 (New York,1974), Vo!. 1, pp 16-24.

 

47. See Workers Power & Irish Workers Group The Degenerated Revolution (London,1982), pp.90-93.

 

48. International Secretariat Documents 1951-54 (New York, 1974) Vo!. 1, p.18.

 

49. International Committee Documents 1951-54 (New York, 1974) Vo!. 1.,p.16.

 

50. ibid., p. 16.

 

51. Fourth International (New York, November/December 1951).

 

52. From an interview in Militant May 12th-19th 1952, quoted in Documents of the Vern-Ryan Tendency (Communard Publishers) p. 41.

 

53. ibid., p. 43.

 

54. From G. Lora, "One Year of the Bolivian Revolution", quoted in ibid., p. 80.

 

55. G. Lora, Bolivie: de la Naissance du POR A L'Assemblee Populair p.35 (Our translation).

 

56. The Development and Disintegration of World Stalinism (New York,1970) p.16.

 

57. ibid., p. 16.

 

58. ibid., p. 20. 59. ibid., p. 23.

 

60. Dynamics of World Revolution Today (New York, 1974), p. 30.

 

61. ibid., p. 37.

 

62. ibid., p. 38.

 

63. See also E. Mande1's recent defence of this position in Revolutionary Marxism Today (London 1979) p. 96.

 

64. Revolutionary Marxism vs Class Collaboration in Sri Lanka (New York, 1975) p.8.

 

65. P. Frank The Fourth International (London,1979) p.116.

 

66. Quoted in Trotskyism versus Revisionism (London 1974) Vol 4, p. 235.

 

67. Intercontinental Press (New York, July 14th 1969), Vol 7, No. 26, p. 270.

 

68. Intercontinental Press (New York, January 1980) Special Supplement.

 

69. The USFI's clearest espousal of this theory is to be found in the 1974 "Theses on Building of Revolutionary Parties in Capitalist Europe" in Intercontinental Press (New York, December 23rd 1974) Vol 12, No. 46, p 1822.

 

70. E. Mandel, Socialist Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Toronto, 1977) p. 13.

 

71. ibid., p. 27.

 

72. "Revolution on the March" in Intercontinental Press (New York, January 1980).

 

73. Trotskyism versus Revisionism (London, 1974) Vo!. 2, p. 154.

 

74. International Committee Documents 1951-54 (New York, 1974) Vol. 3, p. 137.

 

75. Trotskyism versus Revisionism op. cit. Vol. 3 p.22.

 

76. W. Sinclair, "Under a Stolen Flag", in ibid., p. 5.

 

77. ibid., Vo14. p. 274.

 

78. ibid., p. 307.

 

79. ibid., Vol. 5, p. 72.

 

80. Towards a History of the Fourth International (New York, 1973) Part 1, p. 17.

 

81. International Socialist Review (New York, Spring 1958) p. 50.

 

82. See Workers Power & Irish Workers Group, The Degenerated Revolution (London 1982), pp. 93 - 96.

 

83. Quoted in T. Polan The SLL - An Autopsy (Trotskyist Tendency, n.d.), p.16.

 

84. Trotskyism versus Revisionism op. cit. Vol. 4, p. 302.

 

85. Quoted in ibid., Vol. 6, p. 64.

 

86. Polan, op. cit., p. 8.

 

87. Quoted in Trotskyism versus Revisionism op. cit., V 01. 3, p. 132.

 

88. "La Verite" was the newspaper of the Lambert grouping.

 

89. Trotskyism versus Revisionism op. cit. Vol. 6. p. 64. (Our emphasis).

 

90. ibid., Vol. 5., p. 86.

 

91. ibid., Vol. 6, p. 54.

 

92. ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 154-5.

 

93. J. Lister,Spartacist Truth Kit (London, 1982).

 

94. L. Trotsky, Writings 1933-34 (New York, 1975), p.233.

 

95. Marxist Bulletin (New York, n.d.) No. 9, p.5.

 

96. Quoted in Lister, op.cit., p.12.

 

97. This question is dealt with at greater length in the final section of this book.

 

98. Spartacist Britain No. 47.

 

99. Spartacist Britain No. 1. 100. Workers Vanguard No. 295.

 

101. FMR, Self Critical Balance Sheet of the NIl (Frankfurt, 1977), 102. The I-CL and the Fourth International (London 1976), p.6.

 

103. ibid., p. 8.

 

104. See section on the TlLC for a fuller discussion of this fusion.

 

105. Documents of the Founding Conference of the OCRFI (Dublin, n.d.) p. 11.

 

106. G. Lora, History of the Bolivian Labour Movement (Cambridge, 1977) p. 363.

 

107. ibid., p. 362.

 

108. G. Lora;Programmatic Basis of the POR (English Translation by the Socialist Labour Group, n.d.) p.57.

 

109. G. Lora, History of the Bolivian Labour Movement op. cit. p. 368.

 

110. "Manifesto of Bolivian Front Against the Dictatorship" in Intercontinental Press (New York, December 6th 1971) p. 1078.

 

111. Declaration of the Fourth Internationalist Tendency (Lima, 1979) (Our translation).

 

112. Documents of the Founding Conference of the OCRFI op. cit., p. 17.

 

113. Declaration of the FIT op. cit.

 

114. Declaration of the FIT on Nicaragua (La Paz, 1979) (Our translation).

 

115. Pour la Defense et le Soutien du Proletariat Polonais!! (Paris, 1'981) - this was published by European based militants of the FIT. (Our translation).

 

116. Workers Power No. 17 and Class Struggle No.7.

 

117. International Correspondence No. 1.

 

118. Quoted in International Marxist Review (London, Spring 1982), p.54.

 

119. Draft Theses for the Reorganisation (Reconstruction) of the Fourth International, Thesis 31.

 

120. For a more detailed critique of the "Forty Theses" see Workers Power No.22.

 

121. Correspondance Internationale, No. 14 p.l0.

 

122. ibid., p. 11.

 

123. Workers Socialist League, The Battle for Trotskyism, (London, 1979)

 

124. Trotskyism Today No.2 p.1. 125. Trotskyism Today No.3 p.28.

 

126. Workers Socialist League The Poisoned Well (London), p.3.

 

121. ibid.

 

128. Workers Socialist League The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Srtuggle (London, 1919) ~.21 119. G L, Theses on the Crisis of the Fourth International and the tasks of the Bolshevik Leninists (Genoa, 1979).

 

130. ibid.

 

13\. ibid.

 

132. L. Trotsky, Writings on Britain (London 1974) Vol. 3, p. 87.

 

133. ibi.r, p. 87.

 

134. Workers Socialist League, The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle op. cit., p.8.

 

135. L. Trotsky, Writings 1937-38 (New York, 1976), p. 90.

 

136. Workers Socialist League The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle op. cit., p. 18.

 

137. TILC International Discussion Bulletin (London, 1980) No.2, p. 16.

 

138. L. Trotsky, Writings 1930 (New York, 1975), pp. 236-7.

 

139. L. Trotsky, Writings 1934-35 (New York, 1974) p.278.

 

140. ibid., p. 274

 

141. L. Trotsky, Writings 1931-38 (New York, 1976) p 286.

 

142. ibid., p. 22.

 

143. K. Marx and F. Engels, "Preface to the German Edition of 1872" in The Communist Manifesto (New York, 1970) p. 12.

 

144. L. Trotsky, Writings 1933-34 (New York, 1975), p.73.

 

145. L. Trotsky, "Completing the Programme and Putting it to work" in The Transitional programme p.113.

 

146. ibid., p.l01.

 

147. L. Trotsky, Writings 1932-33 (New York, 1972) p.52.

 

148. L. Trotsky, Writings 1933-34 op. cit., p. 67.

 

149. ibid., p. 268.

 

150. V. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1961) Vol. 5, p. 369.

 

151. G. Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party (London, 1973) p. 55.

 

152. For example, see L. Trotsky, Writings (Supplement) 1934-40 (New York, 1979) p. 533: "The ICL cannot act as an independent party of the proletariat, it is only the instrument for the creation of independent parties".

 

153. L. Trotsky, Writings 1933-34 op. cit., p. 268;

 

154. L. Trotsky, Writings 1930-31 (New York, 1973), p.297.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marxism versus Post-Modernism

 

 

Note by the Editor: The following document has been published in 1997 by our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (renamed to League for the Fifth International in 2003). It was initially published in the LRCI’s theoretical journal “Trotskyist International” No. 21 (January-June 1997).

 

The founding members of the RCIT were partly long-time and leading members of this organization before they were bureaucratically expelled in April 2011 – a few weeks after they formed a faction in opposition against the increasing centrist degeneration of the LFI. Immediately after their expulsion these comrades built a new organization and went on to form the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) together with a number of other comrades. Today the RCIT is present in more than a dozen countries.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

Postmodernism is not yet the dominant form of bourgeois thought. But it is, increasingly, the predominant form of critical academic thought. A Marxist critique of postmodernism has to challenge its intellectual core and uncover its material roots. The aims of this article are: to summarise the theory which underpins postmodernism; to offer a Marxist critique of that theory; and to explain the material roots of its plausibility.\n“The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art or social class, the ‘crisis’ of Leninism, social democracy or the welfare state etc. etc.); taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism.”(Frederick Jameson)1

 

If there is a late 20th century zeitgeist – a spirit of the age which pervades culture, academic thought and politics – it is to be found in the ideas grouped under the banner of postmodernism. We could add to Jameson’s list the idea of “post-industrial” society, chaos theories in science and, of course, the “end of history”.

 

Postmodernism is not yet the dominant form of bourgeois thought. But it is, increasingly, the predominant form of critical academic thought. A Marxist critique of postmodernism has to challenge its intellectual core and uncover its material roots. The aims of this article are: to summarise the theory which underpins postmodernism; to offer a Marxist critique of that theory; and to explain the material roots of its plausibility.

 

In social science, cultural theory, politics and philosophy postmodernism’s enemy number one is Marxism. The old bourgeois liberalism – while it retained its predominance – lost its dynamism and coherence with the onset of the crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s Marxism – albeit in a variety of academic forms – was the main methodological standpoint adopted by those searching for a coherent critique of modern society.

 

Today, in the English speaking world, Marxism has been virtually banished from the universities. A whole generation of academics has “converted” to postmodernism. Among students there is little knowledge of Marxism, still less study of it, other than in the form of distorted summaries provided by its opponents.

 

So in anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics and philosophy postmodernism has almost become the new orthodoxy. That is to say nothing of academic disciplines such as “post-colonial studies” – where the word imperialism is banned – whose very existence is premised on postmodernist methods.

 

If postmodernism were popular in universities but subject to a sustained challenge in intellectual life outside them, in particular by a vibrant workers’ movement, the task of combating it would be less important. But its theoretical premises align fundamentally with the “common sense” of a whole generation which has seen Stalinism collapse, Labourism commit suicide and popular radicalism fragment into a variety of single issue campaigns.

 

That is why fighting postmodernist ideas is of prime importance to Marxism.

 

It cannot be done by wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan “bollocks to postmodernism”. Nor can it be done by bowing and scraping in front of the gurus of postmodernism, asserting that – at their best – they were really Marxists.

 

The works of the French post-structuralists – Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and Baudrillard etc. – are the philosophical foundations of postmodernism.

 

Alongside them, reaching similar conclusions from different starting points, stand the “neo-sceptics” of modern American philosophy: Quine, Rorty, De Man and Stanley Fish. If this article deals predominantly with the European proponents of postmodernism it is because theirs is the standpoint generated specifically via a critique of Marxism.

 

Defenders of postmodernism often argue that it is impossible to lump all the postmodern thinkers together; that the weak points of one postmodern theorist were recognised and overcome by another; that there are important debates within postmodernism, and self-critical re-assessments within the works of its major thinkers.

 

All of this is true. But in the first five minutes of any argument between a Marxist and a postmodernist a set of common themes will emerge. These are:

 

• there is no objective truth to be comprehended by scientific thought;

 

• there is no pre-given human subject; the human individual is only a complex of interrelated outside influences and determinants;

 

• language cannot represent reality; therefore, the concept of ideology, where false ideas mask reality, is meaningless;

 

• the idea of historical progression and necessity is meaningless: social formations in history, sociology and anthropology must be “mapped” – not judged or categorised;

 

• all social movements or societies based on the possibility of scientific knowledge and objective truth rely on “grand narratives” rather than inner logic to legitimise them; these “meta-narratives” inevitably lead to the legitimising of oppression;

 

• the class struggle and socialism are precise examples of such meta-narratives; in any case they have become outmoded by developments in the modern world;

 

• the only form of resistance to oppression that does not lead to another form of oppression is limited, local, piecemeal resistance; the surest form of resistance is to change ourselves, aspiring ultimately to turn our own lives into a “work of art”.

 

Thus, philosophical postmodernism overtly rejects more than three hundred years of progressive thinking associated with the consistent rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment. The attempt to think scientifically about society as well as nature – and all systematic thought based on this endeavour – is rejected by postmodernism as part of the “Enlightenment project”, a project which Francois Lyotard argues:

 

“ . . . legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse – the dialectics of the Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject or the creation of wealth.”2

 

At the very heart of postmodernist theory lies the rejection of human thought’s ability to comprehend objective truth. While they have expressed it in different ways, and with different degrees of confidence, the chief theorists of postmodernism all stand by a variant of philosophical scepticism: we cannot know anything for certain; even provisional theories about the world presuppose that there is an objective truth to be grasped. Jean Baudrillard quotes approvingly the words of the 19th century philosopher Frederick Nietzsche:

 

“Down with all hypotheses that have allowed the belief in a true world.”3

 

This view is, in turn, rooted in postmodernism’s rejection of the ability of language to represent reality.

 

The postmodernists found their way to this idea via a critique of the “structuralism” of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Writing in the early 20th century Saussure sought to understand the structure of language by uncovering the relationship between a word and the idea it signifies (the signifier and the signified).

 

Saussure set aside – for the purpose of study – the relationship between the concept and the thing being conceptualised. He was concerned with the relative autonomy of the structure of language from the world it discussed.

 

Out of this specific line of investigation a whole methodology – “structuralism” – was evolved after World War Two. It was applied not just to the study of language but to society and culture in general, particularly in the social sciences.

 

A generation of radical intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s became preoccupied with the problems of generalising structural linguistics into a “science of signs” – semiotics. Structuralism also found a voice in the writings of the most influential academic Marxist of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Louis Althusser. Meanwhile structural linguistics itself experienced a “crisis” during which many of its leading proponents began to reject any correlation between the sign and the real object being signified.

 

According to Foucault scholars, McHoul and Grace:

 

“In essence, theories of the relation between language and the ‘real’ were abandoned in favour of theories relating linguistic element to linguistic element. Semiotics and structuralism, that is, moved towards the signifier side of things. Discourse, then, took on the guise of a relatively autonomous, yet quite material, sphere in its own right. This position became known as the ‘materiality of then signifier’.”4

 

Out of the crisis of structural linguistics “post-structuralism” was born and it no longer confined its pronouncements to the sphere of linguistics.

 

Its basic tenet – that signs are more real than the things they represent – was codified into a world view, an anti-philosophy. The most radical proponents of this have been Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard.

 

For Derrida all forms of language and communication are summed up in the word “text”. And, in Derrida’s famous phrase, there is “nothing outside the text”.5 For Derrida, however, the lack of correspondence between language and reality does not absolve us from subjecting culture to criticism. This gives rise to one of postmodernism’s most important ideas: deconstruction.

 

All “texts”, according to Derrida, are made up of metaphors and other linguistic devices which conceal the real meaning, often concealing the flaw in the logical structure. The task of a critical thinker is to “deconstruct” the text, reveal its inner meaning – or lack of meaning – through a “close reading”. Like a psychiatrist who looks for chance remarks and physical twitches in the patient to uncover what is really the cause of mental illness, Derrida sees the “marginal text” as the best starting point for a critique of a set of ideas.

 

Derrida’s work takes the form of literary commentaries on various aspects of Western culture. He does not posit an absolute truth which the allegedly dishonest forms of language cover up: like all postmodernists he rejects the concept of ideology.

 

Since the role of the critic is not to analyse but to commentate, literary ramblings are just as valid as rigorous analytical presentations. The US writer Paul De Man, a follower of Derrida, wrote:

 

“Literature turns out to be the main topic of philosophy and the model of the kind of truth to which it aspires”6

 

Jean Baudrillard poses the problem of the relationship of language to the real world in a different and more culturally specific way. He claims that mass communications, and the popular culture they have given birth to, make a nonsense of the question “does language reflect the real world?”.

 

Traditional language, according to Baudrillard, tried to “represent” the real world, giving rise to the philosophical “problem of representation” (i.e. is the representation accurate?). The structure of knowledge in the late 20th century means that, for Baudrillard representation has given way to “simulation”. Simulation “bears no relation to reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum”.7

 

Instead of reality we have “hyper-reality” – where signs are more real than the things they signify. As a result, Baudrillard too rejects the concept of ideology:

 

“Ideology corresponds to a betrayal of reality by signs; simulation corresponds to a short-circuit of reality and its reduplication by signs.”8

 

Television, for example, is more real than the world it represents. This outlook allowed Baudrillard infamously to predict, in January 1991, that the Gulf War could not happen. After it was over he wrote a book entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.9

 

Within postmodernism itself there is controversy over what the inability of language to reflect truth means.

 

An obvious problem raised by Baudrillard’s arguments for rejecting rationality is its historically specific and therefore limited premise. Whereas Derrida makes a general statement about knowledge, Baudrillard makes a historically specific one: for him it is the age of mass communications which has made truth impossible.

 

The clearest line is drawn, however, between Foucault and Derrida. Whereas Derrida denies that there is a knowable world beyond the text, Foucault sees – in the hidden meanings uncovered by deconstruction – a reflection of the power relationships in human society.

 

Postmodernists argue that any meta-discourse or meta-narrative, will legitimise political power and oppression. Enlightenment rationality gave rise to a number of such meta-discourses: liberalism, Marxism, fascism, Hegelian philosophy, Social Darwinism etc. The task, they say, is to subject rationality itself to a critique so that such abuses of social power cannot recur.

 

Michel Foucault, declared, “I am simply a Nietzschean”.10 Postmodernism’s views on the problem of “power” – social oppression and repression – also owe much to Nietzsche. Nietzsche saw the class struggle as only one expression of a more fundamental struggle in human society – what he called the “will to power”. Foucault refuses to make a value judgement between repression and the “power” exerted by social movements which resist it.

 

But Foucault refuses to order those power relationships politically, socially or morally. He refuses to write “history” preferring “genealogy” i.e. a temporal progression which does not suggest progress, lawfulness or necessity.

 

His three volume History of Sexuality provides a commentary on the historically changing and determined nature of this fundamental facet of human culture. But – though its subject matter is the rise of capitalism and its effects on the pre-capitalist family – he refuses to structure his investigations around that historical fact.

 

Both Foucault and Derrida have their quasi-Marxist followers. Derrida has claimed to see value in Marxist socialism as a form of resistance once it is shorn of its “meta-narrative” and reduced to a utopian good idea.11

 

Foucault – though avowedly anti-Marxist – is seen by many as the more “materialist”, because of his desire to explain unequal power structures as underpinning the hidden meaning of language, and because his subject matter has been the historically changing form social oppression.

 

But the arguments between the postmodernists only serve to underline the key points of agreement, all of which form the starting point for their critique of Marxism. Fundamentally, all of them reject the possibility of knowing the objective world.

 

When considering the social world, all reject historicism. All see modern philosophical thought – from the Enlightenment of the 1760s to Marxism and beyond – as rooted in an unjustifiable rationalism. They reject the specific value of philosophical thought over literature and commentary.

 

Finally, all reject the concept of the human subject. Western philosophy has been rooted in the concept of the individual human being (the subject) comprehending the outside world (the object) through thinking. According to Foucault:

 

“The individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.”12

 

While much of Foucault’s work focuses on the creation of human subjectivity by society, postmodernism’s attack on the subject has important implications for the theory of knowledge. We cannot know objective truth: not only because language cannot depict reality but also because there is no “independent” human thinker to comprehend the truth.

 

The Marxist critique of postmodernism has to start with the epistemological questions – i.e. questions about knowledge and how we know what we know.

 

Marxists defend science, rationality, the idea of an objective, knowable world and human subjectivity – but we do so critically. We defend them from the standpoint of dialectical materialism.

 

Dialectical materialism sees all scientific thought as a “series of successive approximations to the truth” (Lenin); it sees the subject/object model of knowledge as one sided because it presupposes an absolute opposition between the thinking mind and “matter”.

 

In addition it is only revolutionary Marxism which can provide a coherent critique of “meta-narratives” where they serve as justification for oppression, including where – as in the case of Stalinism – that “meta-narrative” is a degeneration originating in the Marxist movement itself.

 

Let us start with the arguments for and against an objective reality, whose laws of motion are real and discoverable.

 

Millions of people, every day, board passenger jets. They are prepared to believe that a machine based on the laws of aerodynamics can defy gravity. They believe, provisionally, that science has discovered a real objective law; they trust science’s prediction that the jet will fly. Aeroplanes work because their design is based on accurately observed and understood laws of nature.13

 

At a deeper level, however, some of the laws of physics on which aerodynamics is based – essentially the physics discovered by the scientists of the much maligned “Enlightenment” – are called into question by modern scientific discoveries. Even the two great advances of 20th century physical science (the general theory of relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics) conflict with each other.

 

Because of this the most consistent scientific thinkers are forced to view their theories as provisional summaries of the truth; approximations formed in the human mind to the actual laws of the objective world.

 

Scientific method

 

Does the provisional and approximate nature of scientific theory mean that, ultimately, there is no knowable objective world?

 

The most influential modern argument in favour of this comes not from European post-structuralism but from North American “neo-pragmatist” philosophy. W.V.Quine, in his essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”14 argued that there are as many ways of describing an observed event as there are sentences held to be true at a given time.

 

For Quine even non-theoretical “observation sentences” – such as “the jumbo jet is flying” – are already value-laden, bound up in a pre-existing belief system (“It will fly”). For Quine, therefore, scientific statements and mystical statements have equal validity: they are all hypotheses. We may choose one set of statements to represent truth, says Quine, but in fact we are only choosing one set of metaphors for the world, one “ontological scheme”.15

 

However, when Quine wants to cross the Atlantic he gets on a jumbo jet.

 

Faced with the choice of two sentences – “the jet will fly” and “I could fly by flapping my arms” – Quine chooses to act as if the second statement were false.

 

In doing so, he is not just exhibiting an urge to self preservation. Nor is he simply choosing an “ontological scheme”. He is making exactly the same link between scientifically formulated laws and human action that forms the basis of so called Enlightenment rationalism.

 

It could easily be proved that Quine cannot fly by dropping him from a tall building. It can be proved that jumbo jets will fly by observing them. Ultimately the proof of scientific hypotheses lies in practice.

 

The physicist Stephen Hawking describes the way Einstein’s general theory of relativity was reinforced – as against classical Newtonian physics – by observing small movements in the path of the planet Mercury:

 

“The fact that Einstein’s predictions matched what was seen, while Newton’s did not, was one of the crucial confirmations of the new theory. However we still use Newton’s theory for all practical purposes because the difference between its predictions and those of general relativity is very small in situations that we normally deal with.”16

 

Marxism shares with all consistent scientific method and rationalism the belief in the concreteness of truth, and the provisional hypothetical nature of scientific theory. But the revelation – through scientific research – that one theory is inadequate; its replacement by another; even a period of generalised scientific uncertainty such as our own; all of this does not add up to a case for rejecting the possibility of scientific truth.

 

In the late 20th century science is undergoing a massive historical transformation, in which many of the certainties and models of reality are being shaken up. The goal of the absolute majority of scientists is to re-order scientific thought at the end of this process. Hawking, for example, sees the possibility of current partial and conflicting theories giving rise to a “complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe”.17

 

A small minority of scientists have been influenced by postmodernism. But calls for a “postmodern science” based on chaos theory have received little support, even from those like Hawking who believe that theory “exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality”18.

 

The postmodernist call for a “re-enchantment of nature”19 has produced little resonance precisely because science is a search for truth in the physical world.

 

Richard Appignanesi, a recent populariser of postmodernism, points out ruefully:

 

“The emerging theories of chaos and complexity completely demolish the notion of control and certainty in science . . . Both theories promise a postmodern revolution in science based on notions of holism, interconnection and order out of chaos . . . While both chaos and complexity have forced us to ask sensible questions and to stop making naive assumptions, both are presented by their champions as new theories of everything.”20

 

Of course, under capitalist society scientific research is subject to many restraints. The scientific community is often, and increasingly, a handmaiden of business. The fracturing of scientific research into a series of overlapping but uncoordinated “disciplines” can hinder the search for truth.21

 

But while science is hampered by the social relations of capitalism under which is it practised, and while many of the new disciplines of science have contributed buzzwords to the postmodern lexicon (chaos, fractals, Heisenbergian uncertainty etc.), not one of these scientific disciplines proceeds in practice from an absolute scepticism or relativism.

 

That is because scientific thought is not qualitatively different from the common, everyday thoughts of the air traveller checking in his/her luggage at the airport: it proceeds from practice and is verified through practice – that is to say through our senses.

 

Materialist dialectics counterposes to all scepticism the historical fact that humanity has conquered nature through knowing it more accurately. The progress of the productive forces – from stone tools to the internet – has occurred because of the interaction between human thought, consciousness, and the objective world.

 

If the objective world were unknowable through our senses then this progression could not have taken place.

 

Language and reality

 

Postmodernism has adopted and reinforced the general philosophical relativism outlined above in its theory of language. Richard Rorty, the American postmodernist writes:

 

“To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations. Truth cannot be out there – cannot exist independently of the human mind – because sentences cannot so exist.”22

 

Postmodernist thinkers fall into two camps on the question of language:

 

• language cannot represent reality;

 

• language can no longer represent reality.

 

For both standpoints the problem of knowledge is shifted from sensation to consciousness. Whether or not we can see a true picture of the objective world we cannot think it – because the language in which we think cannot accurately comprehend that world.

 

Language is demonstrably a product of human history. Humankind’s interaction with nature, through practice, has produced successive linguistic structures. In Greenland there are more than twenty different words for snow; in the England of Sir Francis Drake there were over forty different words for a sailing ship.

 

For Marxists this history of language is a confirmation of the dialectical materialist assertion that being determines consciousness. A visit to any museum of antiquity shows that the rising level of human mastery over nature created “languages” that described and comprehended the world with increasing accuracy: from hieroglyphics and crude human representations to the alphabet and unsurpassed sculptural realism.

 

Structural linguistics originated in an attempt to understand the inner laws of humanity’s successive ways of thinking expressed through language.

 

Its original focus was historic languages and the living languages of surviving pre-capitalist (often pre-class) civilisations. It attempted to look beneath conscious speech to the unconscious infrastructure of language. It searched for an inner structure or system in languages with the aim of discovering general laws of language itself. It focused not on historical change, but abstracted from the changes within language.

 

Many of structuralism’s insights were useful, both to the study of “primitive” cultures and also the development of language in children. But generalised into a method of analysing all human society, most importantly in the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, structuralism became a mixture of mechanical materialism and idealism.

 

Its mechanical materialism lies in its assertion that human subjectivity and action played no part in the “structure” of society. We are simply the products of our circumstances. The analysis of a given social structure depends on taking a “snapshot” of society and elaborating its general rules. The human subject is not free to think outside the language rules of the society in which they live. Because of this structuralism is unable to understand – and often uninterested in – the process of historical development.

 

At the same time, precisely because of its emphasis on language as the determining factor in consciousness (as opposed to practice), structuralism is a form of idealism.

 

It was out of the collapse of structuralism – its failure to hold up as a general theory of social reality – that post-structuralism and postmodernism were born.

 

Derrida and Foucault both began working within a structuralist framework. They shared with structuralism the idea that the human subject (what Levi Strauss called the “spoilt brat of philosophy”) was merely the product of its surroundings and therefore, not valid as a concept. They also shared with Levi-Strauss his opposition to the idea of historical progress. His anthropology had rejected, as “Euro-centric”, the idea that modern capitalist society represented a form of progress over the pre-class societies he studied.

 

Structuralism had also gone a long way to undermining the possibility of language reflecting truth. It “bracketed” (i.e. temporarily ignored) the thing, in order study the sign representing the thing. Thus it paved the way for its own self-destruction.

 

Derrida led structuralism’s movement to the “signifier side of things” by asserting that since the relationship between word and concept were already arbitrary, language was nothing more than a “free-floating collection of signifiers”.

 

At a theoretical level the most fundamental objection to this retreat to linguistic relativism is that it contains its own refutation. If language has no reference to the material world, if there can be no truth, then there can also be no coherent theory. The “theory” that language cannot reflect reality is – by its own criteria – invalid, because there can be no theory.

 

This may seem like a cheap shot at postmodernism. But its validity has been recognised by the postmodernists themselves.

 

Alongside the retreat to linguistic relativism – the idea that truth, in Nietzsche’s words, is just a “mobile army of metaphors” – goes a retreat away from attempts to theorise. In Derrida’s work the attempt to theorise is replaced by a fragmentary series of “non-judgmental” commentaries.

 

This is also the method of Jean Baudrillard, but taken to extremes.

 

Baudrillard began as loosely committed Marxist in the early 1960s but developed a new, basically idealist explanation of mass production and consumption, in which the categories of Marxist economics are torn away and applied to semiology.

 

For Baudrillard commodities do not simply have use value and exchange value (as in the scheme outlined in Marx’s Capital23), they are also “signifiers” in a language system.

 

And their signifying role is more important than either their use value or exchange value. Ultimately Baudrillard concluded that both use value and exchange value were merely “alibis” for the sign. The whole “system of signs” which Marxism calls ideology, the whole culture of mass consumption, advertising etc. was not the result of capitalist production but its prime cause.

 

As we have indicated, there is a logical contradiction between the generalised relativism of Foucault and Derrida and the historically specific relativism of Baudrillard. But what they share is a retreat from theory, justified by a retreat from linguistic meaning.

 

Marxists object to this: not because we believe that language reflects reality in a constantly “true” and unmediated way, but because the linguistic “problem of representation” can only be solved historically.

 

If there is “only” language, and it bears no relationship to objective reality – in Derrida’s version of post-structuralism – then why does language change? If “discourse”, as Foucault understands it, is not merely language but the means whereby power systems come into being and legitimise themselves, then what is the impulse which drives one power structure to be replaced by another? It cannot be the subjective action of human individuals since the human subject is hopelessly trapped in the “determined” language and the predominant discourse of its time.

 

There is no convincing answer to these questions in the work of Foucault and Derrida. The only consistent answer can be found in Marxism.

 

Dialectical materialism rejects the distinction between “knowing” and “doing”. The “truth claims” and “truth sentences”, derided by postmodernists on both linguistic and epistemological grounds, are always, in the first place, the product of human action not of thinking divorced from action. For Marxists knowledge is transforming action.

 

And this is not just a “theory”, or rival speculation. It is provable with reference to every historical advance in knowledge. Every advance in knowledge is at the same time an advance in technique.

 

Until very recently human knowledge, of necessity, trailed behind technique. Hunting leads to language, the stone tool to drawing – not the other way round.

 

The answer to all scepticism – whether of the Quine, Rorty, Foucault or Derrida types – was given by Marx as early as 1845 in the Theses on Feuerbach:

 

“The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.”24

 

Ideology

 

As we have seen, both French post-structuralism and American philosophical scepticism reject the possibility of ideology.

 

Ideology – broadly speaking – means a set of ideas arising from social conditions which serve to obscure the truth about society, legitimising a specific form of class society as the only “natural” or inevitable social formation.

 

Marxism did not invent the concept: it was originated by the mechanical materialism of the Enlightenment and the French revolution, and taken up by Marx’s idealist precursor, Hegel. Even in Marxism there has been intense debate about the nature and role of ideology.25

 

Nevertheless, it remains a crucial concept for explaining the role of language and logic in comprehending reality; for explaining why humankind – despite being engaged constantly in “practice” – comes up with false ideas.

 

In the earliest exposition of the concept, The German Ideology26, Marx and Engels start from the fact that, before there is thinking there is being: before mind there is matter. Matter existed for millennia before it produced a thinking animal. The human brain, where thinking takes place, is also matter. Human consciousness was produced, historically, by our interaction with the environment – more specifically our attempts to change it.

 

This biological fact is at the same time a social fact: humans are social animals. In order to interact successfully with our environment we must do so in societies. Our social existence is crucial in producing our consciousness.

 

As soon as human beings raised their minds to questions of explaining the world around them they formed sets of ideas which were conditioned by their social and physical environment: seaboard societies worshipped sea gods.

 

But why did they worship gods at all?

 

The religious impulse appeared to the early materialists as an absence of reason: ideology was humanity’s substitute for not being able to know the natural world and thus control it. Marx and Engels went beyond this rationalist view of ideology by showing how false ideas, as well as true ones, have real material roots:

 

“We set out from real, active men and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process.”

 

But:

 

“If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura [a pinhole camera], this phenomenon arises just as much as from their historical life process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life process.”

 

The act of subordinating nature to human control did not just push back the boundaries of ideology. It was done through society, and because all society until now has been systematically unequal – class based – social development created and reinforced ideology.

 

Ideology is formed not just by physical conditions but by social conditions. Specifically the most fundamental social conditions – the way we produce wealth, what Marx called the economic “structure” or base – give rise to a whole series of social institutions and modes of behaviour which in turn condition human thought:

 

“The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life processes in general.”27

 

The many-layered mediating process between economic production and social thought means that ideology can be varied within a given society. There can be ideologies of resistance as well as of reaction. “The blacks are taking our jobs and destroying our national culture” is one example of ideology. So is the idea that fascist councillor Derek Beacon came to power in London’s Isle of Dogs by exploiting the magical power of a “lay-line” which ran beneath his house.

 

For the same reason that we have jumbo jets that fly we can have ideas that challenge ideology. Science, applied to the physical world, produces hypotheses provable by interaction with that world. Social practice can equip us with the vision to see beneath the external appearances thrown up by social structures.

 

Anybody wanting to free humanity from the necessity of having to endure exploitation at work, to starve and suffer oppression has to identify the obstacles that stand in the way of freedom. Collective struggle has the power to blow away ideology – maybe only partially but at least in the most crucial areas – and allow those resisting oppression to come to a scientific view of their predicament.

 

It is a fact that the collective class struggle is the greatest counterweight to crude, overt and crippling racism of the kind quoted above. The active struggle can prove that fascists like Derek Beackon have no power – magical or otherwise – to resist a mass, political and physical working class response.

 

Ultimately the working class will not dispel capitalist ideology- in all its forms – without uprooting capitalism itself. But the most collectively active section of the working class is able to see through the decisive parts of that ideology, especially when its spontaneous insights are combined with, and codified into, a scientific counter-argument for socialism.

 

Contrast all this with the views of post-structuralism and neo-scepticism.

 

Neither Michel Foucault nor Stanley Fish deny that our beliefs are conditioned by our surroundings. Both agree that we cannot escape such conditioning. According to Fish:

 

“That is the one thing a historically conditioned consciousness cannot do, conduct a rational examination of its own convictions.”28

 

For the post-structuralists, while deconstructive criticism can unmask the logical flaws and sleights of hand in discourse, and even uncover the structure of an ideology, it cannot replace it. Unless it retreats to the personal, or the fragmentary, the critique of one ideology will only be done from the standpoint of another.

 

In one sense the postmodernists have grasped the truth here. They are rooted in the “Western Marxist” tradition which divides the revolutionary party into “intellectuals” and “masses”. No individual theorist, however erudite, can hope to escape ideology by theoretical practice alone. As individuals we all possess a consciousness that is more or less shaped by the predominant ideas of the ruling class. This is even true of revolutionary socialists.

 

But as a collective, through a party that unites our everyday experience as individuals with the historic experience of the organised working class, and is armed with a scientific understanding of the interests of the working class, we can combat ideology.

 

It was the experience of the Stalinist parties’ misleadership and betrayal of the working class which drove the French post-structuralists away from the concept of ideology and towards the concept that Marxism was just another “meta-narrative”.

 

The class struggle “taught” Foucault, Baudrillard and co that the working class could not rise to become a revolutionary subject. It could not learn collectively from practice. It was a short journey from this idea to the rejection of human subjectivity in general.

 

True to the influence of Nietzsche, Foucault in particular sees the class struggle as only one example of a more fundamental impulse in humanity, namely the “will to power”.

 

The first question a materialist must ask about the “will to power” is where does it come from? If it is a biologically determined trait of humanity, and it underpins all social conflict, then the human race is doomed genetically to suffer oppression. That would leave postmodernism as little more than a rehashed version of the religious theory of “original sin”.29

 

If, on the other hand, the will to power has social roots then it is already called into question as the fundamental category. What in society produces and reproduces this will? What exists prior to it? Foucault’s investigations into “discourse” as a means of legitimising power structures, and into historically successive discourses, refuse to answer these questions. The history of society is reduced to the “power struggle” without any explanation of where the power struggle comes from.

 

Instead Foucault observes the effects of the rise of capitalism on human relations, not just at the level of class struggle, but in the sphere of punishment, training, social oppression and sexual repression. He argues that, whereas feudalism had imposed a political power relationship from above, rising capitalism imposed “self discipline” through a variety of new social institutions:

 

“This new mechanism of power is more dependent upon bodies and what they do than upon the earth and its products. It is a mechanism of power which permits time and labour, rather than wealth and commodities, to be extracted from bodies. It is a type of power which is constantly exercised by means of surveillance rather than in a discontinuous manner by means of a system of levies or obligations distributed over time. It presupposes a tightly knit grid of material coercions rather than the physical existence of a sovereign. It is ultimately dependent on the principle that one must be able simultaneously both to increase the subjected forces and to improve the force and efficacy of that which subjects them.”30

 

If these observations were allied to Marxism they would form an interesting and useful insight into the social effects of the rise of capitalism.

 

Instead they are raised to the status of a theory, specifically opposed to the class struggle as an explanation of historical change:

 

“One should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations of domination.”31

 

In the first place, these two statements, taken from the same book of interviews, are materially at odds. Who is the “one” who must be able to increase the numbers of those subjected while increasing the force that subjects them? Who are the “subjected”? The answer is clear if we view history as the history of class struggle.

 

Rising capitalism required a new system of labour discipline, in which the worker was responsible – within limits – for the quality and duration of work. No longer to be ruled by the seasons and the sun, as agricultural labour was, but by the rhythms of the factory, the new working class had to be taught the “discipline” of the factory.

 

Foucault’s polemic against Marxism rests on the assertion that Marxism reduces history to just one set of power relationships – class structure – whereas “power” itself is a more fundamental category. But Marxism does not do this. For Marx the fundamental human category was not class struggle, nor power, but labour. Because humans have to labour in order to live, and because their labour is social, they create societies as a means to carrying out labour.

 

Marxism does not have to ignore or reject a relationship between power structures and human biology – as the Foucault/Nietzsche model does. It sees human beings as “social animals” and is able to understand power relationships in connection to the most fundamental human activity – social labour.

 

It is not true that Marxism reduces all power struggles to class. But we insist that the major social struggles can be defined in relation to class.

 

Women’s oppression emerges with the transformation of an accidental biological division of labour into a socially codified one. It does not happen until society is advanced enough to create a surplus and therefore a struggle over the surplus.

 

Racial oppression – as opposed to simple and widespread prejudice against the outsider – does not emerge until the rise of a specific form of class exploitation in early capitalism, namely chattel slavery, and is systematised by the emergence of a specifically capitalist “power structure”, the nation state. Systematic oppression of lesbians and gay men emerges even later, with the imposition of the bourgeois family.32

 

Foucault’s “reduction” of all inequalities to the concept of power is not a reduction at all: it is a mystification. It cannot explain the reasons for power without reference to power. It is also self-contradictory, recognising oppressors and oppressed but refusing to recognise oppression.

 

It also relies on an utterly one-sided understanding of human subjectivity.

 

An earlier generation of humanist French thinkers (e.g. Sartre) saw the human subject as capable of doing and thinking anything – in defiance of its circumstances. Post-structuralism replaced this with an equally one-sided view of the human individual completely trapped by power structures and equally responsible for maintaining them, whether oppressor or oppressed.

 

Only Marxism can provide a coherent account of the power structures in society and of human subjectivity. Power structures reflect class interests. The state defends the property of the ruling class but petty theft in the inner cities does not summon many police sirens. A strike is an elementary form of power struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie.

 

Only somebody who equated Marxism with Stalinism – in particular with its economism and one-sided economic determinism – could see social struggles beyond the workplace as proof of its invalidity. But that is exactly the kind of “Marxism” which surrounded Michel Foucault as a member of the French Communist Party in the 1950s.

 

In the late 1960s an international working class offensive coincided with explosive struggles of women, youth, gays, black people and third world peasants. Foucault wrote:

 

“What has happened since 1968, and arguably what made 1968 possible, is profoundly anti-Marxist.”33

 

In the last part of this section we will try to explain how this judgement rests on a misinterpretation of the facts and a blatant misunderstanding of Marxism.

 

Fighting oppression

 

Marxism lays claim to be the only scientific form of thought about society precisely because it uniquely combines a search for totality with the realisation that thought is provisional and reality is in a constant process of change.

 

Marxism was able to stand on the shoulders of three strands of the Enlightenment – utopian socialism, Hegelian idealism and classical bourgeois political economy – only because it was able to see what was unscientific about them. It saw their tendency to present truth as a closed system and reality as a finished evolution.

 

For Lyotard the meta-narrative is defined by its “great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal”.34 Marxism arose by subjecting every one of these elements, in what have become known as its “three sources and component parts”, to a scientific critique. Did it replace them with heroes, dangers, voyages and goals of its own? In the sense Lyotard means, it did not. The working class – which would constitute the “hero” if Marxism were a meta-narrative – is destined to abolish itself in the process of liberating humanity. The “great danger” in the Marxist theoretical scheme – society’s collapse into barbarism – does not come from outside of its historical scheme: it is a possibility built into capitalist development.

 

Hence Marxism’s “goal” is completely different to that of rationalism, Hegelianism and classical political economy: it is not assured by the rationality and all-knowing totality of the theoretical system. It is only one possible outcome of the inner laws of society. And in Marxism of course the “goal” is not merely socialism or communism but the total emancipation of the human individual from need. Our goal is to start human history, not bring it to a conclusion.

 

Marxism is a synthesis of all that was progressive in early 19th century philosophy, economics and utopian socialism, made possible only by an attack on their one sided and false “totalising” claims.

 

As for the reactionary meta-narratives of the 20th century – Social Darwinism, national chauvinism, fascism, Cold War liberalism – revolutionary Marxism has been the only theory that did not give an inch to them, and the only force which combated them effectively in practice. There is no more cogent theory of fascism, for example, than that of Marxism: it was and is the politics of counter-revolutionary despair. Fostered by big business, but rooted among the middle class victims of capitalism, it was to do the job that the state apparatus could not – destroy the organised workers’ movements.

 

To the list above we should of course add Stalinism. Leon Trotsky, the last of the great “classical” Marxists, fought a long battle against the rise of Stalinism. When we survey that battle from the standpoint of the current debate what is striking is just how sensitive Trotsky and his followers were to Stalinism’s corruption of Marxism as a theory.

 

From the struggle against proletkultism and the effects of bureaucratism on social life in the early Soviet Republic right through to the defence of dialectical materialism against the Stalinist professors, real revolutionary Marxism saw and resisted every attempt to turn Marxism into a “meta-narrative”.

 

When Stalin declared that “socialism” had been achieved in pre-1939 Russia, and that “communism” was only years ahead, it was Trotskyists who held this up to ridicule. Meanwhile the liberal intelligentsia of the West crawled at Stalin’s feet.

 

The Trotskyists treated Stalin’s claim for Russia just as Marx treated Hegel’s claims for monarchic Prussia, Adam Smith’s claims for the capitalism of the 14 hour day, Robert Owen’s claims for New Harmony. They refused to accept it as the end of history. They roused the masses to struggle against it. They exposed the legitimising theory as ideology.

 

This was not the case with the precursors of postmodernism. All accepted Stalinism as Marxism. Thus they experienced the crisis of Stalinism as the death of Marxism.

 

In 1968 French workers launched the biggest general strike in history. It was sparked into life by a political crisis arising from a student uprising, at a time when a majority of university students could have legitimately been described as middle class. It took place against a backdrop of the rising women’s struggles and black struggles of the late 1960s and a near universal youth radicalisation.

 

Postmodernist psychologists Deleuze and Guattari argue that “May 68 in France was molecular . . . irreducible to the segmentarity of class”.35 Refracted through three decades of defeat, the working class seems to disappear totally from today’s postmodernist accounts of the 1968 events:

 

“Paris was in riot. In France 10 million people went on strike. Non-violent marches became pitched battles – the tools were barricades, burning cars and Molotov cocktails. Even Baudrillard’s faculty was disrupted for two months. Who was responsible? Students known as the Enragés – maniacs – and some were taught by Baudrillard. But they drew their inspiration from the Situationist International . . . The revolution failed. Some historians think it expired because the students went on summer holiday.”36

 

In fact the 10 million strikers were workers. The majority of student radicals drew their inspiration not from the artistic poseurs of the Situationist International but from Maoism, Stalinism and Trotskyism. The revolution failed because of the strength of Stalinism, which demobilised the workers and tried to divide them off from the student uprising.

 

Within a decade the majority of French intellectuals had abandoned Marxism and openly embraced French capitalism. Those who wanted to maintain a critical stance towards capitalism without Marxism had to evolve structuralism into the anti-rational orthodoxy that is the subject of this discussion. Sebastiano Timpanaro37 has explained the crucial role of Louis Althusser – the influential academic Marxist, who sought to fuse Marxism with structuralism – in precipitating this transition (see box).

 

Today the only revolutionary critique of capitalism and Stalinism is Trotskyism. Contrary to McHoul and Grace you will see revolutionary Marxists fighting for leadership on every contemporary barricade: the picket line, the black self defence group, the women’s campaign against domestic violence, the struggle against imperialist war. But you will not find many postmodernists there. Hampered by scepticism, paralysed by fear of the meta-narrative they retreat into the local and fragmentary. But it is to a local and fragmentary world far removed even from the vision of Foucault, who at least immersed himself in the struggle for the rights of prisoners.

 

Today’s postmodernists are more at home in the polite protests of middle class environmentalism; the ritual conflicts of the anti-road movement; the hand-wringing anti-humanism of animal rights; and of course in the ultimate form of postmodern protest – to dress outrageously and stay at home.

 

Postmodernism is part of the ideology of decaying capitalism. Like all ideology it does not spring up instantly and unmediated out of its economic roots. Its process of formation occurs in the world of ideas. Only after this, under the impact of events, do the ideas assume a mass character and therefore become a material force themselves.

 

In turn its arguments, “proofs”, methods and metaphors are drawn not just from culture, but from changes in the economic base itself. What follows is a brief attempt to explain that process.

 

There are many sources of postmodernist ideas: we have already discussed the crisis of Structuralism, and the so-called crisis of Marxism. Another strand is the crisis of artistic modernism.38

 

Modernism in art helped to define an important aspect of the ideology of the big bourgeoisie in the imperialist epoch. The very small upper layer of the bourgeoisie (and their later corporate equivalents) were able to persuade themselves of the dynamism of their system and the liberalism of their politics through their patronage of progressive artistic creativity.

 

After 1945 it experienced a “golden age”. Not just tolerated but actively promoted by the US imperialist establishment – including the CIA – post-war modernism was meant to adorn a booming, technologically progressive capitalism plucked from the ashes of World War Two, and to act as a siren call for dissident intellectuals in the Stalinist states.

 

But as capitalism’s long boom drew to a close modernism underwent another crisis of direction. It seemed to collapse in fragmentary directions. Where modernism had been put to functional use – most famously in architecture – its confidence was even further dented as, one after the other, the “cities in the sky” turned to slums and many were dynamited.

 

The inner contradictions of a modernism almost wholly divorced from any belief in social progress – capitalist or socialist – ultimately produced an art that reflected this growing pessimism. At first, few of those now acclaimed as postmodernists recognised themselves as such. Some still refuse to do so.

 

For the majority, however, it has become a convenient label to justify an art that denies or ignores the human subject; that refuses to comment on suffering; that maintains an ironic coolness towards all serious questions; that absolutely refuses to be associated with progressive movements; that is constantly pastiching itself.

 

The most fundamental ideological change however is the crisis of belief in the progressiveness of capitalism itself. Postmodernism is just one product of this. We also find it echoed within all mainstream bourgeois thought, as well as the “common sense” of a generation that can see no future other than one relentlessly like the present.

 

In this sense postmodernism stands firmly within the irrationalist tradition which formed the counterpoint to bourgeois rationalism ever since the Enlightenment itself.

 

We can trace a line from Schopenhauer, via Nietzsche to the gurus of postmodernism which asserts that rationalism is only the tool of power or the will, and that human life is meaningless. Alongside this philosophical tradition go various artistic expressions of it, all of which are characterised by a reactionary romantic opposition to capitalism.

 

In the 19th century, when capitalism was a relatively progressive system, this tradition remained on the sidelines of bourgeois ideology. In the 20th century, as capitalism begins to go rotten, it grows in strength. It is manifested not just in the desolate thoughts of adolescent poets but in the ideology of dictators. But still it does not achieve predominance.

 

Bourgeois liberalism remains the dominant ideology, and is given a new lease of life by the post-war boom.

 

Only in the last 25 years has the irrationalist streak of bourgeois thought seriously contended for dominance. And that is because of the coincidence of circumstances accumulated over three decades: the end of the post-war economic boom, with no return in sight; the defeat of working class struggles – many of them strategic defeats with long-term implications; finally the collapse of Stalinism.

 

These fundamental, developments in the economy and the class struggle unleash new developments in both base and superstructure: the destruction of traditional productive industries in the imperialist countries, the collapse of the “state capitalist” model in the third world and the resultant break-up of multinational states, the fragmentation of the political establishments of most of the imperialist countries as Cold War priorities receded.

 

Frederick Jameson has argued that postmodernism is the “cultural logic of late capitalism”. While Jameson never succeeds in specifying what exactly this late capitalism is he is correct in his insight that postmodernism is a spontaneous ideological reflection of capitalism in a period of decay, compounded by working class defeat.

 

And the fact that the champions of postmodernism in the English speaking world have originated in the left tells us that postmodernism reflects the particular outlook of a whole generation of disillusioned left intellectuals.

 

Alex Callinicos goes further, attempting to root postmodernism in the specific outlook of the “new middle class” – a concept originated by sociologist Eric Olin Wright and imported into Marxism by Callinicos himself. This is unconvincing, both because the new middle class analysis has serious flaws39 and because even if we accept its existence, it existed before postmodernism.

 

Postmodernism may have originated in the intelligentsia, it may be transmitted via the middle managerial and technical strata, but then again this is true of religious fundamentalism, Blair-ite Christian socialism and a whole host of ideologies in the late 20th century.

 

A materialist explanation of postmodernism does not need to situate its material roots in an intermediate stratum of society.

 

The immediate material impulses are economic stagnation, Stalinist collapse and working class defeat.

 

But the historic roots of postmodernism are the same as those of all post-1789 irrationalism: irrationalism with its emphasis on the individual will and power is the guilty self-hatred of the capitalist system. It is not a critique of capitalism, only a more desolate attempt to justify it.

 

Instead of enslaving millions in the factories in the name of “liberty, equality and fraternity” the irrationalist tradition says clearly that modern society is just the survival of the fittest.

 

Not even thought itself escapes this process: reason and theory are only tools to the competitive human will.

 

Whereas Nietzsche celebrated this will to power the proponents of postmodernism can only bemoan it – while accepting that there is no alternative.

 

Some, like Derrida, clearly recoil from this world without hope, and turn pleadingly back to Marxism for a radical theory: if only Marxism could shed itself of its “scientific” illusions and promote itself as a new utopianism then it could provide a point of light, Derrida believes.40

 

Others, like Rorty, passionately embrace the new reactionary reality, urging us to accept modern day America as “an example of the best kind of society so far invented”41 and expressing the hope that “America will continue to set an example of increasing tolerance and equality”42.

 

With views as divergent as these underpinning the most fashionable form of theoretical critique it is no surprise that, in the 1990s, we have started to hear about the “crisis of postmodernism”.

 

In this respect Jean Baudrillard has performed sterling work in pointing his followers towards the utter futility of postmodernism as a world view:

 

“Postmodernism is a regression. It’s the most degenerate, artificial and eclectic phase. It doesn’t have a meaning. It’s impossible to define what’s going on now. There’s a void which I analyse”.43

 

Marxists should view the crisis of postmodernism not with passive satisfaction but as an opportunity to intervene into the political crisis of a whole new generation which has grown up knowing only defeat.

 

Our aim is to convince today’s followers of postmodernism that the only healthy scepticism is dialectical materialism; the only coherent critique of Enlightenment rationality comes from the tradition which synthesised it and overcame it; that there is an alternative to a future of endless Bosnias and Rwandas.

 

The possibility of that future exists because of one product of the late 18th century that has not gone away: the organised working class. It is a growing class. It has suffered retreat and defeat across the developed world – particularly in the English speaking countries – but will recover its confidence and strength for new rounds of struggle.

 

Elsewhere it is already on the offensive. It is the only social force left in the world with the power to impose a progressive order against the onset of barbarism.

 

Its theoretical expression – Marxism – is the only product of the “Enlightenment tradition” which still thinks the Enlightenment was a good idea.

 

Postmodernism is the ideology of dying capitalism. Revolutionary socialism is the only guide to survival for humanity. And Marxists are not ashamed to say to the postmodernist generation: choose life!

 

Althusser’s Marxism

 

In the 1970s, the French philosopher, Louis Althusser, influenced a generation of Marxist intellectuals and professional academics in the social sciences and cultural studies.

 

Until his death in 1990 he was, for most of his adult life, a member of the French Communist Party (PCF). Like many he was deeply effected by Khruschev’s speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 which revealed the crimes of Stalin. His attempts to make sense of Marxism in the aftermath of this make up Althusser’s work.

 

During his “re-reading” of Marx in the 1960s the key influences on his thought were writers such as Derrida, Lacan and other structuralists. By contrast Althusser showed no interest in studying or learning from the left’s anti-Stalinist critique of the degeneration of the Russian revolution. Indeed, he defended most of the political and social results of Stalinism’s bloody counter-revolution against the Soviet working class.

 

His reflections were philosophical in nature. He concentrated his fire upon what he saw as alien influences on Marxism that had led to Stalinism’s deviations, namely a view of history that emphasised the forces of production and technology as the key to human development. This he termed “economism”.

 

But he rejected the “liberal” critique of Stalinism after 1956, which he labelled “humanism”:

 

“ . . . a profound ideological reaction . . . ethical in tendency which spontaneously rediscovered the old philosophical themes of ‘freedom’, ‘man’, ‘the human person’ and “alienation’.” (L. Althusser For Marx)

 

Both economism and humanism were products, according to Althusser, of the Second International’s reformist “Marxism” and had to be rejected. But the Second International did not invent them; rather, they were to be found in the early writings of the young Marx.

 

Althusser pointed the finger of blame for this type of Marxism at Hegel. Hegel was the one who bequeathed Marx a false view of history whereby history unfolds automatically to a pre-determined goal (teleology); this could be due either to objective economic laws (economism) or, alternatively, to the working class becoming more and more class conscious of its own destiny (humanism).

 

Marx’s early works were tainted with these views, according to Althusser, but, through an “epistemological break” around 1845, were gradually thrown off in his later works, above all, in Capital.

 

In short, Althusser set himself the task of redefining historical materialism and rescuing Marxism. He did neither. To rid Marxism of its Hegelian “defect” it was necessary to junk the idea of history or society as “an expressive totality”, that is, a combination of forces and relations of production in which the economic determines the legal, cultural and ideological. In its place Althusser argued, following the structuralists, that history and society were not in a contradictory movement towards a goal but were, rather, a series of structures or “instances” within the social formation which were relatively autonomous and moved in different “timeframes”. While the ideological spheres were “ultimately” determined by economic forces, this time “never arrived”.

 

This threw up the banal conclusion that economics, politics and culture affected each other equally. Causality and hierarchy were rejected, rendering historical materialism useless as an explanatory tool. These separate structures may or may not collide and a specific society at a specific point in time may be burdened by too much history to the point where the social formation is “overdetermined” and revolution breaks out. Structures may change but they may or may not effect consciousness. None of these influences can be compared, generalised or quantified; in short, they cannot be foreseen.

 

Althusser’s concept of science was another victim of his “re-reading”. In the first place, science was not about understanding the real, objectively existing world, but only the concept of that world. In contrast, empiricism opposes “a given subject to a given object and calls knowledge the abstraction by the subject of the essence of the object”, a view of science Althusser completely rejected. Theory could not generate knowledge of the real world and nor could this world be the source material for theoretical reflection.

 

In a manner analogous to Derrida and his view of “texts” Althusser saw the raw material of science as the key works of Marx and his job, as a scientist, to “deconstruct” them. The task was to “discover” the “scientific problematic” buried within the text, and reject concepts used by Marx (even if he used them consciously) which were inconsistent with this problematic. Naturally, all Hegelian concepts were purged.

 

Science, for Althusser, was not the servant of the real world, rather it is a separated-off sphere of social practice. The hole in Althusser’s argument is clear. If the real world is not the legitimate starting point for the generation of theoretical knowledge then what is? For Althusser it was nothing other than a “reading” by the dispassionate scientist, hence its idealism.

 

But Marx in contrast started from certain real premises, from which it is not possible to abstract; namely, that humans are purposive and social by nature. This nature is constrained and alienated by the class exploitative social relations within which labour is carried out. Capitalism produced the first society in history where the potential existed for humans to free themselves from this historical constraint by overthrowing capitalism and class society in general.

 

Althusser managed the remarkable trick for a Marxist in sundering theory from the real world and offered no account of how theory could guide practical intervention into the world in order to change it. In short, he reverted to a form of rationalist idealism in which the truth was a series of internally coherent imposed logical constructs within the body of a work.

 

It is clear that Althusser, like the postmodernists ended up with a belief that the objective world, and an account of its contradictory movement in thought, is not possible. Indeed, all that is open to mere humans is ideology. Ideas generated by individuals and classes and how they see their place in the world (a “system of lived relations”) are the stuff of ideology. From Lacan, Althusser borrowed the idea that the real world cannot be known consciously and hence people can only be trapped in an imaginary understanding of that world and their place within it.

 

Althusser began his search for an authentic non-Stalinist historical materialism by rejecting a meta-theorist, Hegel. Unlike Marx he did not just reject Hegel’s idealism, but rather Hegel’s comprehensive and systemic account of history. He ended up gutting Marxism of its coherence, its materialist premises and the central notion that conscious human beings are the active agents of social change.

 

By the 1980s many “Althusserians” went beyond his structuralism altogether. They realised that you could not hope to savage Hegel and leave the Marxist “meta-narrative” standing. Without history as a process with a determinate direction, without humans as conscious social agents of transformation, without science as a series of mental approximations to the real objective world, then, quite simply, there is no Marxism.

 

 

 

Footnotes

 

1. F. Jameson Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London 1991

 

2 J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition – a report on knowledge, Manchester 1984

 

3 J. Baudrillard Simulations New York 1983

 

4 A. McHoul and W. Grace A Foucault Primer Melbourne 1993

 

5 J. Derrida Of Grammatology Baltimore 1976

 

6 Quoted in C. Norris Deconstruction London 1981

 

7 J. Baudrillard op cit.

 

8 J. Baudrillard ibid.

 

9 J Baudrillard The Gulf War Did Not Take Place Sydney 1995

 

10 Quoted in L Ferry and A Renaut, La Pensee 68 Paris 1985

 

11 J. Derrida Spectres of Marx London 1994. See also G. Hyle “Exorcising the red spectre”, Trotskyist International No 18, London 1995

 

12 M. Foucault Power/Knowledge London 1980.

 

13 Even where they do not work the problem can generally be solved according to the same scientifically formulated laws.

 

14 W.V.Quine From a Logical Point of View New York 1953

 

15 i.e. a theory of being or existence

 

16 S. Hawking A Brief History of Time London 1988

 

17 S Hawking ibid

 

18 ibid

 

19 D. Griffin The Re-enchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals Albany 1988

 

20 R Appignanesi and C. Garratt, Postmodernism for Beginners Cambridge 1995

 

21 See Richard Leavens Edinburgh lecture in International Socialism 72 Autumn 1995

 

22 R.Rorty Contingency, Irony and Solidarity Cambridge 1989

 

23 K. Marx Capital (Vol 1) Harmondsworth 1973

 

24 K.Marx “Concerning Feuerbach” Early Writings Harmondsworth 1975

 

25 For a well documented, if inconclusive, discussion see T. Eagleton Ideology – an introduction London 1991

 

26 K. Marx and F.Engels The German Ideology London 1974

 

27 ibid

 

28 S. Fish Doing What Comes Naturally Oxford 1989.

 

29 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, (in Anti-Oedipus Minneapolis 1983) do advocate to a form of psycho-biological determinism, declaring “desire” to be the source of power.

 

30 M. Foucault Power/Knowledge op cit.

 

31 ibid.

 

32 For a Marxist account of the specific origins of various forms of social oppression see: LRCI Marxism and Women’s Liberation London 1993, Workers Power Lesbian and Gay Liberation – a Trotskyist strategy London 1989 and Workers Power Black Liberation and Socialism London 1995

 

33 M. Foucault Power/Knowledge op cit.

 

34 J-F Lyotard The Postmodern Condition Minneapolis 1984

 

35 quoted in A.Callinicos Against Postmodernism op cit.

 

36 C. Horrocks and Z Jevtic Baudrillard for Beginners Cambridge 1996

 

37 S. Timpanaro On Materialism London 1975 See also S. Clegg “The remains of Louis Althusser” International Socialism No 53 London 1991

 

38 In this article “art” refers to the whole of artistic creation in both “high culture” and “popular culture” – ie music, film, literature etc. It is not the task of the revolutionary party to offer a unified “critique” of such art. We stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky ( Literature and Revolution Ann Arbor 1975) , who vilified nascent Stalinism’s attempt to impose a “party line” on art. To the question “what does Marxism oppose in postmodern art?” we answer: nothing. Of course individual Marxists – whether they be professional art critics or amateur thrash-metal guitarists – have a right to their own critical views. Many of them have disliked modernism, let alone post modernism. In the conflict between the modernist cultural establishment in the West and its postmodern critics the revolutionary party should be strictly neutral.

 

39 See P Morris “SWP, imperialism and the ‘real Marxist tradition’” in Trotskyist International No 17 1995 and K Hassell & G Binette, “The British Working Class Today ” Permanent Revolution No 7 1988

 

40 See G. Hyle in Trotskyist International op cit

 

41 R. Rorty op cit

 

42 in M Edmundson Wild Orchids and Trotsky New York 1993

 

43 quoted in C. Horrocks and Z Jervin op cit.

 

44L Althusser, For Marx, p10

 

 

 

On the Transitional Programme

Note by the Editor: The following document has been published in 1988 by our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (renamed to League for the Fifth International in 2003). It was initially published in “Permanent Revolution” No. 7 (Spring 1988) – the theoretical journal of the British section “Workers Power”.

 

The founding members of the RCIT were partly long-time and leading members of this organization before they were bureaucratically expelled in April 2011 – a few weeks after they formed a faction in opposition against the increasing centrist degeneration of the LFI. Immediately after their expulsion these comrades built a new organization and went on to form the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) together with a number of other comrades. Today the RCIT is present in more than a dozen countries.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

Half a century has passed since the Transitional Programme (TP)1 of Leon Trotsky was written. In those fifty years much has occurred that Trotsky’s programme neither foresaw nor prepared for. Trotsky’s perspectives were based on the premise that ‘Mankind’s productive forces stagnate’.2 Yet, in the metropolitan countries the second imperialist war was followed by an unprecedented economic boom for almost twenty years. In turn this boom created the conditions for the resurgence of social-democratic reformism, a force Trotsky believed would be decisively destroyed in the war. Stalinism too not merely survived but gained a new lease of life through its expansion into eastern Europe and eventually parts of Asia. The condition for these unforeseen developments was the defeat of the revolutionary upsurge that occurred during the war in Europe. The defeat of that upsurge was achieved by counter-revolutionary force in the areas occupied by the Soviet Armed Forces and Allied imperialism. It fell victim to the no less fatal snares of democratic counter-revolution in much of western Europe.

 

Clearly, at least at the level of perspectives, the post-war reality did not correspond to the picture of generalised and synchronised crisis that Trotsky had drawn shortly before his death. Such a development is not unique in the history of Marxism. The predictions of Marx and Engels were, on a number of occasions, confounded by a variety of unexpected developments. All this tells us is that Marxism possesses no mystical powers that guarantee the fulfilment of predictions. Marxism’s prediction—its formulation of perspectives—is necessarily a constant process of assessment and re-assessment of trends within the economy, the ruling class, the working class and the class struggle. On the basis of such concrete analyses perspectives need to be formulated and tested. If they fail the test they need to be re-formulated. Trotsky himself, in the 1930s, demonstrated again and again the Marxist method of ‘testing and correcting’ his own programmes.

 

The method of the Transitional Programme

 

At the end of the 1920s an economic crisis began that wracked the entire capitalist world. A new period of political and economic crisis succeeded the period of capitalist boom in the 1920s. The rise of fascism in Germany, the popular front in France, the civil war in Spain, the Sino-Japanese war, were all explosive manifestations of world capitalism’s chronic weakness. The enormous depth as well as the world wide extension of this crisis and the repeated failures and defeats of the proletariat between 1921 and 1933 led to a new phenomenon. Just as the years 1917-21 had seen the foundation and establishment through civil war of the world’s first workers’ state, so the succeeding decade or so saw its bureaucratic degeneration. The Russian Communist Party, through its domination of the Comintern, became an instrument of chronic misleadership within the world workers’ movement. Stalin’s ultra-left policies facilitated Hitler’s triumph in 1933. The obstruction of the united front to fight fascism was criminal. Yet, in the aftermath of the defeat, all of the Comintern sections bar none subscribed to Stalin’s view that its policies had been entirely correct. Trotsky recognised the true significance of this and declared the Comintern to be dead for revolution. As the decade progressed the experience of the popular front governments in France and Spain revealed that the Comintern was not simply dead for revolution. It had became an instrument for counter-revolution. Under Stalin it became a counter-revolutionary reformist organisation.

 

Trotsky’s response to these developments was to dedicate his remaining years to the building of the Fourth International (FI). This struggle underwent many phases. It was conducted against a back-cloth of terrible defeats for the working class. This objective fact meant that it was constantly swimming against the stream. Its adherents numbered only a few thousand on the eve of the world war.

 

Trotsky resisted, throughout the 1930s, the temptation to short-circuit the process of building a revolutionary international through any compromises on the question of programme. While always making a serious attempt to win left-centrist elements (the Block of Four, the ILP, the PSOP, the Muste group etc), Trotsky always insisted that they subscribe to a clear, revolutionary programme. The centrists of Trotsky’s day accused him of issuing ultimatums about programme. In so doing characters like Fenner Brockway of the ILP poured scorn upon ‘rigid’, ‘dogmatic’ attitudes to programme. What they wanted was to be absolutely free to change their programme at will. Their principles, their strategy and tactics were so chameleon-like, consisting as they did of various adaptations to the dominant forces in the labour movement, that the last thing they wanted was to be obliged to formulate them clearly and precisely. Brockway fulminated against Trotsky’s ‘sectarianism’. He was denounced as a dictator whose method of building the FI was ‘the artificial method of imposing a rigid programme and then inviting parties to associate with it.’3 How centrism abhors a rigid—that is a definite—programme.

 

Trotsky never strayed from his course. He believed that the FI had to delineate itself from reformism and centrism by virtue of its programme. Only if it was revolutionary in programme would it be able to confront the crisis that was engulfing the world. Only with a firm programme could it steer an even course, despite being small and despite working in profoundly unfavourable objective conditions. During the period of the entry tactic in France when the majority of the French Trotskyists entered the SFIO (Socialist Party) as an organised faction he sharply castigated those, like Raymond Molinier, who sacrificed programme for illusory gains of the moment. He attacked Molinier and Frank’s ‘mass paper’ La Commune and said to them:

 

‘Programme first! “Mass Paper”? Revolutionary action? Regroupment? Communes everywhere? . . . very well, very well . . . But programme first! Your political passports please, gentleman! And not false ones if you please—real ones! If you don’t have any, then pipe down!’ 4

 

Trotsky began to develop his ideas of what that programme was through intervening in the class struggle on a Marxist basis. This way alone could ideas be tested in practice and then codified into a programme. The period before 1938, when The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International—the Transitional Programme—was written, saw Trotsky elaborate the key elements of the Marxist programme focused to the period he was living through.

 

The Left Opposition had learnt from the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and from the healthy Comintern that transitional slogans were essential. In particular, the centrality of workers’ control was recognised by Trotsky. While the Stalinists during the ultra-left Third Period counterposed the struggle for power to the struggle for control, Trotsky conceived of the latter as a bridge to the former. That is, he recognised that if a real struggle for control was launched and was in any way successful, then the workers would be compelled to go further:

 

‘Under the influence of the crisis, unemployment, and the predatory manipulations of the capitalists, the working class in its majority may turn out to be ready to fight for the abolition of business secrecy and for control over banks, commerce and production before it has come to understand the necessity of the revolutionary conquest of power.

 

After taking the path of control of production, the proletariat will inevitably press forward in the direction of the seizure of power and of the means of production.’5

 

In an important sense Trotsky was here getting to the very kernel of transitional demands. Minimum or immediate demands can, under certain conditions, be granted by capitalism as a means of pacifying the working class. Transitional demands, on the other hand, providing they really correspond to the objective situation, cannot be granted in full by capitalism. If they are fought for and even partially won then they raise class warfare to a qualitatively higher level, at once obliging the proletariat to move more and more against the very foundations of class society and at the same time creating the consciousness and organisation capable of a socialist solution. They pose a solution, a way forward from the impasse of normal immediate demands (reforms) and methods of struggle towards more effective ones, which organise working class strength so that it challenges the very logic of capitalist economy, as well as the capitalists’ control and direction of that economy. Against this transitional demands pose the ‘political economy of the working class’; planned production to meet human needs. But it does so, not in the form of sterile Sunday sermonising about socialism, but as a concrete answer to a concrete problem facing workers in struggle.

 

Trotsky’s Action programme for France

 

Trotsky’s grasp of the method lodged in transitional demands was revealed by the crisis that developed in France in 1934. The Comintern had, during its ultra-left phase, condemned immediate and transitional demands as opportunist. Everything was reduced to the question of power. As it moved rightwards towards the popular front, it reversed its previous position and counterposed immediate demands in France, to the question of power. In both cases it abandoned the transitional method of relating the needs of the moment to the struggle for power. Trotsky showed how in fact, transitional demands had, by virtue of the scale of the crisis, become of immediate relevance. They corresponded with the burning needs of the masses at the immediate level, and moreover, the question of power itself was becoming an immediate, burning issue:

 

‘The general Marxist thesis, “Social reforms are only the by-products of revolutionary struggle”, has in the epoch of the decline of capitalism the most immediate and burning importance. The capitalists are able to cede something to the workers only if they are threatened with the danger of losing everything.

 

However, even the greatest “concessions” of which contemporary capitalism—itself in a blind alley—is capable are completely insignificant in comparison with the misery of the masses and the depth of the social crisis. This is why the most immediate of all demands must be for the expropriation of the capitalists and the nationalisation (socialisation) of the means of production. But is not this demand unrealisable under the rule of the bourgeoisie? Quite so! That is why we must seize power.’ 6

 

By the same token the armed mobilisations of the fascist gangs posed as an immediate necessity the arming of the proletariat in order to protect its existing organisations. Of course, an armed working class is incompatible with the existence of capitalism for any length of time. The acuteness of the social crisis made demands which took the masses to the threshold of revolution an immediate necessity. The old order of society was collapsing. The masses were prepared to struggle but a treacherous leadership left them passive and confused and paved the way for defeat. In an important sense this is what Trotsky thought of as a pre-revolutionary situation. The old order crumbles, but the crisis of leadership in the working class prevents the masses from exploiting the cracks in the ruling class, stops them rallying to its side the confused and desperate intermediate strata and classes. Transitional demands are crucial as a whole system of demands aimed at resolving this crisis of leadership by mobilising the working class on a programme that introduces it to socialism, breaks it from the traitors and causes them to look for new leadership in the Trotskyists.

 

An early example of this method being applied was the Action Programme for France of 1934. This was a transitional programme sharply focused towards the pre-revolutionary situation in France. It sounded the alarm against the fascist danger. It outlined the method by which the French bourgeoisie were attacking the working class—deflation and unemployment. It counterposed to those dangers a programme of workers’ control measures and forms of organisation that challenged the foundations of capitalist society. It sought to mobilise alongside the proletariat the progressive sections of the petit bourgeoisie and did not shirk from demanding the eradication of all traces of Bonapartism from the bourgeois constitution. The Action Programme is a model of its kind. But models exist not to be copied slavishly but to be creatively applied to a concrete situation. If anybody said today that the Action Programme, was ‘valid today’, sensible people would consider them a trifle mad. It was not timeless. In enshrining the transitional method, it applied it to a particular juncture. That method was carried forward to the TP in a different period

 

The Transitional Programme

 

The first draft of the TP was completed by Trotsky in the spring of 1938. It was written after extensive discussions with leaders of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States (SWP(US)), including James Cannon. Trotsky very much regarded it as a codification, a summation of the experience and lessons of the preceeding period and a codification of the Left Opposition/FI’s response to the events of that period. As Trotsky himself said ‘It is the summation of the collective work up till today.’7

 

Such a summation was vital to ensure that past experience and future perspectives were generalised to the whole FI (as opposed to just the French section). It was a new version of Section II of the Communist Manifesto:

 

‘It is necessary to make a summary of concrete, precise demands, such as workers’ control of industry as opposed to technocracy . . . A series of transitional measures which correspond to the stage of monopolistic capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat with a section corresponding to colonial and semi-colonial countries. We have prepared such a document. It corresponds to that part of the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels which they themselves declared outdated. It’s only partially outdated, partially it’s very good, and is to be replaced by our conference.’8

 

And like the of Manifesto, the TP consisted of interrelated constituent parts. To understand the whole we must understand these parts, and their relationship to each other.

 

Like the great Manifesto Trotsky’s programme is based on a short-term perspective of acute crisis. Trotsky, recognising that the imperialist epoch meant ever deeper and more violent crises, was catastrophic in his predictions. He fully understood that the result of nearly a decade of capitalist crisis would be an imperialist war. He was absolutely right in these predictions. Those who accuse Trotsky of ‘catastrophism’ would appear not to recognise that the Second World War did plunge humanity into an enormous catastrophe. Conventional weaponry left millions dead and maimed. Whole national economies were devastated. Such was the scale of the catastrophe that Trotsky brilliantly foresaw in his programme.

 

But Trotsky’s perspective was not simply one of general catastrophe. It was more detailed than that, taking into account the specific problems confronting particular capitalist countries and those confronting Stalinism. Trotsky embodied in the TP the perspective that capitalism was far weaker than it had been at the beginning of the first world war. The very weakness of capitalism meant, in Trotsky’s view, that a revolutionary crisis would bring about the collapse of the whole capitalist system. In early 1939 he argued ‘Yes I do not doubt that the new world war will provoke with absolute inevitability the world revolution and the collapse of the capitalist system.’9 Again in 1940 he stated: ‘The capitalist system is in a blind alley. Without an entire reconstruction of the economic system on a European and a world scale our civilisation is doomed.’10

 

Nor did he exempt the USA from this perspective. Trotsky again correctly foresaw that Roosevelt would take his country into the war. He believed that US imperialism was as internally weak as European capitalism. Therefore it would be subject to a similar collapse and revolutionary crisis as that facing Europe:

 

‘The inner contradictions of American capitalism—the crisis and unemployment—are incomparably more mature for a revolution than the consciousness of the American workers . . . We know that subjective conditions—the consciousness of the masses, the growth of the revolutionary party—are not a fundamental factor.’11

 

The other two elements of Trotsky’s analysis were his recognition that the colonial revolution would be provoked on an ever wider scale by the war, and his belief that the survival of the USSR as a workers’ state was conditional upon a political revolution. Again Trotsky correctly predicted the Nazi onslaught when the smug Kremlin bureaucrats imagined that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had turned the wolf from the door:

 

‘Only the overthrow of the Moscow totalitarian clique, only the regeneration of Soviet democracy can unleash the forces of the Soviet people for the fight against the inevitable and fast-approaching blow from imperialist Germany.12

 

Without a political revolution Trotsky foresaw only collapse and the restoration of capitalism. Moreover, he thought that if capitalism did survive the catastrophe then it would only be on the basis of transforming itself into a totalitarian regime, or series of regimes. These perspectives were far from fanciful. But they were not, and could not be, exact prophecies. They were hypotheses. Trotsky himself recognised this: ‘Political prognosis is only a working hypothesis. It must be constantly checked, rendered more precise, brought closer to reality.’13

 

As such they were designed to guide the FI for the period immediately confronting them. This period was, in Trotsky’s view, likely to be a protracted pre-revolutionary period. Trotsky, unlike his epigones, was precise in his definition of why the period was pre-revolutionary and what was required to make it revolutionary:

 

‘The economy, the state, the bourgeoisie’s politics and its international relations are completely blighted by a social crisis characteristic of a pre-revolutionary state of society. The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the pre-revolutionary one is the opportunist character of proletarian leadership . . . The multi-millioned masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines.’14

 

This is Trotsky’s understanding of the crisis of proletarian leadership on the eve of the war. In the pre-revolutionary situation the masses—particularly in Europe—had entered the road of revolution. The struggles of the French and Spanish workers were not of of a purely sectional, economic or episodic character. They were generalised struggles pregnant with revolutionary potential. The specific feature of the crisis of proletarian leadership at that time was the ability of the old leaderships to stop this potential being realised. The Stalinists and social-democracy had shown their capacity for treachery in both France and Spain in 1936 and 1937. At the same time the forces of Trotskyism were too weak to challenge for leadership. In Trotsky’s view the potential for resolving this crisis of leadership existed in the short term. The political corollary of his analysis of the crisis was that it would bring about the collapse of Stalinism and social-democracy precisely at the point when the masses would be propelled, once again, to enter the road of revolutionary struggle. For Trotsky, therefore, it was vital to arm the FI with the means of taking advantage of revolutionary struggle and the decay of the old leaderships. A decisive turn to the mass movement was necessary, with the TP itself being the means to take the sections of the FI to the head of the mass movement: ‘Henceforth the Fourth International stands face to face with the tasks of the mass movement. The Transitional Programme is a reflection of this important turn.’15

 

These perspectives were short to medium term, not epochal—a matter of years not decades or half a century. They applied to the period—the pre-revolutionary period—Trotsky confronted. The beginning and end of such a period is determined by world historic events. The period on which Trotsky based his perspectives can, roughly speaking, be said to have begun with the victory of Hitler and ended with the victory of US imperialism at the end of the Second World War. For that period Trotsky’s perspectives were both realistic—they took stock of the enormity of the crisis facing mankind—and filled with revolutionary optimism. That is they counted, on the subjective side, on the will of the FI—embodied in its programme—to resolve that crisis in a revolutionary fashion. In the context of 1938 to have advanced any other perspective than Trotsky’s for proletarian triumph would have been merely an excuse for either treachery or abstentionism.

 

These perspectives required extensive modification after the war. The boom in the imperialist countries, the national struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the political revolutionary crisis in those countries where capitalism had been overthrown but where Stalinist bureaucracies ruled, all presented a different picture to that forseen by Trotsky. This development required two things of Marxists. First they needed to elaborate new perspectives in the new conditions as a means of re-focusing their programme. Second they needed to draw up a critical balance sheet of Trotksy’s own perspective in order to isolate and overcome any errors that were contained within them. In the event the post war Trotskyists proved incapable of fulfilling either task.

 

Its leading section, the SWP(US), effectively withdrew from the international scene as a leading force. The European and Asian cadres were decimated in the war itself. In most of Africa Trotskyism had no influence at all while in Latin America, where it was much stronger, national isolation preyed on all of the Trotskyist groupings leaving them as ill-equipped as their US comrades to play a leading role within the FI. The cadres that confronted the task of developing Trotskyism were relatively inexperienced and, ominously, not leaders of parties with significant numbers rooted in, at least, sections of the working class. Experienced and seasoned militants such as James P Cannon of the SWP(US), were incapable or unwilling to play the central, international leading role that Trotsky had until his death.

 

The result was that the FI, without a leadership capable of re-elaborating the programme in the light of new developments, was, as a whole, profoundly disoriented by these developments.16 On the question of the TP itself two responses emerged. The first was manifested by Cannon and the European leaders. They clung to the perspectives contained in the TP despite their general inapplicability in much of the world after the war.

 

Blind to the real impact of the USA’s military victory, enormous economic buoyancy and to the fact that the huge post war strike wave had been bureaucratically contained, Cannon simply pushed the pre-war perspective of crisis back, arguing that it was just about to happen. Moreover, the crisis was understood as being, inevitably, a fully revolutionary one. Cannon characterised any challenge to this view as sceptical and defeatist. It was considered a slur on the American working class to suggest that they were not moving onto a revolutionary offensive. The basis for this view was a one-sided reflection of the USA’s new found world dominance. Instead of admiting the possibility of economic recovery on the basis of this dominance Cannon insisted in 1946:

 

‘The blind-ally in which world capitalism has arrived, and the US with it, excludes a new organic era of capitalist stabilisation. The dominant world position of American imperialism now accentuates and aggravates the death agony of capitalism as a whole.’17

 

Cannon forgot Lenin and Trotsky’s insistence that there are no hopeless situations for the bourgeoisie. He admitted the possibility of a short-term boom but said that it would be followed quickly by a depression that would ‘make the 1929-32 conditions look prosperous’.18

 

In Europe Mandel and Pablo19 were singing a similar tune. Their theses on the world situation in 1948 contained the same fatalistic faith in Trotsky’s prognosis. They paid lip service to the ‘unstable equilibrium’ that prevailed, but argued:

 

‘The capitalist system, in decline and decay, and the regime established by the Soviet bureaucracy in the USSR, accumulate and sharpen their inherent contradictions. They paralyse the development of productive forces; steadily lower the living standards of millions of people in the world; increase the pressure of the bureaucratic and police state on social and private life, stifling creativity in all fields; reduce highly industrialised countries like Germany and Japan to the level of colonies; and increase national oppression.’20

 

There is not the slightest hint of a serious balance sheet based on the actual outcome of the war, in this perspective. It is a paraphrasing of Trotsky in 1938.

 

The false perspectives were close. lt connected to a false understanding of the nature of the TP itself. The ‘orthodox’ Trotskyists—those who fetishised the TP—argued that the programme was geared only towards an actual revolutionary crisis. They concluded, therefore, that such a state of crisis was a permanent feature of post-war society. Cannon typified this approach. After the war he wrote:

 

‘The Transitional Programme does not have any meaning unless one has in mind a revolutionary perspective. The very fact that you go over from the concept of the maximum and the minimum programme—that is, the minimum programme of daily small change, the maximum programme of ultimate goal that you talk about on Sunday—to a transitional programme, presupposes a development of a revolutionary nature, with the prospects of a showdown in sight.’ 21

 

Having defined the transitional methods—so painstakingly developed by Marxism for almost a hundred years22—in the narrowest possible sense Cannon was obliged to ignore the reality of the post-war boom. His perspective, for a whole period, was that the economic recovery and maintenance of bourgeois democracy in the US and much of western Europe, was merely a short term interruption of the crisis. The boom and the social peace it led to in the west became an aberration. In its extreme form this ‘orthodoxy’ was manifested by the International Committee’s crisis mongering. Members were kept in a feverish state of expectation for the economic collapse and revolutionary crisis that was just around the corner. While Gerry Healy was a typical exponent of this view, Cannon, in many respects, is its original author. He wrote, after the war, that economic crisis was imminent and that there was an inevitable correlation between such a crisis and revolution:

 

‘As a consequence [the economic crisis] will open up the most grandiose revolutionary possibilities in the United States. That conception must be at the base of the policy and perspectives of our party from now on.’ 23

 

The disparity between real life and these grandiose perspectives forced the SWP(US) to abandon the TP as the centre of its propaganda and agitation from 1950 on, while insisting that it be ritually worshipped as a condition for being admitted into the ‘orthodox’ fold.

 

Against this type of analysis factions of the SWP(US) and British RCP did attempt to advance alternatives based on a recognition of the stability that had emerged in western Europe as a result of the war. Ted Grant, for example, correctly argued that a ‘democratic counter-revolution’ had taken place. However these oppositions were dealt with bureaucratically by the FI leadership and prevented from developing into sizeable and influential forces.

 

The Cliffites, developing out of the RCP, did register the change in conditions. In so doing, however, they merely proved the truth of the old maxim that a little learning is a dangerous thing. In the 1950s and 60s their empirical recognition of Stalinism’s survival and capitalism’s boom led them to embrace state capitalism as a theory for explaining the class nature of the USSR and their rejection of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Nowhere was this clearer than in their approach to the TP. In the 1960s Hallas, keen to defend elements of Trotskyism, correctly argued that, at the 1948 FI Congress:

 

‘A fundamental reappraisal of the situation and of the perspectives of the Transitional Programme was required. The movement, in its majority proved incapable of rising to this task.’24

 

However, far from making such a reappraisal the Cliffite Socialist Workers Party of Great Britain (SWP(GB) itself has decided that Trotsky’s perspectives in 1938 were wrong and therefore so was his programme. John Molyneux, in his book on Trotsky, puts it clearly:

 

‘Thus Trotsky’s characterisation of capitalism in 1938 was strictly speaking an empirical impression. As such it was particularly vulnerable as a prediction of the future. In short, the economic analysis was the foundation of the TP and it was a faulty foundation.’25

 

At first sight the positions of the Cliffites appear to be a million miles away from Cannon’s. Yet in their rationalisation for rejecting the TP they define its essence in exactly the same way as Cannon did. They argue that the programme can only be regarded as relevant if there is an immediate revolutionary crisis. This view, which has always been argued by the Cliff tendency, was expressed recently in an article, ironically enough, on James P Cannon. Its author, Chris Bambery, attacked the SWP(US) for clinging on to the TP since:

 

‘Transitional demands, acting in Trotsky’s words as a bridge between the struggle for reformist and economic demands and the struggle for power—only have meaning within a particular revolutionary context.’ 26

 

This supposed critique of Cannon sounds more like an echo of his own words! The Cliffites, therefore, rejected Trotsky’s programme because, seeing it as relevant only for a directly revolutionary crisis, they had, unlike Cannon, Healy, Mandel and Pablo et al, registered the fact that no such crisis was imminent in the US and western Europe. In fact, as we shall see, their own one-sided definition of the TP led them to deepen their revisionism in a manner no less damaging to the cause of revolutionary Marxism than the barren orthodoxy of post-war ‘Trotskyists’.

 

Against both of these tendencies we would argue that Trotsky’s perspectives were the basis for a specific action programme element of the TP. After the war the re-elaboration of both elements was necessary. On perspectives we have made clear what we think the strength of Trotsky’s ‘catastrophism’ was. It foresaw the war and, emerging from it, a revolutionary upsurge. Both occurred. The revolutionary upsurge was evident most clearly in Italy, Greece, Vietnam, China and Yugoslavia. Much weaker reverberations were felt in Britain and France and the USA.

 

However, a combination of factors, unforeseen by Trotsky, meant that the war and the revolutionary upsurge did not develop in the direction and to the degree that he expected. The revolutionary upsurge took place in the context of Anglo-American imperialism and its ally, the USSR, marching through Europe under the banner of anti-fascism. Stalinism and social democracy were able in these circumstances to justify the derailing of the revolutionary upsurge. Its goals were limited to the restoration of bourgeois democracy. In France and Italy the communist parties entered coalition governments with the bourgeoisie. Where such betrayals were insufficient to quell the revolutionary struggles the brute force of the Soviet Armed Forces and the troops of Allied imperialism were used in the service of counter-revolution (Poland, Greece, Vietnam). The absence of a mass FI capable of challenging Stalinism and social democracy for leadership in the revolutionary upsurge was a crucial factor in enabling democratic or Stalinist counter-revolution to triumph relatively easily compared with the post-first world war situation.

 

On the basis of these defeats Stalinism and US imperialism, the real victors in the war, consolidated their positions and fashioned a new post war reality. The FI however, failed to register the enormous significance of the stifling of the revolutionary upsurge or the victories of US imperialism and Stalinism. Worse, their perspectives underestimated both. A new perspective, based on these developments would have had to prepare for the impact of an economic upturn (even if a long boom could not have been predicted) in the imperialist countries, for the development of national liberation struggles as the US imposed its will and the British Empire disintegrated, and for revolts against Stalinist rule in the east. In point of fact no section of the FI elaborated such perspectives.

 

To what extent was Trotsky himself guilty of disorienting his followers? Trotsky recognised that, in the sphere of political economy, both he and the FI as a whole had an inadequate understanding. He said of the first section of the TP, which deals with the world economy ‘The beginning of the Programme is not complete. The first chapter is only a hint and not a complete expression’.27

 

The problem is that, despite recognising the admitedly provisional nature of the perspective, the Transitional Programme is categorical in its economic prognosis. Trotsky wrote:

 

‘The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate.’28

 

This phrase has been at the centre of inumerable disputes in the Trotskyist movement. After the war, when Felix Morrow in the SWP(US) pointed out that Trotsky’s assertion was proving to be false, he was roundly denounced as a sceptic and a defeatist. Now, with the reality of the post-war boom behind us, only an idiot, or perhaps a charlatan like Gerry Healy, would describe Trotsky’s categorical declaration as correct. However, we reject the idea that Trotsky’s error stems from an objectivist and fatalist methodology on his part. This charge—leveled at him by theoretical cheapskates like John Molyneux—does not stand up for one minute. Molyneux argues that Trotsky’s isolation led him to place more and more emphasis on the role of history as an objective, forward moving force, solving the crisis facing mankind. This, in turn, stemmed from and was an echo of his essentially fatalist Second International method:

 

‘But if it is not hard to see why apocalyptic prediction became predominant at this time, it is also not hard to see that its theoretical roots lay in the mechanical materialism and determinism of the Second International.’29

 

To make such a statement implies that Molyneux neither understands the significance of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalinism from the mid-1920s to the end of his life, nor that of his struggle to build the FI. Trotsky never said that history would solve the crisis in a socialist fashion. He insisted time and again that the crisis merely furnished conditions under which the revolutionary party and the international could triumph. That is the whole point of his emphasis on the crisis of leadership. Indeed Trotsky’s polemics against centrism throughout the 1930s again and again attack the idea that history is a force independent of the actions of people. Indeed in December 1938, some months after the TP was written, he warned his followers:

 

‘Recent history has furnished a series of tragic confirmations of the fact that it is not from every revolutionary situation that a revolution arises, but that a revolutionary situation becomes counter-revolutionary if the subjective factor, that is, the revolutionary offensive of the revolutionary class does not come in time to aid the objective factor.’30

 

Trotsky’s error was not determinism. His prediction was wrong because it seriously under-estimated the strength of US imperialism. This was an important error. It led Trotsky to believe that the possibility of a way-out of the economic crisis short of fascism in the US was highly unlikely. Thus when he conceded the possibility of an alternative to a revolutionary outcome, it was always presented as a totalitarian one. This, he reasoned, would mean that any respite for capitalism would be temporary. In fact the economic strength of US imperialism enabled it to fund a democratic counter-revolution on a massive scale in much of Europe after the war. Moreover, the same strength enabled it to act as the motor of the world economy paving the way for an expansion of the productive forces after the war. In this error both Trotsky and the SWP(US) were culpable. Their premise was that the very rapidity of the US economy’s growth was the guarantee of its equally rapid downfall. Trotsky reasoned that the war would be such a tremendous drain on resources that any country involved would encounter economic collapse. This exchange between himself and one of the SWP(US) leaders makes this quite clear:

 

‘Shachtman: Supposing its is a European war, into which the USA does not yet enter?

 

Trotsky: In that case the USA will have a postponement of the economic collapse. What is clear is that in the countries involved in the war the collapse will come in not four or six years, but in six to twelve months, because the capitalist countries are not richer but poorer than in 1914, materially . . . You can say that all these unemployed [in the US] will be absorbed in the war industry, but that signifies the creation of a terrible pump for absorbing all the riches of the nation.’31

 

This is a dangerously one-sided view of the US and other capitalist economies. It fails to recognise that, in certain cases, war can regenerate the profitability of the capitalist economy and not simply act as a drain on it. This was particularly true for the USA, which, as everybody recognised from very early on, would not have to fight the war on its own soil, nor risk the destruction of its industries by bombing raids. Supplying the hard pressed British war machine as well as its own, did not merely absorb riches in the USA, it helped generate them as well. In arguing against the ‘final crisis’ theory of the Stalinists during their ‘third period’, Trotsky warned that such a view would lead to fatalism at the level of politics—our turn next’. In presenting a one-sided characterisation of the world economic crisis he tied his followers to a perspective that was in important respects proved wrong. Its errors, stemming from the failure of the revolutionary communist movement (the healthy Comintern and later the Trotskyists) to develop Lenin’s theory of imperialism, disorientated Trotsky’s followers after the war. They were certainly guilty of fatalism, episodically at first and later systematically. But this was a product of their slide into centrism, and away from Trotskyism. They clung onto his perspective at first because of a sincere confusion between perspectives and principles. Later they used it as a fig-leaf to cover their accumulated centrist errors.

 

A clear example of this was Pablo’s use of a single phrase in the TP itself. Following Tito’s break with the Kremlin in 1948 Pablo wrote:

 

‘At the very moment when the power and internal stability of the Stalinist apparatus, directing the USSR and the Communist parties from the Kremlin, seemed to many people more impressive than ever, the Yugoslav affair came to remind them of a factor on which revolutionary optimism rests, namely: the laws of history which will in the final analysis prove stronger than any type of bureaucratic apparatus.’32

 

Since Pablo uttered this half-quote from the TP, this line of fatalist thinking has dominated the centrist fragments of the FI. It became the basis for Healy’s permanent ‘revolutionary crisis’, for Mandel’s unstoppable (and undifferentiated) ‘revolutionary process’, and for Lambert’s definition of a never-ending pre-revolutionary situation. In short it became the excuse for offloading onto the historical process the work of revolutionaries. The objective factor became all powerful. Pablo makes clear that the historic law at work in Yugoslavia was the pressure of the masses. This pressure is so strong it can turn Stalinist butchers like Tito into rough and ready revolutionaries. Today the same law has led the Sandinistas, according to the USFI, to turn Nicaragua into a proletarian dictatorship! We assert that this fatalism is based on a wilful distortion of the TP which was far more dialectical in its understanding of the relationship of the historic process and the treacherous leaders:

 

‘. . . the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus. No matter how the methods of the social betrayers may differ . . . they will never succeed in breaking the revolutionary will of the proletariat. As time goes on, their desperate efforts to hold back the wheel of history will demonstrate more clearly to the masses that the crisis of proletarian leadership, having become the crisis in mankind’s culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International.’33

 

For Trotsky the laws of history—the fact that the proletariat is objectively the revolutionary class—will ensure that the class struggle will continue and create the conditions for the eventual triumph of the subjective factor in the shape of the revolutionary party. No ‘blunt instruments’ or unconscious agents would or could fulfill this role for Trotsky.

 

Action programme

 

Trotsky repeatedly argued that a revolutionary programme had to be a guide to action. That meant that the action orienting element—transitional slogans—stood in the foreground reducing to some degree the more general aspects of the programme. Of course, the action programme component proceeded from general revolutionary principles, but it was a sharply focused application of them. The key transitional demands in the programme had as their premise the perspectives outlined previously. That is, the full potential of the TP as an action programme, would be realised in the context of a revolutionary struggle for power:

 

‘On the other hand the Fourth International’s programme of transitional demands, which seemed so “unreal” to nearsighted politicians, will reveal its full significance in the process of the mobilisation of the masses for the conquest of state power.’34

 

It was a programme of action for transforming the pre-revolutionary situation into a revolutionary situation. It based itself primarily on the objective conditions of its own period. It proceeded from the actual experience of the class struggle during the preceding years. The lessons of the German defeat, the popular front in Spain and France, the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, the explosive trade union struggles in the USA, and the anti-imperialist struggle in China, were all encompassed in the programme. Its slogans flowed from the experience—both positive and negative—of these momentous events. It was these events that invested Trotsky’s understanding of the crisis of leadership with a precision that his epigones never matched. The crisis of leadership had as its context an immediate contradiction between objective conditions (crisis torn capitalism driven to its second world war in just over twenty years) and the proletariat’s subjective weaknesses. That is war and revolution were looming in the immediate future and yet the proletariat lacked a revolutionary leadership. Of course within the imperialist epoch the conditions for revolution repeatedly come into existence objectively, in a number of isolated countries. But an international action programme cannot and should not base itself on generalities such as this. The reason for this is clear from the existence of periods in the imperialist epoch when the explosive character of this contradiction is, for whole sections of the world, subdued. The crisis of leadership that manifests itself in a trade union struggle that is sold out is an underdeveloped anticipation of the crisis Trotsky talked of. But to confuse the two would be to mistake every strike for the opening shot of a revolution within the context of a permanent pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situation. Trotsky himself was quite clear about the nature of the period his action programme focused towards. It was not focused to the imperialist epoch in general but to a feverish crisis typical of that epoch:

 

‘The strategic task of the next period—a pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organisation—consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation).’35

 

The very fact that Trotsky talks of the specific features of specific generations of workers should indicate the focused nature of his programme. Indeed in its review of its conference the FI came to the same conclusion as Trotsky that the programme was meant as a guide to action:

 

‘What a contrast it offers to the vague generalisations and deceptive abstractions which the official leaderships of the working class offer as guides to action in the present tumultuous world situation! It is not, or rather it is not so much, the basic programme of the Fourth International, as it is its programme of action for the immediate period in which we live.’36

 

As an action programme it had to be understood as a specific expression of the general programme of Marxism (embodying the key principles, strategy and tactics) but as such not, in itself, immutable. It had a definite connection with a perspective of immediate war, crisis and revolution. A dramatic shift in perspective would, Trotsky believed, require a re-focusing of the programme:

 

‘You can raise the objection that we cannot predict the rhythm and tempo of the development, and that possibly the bourgeoisie will find a political respite. That is not excluded—but then we will be obliged to realise a strategic retreat. But in the present situation we must be oriented for a strategic offensive, not a retreat.’37

 

Trotsky anchored his action programme in his perspectives, but never forgot that perspectives are not Delphic oracles. Unfortunately, his epigones forgot precisely that.

 

However, having stressed this we must go on to assert that the TP was not simply an action programme. Lodged within it is the explanation of the whole method of transitional demands. Such demands form a system which seeks to take each partial struggle of the proletariat a decisive step further towards the goal of socialist revolution and towards the transition to socialism itself. An action programme must be focused towards a particular international crisis, like that of 1938, or towards a national crisis, like that of France in 1934, or indeed towards the struggles of a section of workers outside of the context of a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary crisis, like our own action programme for the British miners.38 But whatever the focus of a particular action programme, it must encompass within it the overall strategy of the TP. It must apply that method if it is to transcend the divide between the minimum and partial demands generated in every struggle and the goal of socialist revolution. The bridging of that divide is crucial if the dangers of tailism—of simply echoing the demands spontaneously raised by workers—and of pragmatism are to be avoided. For even within periods that are not in their general character revolutionary, the character of the imperialist epoch poses the possibility of taking steps, sometimes quite limited, towards the revolution. Moreover, transitional demands can, when carried into life, train workers for the tasks of the socialist transition, as well as mobilise them around a fight for their immediate interests. Transitional demands are therefore essential in any action programme. Trotsky explained why:

 

‘However, the achievement of this strategic task [socialist revolution] is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat—all its layers, occupations and groups—should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not because it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work, but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of revolution.’39

 

The theoreticians of the SWP(GB) are ever ready to argue that the day to day tasks cannot be linked to socialism with transitional demands. Their pragmatism leads them to argue that such demands do not really exist. The key thing, they argue, is purely and simply to get the masses to act. Duncan Hallas expresses this most clearly:

 

‘The problem at each stage is to find and advance those slogans which not only strike a chord in at least some sections of the class (ideally of course the whole of it) but which are also capable of leading to working class actions. Often they will not be transitional in Trotsky’s very restricted definition.’40

 

The point is the class struggle itself compels workers to take action, to strike, to mobilise. And it is ABC to raise demands that workers undertake strikes. But our job as revolutionaries is not only to get workers to act, it is to win them, in the course of such action to socialism. It is precisely this job of leading workers beyond their everyday demands by fighting for a transitional action programme—a job the SWP(GB) refuse ever to undertake—that we can win them to revolutionary socialism. We can make the task of socialist revolution relevant to their everyday concerns. In fact the SWP(GB), like the Second International in its centrist days, ends up supporting the existing demands of workers and preaching socialism to them.

 

The claims that transitional demands are a product of Trotsky’s isolation in 1938 ignores the fact that he was developing the Comintern’s conceptions of them from a much earlier period. In 1931 in Spain, when the crisis that led to civil war war was still only maturing, Trotsky recognised the need to go beyond the partial demands of the moment:

 

‘Alongside these [minimum demands] however, demands of a transitional character must be advanced even now; nationalisation of mineral resources; nationalisation of the banks; workers’ control of industry; and finally state regulation of the economy. All of these demands are bound up with the transition from a bourgeois to a proletarian regime; they prepare for this transition so that, after nationalisation of the banks and industry, they can become part of a system of measures for a planned economy, preparing the way for the socialist economy, preparing the way for the socialist society.’41

 

The nature of transitional demands

 

In codifying a set of transitional demands into a programme Trotsky finally resolved the ‘programme question’ at the level of method. The TP marked the successful resolution of the programmatic problems that originated with the Erfurt Programme of 1891. It overcame the problem of the disjuncture between the struggle over immediate and partial demands and the struggle for power. It completed the work of the Comintern in this regard. Lenin and the Comintern had an understanding of transitional demands as primarily a bridge to the transitional society during a revolutionary situation. The degenerate Comintern seized on this position—which was only partially correct—in order to condemn the use of transitional demands as opportunist except in a revolutionary situation (prior to dumping them altogether). The reason Lenin’s view of transitional demands was only partially correct was because he had not then worked out the relationship of the general programme to the minimum programme. Trotsky precisely worked out this relationship. He viewed the imperialist epoch as one within which it was possible to tear down the brick wall between minimum and transitional demands. Immediate demands fought for by revolutionary tactics could become the starting point for winning the masses to broader transitional demands: ‘Every local, partial, economic demand must be an approach to a general demand in our transitional programme’.42

 

Struggles over wage demands could, in circumstances of high inflation, pose questions (the way the cost of living is calculated under capitalism, for example) that workers would seek general answers to. This logic would facilitate the transition from partial demands to transitional, demands provided those transitional demands could be rendered concrete and used as the basis for a mobilisation of workers for struggle:

 

‘It is necessary to interpret these fundamental ideas by breaking them up into more concrete and partial ones, dependent upon the course of events and the orientation of thought of the masses.’43

 

Trotsky’s method of firmness and flexibility combined within the framework of a clearly defned strategy is so refreshing compared with the lifeless schematism of that wing of his epigones who think that revolutionary credentials depend on the ability to repeat in all circumstances slogans ripped from the programme and learnt by heart. The ability to take partial struggles as a starting point, generalise them, and then express this generalisation through a concrete demand, is at the heart of the transitional method.

 

The other addition Trotsky made to Lenin and the Comintern’s position was the use of transitional demands as a bridge not simply to socialism, but to the socialist revolution. The fulfilment of this task, winning the vanguard of the proletariat to the programme of socialist revolution, could only—and can only—be achieved by means of a transitional programme. The programme would, by freeing the proletariat from its bankrupt leaders, clear a path to the revolution. At that point a programme of transition in Lenin’s sense—to socialism—would become necessary:

 

‘Only a general revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat can place the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the order of the day. The tasks of transitional demands is to prepare the proletariat to solve this problem.’44

 

Transitional demands, providing they really become a focus for mass struggle could introduce a reformist led proletariat to the very need for revolution:

 

‘It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands stemming from the day’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.’45

 

Lodged within every transitional demand is the struggle for vital working class needs over capitalism’s pursuit of profit via the establishment of workers’ control over capitalist production and distribution. At the same time each transitional demand contains a call for the organisation of the working class in bodies capable of exercising this control. By fighting for workers’ control and by building organisations that correspond to this fight the working class can block their bosses exercise of his or her ‘right to manage’ against the interests of workers. This denial of managements’ ability to be master in ‘their own’ house is a sort of dual power. Dual power in a single factory must lead to dual power in an industry and indeed in all industries if it is to effectively check the bosses. This in turn will create the beginnings of dual power in society as a whole. In order to defend each and every gain from the inevitable attacks of the capitalists the working class can, through transitional demands, be won to taking this road.

 

In that sense workers’ control at both a primitive level (over hiring and firing, for example, in a single factory) and an advanced level, (by forcing throughout society the abolition of business secrecy, and the right to veto all plans of the bosses) has the capacity to transform the most basic defensive struggles (against unemployment, for better pay) into offensive struggles leading inexorably towards the creation of a dual power situation. But for this to happen the demands must have an internal logic and interconnection. They are a system of demands, which can only achieve the goal of taking the working class to the threshold of revolution on the condition that they are actually fought for by significant sections of the class and that in the course of that struggle, the demands are extended up to and including the fight for a workers’ government. At the point where the working class, or its vanguard, are fighting in this manner, the transitional programme will be transformed into the programme of soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat:

 

‘Dual power in its turn is the culminating point of the transitional period. Two regimes, the bourgeois and the proletariat, are irreconcilably opposed to each other. Conflict between them is inevitable. The fate of society depends on the outcome.’46

 

The struggle for transitional demands, therefore, has an integral logic. Each demand has as its essence this logic of propelling the working class further along the road towards revolution. If they are fought for then ‘ever more openly and decisively they will by directed against the very foundations of the bourgeois regime’.47 for this reason it would be profoundly wrong to fetishise the fight for one particular transitional slogan, and conduct that fight irrespective of objective conditions. Transitional slogans, if they are to fulfil their purpose of compelling the proletariat to make ever deeper inroads on capitalism, cannot be used in a timeless fashion. They are rooted first and foremost in actual conditions. The demand for a sliding scale of wages is a case in point. This is nowhere to be found in the Action Programme for France. To those who reverence the TP without either understanding it or being able to creatively develop it, this appears simply to be an oversight. Thus, an article in the old Workers Socialist League’s journal, Trotskyism Today, argued:

 

‘The Programme of Action in many respects exactly anticipates demands of the Transitional Programme four years later—though the sliding scale of wages and sliding scale of hours were not included and appear not to have been thought of in 1934.’ 48

 

This is a light minded comment. The sliding scale of hours, while not expressed via that phrase, can be found in the demands of the healthy Comintern and RILU. Workers’ control of hours worked was how it was expressed. As for the sliding scale of wages, it was a demand pioneered in the German communist movement as early as 1923. However—undoubtedly Trotsky did not include it for the simple reason that it was not of central relevance in the given concrete circumstances. Whether or not it had been ‘thought of’ is totally beside the point. It was not relevant. As such it would not have generalised the working class struggle on the wages front. Inflation was not the common grievance of the working class. It could not have been mobilised in a struggle against capitalism around such a demand at that time. Trotsky gives us a fairly obvious reason why not: ‘Brutal deflation is the first step in the plan of the French capitalists.’ 49

 

In addition if this demand is dislocated from its workers’ control element (the workers’ cost of living index and workers’ and housewives’ committee) it loses its transitional element. It becomes merely partial demand, an immediate reform. And if a situation of monetary stability and low inflation obtains, it will do very little to either mobilise the working class at all let alone generalise a mobilisation of the class. Capitalism could (and has in Italy and Belgium) granted forms of sliding scale which in periods of low inflation do not advance the class towards the socialist revolution. Of course, defence of these sliding scales in a period of crisis and high inflation can become the starting point for transforming the struggle into one for workers’ control. For this reason to have advanced this slogan in the major capitalist powers of Europe or the USA in the period of the long boom, when inflation was relatively insignificant, would have been a departure from Trotsky’s transitional method. He advanced the slogan in the TP not as a universal panacea but as an action slogan for a period characterised by the threat of an enormous leap in prices:

 

‘Against a bounding rise in prices which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages.’50

 

The SWP(GB), on the other hand, will counter that in periods where insignificant inflation exists the demand is wrong. This is only half-true. It is inappropriate for such periods, but it should not be junked altogether and forever driven out of the party’s programme. In fact the SWP(GB) hate it at all times because it is a transitional demand, because it challenges trade union reformism. The SWP(GB) opposed the demand in Britain in the 1970s when inflation made it once again timely. Their hostility was rooted in their economism. They wrongly believed that the sliding scale would dampen wage militancy which was, for them, the one and only road to socialist consciousness. The idea that wage militancy could be transformed through a fight to give workers protection against inflation, without at all limiting their demands for additional rises, was anathema to the SWP(GB). Indeed their opposition to the demand became quite infantile. One of their ‘big’ theoreticians, John Molyneux, warned against the demand ‘. . . because it precludes wage claims that exceed price rises.’51

 

How? Nowhere in the TP does Trotsky say to workers thou shalt not strike for increases in excess of the current retail price index! It merely seeks to direct militancy from the plane of piecemeal demands on the boss for lump sum rises to a higher plane in which workers are challenging the right of the capitalists to use inflation to encroach upon their living standards. Trotsky says that the workers ‘must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it’.52 In no sense should this be read as a warning against high wage demands. Indeed Trotsky adds:

 

‘There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances—national, local, trade union.’ 53

 

Clearly the objective conditions determined the use and revolutionary significance of the slogan. The same rule applies to all of the principal transitional slogans.

 

Pedagogic tasks

 

Taking objective conditions as his starting point was vital for Trotsky to combat another danger. As well as a wooden counterposing of transitional to immediate demands, Trotsky had to combat tendencies to limit programme to the existing consciousness of the masses. He tirelessly stressed the need to take into account the consciousness (backward or otherwise) of the working class in explaining transitional demands, in adapting them to specific situations. However, he argued that these fundamentally pedagogic considerations could not form the starting point in formulating the central tasks that the party had to arm the proletariat to fulfil. That is, the actual demands in the programme had to correspond to the acute social and political crisis of the world at the end of the 1930s. This objective criterion requires of revolutionaries that they advance demands that are necessary rather than ones which revolutionaries gauge as being possible because of the backward consciousness of a particular working class:

 

‘Our tasks don’t depend on the mentality of the workers. The task is to develop the mentality of the workers. That is what the programme should formulate and present before the advanced workers. Some will say: good, the programme is a scientific programme; it corresponds to the objective situation—but if the workers won’t accept this programme, it will be sterile. Possibly. But this signifies only that the workers will be crushed, since the crisis can’t be solved in any other way but by the socialist revolution.’54

 

This spells out clearly that the job of revolutionaries is to lead the workers not to politically adapt to their state of consciousness which in any case is not a fixed or stable thing but undergoes leaps and transformations brought on by crisis and struggle. Transitional demands have to be fought for if they are objectively necessary even though they may appear too advanced in relation to the consciousness of workers at the time:

 

‘But we cannot adapt the programme to the backward mentality of the workers; the mentality, the mood is a secondary factor—the prime factor is the objective situation.’55

 

A vexed question that always arises with young revolutionaries and which inveterate centrists can never answer is whether transitional demands can be realised under capitalism. The short answer is no. Because of their inbuilt challenge to the profit logic and mastery of the capitalists over production they are unrealisable as a stable and permanent gain under capitalism. But neither are they simply ‘impossible’ or utopian demands. If they were then they would be unable to address current problems and would be unable to win the allegiance of workers who did not already fully realise the necessity of abolishing capitalism.

 

Like other serious immediate demands, capitalists can be forced to concede one or another of them temporarily or partially if the working class is strong enough and is threatening the whole system with its actions. Concessions stemming from the struggle for transitional demands can increase workers’ confidence and lead to an offensive struggle. Their successful realisation depends precisely on broadening the struggle to ever wider layers of the working class and interlinking the transitional, immediate and democratic demands until the question of the necessity of a workers’ government to realise them is grasped by the ‘multi-millioned masses’. Organisationally this must be expressed in the massive growth of the influence of the revolutionary party and the creation of soviet-type organs of struggle.

 

The question of any one demand being realisable or unrealisable, practical or unpractical does not arise in the abstract metaphysical way that this question is usually put. The fate of each separate demand will be settled in the course of struggle. The system of demands will however only be realised by the destruction of bourgeois political and economic power. Lenin, in dealing with the same problem in relation to certain minimum demands, outlined the correct method of dealing with this question. In a letter to Radek in 1910 he argued:

 

‘The criteria of what is “impractical” within the framework of capitalism should not be taken in the sense that the bourgeoisie will not allow it, that it cannot be achieved etc. In that sense very many demands in our minimum programme are “impractical”, but are none the less obligatory.’56

 

In dealing with transitional demands Trotsky echoed this point, making clear that these demands were not meant to be a means of ‘tricking’ the workers into socialist struggle, but a means of mobilising them for their vital needs:

 

‘Not one of our demands will be realised under capitalism. That is why we are calling them transitional demands. It creates a bridge to the mentality of the workers and then a material bridge to the socialist revolution. The whole question is how to mobilise the masses for struggle . . . The revolutionaries always consider that the reforms and acquisitions are only a by-product of revolutionary struggle. If we say that we will only demand what they can give, the ruling class will only give one tenth or more of what we demand. When we demand more and can improve our demands, the capitalists are compelled to give the maximum. The more extended and militant the spirit of the workers, the more is demanded and won. They are not sterile slogans; they are a means of pressure on the bourgeoisie, and will give the greatest possible material results immediately.’57

 

A world programme

 

The Transitional Programme was a programme for the Fourth International. It was based on the contradictions of world capitalism, the crisis of the Stalinist regime and the experiences of the international proletariat. The opening lines indicate the basis from which the programme starts: ‘The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of leadership’.58

 

The opening sections are heavily oriented to the problems of revolutionary strategy within the trade unions. Their focus is towards mobilising the workers for a break with established trade union and reformist leaders. Clearly the most immediate (thought not exclusive) field of application for such policies was in the countries where trade union bureaucracies and reformist apparatuses were the decisive obstacles to revolution—the imperialist heartlands. In the discussions of the programme that Trotsky held with SWP(US) members this emphasis is apparent. However, Trotsky goes on to examine the relationship of the trade union oriented transitional demands to democratic demands that have a burning significance for the semi-colonial world. The depth of Trotsky’s grasp of the internationalist nature of the communist programme is revealed in the manner in which he develops the link between democratic and transitional demands. His theory of Permanent Revolution, based as it was on an understanding of the uneven but combined character of development in the imperialist epoch, enabled him to combine the democratic programme and the transitional programme, where the Stalinists and nationalists alike counterposed democracy to socialism:

 

‘Democratic slogans, transitional demands and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another.’59

 

In particular, it was the experience of the revolutions in Russia, Spain and China that enabled Trotsky to concretely demonstrate how the tasks of the democratic revolution are indissolubly linked with those of the socialist revolution. Trotsky argued that the weight given to democratic demands depended on the degree of backwardness in a particular country, and on the extent of the strength of democratic aspirations. His starting point in raising democratic demands was to solidarise not with the illusions that the masses harboured in bourgeois democracy but with what was progressive about the aspiration (the yearning for freedom of speech and assembly, the right to organise trade unions and political parties). By taking up these demands in conditions where the bourgeoisie refused them or at best used them in a deceitful manner a bridge to transitional and socialist demands could be opened. This is what Trotsky meant when he called for a transitional democratic programme in China, for example. The method of utilising democratic demands in this transitional fashion—enshrined in the programme—was anticipated by Trotsky’s use of the call for a constituent assembly (Cortes) in Spain:

 

‘The masses of the city and countryside can be united at the present time only under democratic slogans. These include the election of a constituent Cortes on the basis of universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage. I do not think that in the present situation you can avoid this slogan. Soviets are as yet non-existent. The Spanish workers—not to speak of the peasants—do not know what soviets are; at any rate not from their own experiences. Nevertheless, the struggle around the Cortes in the coming period will constitute the whole political life of the country. To counterpose the slogan of soviets, under these circumstances to the slogan of the Cortes, would be incorrect.

 

On the other hand, it will obviously be possible to build soviets in the near future only by mobilising the masses on the basis of democratic slogans. This means: to prevent the monarchy from convening a false, deceptive, conservative Cortes; and so that this Cortes can give land to the peasants, and do many other things, workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets must be created to fortify the positions of the toiling masses.’60

 

This method of combining democratic demands with transitional ones, stands in stark contrast to the positions of degenerate Trotskyism today in Latin America, Africa and Asia. They interpret Trotsky’s reference to arming workers with a democratic programme as a ‘primary step’61 to mean the fight for democracy as a distinct stage. Thus they mimic the Stalinist stages theory. The sense of Trotsky’s talk of a ‘primary step’ is clear from the reference above to Spain. A revolutionary fight for the democratic programme can, in certain circumstances, be the first step towards the programme of Soviets. But this step can only be made if the fight for soviets is linked to the struggle for democracy. Neither Trotsky nor Lenin in 1917 before October abandoned the call for the constituent assembly, even while at the same time calling for all power to be placed in the hands of the Soviets. This position reflected the combined tasks of the Russian Revolution, not counterposed stages of that revolution.

 

The international scope of the TP is equally evident in the section on the USSR. Trotsky elaborates a clear programme aimed at overthrowing the bureaucracy. This section was of vital importance in countering those in the FI who saw political revolution as a mere self-reform process by sections of the bureaucracy. Trotsky made clear that ‘. . . the chief political task in the USSR still remains the overthrow of this same Thermidorian bureaucracy’.62

 

Trotsky’s programme was prescient in identifying the struggle against social inequality and political oppression as the starting point of political revolution. Hungary and Poland both demonstrate the correctness of his prediction. However, the lack of experience of actual political revolutionary crises necessarily limited Trotsky’s ability to elaborate detailed tactics and demands. He could only begin to elaborate a programme. Once again the actual experiences of the post-war period, in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and, most recently Poland, oblige us to go further. It is proof of the bankruptcy of the FI’s fragments that they emptied Trotsky’s programme of its revolutionary kernel and went backwards to a reform perspective. For their part the Cliffites, with the theory of State Capitalism, abandoned the programme of political revolution altogether. For them there is only the perspective of a new February 1917, a spontaneous democratic revolution. As Cliff puts it:

 

‘The spontaneous revolution, in smashing the iron heel of the Stalinist bureaucracy, will open the field for the free activity of all the parties, tendencies and groups in the working class. It will be the first chapter in the victorious proletarian revolution.’63

 

The land of the first successful workers’ revolution must return to chapter one—bourgeois democracy—before the transition to socialism can be effected. The transitional method is abandoned and its place is taken by spontaneism—a position every bit as fatalist and prostrate before the objective process as that taken by the principal fragments of the FI that the Cliffites claimed to be opposing.

 

Re-elaborating the Transitional Programme

 

In our book, The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today, we stated that our objective was the re-foundation of a revolutionary international on the basis of a re-elaborated programme. As we have seen regular re-elaborations of the programme have taken place in the Marxist tradition. The method lodged in the Communist Manifesto was retained in the TP. But Trotsky did not simply reprint the Manifesto because it was, at a methodological level, still valid. He re-elaborated it. He encompassed new developments, new perspectives and a new balance sheet of the class struggle in his programme. This is entirely Marxist. Yet our call to do just the same fifty years on from when the TP was written, has been greeted with horror and dismay by a miscellany of centrist groups that originated from the FI. How dare we propose to tamper with a text, which for them, has become a holy icon! For us the programme must be a guide to action. For them it is something to look at, admire and perhaps even worship. We say clearly that just as Trotsky declared the Communist Manifesto to be his programme, and just as he re-elaborated it to fit new circumstances, so we say the TP is our programme and we simply intend to re-elaborate it for the period we face.

 

For us the need for re-elaboration stems from several factors. The first and most straightforward, is that it was not complete. Anyone who thinks it was should consider Trotsky’s own remarks about the programme. When the SWP(US) National Committee hesitated in adopting the programme Trotsky re-assured them that it was a general ‘working hypothesis’ that ‘can and surely will be modified in the fire of experience’64. He even offered it as a basis for discussion with the French PSOP led by the centrist Marceau Pivert, inviting the latter to submit amendments. And in his discussions of the programme with the SWP(US) leaders he insisted:

 

‘The draft programme is not a complete programme . . . The programme is only the first approximation. It is too general in the sense in which it is presented to the international conference in the next period.’65

 

He believed it lacked a precise enough analysis of the contemporary stage of imperialism and its contradictions and developments. He knew full well it lacked precise slogans for establishing and consolidating of the proletarian dictatorship. He recognised that ‘peculiar conditions in each country and even in each part of the country’,66 would affect the particular focus of the programme when applied in a given nation. In short, Trotsky signalled the areas where he felt further development was necessary.

 

The first point, concerning the imperialist epoch, is decisive for any re-elaboration of the programme. This is because the lack of this analysis disarmed Trotsky’s followers after the war when his prognoses for acute and prolonged economic crisis failed to materialise, at least in the imperialist heartlands. Trotsky’s perspective as we have seen under-estimated the economic strength of US imperialism.

 

But not only do we have Trotsky’s own admitted shortcomings that require work from us in the development of the programme, we also have to overcome the distortions of the programme by the centrists. The final factor that renders re-elaboration necessary is the profound changes and their effects on the class struggle and its major protagonists (reformists, nationalists, centrists and revolutionists) that have occured in the last fifty years. The problems of imperialism in the aftermath of its long boom, the complexities of the struggles in the imperialised world, the effects of its own expansion on Stalinism, the flowering of movements of the oppressed and so on, all have to be encompassed in a re-elaborated programme.

 

This task would have been considerably easier had not revolutionary continuity been shattered. Had Trotsky‘s epigones re-elaborated his programme in the 1950s many of the difficulties we face today would not exist. And such re-elaboration was possible. In the imperialist countries, where the boom engendered relative social peace, Trotsky’s warning that a strategic retreat might prove necessary should have warned and encouraged the next generation of Trotskyists. It would have encouraged them that, even in the conditions of boom and the isolation of revolutionaries, they could retreat to dealing with a lower level of class struggle, but in a revolutionary manner. Retreat need not mean revision. That retreat, in the face of a capitalist boom, should not have been a retreat back to the minimum programme. It should have looked at the tasks of building opposition inside the trade unions to the reformist bureaucracies. It should have meant developing the tactic of the rank and file movement—the revolutionary use of the united front in the unions—so as to be able to seize every opportunity to exact new gains from the capitalists, encroaching upon their control in the workplace and weakening the ability of the bureaucrats to play their role as lieutenants of capital inside the labour movement. Yet the TP’s call for ‘independent militant organisations’ was left as a dead letter.

 

The failure to carry out a ‘strategic retreat’ for the imperialist countries by formulating a policy for the unions was mirrored by the failure to re-elaborate the programme to deal with the resurgence of reformism. The TP deals with reformism—in both its social democratic and Stalinist garb—at a very general level. Trotsky firmly believed its death knell had been sounded. He did not feel the need to repeat the tactics towards it any detail. Yet after the war in Britain, Italy, France and West Germany reformism played a vital role in facilitating the stabilisation of capitalism. It saved capitalism and itself. In place of the Transitional Programme’s general denunciation of reformism a programme of action utilising the tactics of the united front was required. Instead, the FI’s fragments in imperialist Europe simply saw every current of left reformism is evidence of Trotsky’s prediction that reformism as a whole was disintegrating. At the level of tactics all the fragments, to one degree or another, capitulated to left reformism, hailing it as centrist or assimilating themselves to it as its left wing.

 

These failures to develop the programme inevitably disarmed the centrist groupings which originated from the FI. In Belgium 1961 and France 1968 the cost of either abandoning or distorting the transitional method proved to be a tendency to accommodate to the labour and trade union bureaucracy or a tendency to simply tail the workers’ struggles in the hope that they would spontaneously overcome their illusions in that bureaucracy. The same tendencies manifested themselves when the developments of movements of the oppressed (women, blacks, lesbians and gays) developed. With no real point of reference in the Transitional Programme and blind to its methods, the centrists practiced liquidationism or economism.

 

In the semi-colonies the development of the programme to relate to the rise of petit bourgeois nationalist movements was required. Bolivia in 1952 provided a test case.67 The problem of soviets, of the workers’ and peasants’ government, of workers’ control and the relationship of democratic and transitional demands, could have been rendered precise. The tactics and strategy of Trotskyism, however, were unceremoniously dumped by the epigones. The programme was ignored, not enriched.

 

And, in the degenerate workers’ states, the need to develop the programme of political revolution was demonstrated by the regular explosions of rebellion against the Stalinist rulers. But here too the foundation stones laid by Trotsky were dynamited, not built upon. Instead fractions of the bureaucracy were tailed.

 

The crisis of leadership has, in the latter part of the twentieth century, seen a further development. The collapse of the FI means that centrism stands as the major alternative for workers breaking with reformism. The forces of revolutionary communism are a tiny minority. They lack numbers, resources, theoreticians of the stature of Trotsky and many things beside. But these forces exist. Under the banner of the MRCI they are fighting. True, today we must largely fight with the weapons of criticism. In transcending this stage and in overcoming the obstacles we do possess one vital weapon—Trotsky’s revolutionary method. Enshrined in the Transitional Programme are all the answers for us in re-elaborating that programme to meet the new period of social and economic crisis that imperialism has plunged into. By tearing away the shrouds that centrism wrapped Trotskyism’s real method and programme in, we can compensate for all weaknesses. We can prepare our cadre, root ourselves in the class struggle and accumulate experience. We can march forward confidently and produce the new programme, on the shoulders of each previous Marxist programme, especially the TP. And in so doing we will build the new International and new parties that are so desperately needed. In doing so we heed Trotsky’s words:

 

‘The significance of the programme is the significance of the party . . . Now what is the party? In what does the cohesion exist? This cohesion is a common understanding of the events, of the tasks; and this common understanding—that is the programme of the party. Just as modern workers cannot work without tools any more than the barbarians could, so in the party the programme is the instrument.’68

 

With such a programme we can arm the working class with a strategy to despatch capitalism into the rubbish bin of history.

 

Endnotes

 

1 Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (TP), (New York 1977)—all future references to the Transitional Programme and discussions on it are to this edition.

 

2 Ibid, p111

 

3 Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, Against the Stream, (London 1986) p183

 

4 Leon Trotsky, The Crisis in the French Section, (New York 1977) p119

 

5 Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, (Harmondsworth 1975) p40

 

6 Leon Trotsky, Whither France?, (London 1974) p50

 

7 Leon Trotsky, TP, p172

 

8 Leon Trotsky, Writings 1937-38 (W 37-38), (New York 1976) p284

 

9 Leon Trotsky, W 38-39, (New York 1974) p232

 

10 Leon Trotsky, W 39-40, (New York 1973) p159

 

11 Leon Trotsky, TP, p99

 

12 Leon Trotsky, W 39-40, p291

 

13 Leon Trotsky, W 38-39, p341

 

14 Leon Trotsky, TP, p112

 

15 Leon Trotsky, W 37-38, pp438-39

 

16 For a full account of the effects of this disorientation see: Workers Power/Irish Workers Group, The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today, (London 1983)

 

17 James P Cannon, The Struggle for Socialism in the American Century, (New York 1977) p256

 

18 Ibid, p263

 

19 Mandel and Pablo were, with Pierre Frank, the International Secretariat which was based in Paris at that time

 

20 ‘The World Situation and Tasks of the Fourth International’, Fourth International , June 1948 (New York)

 

21 James P Cannon, op cit, pp276-77

 

22 See Mark Hoskisson, ‘Programme in the Imperialist Epoch’, Permanent Revolution No 6 (London 1987)

 

23 James P Cannon, op cit, p298

 

24 Duncan Hallas, ‘Against the Stream’, International Socialism 1:53, (London 1972) p39

 

25 John Molyneux, Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Revolution, (Brighton 1981) p179

 

26 Chris Bambery, ‘The Politics of James P Cannon’, International Socialism 2:36 (London 1987) p77

 

27 Leon Trotsky, TP, p173

 

28 Ibid, p111

 

29 John Molyneux, op cit, p185

 

30 Leon Trotsky, On France, (New York 1979) p200

 

31 Leon Trotsky, TP, pp103-04

 

32 ‘The Yugoslav Affair’, Fourth International December 1948, (New York) p238

 

33 Leon Trotsky, TP, p113

 

34 Documents of the Fourth International, (New York 1973) p348

 

35 Leon Trotsky, TP, pp113-14 (our emphasis)

 

36 Documents of the Fourth International, p161 (our emphasis)

 

37 Leon Trotsky, TP, p101

 

38 Workers Power, Where Next for the NUM?, (London 1985)

 

39 Leon Trotsky, TP, p114

 

40 Duncan Hallas, Trotsky’s Marxism, (London 1979) p104

 

41 Leon Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution, (New York 1973) p80

 

42 Leon Trotsky, TP, p135

 

43 Ibid, p102

 

44 Ibid, p129

 

45 Ibid, p122

 

46 Ibid, pp136-37

 

47 Ibid, p137

 

48 Workers Socialist League, Trotskyism Today No4, p5 (London 1979)

 

49 Leon Trotsky, Whither France?, p146

 

50 Ibid, p115 (our emphasis)

 

51 John Molyneux, op cit, p152

 

52 Leon Trotsky, TP, p115

 

53 Ibid, p115

 

54 Ibid, p157

 

55 Ibid, p176

 

56 V I Lenin, Collected Works Volume 36, p172 (Moscow 1966)

 

57 Leon Trotsky, TP, pp159-60

 

58 Ibid, p111

 

59 Ibid, p137

 

60 Leon Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution, p137

 

61 Leon Trotsky, TP, p137

 

62 Ibid, p145

 

63 Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia, p264 (London 1974)

 

64 Leon Trotsky, W 37-38, p343

 

65 Leon Trotsky, TP, p173

 

66 Ibid, p173

 

67 See Workers Power, Permanent Revolution No2, (London 1984)

 

68 Leon Trotsky, TP, p171

 

 

 

O Programa de Transição cinquenta anos depois

Meio século se passou desde que o Programa de Transição (PT) 1 de Leon Trotsky foi escrito. Nesses cinquenta anos, muitas coisas aconteceram que o programa de Trotsky não previu nem preparou. As perspectivas de Trotsky baseavam-se na premissa de que "as forças produtivas da humanidade estagnam" .2 No entanto, nos países metropolitanos, a segunda guerra imperialista foi seguida por um boom econômico sem precedentes por quase vinte anos. Por sua vez, esse boom criou as condições para o ressurgimento do reformismo social-democrata, uma força que Trotsky acreditava que seria destruída de forma decisiva na guerra. O stalinismo também não apenas sobreviveu, mas ganhou um novo sopro de vida por meio de sua expansão na Europa Oriental e, por fim, em partes da Ásia. A condição para esses desenvolvimentos imprevistos foi a derrota do levante revolucionário que ocorreu durante a guerra na Europa. A derrota desse levante foi alcançada pela força contrarrevolucionária nas áreas ocupadas pelas Forças Armadas Soviéticas e pelo imperialismo Aliado. Foi vítima das armadilhas não menos fatais da contrarrevolução democrática em grande parte da Europa Ocidental.

 

É claro que, pelo menos no nível das perspectivas, a realidade do pós-guerra não correspondia ao quadro de crise generalizada e sincronizada que Trotsky havia desenhado pouco antes de sua morte. Tal desenvolvimento não é único na história do marxismo. As previsões de Marx e Engels foram, em várias ocasiões, confundidas por uma variedade de desenvolvimentos inesperados. Tudo isso nos diz que o marxismo não possui poderes místicos que garantam o cumprimento das previsões. A previsão do marxismo - sua formulação de perspectivas - é necessariamente um processo constante de avaliação e reavaliação das tendências dentro da economia, da classe dominante, da classe trabalhadora e da luta de classes. Com base em tais análises concretas, as perspectivas precisam ser formuladas e testadas. Se eles falharem no teste, eles precisam ser reformulados. O próprio Trotsky, na década de 1930,demonstrou repetidamente o método marxista de 'testar e corrigir' seus próprios programas.

 

O método do Programa de Transição

 

No final da década de 1920 teve início uma crise econômica que assolou todo o mundo capitalista. Um novo período de crise política e econômica sucedeu ao período de boom capitalista na década de 1920. A ascensão do fascismo na Alemanha, a frente popular na França, a guerra civil na Espanha, a guerra sino-japonesa, foram todas manifestações explosivas da fraqueza crônica do capitalismo mundial. A enorme profundidade, bem como a extensão mundial desta crise e os repetidos fracassos e derrotas do proletariado entre 1921 e 1933, conduziram a um novo fenômeno. Assim como os anos 1917-21 viram a fundação e o estabelecimento através da guerra civil do primeiro estado operário do mundo, a década seguinte viu sua degeneração burocrática. O Partido Comunista Russo, por meio de seu domínio do Comintern, tornou-se um instrumento de má liderança crônica dentro do movimento mundial dos trabalhadores. As políticas ultra-esquerdistas de Stalin facilitaram o triunfo de Hitler em 1933. A obstrução da frente única para combater o fascismo foi criminosa. No entanto, após a derrota, todas as seções do Comintern, sem exceção , concordaram com a visão de Stalin de que suas políticas haviam sido inteiramente corretas. Trotsky reconheceu o verdadeiro significado disso e declarou que o Comintern estava morto para a revolução. À medida que a década avançava, a experiência dos governos de frente popular na França e na Espanha revelou que o Comintern não estava simplesmente morto para a revolução. Tornou-se um instrumento para a contrarrevolução. Sob Stalin, tornou-se uma organização reformista contrarrevolucionária.

 

 A resposta de Trotsky a esses acontecimentos foi dedicar seus anos restantes à construção da Quarta Internacional (Fourth International-FI). Essa luta passou por muitas fases. Foi conduzida contra um pano de fundo de terríveis derrotas para a classe trabalhadora. Este fato objetivo significava que ele estava constantemente nadando contra a corrente. Seus adeptos somavam apenas alguns milhares na véspera da guerra mundial.

 

Trotsky resistiu, ao longo da década de 1930, à tentação de curto-circuitar o processo de construção de uma internacional revolucionária por meio de qualquer compromisso na questão do programa. Enquanto sempre fazia uma tentativa séria de ganhar elementos de centro-esquerda (o Bloco dos Quatro, o ILP, o PSOP, o grupo Muste etc.), Trotsky sempre insistiu que eles se inscrevessem em um programa claro e revolucionário. Os centristas da época de Trotsky o acusaram de dar ultimatos sobre o programa. Ao fazê-lo, personagens como Fenner Brockway, do ILP, desprezaram atitudes "rígidas" e "dogmáticas" em relação ao programa. O que eles queriam era ser absolutamente livre para mudar seu programa à vontade. Seus princípios, suas estratégias e táticas eram tão camaleônicas, consistindo em várias adaptações às forças dominantes no movimento trabalhista, que a última coisa que eles queriam era ser obrigado a formulá-los com clareza e precisão. Brockway fulminou contra o "sectarismo" de Trotsky. Ele foi denunciado como um ditador cujo método de construir a FI era "o método artificial de impor um programa rígido e depois convidar as partes a se associarem a ele".3 Como o centrismo abomina um programa rígido - isto é, definido.

 

Trotsky nunca se desviou de seu curso. Ele acreditava que a FI deveria se distanciar do reformismo e do centrismo em virtude de seu programa. Somente se tivesse um programa revolucionário seria capaz de enfrentar a crise que estava engolfando o mundo. Somente com um programa firme poderia seguir um curso regular, apesar de ser pequeno e trabalhar em condições objetivas profundamente desfavoráveis. Durante o período da tática de entrismo na França, quando a maioria dos trotskistas franceses entrou no SFIO (Partido Socialista) como uma facção organizada, ele castigou fortemente aqueles, como Raymond Molinier, que sacrificaram o programa por ganhos ilusórios do momento. Ele atacou o 'jornal de massa' La Commune de Molinier e Frank e disse-lhes:

 

'Programa primeiro! “Mass Paper”? Ação revolucionária? Reagrupamento? Comunas em todos os lugares? . . . muito bem, muito bem. . . Mas programa primeiro! Seus passaportes políticos, por favor, cavalheiro! E não falsos, por favor - verdadeiros! Se você não tiver nenhum, então diminua o ritmo! ' 4

 

Trotsky começou a desenvolver suas ideias sobre o que era esse programa, intervindo na luta de classes com base marxista. Só dessa forma as ideias poderiam ser testadas na prática e, em seguida, codificadas em um programa. O período anterior a 1938, quando a agonia de morte do capitalismo e as tarefas da Quarta Internacional - o Programa de Transição - foi escrito, viu Trotsky elaborar os elementos-chave do programa marxista voltados para o período que estava vivendo.

 

A Oposição de Esquerda aprendera com o Partido Bolchevique em 1917 e com o saudável Comintern que os slogans de transição eram essenciais. Em particular, a centralidade do controle dos trabalhadores foi reconhecida por Trotsky. Enquanto os stalinistas durante o Terceiro Período ultra-esquerdista contrapuseram a luta pelo poder à luta pelo controle, Trotsky concebeu esta última como uma ponte para a primeira. Ou seja, ele reconheceu que se uma verdadeira luta pelo controle fosse lançada e fosse de alguma forma bem-sucedida, os trabalhadores seriam compelidos a ir mais longe:

 

'Sob a influência da crise, do desemprego e das manipulações predatórias dos capitalistas, a classe trabalhadora em sua maioria pode estar pronta para lutar pela abolição do sigilo comercial e pelo controle dos bancos, comércio e produção antes que venha a compreender a necessidade da conquista revolucionária do poder.

 

Depois de tomar o caminho do controle da produção, o proletariado irá inevitavelmente avançar na direção da tomada do poder e dos meios de produção. ”5

 

Em um sentido importante, Trotsky estava chegando ao cerne das demandas transitórias. Demandas mínimas ou imediatas podem, sob certas condições, ser atendidas pelo capitalismo como um meio de pacificar a classe trabalhadora. As demandas transitórias, por outro lado, desde que correspondam realmente à situação objetiva, não podem ser atendidas integralmente pelo capitalismo. Caso se lute por elas e mesmo parcialmente vencidas, então elas elevam a luta de classes a um nível qualitativamente mais alto, ao mesmo tempo obrigando o proletariado a se mover cada vez mais contra os próprios fundamentos da sociedade de classes e ao mesmo tempo criando a consciência e organização capazes de uma solução socialista. Elas representam uma solução, um caminho a partir do impasse das demandas imediatas normais (reformas) e métodos de luta para outros mais eficazes, que organizam a força da classe trabalhadora para que ela desafie a própria lógica da economia capitalista, bem como o controle e direção dos capitalistas dessa economia. Contra essas demandas transitórias se colocam a 'economia política da classe trabalhadora'; produção planejada para atender às necessidades humanas. Mas o faz, não na forma de sermões estéreis de domingo sobre o socialismo, mas como uma resposta concreta a um problema concreto enfrentado pelos trabalhadores em luta.

 

Programa de ação de Trotsky para a França

 

A compreensão de Trotsky do método alojado nas demandas transitórias foi revelada pela crise que se desenvolveu na França em 1934. O Comintern, durante sua fase ultra-esquerdista, condenou as demandas imediatas e transitórias como oportunistas. Tudo foi reduzido à questão do poder. À medida que avançava em direção à frente popular, inverteu sua posição anterior e contrapôs as demandas imediatas na França, à questão do poder. Em ambos os casos, abandonou o método de transição de relacionar as necessidades do momento com a luta pelo poder. Trotsky mostrou como, de fato, as demandas transitórias tinham, em virtude da escala da crise, se tornado de relevância imediata. Elas correspondiam às necessidades urgentes das massas no nível imediato e, além disso, a própria questão do poder estava se tornando uma questão urgente e imediata:

 

'A tese marxista geral,' As reformas sociais são apenas subprodutos da luta revolucionária ', tem na época do declínio do capitalismo a importância mais imediata e ardente. Os capitalistas podem ceder algo aos trabalhadores somente se eles forem ameaçados com o perigo de perder tudo.

 

No entanto, mesmo as maiores “concessões” de que o capitalismo contemporâneo - ele mesmo em um beco sem saída - for capaz são completamente insignificantes em comparação com a miséria das massas e a profundidade da crise social. É por isso que a mais imediata de todas as reivindicações deve ser a expropriação dos capitalistas e a nacionalização (socialização) dos meios de produção. Mas essa demanda  é irrealizável sob o domínio da burguesia? Isso mesmo! É por isso que devemos tomar o poder. ' 6

 

Da mesma forma, as mobilizações armadas das gangues fascistas colocaram como uma necessidade imediata o armamento do proletariado para proteger suas organizações existentes. Claro, uma classe trabalhadora armada é incompatível com a existência do capitalismo por qualquer período de tempo. A agudeza da crise social tornou as demandas que levaram as massas ao limiar da revolução uma necessidade imediata. A velha ordem da sociedade estava entrando em colapso. As massas estavam preparadas para lutar, mas uma liderança traiçoeira os deixou passivos e confusos e abriu o caminho para a derrota. Em um sentido importante, isso é o que Trotsky considerava uma situação pré-revolucionária. A velha ordem desmorona, mas a crise de liderança na classe trabalhadora impede que as massas explorem as rachaduras na classe dominante, os impede de reunir ao seu lado as classes e camadas intermediárias confusas e desesperadas. As demandas transitórias são cruciais como todo um sistema de demandas voltado para resolver esta crise de liderança, mobilizando a classe trabalhadora em um programa que o introduz ao socialismo, o separa dos traidores e os leva a buscar uma nova liderança nos trotskistas.

 

Um dos primeiros exemplos desse método sendo aplicado foi o Programa de Ação para a França de 1934. Este foi um programa de transição fortemente focado na situação pré-revolucionária na França. Soou o alarme contra o perigo fascista. Descreveu o método pelo qual a burguesia francesa estava atacando a classe trabalhadora - deflação e desemprego. Ele contrapôs a esses perigos um programa de medidas de controle dos trabalhadores e formas de organização que desafiava os fundamentos da sociedade capitalista. Procurou mobilizar ao lado do proletariado os setores progressistas da pequena burguesia e não se esquivou de exigir a erradicação de todos os vestígios de bonapartismo da constituição burguesa. O Programa de Ação é um modelo desse tipo. Mas os modelos não existem para serem copiados cegamente, mas para serem aplicados criativamente a uma situação concreta. Se alguém dissesse hoje que o Programa de Ação é 'válido hoje', as pessoas sensatas iriam considerá-lo um tanto louco. Não foi atemporal. Ao consagrar o método transicional, aplicou-o a uma conjuntura particular. Esse método foi transportado para o PT em um período diferente

 

O Programa de Transição-PT

 

O primeiro esboço do PT foi concluído por Trotsky na primavera de 1938. Ele foi escrito após extensas discussões com líderes do Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores dos Estados Unidos (SWP (EUA)), incluindo James Cannon. Trotsky considerou isso como uma codificação, um somatório da experiência e lições do período anterior e uma codificação da resposta da Oposição de Esquerda / FI aos eventos daquele período. Como disse o próprio Trotsky, "É a soma do trabalho coletivo até hoje" .7

 

Tal soma era vital para garantir que a experiência passada e as perspectivas futuras fossem generalizadas para toda a FI (em oposição apenas à seção francesa). Era uma nova versão da Seção II do Manifesto Comunista:

 

É necessário fazer um resumo das demandas concretas e precisas, como o controle operário da indústria em oposição à tecnocracia. . . Uma série de medidas de transição que correspondem à fase do capitalismo monopolista e da ditadura do proletariado com uma seção correspondente aos países coloniais e semicoloniais. Preparamos esse documento. Corresponde à parte do Manifesto Comunista de Marx e Engels que eles próprios declararam desatualizada. Está apenas parcialmente desatualizado, parcialmente é muito bom e deve ser substituído por nossa conferência.'8

 

E como o do Manifesto, o PT consistia em partes constituintes inter-relacionadas. Para entender o todo, devemos entender essas partes e sua relação umas com as outras.

 

Como o grande Manifesto, o programa de Trotsky é baseado em uma perspectiva de curto prazo de crise aguda. Trotsky, reconhecendo que a época imperialista significava crises cada vez mais profundas e violentas, foi catastrófico em suas previsões. Ele entendeu perfeitamente que o resultado de quase uma década de crise capitalista seria uma guerra imperialista. Ele estava absolutamente certo nessas previsões. Aqueles que acusam Trotsky de "catastrofismo" parecem não reconhecer que a Segunda Guerra Mundial mergulhou a humanidade em uma enorme catástrofe. O armamento convencional deixou milhões de mortos e mutilados. Economias nacionais inteiras foram devastadas. Tal foi a escala da catástrofe que Trotsky brilhantemente previu em seu programa.

 

Mas a perspectiva de Trotsky não era simplesmente uma catástrofe geral. Foi mais detalhado do que isso, levando em consideração os problemas específicos enfrentados por determinados países capitalistas e aqueles que enfrentam o stalinismo. Trotsky incorporou no PT a perspectiva de que o capitalismo estava muito mais fraco do que no início da Primeira Guerra Mundial. A própria fraqueza do capitalismo significava, na visão de Trotsky, que uma crise revolucionária traria o colapso de todo o sistema capitalista. No início de 1939, ele argumentou: 'Sim, não tenho dúvidas de que a nova guerra mundial provocará com absoluta inevitabilidade a revolução mundial e o colapso do sistema capitalista' .9 Novamente em 1940, ele afirmou: 'O sistema capitalista está em um beco sem saída. Sem uma reconstrução completa do sistema económico à escala europeia e mundial, a nossa civilização está condenada.'10

 

Ele também não isentou os EUA dessa perspectiva. Trotsky mais uma vez previu corretamente que Roosevelt levaria seu país à guerra. Ele acreditava que o imperialismo dos EUA era tão fraco internamente quanto o capitalismo europeu. Portanto, estaria sujeito a um colapso e crise revolucionária semelhantes aos que a Europa enfrenta:

 

As contradições internas do capitalismo americano - a crise e o desemprego - são incomparavelmente mais maduras para uma revolução do que a consciência dos trabalhadores americanos. . . Sabemos que as condições subjetivas - a consciência das massas, o crescimento do partido revolucionário - não são um fator fundamental. '11

 

Os outros dois elementos da análise de Trotsky foram seu reconhecimento de que a revolução colonial seria provocada em uma escala cada vez mais ampla pela guerra, e sua crença de que a sobrevivência da URSS como um estado operário estava condicionada a uma revolução política. Mais uma vez, Trotsky previu corretamente o ataque nazista quando os burocratas presunçosos do Kremlin imaginaram que o Pacto Molotov-Ribbentrop havia expulsado o lobo da porta:

 

'Apenas a derrubada da camarilha totalitária de Moscou, apenas a regeneração da democracia soviética pode liberar as forças do povo soviético para a luta contra o golpe inevitável e que se aproxima rapidamente da Alemanha imperialista.”12

 

Sem uma revolução política, Trotsky previu apenas o colapso e a restauração do capitalismo. Além disso, ele pensava que, se o capitalismo sobrevivesse à catástrofe, seria apenas com base em sua transformação em um regime totalitário, ou em uma série de regimes. Essas perspectivas estavam longe de serem fantasiosas. Mas não eram, e não podiam ser, profecias exatas. Elas eram hipóteses. O próprio Trotsky reconheceu isso: 'O prognóstico político é apenas uma hipótese de trabalho. Deve ser constantemente verificado, tornado mais preciso, trazido para mais perto da realidade.”13

 

Como tal, foram concebidos para orientar a FI para o período imediatamente confrontado com eles. Esse período era, na opinião de Trotsky, provavelmente um período pré-revolucionário prolongado. Trotsky, ao contrário de seus discípulos, foi preciso em sua definição de por que o período era pré-revolucionário e o que era necessário para torná-lo revolucionário:

 

A economia, o estado, a política da burguesia e suas relações internacionais estão completamente arruinados por uma crise social característica de um estado pré-revolucionário da sociedade. O principal obstáculo no caminho da transformação do pré-revolucionário é o caráter oportunista da direção proletária. . . As massas multitudinárias entram repetidamente na estrada da revolução. Mas, a cada vez, elas são bloqueadas por suas próprias máquinas burocráticas conservadoras. ”14

 

Esta é a compreensão de Trotsky da crise da liderança proletária nas vésperas da guerra. Na situação pré-revolucionária, as massas - particularmente na Europa - haviam entrado no caminho da revolução. As lutas dos trabalhadores franceses e espanhóis não foram de caráter puramente seccional, econômico ou episódico. Foram lutas generalizadas prenhes de potencial revolucionário. A característica específica da crise da direção proletária naquela época era a capacidade das antigas direções de impedir que esse potencial se realizasse. Os stalinistas e a social-democracia mostraram sua capacidade de traição na França e na Espanha em 1936 e 1937. Ao mesmo tempo, as forças do trotskismo eram fracas demais para serem desafiadas pela liderança. Na opinião de Trotsky, o potencial para resolver essa crise de liderança existia no curto prazo. O corolário político de sua análise da crise foi que ela provocaria o colapso do stalinismo e da social-democracia precisamente no momento em que as massas seriam impelidas, mais uma vez, a entrar no caminho da luta revolucionária. Para Trotsky, portanto, era vital armar a FI com os meios para aproveitar a luta revolucionária e a decadência das antigas direções. Era necessária uma virada decisiva para o movimento de massa, com o próprio PT sendo o meio para levar as seções da FI à cabeça do movimento de massa: 'Doravante, a Quarta Internacional fica frente a frente com as tarefas do movimento de massa. O Programa de Transição é um reflexo dessa importante virada.”

 

Essas perspectivas eram de curto a médio prazo, não de época - uma questão de anos, não décadas ou meio século. Eles se aplicavam ao período - o período pré-revolucionário - que Trotsky confrontou. O início e o fim de tal período são determinados por eventos históricos mundiais. Pode-se dizer que o período em que Trotsky baseou suas perspectivas, grosso modo, começou com a vitória de Hitler e terminou com a vitória do imperialismo norte-americano no final da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Para aquele período, as perspectivas de Trotsky eram realistas - avaliavam a enormidade da crise que a humanidade enfrentava - e repletas de otimismo revolucionário. Ou seja, eles contavam, do lado subjetivo, com a vontade da FI - incorporada em seu programa - de resolver aquela crise de forma revolucionária. No contexto de 1938, ter avançado qualquer outra perspectiva que a de Trotsky para o triunfo proletário teria sido apenas uma desculpa para traição ou abstencionismo.

 

Essas perspectivas exigiram ampla modificação após a guerra. O boom dos países imperialistas, as lutas nacionais na Ásia, África e América Latina e a crise política revolucionária nos países onde o capitalismo foi derrubado, mas onde as burocracias stalinistas governaram, todos apresentavam um quadro diferente daquele previsto por Trotsky. Este desenvolvimento exigiu duas coisas dos marxistas. Primeiro, eles precisaram elaborar novas perspectivas nas novas condições como um meio de redirecionar seu programa. Em segundo lugar, eles precisavam fazer um balanço crítico da perspectiva do próprio Trotksy, a fim de isolar e superar quaisquer erros que estivessem contidos neles. No evento, os trotskistas do pós-guerra se mostraram incapazes de cumprir qualquer uma das tarefas.

 

Sua seção dirigente, o SWP (EUA), efetivamente se retirou do cenário internacional como força dirigente. Os quadros europeus e asiáticos foram dizimados na própria guerra. Na maior parte da África, o trotskismo não teve nenhuma influência, enquanto na América Latina, onde era muito mais forte, o isolamento nacional atacou todos os grupos trotskistas, deixando-os tão mal equipados quanto seus camaradas norte-americanos para desempenhar um papel de liderança dentro da FI. Os quadros que enfrentaram a tarefa de desenvolver o trotskismo eram relativamente inexperientes e, de forma preocupante, não eram líderes de partidos com um número significativo de raízes, pelo menos, em setores da classe trabalhadora. Militantes experientes e experientes, como James P Cannon, do SWP (EUA), foram incapazes ou não quiseram desempenhar o papel de liderança internacional que Trotsky teve até sua morte.

 

O resultado foi que a FI, sem uma liderança capaz de reelaborar o programa à luz dos novos desenvolvimentos, ficou, como um todo, profundamente desorientada por esses desenvolvimentos.16 Sobre a questão do próprio PT surgiram duas respostas. O primeiro foi manifestado por Cannon e os líderes europeus. Eles se apegaram às perspectivas contidas no PT, apesar de sua inaplicabilidade geral em grande parte do mundo após a guerra.

 

Cego para o impacto real da vitória militar dos EUA, para a enorme flutuabilidade econômica e para o fato de que a enorme onda de greves do pós-guerra foi burocraticamente contida, Cannon simplesmente empurrou de volta a perspectiva pré-guerra da crise, argumentando que estava prestes a acontecer. Além disso, a crise foi entendida como sendo, inevitavelmente, totalmente revolucionária. Cannon caracterizou qualquer desafio a essa visão como cético e derrotista. Foi considerado um insulto à classe trabalhadora americana sugerir que eles não estavam partindo para uma ofensiva revolucionária. A base para essa visão era um reflexo unilateral do novo domínio mundial descoberto pelos EUA. Em vez de admitir a possibilidade de recuperação econômica com base nesse domínio, Cannon insistiu em 1946:

 

O cegamente em que o capitalismo mundial chegou, e os EUA com ele, exclui uma nova era orgânica de estabilização capitalista. A posição mundial dominante do imperialismo americano agora acentua e agrava a agonia de morte do capitalismo como um todo.”17

 

Cannon esqueceu a insistência de Lênin e Trotsky de que não há situações desesperadoras para a burguesia. Ele admitiu a possibilidade de um boom de curto prazo, mas disse que seria seguido rapidamente por uma depressão que "faria as condições de 1929-32 parecerem prósperas" .18

 

Na Europa, Mandel e Pablo 19 cantavam uma melodia semelhante. Suas teses sobre a situação mundial em 1948 continham a mesma fé fatalista no prognóstico de Trotsky. Eles falaram da boca para fora sobre o 'equilíbrio instável' que prevalecia, mas argumentaram:

 

O sistema capitalista, em declínio e decadência, e o regime estabelecido pela burocracia soviética na URSS, acumulam e acentuam suas contradições inerentes. Eles paralisam o desenvolvimento das forças produtivas; reduzir constantemente os padrões de vida de milhões de pessoas no mundo; aumentar a pressão do Estado burocrático e policial sobre a vida social e privada, sufocando a criatividade em todos os campos; reduzir países altamente industrializados como Alemanha e Japão ao nível de colônias; e aumentar a opressão nacional. '20

 

Não há o menor indício de um balanço sério baseado no resultado real da guerra, nesta perspectiva. É uma paráfrase de Trotsky em 1938.

 

As falsas perspectivas estavam próximas. Está ligado a uma falsa compreensão da natureza do próprio PT. Os trotskistas "ortodoxos" - aqueles que fetichizaram o PT - argumentaram que o programa era voltado apenas para uma crise revolucionária real. Concluíram, portanto, que tal estado de crise era uma característica permanente da sociedade do pós-guerra. Cannon tipificou essa abordagem. Depois da guerra, ele escreveu:

 

'O Programa de Transição não tem nenhum significado a menos que se tenha em mente uma perspectiva revolucionária. O próprio fato de você passar do conceito de programa máximo e mínimo - isto é, o programa mínimo de pequenas mudanças diárias, o programa máximo de objetivo final de que você fala no domingo - para um programa de transição, pressupõe um desenvolvimento de natureza revolucionária, com a perspectiva de um confronto à vista. ' 21

 

Tendo definido os métodos de transição - tão meticulosamente desenvolvidos pelo marxismo por quase cem anos 22 - no sentido mais estreito possível, Cannon foi obrigado a ignorar a realidade do boom do pós-guerra. Sua perspectiva, durante todo um período, foi de que a recuperação econômica e a manutenção da democracia burguesa nos Estados Unidos e em grande parte da Europa ocidental foram apenas uma interrupção de curto prazo da crise. O boom e a paz social que gerou no Ocidente tornaram-se uma aberração. Em sua forma extrema, essa "ortodoxia" foi manifestada pela promoção da crise do Comitê Internacional. Os membros foram mantidos em um estado febril de expectativa pelo colapso econômico e pela crise revolucionária que estava por vir. Enquanto Gerry Healy era um expoente típico dessa visão, Cannon, em muitos aspectos, é seu autor original. Ele escreveu, depois da guerra, que a crise econômica era iminente e que havia uma correlação inevitável entre tal crise e revolução:

 

'Como consequência [a crise econômica] abrirá as possibilidades revolucionárias mais grandiosas nos Estados Unidos. Essa concepção deve estar na base da política e das perspectivas do nosso partido de agora em diante. ' 23

 

A disparidade entre a vida real e essas perspectivas grandiosas forçou o SWP (EUA) a abandonar o PT como o centro de sua propaganda e agitação a partir de 1950, enquanto insistia em que ele fosse ritualmente adorado como condição para ser admitido no rebanho 'ortodoxo' .

 

Contra esse tipo de análise, as facções do SWP (EUA) e do RCP britânico tentaram apresentar alternativas baseadas no reconhecimento da estabilidade que surgira na Europa Ocidental como resultado da guerra. Ted Grant, por exemplo, argumentou corretamente que uma 'contrarrevolução democrática' havia ocorrido. No entanto, essas oposições foram tratadas burocraticamente pela liderança da FI e impedidas de se transformarem em forças consideráveis e influentes.

 

Os  Cliffitistas, desenvolvido a partir do RCP, registrou a mudança nas condições. Ao fazer isso, no entanto, eles apenas provaram a verdade da velha máxima de que  pouco de aprendizado é uma coisa perigosa. Nas décadas de 1950 e 60, seu reconhecimento empírico da sobrevivência do estalinismo e do boom do capitalismo os levou a abraçar o capitalismo de estado como uma teoria para explicar a natureza de classe da URSS e sua rejeição da teoria do imperialismo de Lenin e da teoria da Revolução Permanente de Trotsky. O bebê foi jogado fora com a água do banho. Em nenhum lugar isso ficou mais claro do que em sua abordagem ao PT. Na década de 1960, Hallas, interessado em defender elementos do trotskismo, argumentou corretamente que, no Congresso da FI de 1948:'Foi necessária uma reavaliação fundamental da situação e das perspectivas do Programa de Transição. O movimento, em sua maioria, mostrou-se incapaz de cumprir essa tarefa. ”24

 

No entanto, longe de fazer tal reavaliação, o próprio Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores de Cliffite da Grã-Bretanha (SWP (GB) decidiu que as perspectivas de Trotsky em 1938 estavam erradas e, portanto, o seu programa também. John Molyneux, em seu livro sobre Trotsky, coloca isso claramente :

 

Assim, a caracterização do capitalismo feita por Trotsky em 1938 foi, estritamente falando, uma impressão empírica. Como tal, era particularmente vulnerável como uma previsão do futuro. Em suma, a análise econômica era a base do PT e era uma base defeituosa.”25

 

À primeira vista, as posições dos Cliffitistas parecem estar a um milhão de milhas de distância de Cannon. Ainda assim, em sua racionalização para rejeitar o PT, eles definem sua essência exatamente da mesma maneira que Cannon o fez. Eles argumentam que o programa só pode ser considerado relevante se houver uma crise revolucionária imediata. Essa visão, que sempre foi argumentada pela tendência de Cliff, foi expressa recentemente em um artigo, ironicamente, sobre James P Cannon. Seu autor, Chris Bambery, atacou o SWP (EUA) por se agarrar ao PT desde:

 

'As demandas transitórias, agindo nas palavras de Trotsky como uma ponte entre a luta pelas demandas reformistas e econômicas e a luta pelo poder - só têm significado dentro de um contexto revolucionário particular.' 26

 

Essa suposta crítica a Cannon soa mais como um eco de suas próprias palavras! Os Cliffitistas, portanto, rejeitaram o programa de Trotsky porque, vendo-o como relevante apenas para uma crise diretamente revolucionária, eles, ao contrário de Cannon, Healy, Mandel e Pablo et al, registraram o fato de que nenhuma crise desse tipo era iminente nos Estados Unidos e na Europa Ocidental. Na verdade, como veremos, sua própria definição unilateral do PT os levou a aprofundar seu revisionismo de uma maneira não menos prejudicial à causa do marxismo revolucionário do que a ortodoxia estéril dos "trotskistas" do pós-guerra.

 

Contra essas duas tendências, poderíamos argumentar que as perspectivas de Trotsky foram a base para um elemento específico do programa de ação do PT. Após a guerra, a reelaboração de ambos os elementos foi necessária. Sobre as perspectivas, deixamos claro o que pensamos ser a força do "catastrofismo" de Trotsky. Ele previu a guerra e, emergindo dela, um surto revolucionário. Ambos ocorreram. O surto revolucionário ficou evidente com mais clareza na Itália, Grécia, Vietnã, China e Iugoslávia. Reverberações muito mais fracas foram sentidas na Grã-Bretanha, na França e nos Estados Unidos.

 

No entanto, uma combinação de fatores, não previstos por Trotsky, fez com que a guerra e o levante revolucionário não se desenvolvessem na direção e no grau que ele esperava. O levante revolucionário ocorreu no contexto do imperialismo anglo-americano e seu aliado, a URSS, marchando pela Europa sob a bandeira do antifascismo. O stalinismo e a social-democracia foram capazes, nessas circunstâncias, de justificar o descarrilamento do levante revolucionário. Seus objetivos se limitavam à restauração da democracia burguesa. Na França e na Itália, os partidos comunistas entraram em governos de coalizão com a burguesia. Onde tais traições foram insuficientes para sufocar as lutas revolucionárias, a força bruta das Forças Armadas Soviéticas e as tropas do imperialismo Aliado foram usadas a serviço da contrarrevolução (Polônia, Grécia, Vietnã). A ausência de uma FI de massa capaz de desafiar o stalinismo e a social-democracia pela liderança no levante revolucionário foi um fator crucial para permitir que a contrarrevolução democrática ou stalinista triunfasse com relativa facilidade em comparação com a situação pós-primeira guerra mundial.

 

Com base nessas derrotas, o stalinismo e o imperialismo norte-americano, os verdadeiros vencedores da guerra, consolidaram suas posições e moldaram uma nova realidade do pós-guerra. A FI, no entanto, não conseguiu registrar o enorme significado do sufocamento do levante revolucionário ou das vitórias do imperialismo e do stalinismo dos Estados Unidos. Pior, suas perspectivas subestimaram ambos. Uma nova perspectiva, baseada nestes desenvolvimentos, teria que se preparar para o impacto de uma retomada econômica (mesmo que um longo boom não pudesse ser previsto) nos países imperialistas, para o desenvolvimento das lutas de libertação nacional conforme os EUA impusessem sua vontade e o Império Britânico se desintegrasse, e por revoltas contra o domínio stalinista no Leste. Na verdade, nenhuma seção da FI elaborou tais perspectivas.

 

Até que ponto o próprio Trotsky era culpado de desorientar seus seguidores? Trotsky reconheceu que, na esfera da economia política, tanto ele quanto a FI como um todo tinham um entendimento inadequado. Ele disse sobre a primeira seção do PT, que trata da economia mundial 'O início do Programa não está completo. O primeiro capítulo é apenas uma sugestão e não uma expressão completa'.27

 

O problema é que, apesar de reconhecer o caráter admitidamente provisório da perspectiva, o Programa de Transição é categórico em seu prognóstico econômico. Trotsky escreveu:

 

O pré-requisito econômico para a revolução proletária já alcançou em geral o ponto mais alto de fruição que pode ser alcançado sob o capitalismo. As forças produtivas da humanidade se estagnam. ”28

 

Essa frase tem estado no centro de inúmeras disputas no movimento trotskista. Depois da guerra, quando Felix Morrow, do SWP (EUA), apontou que a afirmação de Trotsky estava se revelando falsa, ele foi fortemente denunciado como cético e derrotista. Agora, com a realidade do boom do pós-guerra atrás de nós, apenas um idiota, ou talvez um charlatão como Gerry Healy, descreveria a declaração categórica de Trotsky como correta. No entanto, rejeitamos a ideia de que o erro de Trotsky decorra de uma metodologia objetivista e fatalista de sua parte. Essa acusação - feita contra ele por teóricos mesquinhos como John Molyneux - não se sustenta por um minuto. Molyneux argumenta que o isolamento de Trotsky o levou a colocar cada vez mais ênfase no papel da história como uma força motriz objetiva, para a frente, resolvendo a crise que a humanidade enfrenta. Isto por sua vez, derivou e foi um eco de seu método essencialmente fatalista da Segunda Internacional:

 

“Mas se não é difícil ver por que a predição apocalíptica tornou-se predominante nesta época, também não é difícil ver que suas raízes teóricas estão no materialismo mecânico e no determinismo da Segunda Internacional.” 29

 

Fazer tal declaração implica que Molyneux não entende o significado da luta de Trotsky contra o stalinismo de meados da década de 1920 até o fim de sua vida, nem de sua luta para construir a FI. Trotsky nunca disse que a história resolveria a crise de uma forma socialista. Ele insistiu repetidas vezes que a crise meramente fornecia condições sob as quais o partido revolucionário e a internacional poderiam triunfar. Esse é o ponto principal de sua ênfase na crise de liderança. Na verdade, a polêmica de Trotsky contra o centrismo ao longo da década de 1930 ataca repetidamente a ideia de que a história é uma força independente das ações das pessoas. De fato, em dezembro de 1938, alguns meses após a redação do PT, ele advertiu seus seguidores:

 

'A história recente forneceu uma série de confirmações trágicas do fato de que não é de toda situação revolucionária que uma revolução surge, mas que uma situação revolucionária se torna contrarrevolucionária se o fator subjetivo, isto é, a ofensiva revolucionária da classe revolucionária não chega a tempo de ajudar o fator objetivo.'30

 

O erro de Trotsky não foi determinismo. Sua previsão estava errada porque subestimava seriamente a força do imperialismo dos EUA. Este foi um erro importante. Isso levou Trotsky a acreditar que a possibilidade de uma saída para a crise econômica sem o fascismo nos Estados Unidos era altamente improvável. Assim, quando ele admitiu a possibilidade de uma alternativa a um resultado revolucionário, ela sempre foi apresentada como totalitária. Isso, ele raciocinou, significaria que qualquer trégua para o capitalismo seria temporária. Na verdade, a força econômica do imperialismo dos EUA permitiu-lhe financiar uma contrarrevolução democrática em grande escala em grande parte da Europa no pós-guerra. Além disso, a mesma força lhe permitiu atuar como motor da economia mundial, abrindo caminho para a expansão das forças produtivas após a guerra. Nesse erro, tanto Trotsky quanto o SWP (EUA) foram culpados. A premissa deles era que a própria rapidez do crescimento da economia dos Estados Unidos era a garantia de sua queda igualmente rápida. Trotsky raciocinou que a guerra seria um dreno tão tremendo de recursos que qualquer país envolvido enfrentaria um colapso econômico. Essa troca entre ele e um dos líderes do SWP (EUA) deixa isso bem claro:

 

'Shachtman: Suponha que seja uma guerra europeia, na qual os EUA ainda não entraram?

 

Trotsky: Nesse caso, os EUA adiarão o colapso econômico. O que está claro é que nos países envolvidos na guerra o colapso virá não em quatro ou seis anos, mas em seis a doze meses, porque os países capitalistas não são mais ricos, mas sim mais pobres do que em 1914, materialmente. . . Pode-se dizer que todos esses desempregados [nos Estados Unidos] serão absorvidos pela indústria bélica, mas isso significa a criação de uma terrível bomba para absorver todas as riquezas da nação ”.31

 

Esta é uma visão perigosamente unilateral dos Estados Unidos e de outras economias capitalistas. Ele falha em reconhecer que, em certos casos, a guerra pode regenerar a lucratividade da economia capitalista e não simplesmente agir como um dreno dela. Isso era particularmente verdadeiro para os EUA, que, como todos reconheceram desde muito cedo, não teriam que lutar a guerra em seu próprio solo, nem arriscar a destruição de suas indústrias por bombardeios. Fornecer à máquina de guerra britânica duramente pressionada, bem como a sua própria, não apenas absorveu riquezas nos EUA, mas ajudou a gerá-las também. Ao argumentar contra a teoria da "crise final" dos estalinistas durante seu "terceiro período", Trotsky advertiu que tal visão levaria ao fatalismo no nível da política - nossa próxima vez ". Ao apresentar uma caracterização unilateral da crise econômica mundial, ele vinculou seus seguidores a uma perspectiva que, em aspectos importantes, se mostrou errada. Seus erros, decorrentes do fracasso do movimento comunista revolucionário (o saudável Comintern e mais tarde os trotskistas) em desenvolver a teoria do imperialismo de Lenin, desorientaram os seguidores de Trotsky após a guerra. Eles eram certamente culpados de fatalismo, primeiro episodicamente e depois sistematicamente. Mas isso foi um produto de sua queda para o centrismo e para longe do trotskismo. Eles se apegaram a sua perspectiva a princípio por causa de uma confusão sincera entre perspectivas e princípios. Mais tarde, eles o usaram como nuvem para encobrir seus erros centristas acumulados.

 

Um exemplo claro disso foi o uso de uma única frase por Pablo sobre o  próprio PT. Após a ruptura de Tito com o Kremlin em 1948, Pablo escreveu:

 

'No exato momento em que o poder e a estabilidade interna do aparelho stalinista, dirigindo a URSS e os partidos comunistas do Kremlin, pareciam a muitas pessoas mais impressionantes do que nunca, o caso iugoslavo veio a lembrá-los de um fator sobre o qual o otimismo revolucionário repousa, a saber: as leis da história que, em última análise, se revelarão mais fortes do que qualquer tipo de aparato burocrático ”.

 

Desde que Pablo proferiu essa meia citação do PT, essa linha de pensamento fatalista dominou os fragmentos centristas do FI. Tornou-se a base para a "crise revolucionária" permanente de Healy, para o "processo revolucionário" imparável (e indiferenciado) de Mandel e para a definição de Lambert de uma situação pré-revolucionária sem fim. Em suma, tornou-se a desculpa para descarregar no processo histórico o trabalho dos revolucionários. O fator objetivo tornou-se todo poderoso. Pablo deixa claro que a lei histórica em vigor na Iugoslávia foi a pressão das massas. Essa pressão é tão forte que pode transformar açougueiros stalinistas como Tito em revolucionários rudes e prontos. Hoje, a mesma lei levou os sandinistas, segundo a USFI, a transformar a Nicarágua em uma ditadura do proletariado! Afirmamos que esse fatalismo se baseia em uma distorção intencional do PT que era muito mais dialética em sua compreensão da relação do processo histórico e os líderes traiçoeiros:

 

'. . . as leis da história são mais fortes do que o aparato burocrático. Não importa como os métodos dos traidores sociais possam diferir. . . eles nunca conseguirão quebrar a vontade revolucionária do proletariado. Com o passar do tempo, seus esforços desesperados para segurar a roda da história demonstrarão mais claramente às massas que a crise da direção proletária, tendo se tornado a crise da cultura da humanidade, só pode ser resolvida pela Quarta Internacional ”33.

 

Para Trotsky, as leis da história - o fato de que o proletariado é objetivamente a classe revolucionária - garantirão a continuidade da luta de classes e criarão as condições para o triunfo final do fator subjetivo na forma do partido revolucionário. Nenhum "instrumento cego" ou agente inconsciente iria ou poderia cumprir esse papel para o programa de ação de Trotsky.

 

 

 

Trotsky repetidamente argumentou que um programa revolucionário deve ser um guia para a ação. Isso significava que o elemento orientador da ação - slogans de transição - ficou em primeiro plano, reduzindo em certo grau os aspectos mais gerais do programa. É claro que o componente do programa de ação partiu de princípios revolucionários gerais, mas foi uma aplicação bem focada deles. As principais demandas de transição do programa tiveram como premissa as perspectivas delineadas anteriormente. Ou seja, todo o potencial do PT como programa de ação seria realizado no contexto de uma luta revolucionária pelo poder:

 

'Por outro lado, o programa de demandas transitórias da Quarta Internacional, que parecia tão' irreal 'para políticos míopes, revelará todo o seu significado no processo de mobilização das massas para a conquista do poder do Estado.”.34

 

Foi um programa de ação para transformar a situação pré-revolucionária em uma situação revolucionária. Baseou-se principalmente nas condições objetivas de seu próprio período. Resultou da experiência real da luta de classes durante os anos anteriores. As lições da derrota alemã, a frente popular na Espanha e na França, a degeneração da Revolução Russa, as explosivas lutas sindicais nos EUA e a luta anti-imperialista na China, foram todas incluídas no programa. Seus slogans fluíram da experiência - tanto positiva quanto negativa - desses eventos momentosos. Foram esses eventos que investiram a compreensão de Trotsky da crise de liderança com uma precisão que seus discípulos nunca igualaram. A crise de liderança teve como contexto uma contradição imediata entre as condições objetivas (o capitalismo dilacerado pela crise conduzido à sua segunda guerra mundial em pouco mais de vinte anos) e as fraquezas subjetivas do proletariado. Ou seja, a guerra e a revolução estavam se aproximando no futuro imediato e, no entanto, o proletariado carecia de uma direção revolucionária. É claro que, na época imperialista, as condições para a revolução surgem repetidamente de forma objetiva, em vários países isolados. Mas um programa de ação internacional não pode e não deve se basear em generalidades como esta. A razão para isso é clara pela existência de períodos na época imperialista em que o caráter explosivo dessa contradição é, para seções inteiras do mundo, subjugado. A crise de liderança que se manifesta em uma luta sindical esgotada é uma antecipação subdesenvolvida da crise de que falava Trotsky. Mas confundir os dois seria confundir cada golpe com o tiro inicial de uma revolução no contexto de uma situação pré-revolucionária ou revolucionária permanente. O próprio Trotsky foi bastante claro sobre a natureza do período para o qual seu programa de ação se concentrou. Não foi focado na época imperialista em geral, mas em uma crise febril típica dessa época:

 

'A tarefa estratégica do próximo período - um período pré-revolucionário de agitação, propaganda e organização - consiste em superar a contradição entre a maturidade das condições revolucionárias objetivas e a imaturidade do proletariado e sua vanguarda (a confusão e decepção da geração mais velha, à inexperiência da geração mais jovem). '35

 

O próprio fato de Trotsky falar das características específicas de gerações específicas de trabalhadores  indica a natureza focalizada de seu programa. De fato, em sua revisão de sua conferência, a FI chegou à mesma conclusão de Trotsky de que o programa era um guia para a ação:

 

'Que contraste oferece às vagas generalizações e abstrações enganosas que as lideranças oficiais da classe trabalhadora oferecem como guias para a ação na atual situação mundial tumultuada! Não é, ou melhor, não é tanto o programa básico da Quarta Internacional, mas sim o seu programa de ação para o período imediato em que vivemos.”36

 

Como um programa de ação, ele deve ser entendido como uma expressão específica do programa geral do marxismo (incorporando os princípios-chave, estratégia e tática), mas como tal não é, em si mesmo, imutável. Tinha uma conexão definitiva com uma perspectiva de guerra, crise e revolução imediatas. Uma mudança dramática de perspectiva, acreditava Trotsky, exigiria uma reorientação do programa:

 

'Você pode levantar a objeção de que não podemos prever o ritmo e o andamento do desenvolvimento, e que possivelmente a burguesia encontrará uma trégua política. Isso não está excluído - mas então seremos obrigados a realizar um recuo estratégico. Mas, na situação atual, devemos estar orientados para uma ofensiva estratégica, não para uma retirada.”37

 

Trotsky ancorou seu programa de ação em suas perspectivas, mas nunca se esqueceu de que as perspectivas não são oráculos délficos. Infelizmente, seus discípulos esqueceram exatamente isso.

 

No entanto, tendo sublinhado isto, devemos prosseguir afirmando que o PT não era simplesmente um programa de ação. Alojado nele está a explicação de todo o método das demandas transitórias. Tais demandas constituem um sistema que busca levar cada luta parcial do proletariado a um passo decisivo adiante em direção ao objetivo da revolução socialista e à própria transição para o socialismo. Um programa de ação deve estar voltado para uma determinada crise internacional, como a de 1938, ou para uma crise nacional, como a da França em 1934, ou mesmo para as lutas de um setor de trabalhadores fora do contexto de um período pré-revolucionário ou crise revolucionária, como nosso próprio programa de ação para os mineiros britânicos. 38 Mas qualquer que seja o foco de um programa de ação específico, ele deve abranger a estratégia geral do PT. Deve aplicar esse método se quiser transcender a divisão entre as demandas mínimas e parciais geradas em cada luta e o objetivo da revolução socialista. A redução dessa divisão é crucial se os perigos  de simplesmente ecoar as demandas espontaneamente levantadas pelos trabalhadores - e do pragmatismo devem ser evitados. Pois mesmo em períodos que não são revolucionários em seu caráter geral, o caráter da época imperialista apresenta a possibilidade de dar passos, às vezes bastante limitados, em direção à revolução. Além disso, as demandas transitórias podem, quando concretizadas, formar os trabalhadores para as tarefas da transição socialista, bem como mobilizá-los em torno de uma luta por seus interesses imediatos. As demandas transitórias são, portanto, essenciais em qualquer programa de ação. Trotsky explicou o porquê:

 

“No entanto, a realização desta tarefa estratégica [revolução socialista] é impensável sem a atenção mais ponderada de todos, mesmo pequenas e parciais questões de tática. Todas as seções do proletariado - todas as suas camadas, ocupações e grupos - devem ser atraídas para o movimento revolucionário. A época atual distingue-se não porque liberta o partido revolucionário do trabalho quotidiano, mas porque permite que este trabalho prossiga indissoluvelmente com as tarefas reais da revolução».

 

Os teóricos do SWP (GB) estão sempre prontos para argumentar que as tarefas do dia a dia não podem ser vinculadas ao socialismo com demandas transitórias. Seu pragmatismo os leva a argumentar que tais demandas não existem realmente. O ponto-chave, argumentam eles, é pura e simplesmente fazer com que as massas ajam. Duncan Hallas expressa isso de forma mais clara:

 

O problema em cada estágio é encontrar e promover aqueles slogans que não apenas afetem pelo menos alguns setores da classe (idealmente, é claro, em todo o grupo), mas que também sejam capazes de levar a ações da classe trabalhadora. Frequentemente, eles não serão transitórios na definição muito restrita de Trotsky”.40

 

A questão é que a própria luta de classes obriga os trabalhadores a entrar em ação, fazer greve, se mobilizar. E é essencial levantar demandas para que os trabalhadores façam greves. Mas nosso trabalho como revolucionários não é apenas fazer os trabalhadores agirem, é ganhá-los no curso de tal ação para o socialismo. É precisamente essa tarefa de liderar os trabalhadores além de suas demandas diárias, lutando por um programa de ação transicional - uma tarefa que o SWP (GB) se recusa a empreender - que podemos ganhá-los para o socialismo revolucionário. Podemos tornar a tarefa da revolução socialista relevante para suas preocupações cotidianas. Na verdade, o SWP (GB), como a Segunda Internacional em seus dias de centro, acaba apoiando as reivindicações existentes dos trabalhadores e pregando o socialismo para eles.

 

As afirmações de que as demandas transitórias são um produto do isolamento de Trotsky em 1938 ignora o fato de que ele estava desenvolvendo as concepções do Comintern sobre  um período muito anterior. Em 1931, na Espanha, quando a crise que levou à guerra civil ainda estava apenas amadurecendo, Trotsky reconheceu a necessidade de ir além das demandas parciais do momento:

 

'Paralelamente a essas [exigências mínimas], porém, as exigências de um caráter transicional devem ser apresentadas mesmo agora; nacionalização de recursos minerais; nacionalização dos bancos; controle operário da indústria; e, finalmente, a regulação estatal da economia. Todas essas demandas estão ligadas à transição de um regime burguês para um regime proletário; eles se preparam para essa transição para que, após a nacionalização dos bancos e da indústria, eles possam se tornar parte de um sistema de medidas para uma economia planejada, preparando o caminho para a economia socialista, preparando o caminho para a sociedade socialista.”41

 

A natureza das demandas de transição

 

Ao codificar um conjunto de demandas transitórias em um programa, Trotsky finalmente resolveu a "questão do programa" no nível do método. O PT marcou a resolução bem-sucedida dos problemas programáticos que se originaram com o Programa de Erfurt de 1891. Superou o problema da disjunção entre a luta por demandas imediatas e parciais e a luta pelo poder. Concluiu o trabalho do Comintern a esse respeito. Lenin e o Comintern tinham uma compreensão das demandas de transição principalmente como uma ponte para a sociedade de transição durante uma situação revolucionária. O degenerado Comintern aproveitou esta posição - que era apenas parcialmente correta - para condenar o uso de demandas transitórias como oportunistas, exceto em uma situação revolucionária (antes de abandoná-las por completo).A razão pela qual a visão de Lenin das demandas transitórias era apenas parcialmente correta era porque ele ainda não havia elaborado a relação do programa geral com o programa mínimo. Trotsky elaborou essa relação com precisão. Ele via a época imperialista como aquela dentro da qual era possível derrubar a parede de tijolos entre as demandas mínimas e transitórias. Demandas imediatas lutadas por táticas revolucionárias poderiam se tornar o ponto de partida para ganhar as massas para demandas de transição mais amplas: 'Cada demanda econômica local, parcial deve ser uma abordagem para uma demanda geral em nosso programa de transição' 42.

 

As lutas pelas demandas salariais poderiam, em circunstâncias de alta inflação, levantar questões (a maneira como o custo de vida é calculado no capitalismo, por exemplo) para as quais os trabalhadores buscariam respostas gerais. Essa lógica facilitaria a transição das demandas parciais para as transitórias, desde que essas demandas transitórias pudessem ser concretizadas e utilizadas como base para uma mobilização dos trabalhadores para a luta:

 

"É necessário interpretar essas ideias fundamentais, dividindo-as em outras mais concretas e parciais, dependendo do curso dos acontecimentos e da orientação do pensamento das massas." 43

 

O método de firmeza e flexibilidade de Trotsky combinados na estrutura de uma estratégia claramente definida é tão revigorante em comparação com o esquematismo sem vida daquela ala de seus discípulos que pensam que as credenciais revolucionárias dependem da capacidade de repetir em os circunstanciais slogans retirados do programa e aprendidos de cor. A capacidade de tomar as lutas parciais como ponto de partida, generalizá-las e depois expressar essa generalização por meio de uma demanda concreta está no cerne do método de transição.

 

O outro acréscimo que Trotsky fez a Lenin e à posição do Comintern foi o uso de demandas transitórias como uma ponte não apenas para o socialismo, mas para a revolução socialista. O cumprimento desta tarefa, conquistando a vanguarda do proletariado para o programa da revolução socialista, só poderia - e só pode - ser alcançado por meio de um programa de transição. O programa, ao libertar o proletariado de seus líderes falidos, abriria o caminho para a revolução. Nesse ponto, um programa de transição no sentido de Lenin - para o socialismo - se tornaria necessário:

 

Só uma ascensão revolucionária geral do proletariado pode colocar a expropriação completa da burguesia na ordem do dia. A tarefa das demandas transitórias é preparar o proletariado para resolver este problema.”44

 

As demandas transitórias, desde que realmente se tornem um foco para a luta de massas, poderiam introduzir um proletariado liderado por reformistas na própria necessidade de revolução:

 

É necessário ajudar as massas no processo da luta diária para encontrar a ponte entre as reivindicações atuais e o programa socialista de revolução. Esta ponte deve incluir um sistema de demandas transitórias decorrentes das condições do dia e da consciência de hoje de amplas camadas da classe trabalhadora e conduzindo inalteravelmente a uma conclusão final: a conquista do poder pelo proletariado.”45

 

Alojada dentro de cada demanda de transição está a luta pelas necessidades vitais da classe trabalhadora com relação  à busca do lucro do capitalismo por meio do estabelecimento do controle dos trabalhadores sobre a produção e distribuição capitalistas. Ao mesmo tempo, cada demanda transitória contém um apelo à organização da classe trabalhadora em órgãos capazes de exercer esse controle. Lutando pelo controle dos trabalhadores e construindo organizações que correspondam a essa luta, a classe trabalhadora pode impedir que seus patrões exerçam seu "direito de administrar" contra os interesses dos trabalhadores. Essa negação da capacidade dos administradores de serem donos "em sua própria" casa é uma espécie de duplo poder. O poder duplo em uma única fábrica deve levar ao poder duplo em uma indústria e, na verdade, em todas as indústrias, se for para controlar efetivamente os patrões. Isso, por sua vez, criará o início do poder dual na sociedade como um todo. Para defender todo e qualquer ganho dos ataques inevitáveis dos capitalistas, a classe trabalhadora pode, por meio de demandas transitórias, ser levada a tomar esse caminho.

 

Nesse sentido, o controle dos trabalhadores tanto em um nível primitivo (sobre a contratação e demissão, por exemplo, em uma única fábrica) e em um nível avançado, (ao forçar em toda a sociedade a abolição do sigilo comercial e o direito de vetar todos os planos da patrões) tem a capacidade de transformar as lutas defensivas mais básicas (contra o desemprego, por melhores salários) em lutas ofensivas que conduzem inexoravelmente à criação de uma situação de duplo poder. Mas para que isso aconteça as demandas devem ter uma lógica interna e interligada. São um sistema de reivindicações, que só pode atingir o objetivo de levar a classe trabalhadora ao limiar da revolução com a condição de que sejam realmente lutadas por setores significativos da classe e que no decorrer dessa luta, as reivindicações se estendam até e incluindo a luta por um governo operário. No momento em que a classe operária, ou sua vanguarda, estiver lutando desta maneira, o programa de transição se transformará no programa do poder soviético e na ditadura do proletariado:

 

O duplo poder, por sua vez, é o ponto culminante do período de transição. Dois regimes, o burguês e o proletariado, opõem-se irreconciliavelmente um ao outro. O conflito entre eles é inevitável. O destino da sociedade depende do resultado.”46

 

A luta por demandas transitórias, portanto, tem uma lógica integral. Cada demanda tem como essência essa lógica de impulsionar a classe trabalhadora ainda mais no caminho da revolução. Se eles forem batalhados, então "cada vez mais aberta e decididamente, eles o farão contra os próprios fundamentos do regime burguês". 47, por esta razão, seria profundamente errado fetichizar a luta por um determinado slogan de transição e conduzir essa luta independentemente de condições objetivas. Slogans de transição, se pretendem cumprir seu propósito de compelir o proletariado a fazer incursões cada vez mais profundas no capitalismo, não podem ser usados de uma forma atemporal. Eles estão enraizados principalmente nas condições reais. A demanda por uma escala móvel de salários é um exemplo disso. Isto não se encontra em parte alguma do Programa de Ação para a França. Para aqueles que reverenciam o PT sem compreendê-lo ou sem serem capazes de desenvolvê-lo criativamente, isso parece simplesmente um descuido. Assim, um artigo no jornal da velha Liga Socialista dos Trabalhadores, Trotskyismo Today, argumentou:

 

'O Programa de Ação em muitos aspectos antecipa exatamente as demandas do Programa de Transição quatro anos depois - embora a escala móvel de salários e a escala móvel de horas não tenham sido incluídas e pareçam não ter sido pensadas em 1934.' 48

 

Este é um comentário leve. A escala móvel de horas, embora não expressa por meio dessa frase, pode ser encontrada nas demandas do Comintern e RILU saudáveis. O controle dos trabalhadores sobre as horas trabalhadas era como isso se expressava. Quanto à escala móvel de salários, foi uma demanda pioneira no movimento comunista alemão já em 1923. No entanto - sem dúvida Trotsky não a incluiu pela simples razão de que não era de relevância central nas circunstâncias concretas dadas. Se foi ou não "pensado", isso não vem ao caso. Não era relevante. Como tal, não teria generalizado a luta da classe trabalhadora na frente salarial. A inflação não era a queixa comum da classe trabalhadora. Não poderia ter sido mobilizado em uma luta contra o capitalismo em torno de tal demanda naquela época. Trotsky nos dá uma razão bastante óbvia do porquê não: 'A deflação brutal é o primeiro passo no plano dos capitalistas franceses.' 49

 

Além disso, se essa demanda for deslocada de seu elemento de controle dos trabalhadores (o índice de custo de vida dos trabalhadores e o comitê de trabalhadores e donas de casa), ela perde seu elemento de transição. Torna-se uma demanda meramente parcial, uma reforma imediata. E se uma situação de estabilidade monetária e baixa inflação prevalecer, pouco fará para mobilizar a classe trabalhadora, muito menos generalizar uma mobilização da classe. O capitalismo poderia (e tem na Itália e na Bélgica) concedido formas de escala móvel que, em períodos de baixa inflação, não levam a classe à revolução socialista. É claro que a defesa dessas escalas deslizantes em um período de crise e alta inflação pode se tornar o ponto de partida para transformar a luta em uma luta pelo controle dos trabalhadores. Por isso, ter avançado esse slogan nas grandes potências capitalistas da Europa ou dos Estados Unidos no período do longo boom, quando a inflação era relativamente insignificante, teria sido um afastamento do método de transição de Trotsky. Ele avançou o slogan no PT não como uma solução universal, mas como um slogan de ação para um período caracterizado pela ameaça de um enorme salto nos preços:

 

"Contra um aumento vertiginoso dos preços que, com a aproximação da guerra, assumirá um caráter cada vez mais desenfreado, só se pode lutar sob o slogan de uma escala móvel de salários."

 

O SWP (GB), por outro lado, irá contrariar que em períodos onde existe inflação insignificante a demanda está errada. Isso é apenas meia verdade. É impróprio para tais períodos, mas não deve ser totalmente descartado e para sempre expulso do programa do partido. Na verdade, o SWP (GB) a odeia o tempo todo porque é uma demanda transitória, porque desafia o reformismo sindical. O SWP (GB) se opôs à demanda na Grã-Bretanha na década de 1970, quando a inflação a tornou mais uma vez oportuna. Sua hostilidade estava enraizada em seu economismo. Eles acreditaram erroneamente que a escala móvel diminuiria a militância salarial que era, para eles, o único caminho para a consciência socialista. A ideia de que a militância salarial poderia ser transformada por meio de uma luta para dar proteção aos trabalhadores contra a inflação, sem de forma alguma limitar suas demandas por aumentos adicionais, era um anátema para o SWP (GB). Na verdade, sua oposição à demanda tornou-se bastante infantil. Um de seus 'grandes' teóricos, John Molyneux, alertou contra a demanda '. . . porque impede reivindicações salariais que excedam os aumentos de preços. '51

 

Como? Em nenhum lugar do PT Trotsky diz aos trabalhadores que vocês não farão greve por aumentos que excedam o atual índice de preços de varejo! Ele meramente visa direcionar a militância do plano das demandas graduais sobre o patrão por aumentos de quantia global para um plano superior no qual os trabalhadores estão desafiando o direito dos capitalistas de usar a inflação para invadir seus padrões de vida. Trotsky diz que os trabalhadores "devem defender sua boca cheia de pão, se não podem aumentá-la ou melhorá-la" .52 Em nenhum sentido isso deve ser interpretado como um alerta contra as altas demandas salariais. Na verdade, Trotsky acrescenta:

 

"Não há necessidade nem oportunidade de enumerar aqui aquelas demandas separadas e parciais que surgem repetidamente com base em circunstâncias concretas - nacional, local, sindical." 53

 

Claramente, as condições objetivas determinaram o uso e o significado revolucionário do slogan. A mesma regra se aplica a todos os principais slogans de transição.

 

Tarefas pedagógicas

 

Tomar as condições objetivas como ponto de partida foi vital para Trotsky combater outro perigo. Assim como uma contraposição das demandas transitórias às imediatas, Trotsky teve que combater as tendências de limitar o programa à consciência existente das massas. Enfatizou incansavelmente a necessidade de levar em conta a consciência (atrasada ou não) da classe trabalhadora na explicação das demandas transitórias, adaptando-as a situações específicas. No entanto, ele argumentou que essas considerações fundamentalmente pedagógicas não poderiam constituir o ponto de partida na formulação das tarefas centrais que o partido deveria armar o proletariado para cumprir. Ou seja, as reais demandas do programa deveriam corresponder à aguda crise social e política mundial do final da década de 1930.Este critério objetivo exige que os revolucionários apresentem demandas que sejam necessárias, em vez de aquelas que os revolucionários consideram possíveis devido à consciência retrógrada de uma classe trabalhadora particular:

 

'Nossas tarefas não dependem da mentalidade dos trabalhadores. A tarefa é desenvolver a mentalidade dos trabalhadores. Isso é o que o programa deve formular e apresentar aos trabalhadores avançados. Alguns dirão: bom, o programa é um programa científico; corresponde à situação objetiva - mas se os trabalhadores não aceitarem este programa, será estéril. Possivelmente. Mas isso significa apenas que os trabalhadores serão esmagados, já que a crise não pode ser resolvida de outra forma senão pela revolução socialista.”54

 

Isso deixa claro que o trabalho dos revolucionários é fazer com que os trabalhadores não se adaptem politicamente ao seu estado de consciência que, em todo caso, não é uma coisa fixa ou estável, mas sofre saltos e transformações provocados pela crise e pela luta. As demandas transitórias devem ser lutadas se forem objetivamente necessárias, embora possam parecer muito avançadas em relação à consciência dos trabalhadores da época:

 

Mas não podemos adaptar o programa à mentalidade retrógrada dos trabalhadores; a mentalidade, o humor é um fator secundário - o fator primordial é a situação objetiva.”55

 

Uma questão incômoda que sempre surge com os jovens revolucionários e que os centristas inveterados nunca podem responder é se as demandas transitórias podem ser realizadas sob o capitalismo. A resposta curta é não. Por causa de seu desafio embutido à lógica do lucro e ao domínio dos capitalistas sobre a produção, eles são irrealizáveis como um ganho estável e permanente sob o capitalismo. Mas também não são simplesmente demandas "impossíveis" ou utópicas. Se assim fosse, não seriam capazes de resolver os problemas atuais e de conquistar a lealdade dos trabalhadores que ainda não perceberam plenamente a necessidade de abolir o capitalismo.

 

Como outras demandas imediatas sérias, os capitalistas podem ser forçados a conceder uma ou outra delas temporária ou parcialmente se a classe trabalhadora for forte o suficiente e estiver ameaçando todo o sistema com suas ações. As concessões decorrentes da luta por demandas transitórias podem aumentar a confiança dos trabalhadores e levar a uma luta ofensiva. Sua realização bem-sucedida depende precisamente de ampliar a luta para camadas cada vez maiores da classe trabalhadora e interligar as demandas transitórias, imediatas e democráticas até que a questão da necessidade de um governo dos trabalhadores para realizá-las seja apreendida pelas 'massas multimilionárias' . Organizacionalmente, isso deve ser expresso no crescimento maciço da influência do partido revolucionário e na criação de órgãos de luta do tipo soviético.

 

A questão de qualquer demanda ser realizável ou irrealizável, prática ou impraticável não surge da maneira metafísica abstrata que essa pergunta costuma ser colocada. O destino de cada demanda separada será decidido no decorrer da luta. O sistema de demandas, entretanto, só será realizado com a destruição do poder político e econômico burguês. Lênin, ao lidar com o mesmo problema em relação a certas demandas mínimas, delineou o método correto de lidar com essa questão. Em uma carta a Radek em 1910, ele argumentou:

 

'O critério do que é 'impraticável 'no quadro do capitalismo não deve ser tomado no sentido de que a burguesia não o permitirá, que não pode ser alcançado etc. Nesse sentido, muitas demandas em nosso programa mínimo são' impraticáveis ' , mas não são menos obrigatórios. ”56

 

Ao lidar com as demandas de transição, Trotsky ecoou este ponto, deixando claro que essas demandas não pretendiam ser um meio de 'enganar' os trabalhadores para a luta socialista, mas um meio de mobilizá-los para suas necessidades vitais:

 

'Nenhuma de nossas demandas será realizada sob o capitalismo. É por isso que as chamamos de demandas transitórias. Ele cria uma ponte para a mentalidade dos trabalhadores e, em seguida, uma ponte material para a revolução socialista. A questão toda é como mobilizar as massas para a luta. . . Os revolucionários sempre consideram que as reformas e aquisições são apenas um subproduto da luta revolucionária. Se dissermos que exigiremos apenas o que eles podem dar, a classe dominante dará apenas um décimo ou mais do que exigimos. Quando exigimos mais e podemos melhorar nossas demandas, os capitalistas são obrigados a dar o máximo. Quanto mais extenso e militante é o espírito dos trabalhadores, mais é exigido e conquistado. Eles não são slogans estéreis; eles são um meio de pressão sobre a burguesia, e dará os maiores resultados materiais possíveis imediatamente. ”57

 

Um programa mundial

 

O Programa de Transição foi um programa para a Quarta Internacional. Foi baseado nas contradições do capitalismo mundial, na crise do regime stalinista e nas experiências do proletariado internacional. As linhas de abertura indicam a base a partir da qual o programa começa: 'A situação política mundial como um todo é caracterizada principalmente por uma crise histórica de liderança' .58

 

As seções de abertura são fortemente orientadas para os problemas de estratégia revolucionária dentro dos sindicatos. Seu foco é mobilizar os trabalhadores para uma ruptura com os líderes sindicais e reformistas estabelecidos. Claramente, o campo de aplicação mais imediato (pensado não exclusivo) para tais políticas foi nos países onde as burocracias sindicais e os aparatos reformistas foram os obstáculos decisivos para a revolução - os centros imperialistas. Nas discussões do programa que Trotsky manteve com membros do SWP (EUA), essa ênfase é aparente. No entanto, Trotsky passa a examinar a relação entre as demandas de transição orientadas pelos sindicatos e as demandas democráticas que têm um significado ardente para o mundo semicolonial. A profundidade da compreensão de Trotsky da natureza internacionalista do programa comunista é revelada na maneira como ele desenvolve o vínculo entre as demandas democráticas e transitórias. Sua teoria da Revolução Permanente, baseada em uma compreensão do caráter desigual, mas combinado do desenvolvimento na época imperialista, permitiu-lhe combinar o programa democrático e o programa de transição, onde os estalinistas e os nacionalistas contrapunham a democracia ao socialismo:

 

'Slogans democráticos, demandas transitórias e os problemas da revolução socialista não estão divididos em épocas históricas separadas nesta luta, mas derivam diretamente uma da outra.'

 

Em especial, foi a experiência das revoluções na Rússia, Espanha e China que permitiu a Trotsky demonstrar concretamente como as tarefas da revolução democrática estão indissoluvelmente ligadas às da revolução socialista. Trotsky argumentou que o peso dado às demandas democráticas dependia do grau de atraso de um determinado país e da extensão da força das aspirações democráticas. Seu ponto de partida ao levantar demandas democráticas foi solidarizar-se não com as ilusões que as massas alimentavam na democracia burguesa, mas com o que havia de progressista na aspiração (o desejo de liberdade de expressão e de reunião, o direito de organizar sindicatos e partidos políticos).Ao aceitar essas demandas em condições em que a burguesia as recusasse ou, na melhor das hipóteses, as usasse de maneira enganosa, uma ponte para as demandas transicionais e socialistas poderia ser aberta. Isso é o que Trotsky quis dizer quando pediu um programa democrático de transição na China, por exemplo. O método de utilizar as demandas democráticas nesta forma de transição - consagrado no programa - foi antecipado pelo uso de Trotsky da convocação de uma assembleia constituinte (Cortes) na Espanha:

 

As massas da cidade e do campo podem se unir atualmente apenas sob slogans democráticos. Isso inclui a eleição das Cortes constituintes com base no sufrágio universal, igual, direto e secreto. Não creio que na situação atual você possa evitar esse slogan. Os soviéticos ainda não existem. Os operários espanhóis - para não falar dos camponeses - não sabem o que são os sovietes; de qualquer forma, não de suas próprias experiências. No entanto, a luta em torno das Cortes no próximo período constituirá toda a vida política do país. Contrapor a palavra de ordem dos sovietes, nessas circunstâncias, à palavra de ordem das Cortes, seria incorreto.

 

Por outro lado, obviamente será possível construir sovietes no futuro próximo apenas mobilizando as massas com base em slogans democráticos. Isso significa: impedir que a monarquia convoque Cortes falsas, enganosas e conservadoras; e para que estas Cortes possam dar terras aos camponeses e fazer muitas outras coisas, deve-se criar sovietes de operários, soldados e camponeses para fortalecer as posições das massas trabalhadoras.'60

 

Este método de combinar as demandas democráticas com as transitórias contrasta fortemente com as posições do trotskismo degenerado hoje na América Latina, África e Ásia. Eles interpretam a referência de Trotsky a armar os trabalhadores com um programa democrático como um 'passo primário' 61 para significar a luta pela democracia como um estágio distinto. Assim, eles imitam a teoria dos estágios stalinistas. O sentido da conversa de Trotsky sobre um "passo primário" fica claro a partir da referência acima à Espanha. Uma luta revolucionária pelo programa democrático pode, em certas circunstâncias, ser o primeiro passo para o programa dos Sovietes. Mas esse passo só pode ser dado se a luta pelos sovietes estiver ligada à luta pela democracia. Nem Trotsky nem Lenin em 1917 antes de outubro abandonaram a convocação para a assembleia constituinte, ao mesmo tempo que clama para que todo o poder seja colocado nas mãos dos soviéticos. Essa posição refletia as tarefas combinadas da Revolução Russa, não os estágios contrapostos dessa revolução.

 

O alcance internacional do PT é igualmente evidente na seção sobre a URSS. Trotsky elabora um programa claro com o objetivo de derrubar a burocracia. Esta seção foi de vital importância para combater aqueles na FI que viam a revolução política como um mero processo de auto-reforma por setores da burocracia. Trotsky deixou claro isso '. . . a principal tarefa política na URSS continua sendo a derrubada dessa mesma burocracia termidoriana ”.62

 

O programa de Trotsky foi presciente 9 (capacidade de antecipar o futuro)  ao identificar a luta contra a desigualdade social e a opressão política como o ponto de partida da revolução política. Hungria e Polônia demonstram a exatidão de sua previsão. No entanto, a falta de experiência de crises políticas revolucionárias reais necessariamente limitou a capacidade de Trotsky de elaborar táticas e demandas detalhadas. Ele só poderia começar a elaborar um programa. Mais uma vez, as experiências reais do pós-guerra, na Alemanha Oriental, Hungria, Tchecoslováquia e, mais recentemente, na Polônia, obrigam-nos a ir mais longe. É prova da falência dos fragmentos da FI de que eles esvaziaram o programa de Trotsky de seu núcleo revolucionário e retrocederam para uma perspectiva de reforma. Por sua vez, os Cliffitistas, com a teoria do Capitalismo de Estado, abandonaram completamente o programa de revolução política. Para eles, existe apenas a perspectiva de um novo fevereiro de 1917, uma revolução democrática espontânea. Como diz Cliff:

 

'A revolução espontânea, ao quebrar o calcanhar de ferro da burocracia stalinista, abrirá o campo para a atividade livre de todos os partidos, tendências e grupos da classe trabalhadora. Será o primeiro capítulo da revolução proletária vitoriosa ”.63

 

A terra da primeira revolução operária bem-sucedida deve retornar ao capítulo um - a democracia burguesa - antes que a transição para o socialismo possa ser efetuada. O método transicional é abandonado e seu lugar é tomado pelo espontaneísmo - uma posição tão fatalista e prostrada diante do processo objetivo quanto aquela assumida pelos principais fragmentos da FI aos quais os Cliffitistas afirmavam se opor.

 

 

 

Reelaborando o Programa de Transição

 

Em nosso livro, A Agonia de Morte da Quarta Internacional e as Tarefas dos Trotskistas Hoje, afirmamos que nosso objetivo era a refundação de uma internacional revolucionária com base em um programa reelaborado. Como vimos, reelaborações regulares do programa ocorreram na tradição marxista. O método apresentado no Manifesto Comunista foi mantido no TP. Mas Trotsky não apenas reimprimiu o Manifesto porque era, em um nível metodológico, ainda válido. Ele o reelaborou. Ele incluiu novos desenvolvimentos, novas perspectivas e um novo balanço da luta de classes em seu programa. Isso é inteiramente marxista. No entanto, nosso chamado para fazer exatamente o mesmo cinquenta anos depois de escrito o TP foi recebido com horror e consternação por uma miscelânea de grupos centristas originários da FI. Como ousamos propor adulterar um texto que para eles se tornou um ícone sagrado! Para nós, o programa deve ser um guia para a ação. Para eles, é algo para olhar, admirar e talvez até adorar. Dizemos claramente que assim como Trotsky declarou o Manifesto Comunista como seu programa, e assim como o reelaborou para se ajustar a novas circunstâncias, dizemos que o TP é o nosso programa e pretendemos simplesmente reelaborá-lo para o período em que enfrentamos.

 

Para nós, a necessidade de reelaboração decorre de vários fatores. O primeiro e mais simples é que não estava completo. Quem pensa que sim deve considerar as próprias observações de Trotsky sobre o programa. Quando o Comitê Nacional do SWP (EUA) hesitou em adotar o programa, Trotsky reassegurou-lhes que se tratava de uma 'hipótese de trabalho' geral que 'pode e certamente será modificada no fogo da experiência' 64. Ele até o ofereceu como base para discussão com o PSOP francês liderado pelo centrista Marceau Pivert, convidando este último a apresentar emendas. E em suas discussões sobre o programa com os líderes do SWP (EUA), ele insistiu:

 

«O projeto de programa não é um programa completo. . . O programa é apenas a primeira aproximação. É muito geral no sentido em que é apresentado à conferência internacional no próximo período”.65

 

Ele acreditava que faltava uma análise precisa o suficiente do estágio contemporâneo do imperialismo e suas contradições e desenvolvimentos. Ele sabia muito bem que faltavam palavras de ordem precisas para estabelecer e consolidar a ditadura do proletariado. Ele reconheceu que 'condições peculiares em cada país e mesmo em cada parte do país', 66 afetariam o foco particular do programa quando aplicado em uma dada nação. Em suma, Trotsky sinalizou as áreas onde sentia que era necessário um maior desenvolvimento.

 

O primeiro ponto, relativo à época imperialista, é decisivo para qualquer reelaboração do programa. Isso porque a falta dessa análise desarmou os seguidores de Trotsky depois da guerra, quando seus prognósticos para uma crise econômica aguda e prolongada não se concretizaram, pelo menos nos centros imperialistas. A perspectiva de Trotsky, como vimos, subestimou a força econômica do imperialismo dos EUA.

 

Mas não apenas temos as próprias deficiências reconhecidas de Trotsky que exigem nosso trabalho no desenvolvimento do programa, mas também temos que superar as distorções do programa pelos centristas. O último fator que torna necessária a reelaboração são as profundas mudanças e seus efeitos sobre a luta de classes e seus principais protagonistas (reformistas, nacionalistas, centristas e revolucionários) que ocorreram nos últimos cinquenta anos. Os problemas do imperialismo após seu longo boom, as complexidades das lutas no mundo imperializado, os efeitos de sua própria expansão sobre o stalinismo, o florescimento dos movimentos dos oprimidos e assim por diante, todos devem ser englobados em um programa re-elaborado.

 

Essa tarefa teria sido consideravelmente mais fácil se a continuidade revolucionária não tivesse sido quebrada. Se os discípulos de Trotsky tivessem reelaborado seu programa na década de 1950, muitas das dificuldades que enfrentamos hoje não existiriam. E essa reelaboração foi possível. Nos países imperialistas, onde o boom gerou uma paz social relativa, a advertência de Trotsky de que uma retirada estratégica poderia ser necessária deveria ter alertado e encorajado a próxima geração de trotskistas. Isso os teria encorajado que, mesmo nas condições de boom e isolamento dos revolucionários, eles poderiam recuar para lidar com um nível inferior de luta de classes, mas de uma forma revolucionária. Recuar não significa necessariamente revisão. Esse recuo, em face de um boom capitalista, não deveria ter sido um recuo para o programa mínimo. Deveria ter examinado as tarefas de construir oposição dentro dos sindicatos às burocracias reformistas. Deveria ter significado desenvolver a tática do movimento de base - o uso revolucionário da frente única nos sindicatos - de modo a ser capaz de aproveitar todas as oportunidades para obter novos ganhos dos capitalistas, invadindo seu controle no local de trabalho e enfraquecendo a capacidade dos burocratas de desempenhar seu papel como tenentes do capital dentro do movimento trabalhista. No entanto, o apelo do TP por 'organizações militantes independentes' foi deixado como letra morta.

 

O fracasso em realizar um 'recuo estratégico' para os países imperialistas, formulando uma política para os sindicatos, foi espelhado pelo fracasso em reelaborar o programa para lidar com o ressurgimento do reformismo. O TP lida com o reformismo - em sua roupagem social-democrata e stalinista - em um nível muito geral. Trotsky acreditava firmemente que sua sentença de morte havia soado. Ele não sentiu a necessidade de repetir as táticas em relação a isso em nenhum detalhe. Mesmo assim, após a guerra na Grã-Bretanha, Itália, França e Alemanha Ocidental, o reformismo desempenhou um papel vital em facilitar a estabilização do capitalismo. Ele salvou o capitalismo e a si mesmo. No lugar da denúncia geral do Programa de Transição ao reformismo, foi necessário um programa de ação utilizando as táticas da frente única. Em vez dos fragmentos da FI na Europa imperialista simplesmente viram que cada corrente de reformismo de esquerda é evidência da previsão de Trotsky de que o reformismo como um todo estava se desintegrando. No plano tático, todos os fragmentos, em um grau ou outro, capitularam ao reformismo de esquerda, aclamando-o como centrista ou assimilando-se a ele como sua ala esquerda.

 

Essas falhas no desenvolvimento do programa desarmaram inevitavelmente os agrupamentos centristas oriundos da FI. Na Bélgica 1961 e na França 1968, o custo de abandonar ou distorcer o método de transição provou ser uma tendência para se acomodar à burocracia trabalhista e sindical ou uma tendência a simplesmente seguir as lutas dos trabalhadores na esperança de que eles espontaneamente superassem suas ilusões nessa burocracia. As mesmas tendências se manifestaram quando se desenvolveu o desenvolvimento dos movimentos dos oprimidos (mulheres, negros, lésbicas e gays). Sem nenhum ponto de referência real no Programa de Transição e cegos aos seus métodos, os centristas praticavam o liquidacionismo ou o economicismo.

 

Nas semicolônias, o desenvolvimento do programa relacionado com a ascensão dos movimentos nacionalistas pequeno-burgueses era necessário. A Bolívia em 1952 forneceu um caso-teste.67 O problema dos sovietes, do governo operário e camponês, do controle operário e da relação entre as demandas democráticas e transitórias poderia ter se tornado preciso. A tática e a estratégia do trotskismo, entretanto, foram abandonadas sem cerimônia pelos discípulos. O programa foi ignorado, não foi enriquecido.

 

E, nos estados operários degenerados, a necessidade de desenvolver o programa de revolução política foi demonstrada pelas explosões regulares de rebelião contra os governantes stalinistas. Mas também aqui as pedras fundamentais colocadas por Trotsky foram dinamitadas, não construídas. Em vez disso, frações da burocracia foram eliminadas.

 

A crise de liderança, na última parte do século XX, teve um novo desenvolvimento. O colapso da FI significa que o centrismo permanece como a principal alternativa para os trabalhadores rompendo com o reformismo. As forças do comunismo revolucionário são uma pequena minoria. Faltam números, recursos, teóricos da estatura de Trotsky e muitas outras coisas ao lado. Mas essas forças existem. Sob a bandeira do MRCI, eles estão lutando. É verdade que hoje devemos lutar em grande parte com as armas da crítica. Ao transcender esse estágio e superar os obstáculos, possuímos uma arma vital - o método revolucionário de Trotsky. Estão consagradas no Programa de Transição todas as respostas para nós na reelaboração desse programa para enfrentar o novo período de crise social e econômica em que o imperialismo mergulhou. Arrancando as mortalhas em que o centrismo envolveu o método e programa reais do trotskismo, podemos compensar todas as fraquezas. Podemos preparar nossos quadros, enraizar-nos na luta de classes e acumular experiência. Podemos marchar em frente com confiança e produzir o novo programa, sobre os ombros de cada programa marxista anterior, especialmente o TP. E assim fazendo, construiremos a nova Internacional e novos partidos que são tão desesperadamente necessários. Ao fazer isso, atendemos às palavras de Trotsky:

 

O significado do programa é o significado do partido. . . Agora, qual é o partido? Em que existe a coesão? Essa coesão é um entendimento comum dos eventos, das tarefas; e esse entendimento comum - esse é o programa do partido. Assim como os trabalhadores modernos não podem trabalhar sem ferramentas mais do que os bárbaros, também no partido o programa é o instrumento”.68

 

Com esse programa, podemos armar a classe trabalhadora com uma estratégia para despachar o capitalismo para a lata de lixo da história.

 

Notas de rodapé

 

1 Leon Trotsky, A Agonia da Morte do Capitalismo e as Tarefas da Quarta Internacional (TP), (Nova York 1977) - todas as referências futuras ao Programa de Transição e as discussões sobre ele são para esta edição.

 

2 Ibid, p111

 

3 Sam Bornstein e Al Richardson, Against the Stream, (Londres 1986) p183

 

4 Leon Trotsky, The Crisis in the French Section, (New York 1977) p119

 

5 Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, (Harmondsworth 1975) p40

 

6 Leon Trotsky, Whither France ?, (London 1974) p50

 

7 Leon Trotsky, TP, p172

 

8 Leon Trotsky, Writings 1937-38 (W 37-38), (New York 1976) p284

 

9 Leon Trotsky, W 38 -39, (New York 1974) p232

 

10 Leon Trotsky, W 39-40, (New York 1973) p159

 

11 Leon Trotsky, TP, p99

 

12 Leon Trotsky, W 39-40, p291

 

13 Leon Trotsky, W 38-39, p341

 

14 Leon Trotsky, TP, p112

 

15 Leon Trotsky, W 37-38, pp438-39

 

16 Para um relato completo dos efeitos desta desorientação ver: Workers Power / Irish Workers Group, The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today, (Londres 1983)

 

17 James P Cannon, The Struggle for Socialism in the American Century, (New York 1977) p256

 

18 Ibid, p263

 

19 Mandel e Pablo eram, com Pierre Frank, o Secretariado Internacional que estava sediado em Paris naquela época

 

20 'A Situação Mundial e Tarefas da Quarta Internacional', Quarta Internacional, junho de 1948 (Nova York)

 

21 James P Cannon, op cit, pp276-77

 

22 Ver Mark Hoskisson, 'Program in the Imperialist Epoch', Permanent Revolution No 6 (Londres 1987)

 

23 James P Cannon, op cit, p. 298

 

24 Duncan Hallas, 'Against the Stream', International Socialism 1:53, (Londres 1972) p39

 

25 John Molyneux, Leon Trotsky's Theory of Revolution, (Brighton 1981) p179

 

26 Chris Bambery, 'The Politics of James P Cannon', International Socialism 2:36 (Londres 1987) p77

 

27 Leon Trotsky, TP, p173

 

28 Ibid, p111

 

29 John Molyneux, op cit, p185

 

30 Leon Trotsky, On France, (New York 1979) p200

 

31 Leon Trotsky, TP, pp103-04

 

32 'The Yugoslav Affair', Fourth International December 1948, (New York) p238

 

33 Leon Trotsky , TP, p113

 

34 Documents of the Fourth International, (New York 1973) p.348

 

35 Leon Trotsky, TP, pp 113-14 (grifo nosso)

 

36 Documents of the Fourth International, p161 (grifo nosso)

 

37 Leon Trotsky, TP, p.101

 

38 Workers Power, Where Next for the NUM ?, (Londres 1985)

 

39 Leon Trotsky, TP, p114

 

40 Duncan Hallas, Trotsky's Marxism, (Londres 1979) p104

 

41 Leon Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution, (New York 1973) p80

 

42 Leon Trotsky, TP, p135

 

43 Ibid, p102

 

44 Ibid, p129

 

45 Ibid, p122

 

46 Ibid, pp136-37

 

47 Ibid, p137

 

48 Workers Socialist League, Trotskyism Today No4, p5 (Londres 1979)

 

49 Leon Trotsky, Whither France ?, p146

 

50 Ibid, p115 ( nossa ênfase)

 

51 John Molyneux, op cit, p152

 

52 Leon Trotsky, TP, p115

 

53 Ibid, p115

 

54 Ibid, p157

 

55 Ibid, p176

 

56 VI Lenin, Collected Works Volume 36, p172 (Moscou 1966)

 

57 Leon Trotsky, TP, pp159-60

 

58 Ibid, p111

 

59 Ibid, p137

 

60 Leon Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution, p137

 

61 Leon Trotsky, TP, p137

 

62 Ibid, p145

 

63 Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia, p264 (Londres 1974)

 

64 Leon Trotsky, W 37-38 , p.343

 

65 Leon Trotsky, TP, p.173

 

66 Ibid, p.173

 

67 Ver Workers Power, Permanent Revolution No2, (Londres 1984)

 

68 Leon Trotsky, TP, p171

 

 

 

The 1952 Revolution in Bolivia

 

By José Villa

 

 

 

Introduction by the Editorial Board

 

Below we republish a long document on the history of the Bolivian Revolution in 1952. It was written in 1992 by José Villa, a Bolivian comrade who was at that time a member of the RCIT’s predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI).

 

The document was published in Spanish language in the journal Bases No.5 (Autumn 1992). A shortened English language version appeared in the special Bolivia issue of Revolutionary History Vol.4, No.3 (Summer 1992). Later, the Marxist Internet Archive published the complete version (https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/supplem/bolivia/villamen.htm). The text was translated by Mike Jones.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

The 1952 Revolution

 

How the 4th International and the POR betrayed the revolution which could have carried Trotskyism to power.

 

by José Villa

 

 

 

Chapters

 

1. Introduction

 

2. The Menshevik positions of the POR and of Lora in April

 

3. International repercussions of the interview with Lora

 

4. Rebelión against the Permanent Revolution

 

5. The POR supports the Bourgeois Government

 

6. Co-Government

 

7. The POR seeks to enter the bourgeois government

 

8. The collaborationist programme of the POR

 

9. The POR did not struggle for the occupation of the enterprises

 

10. All Power to the COB!

 

11. Turn the COB Into A Soviet!

 

12. The MNR-POR Government

 

13. All power to the MNR Left Wing!

 

14. The POR adapts itself to The MNR Left.

 

15. The POR believed that Paz would be able to create an anti-capitalist government

 

16. The Nationalisation of the mines

 

17. The disintegration and reorganisation of the armed forces

 

18. The desire to transform the MNR

 

19. The Peasant uprising

 

20. The opportunist international orientation of the POR

 

21. The leadership of the Fourth International identifies itself with this Menshevik policy

 

22. References

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

Part 1: Introduction

 

When the February revolution occurred in 1917, the Bolsheviks had been in existence for fifteen years. When the revolution of April 1952 happened the POR had been in existence for seventeen years. Both movements operated in countries with a peasant and petty bourgeois majority but with a modern, geographically concentrated, proletariat. Both parties had the benefit of working with the introducers of ‘Marxism’ into their respective countries (Plekhanov and Marof) and their cadres had taken part in forming the first working class organisations. While Bolshevism had been formed by its confrontation with other Marxist currents (economists, Mensheviks, etc.), petty bourgeois socialists (SRs) and bourgeois democrats (Cadets), the POR had had to fight against the ‘Marxists’ of Marof and Stalinism, the different wings of the MNR and ‘socialism’ of both bourgeois and military varieties.

 

Bolshevism was tempered during the working class upsurge which culminated in the 1905 revolution, in the reactionary phase which followed it, in the new wave of strikes and the struggle against World War 1. The POR was born in the fight against the Chaco War and was forged during two great mass insurgencies, which brought down the governments in 1936 and 1946, in great strikes and massacres, in constant changes of government, coups and a short civil war. While the ‘general rehearsal’ of 1905 was smashed, both of the two rehearsals of revolutionary crises experienced by the POR ended with toppling the governments. Bolivian ‘Trotskyism’ had its programme endorsed by the university students and the miners and could pride itself on having had within its ranks the main leaders of the FSTMB and the CON. (1)

 

The role of the POR in the April events was such that even one of the founders of the Stalinist party recognised that of the five main leaders of the insurrection, one was of the MNR right, another was of the pro-POR wing of the MNR, and three were POR:

 

“This armed uprising was led and guided to victory by the leading personnel of the MNR, Hernán Siles Zuazo, Juan Lechín Oquendo, Edwin Moller, Alandia Pantojas, Villegas and others”. (2) (Memorias del primer ministro obrero, Waldo Alvarez, La Paz, 1986 p.188).

 

In Lucha Obrera, the POR boasted that

 

“when top MNR leaders thought about flight, it was our comrades who lead the people and proletariat of Oruro to victory (…) our militants were the real leaders in the defence of Villa Pavon and Miraflores that in practice saved the difficult situation for the revolutionaries when the enemy already appeared to be triumphant within the city”. (3) (LO 12.6.52, p.3).

 

Within the COB, the dominant power in the country, the POR was the most important and influential party. The historian Alexander states that: “The POR which had in large part been able to determine the ideological orientation and dynamism of the Workers Center”, “For the first six months the COB was practically in the hands of the Trotskyists”. (4)

 

Lora admits that:

 

“Immediately after the 9th April 1952, the MNR operated as a inactive minority within the trade union organisations. It had little success because mass radicalisation had reached its highest point.” (5) (Sindicatos y revolución, G. Lora, La Paz 1960, p.31).

 

“The whole of the opening struggle for the formation of the Trade Union Centre was in the hands of POR militants and a large part of the full-time Staff and the whole orientation of the brand new COB was Trotskyist. Lechín did no more than operate under the powerful pressure of the masses and the POR. In the speeches of the workers’ leaders of this period and in the plans presented to the Paz Estenssoro Cabinet can be found the imprint of the POR”. (6) (La Revolución boliviana: Análisis crítico, Guillermo Lora, La Paz 1963, p.254).

 

While the MNR was weak for several months after the uprising of April, the POR CC continued boasting to itself about its majority in the COB. “Our unchallenged present majority is a clear proof of our slow but solid and sure work, undertaken by the party in this sense”. (7) (Boletin Interno, no 13, POR, 1953, p.11).

 

The COB was born brandishing the Theses of Pulacayo, and with a POR programme and orientation. When it was founded the POR displayed its total identification with its conduct. “The COB was born then with a clear conception of its independent class position, faithfully interpreting in its transitional programme the broad mass movement” (8) (LO, 18.4.52., p.2).

 

The historian Dunkerley maintains that “much of the preparatory work (of founding the COB) was undertaken by the POR representatives, Edwin Moller, Miguel Alandia and José Zegada”. (9) (Rebelión en las venas, James Dunkerley, Ed Quipus, 1982, La Paz, p.50, Verso edition p.45). “The POR allegedly controlled at least half the COB’s 13 man central committee”. (10) (ibid., p.67, Verso Edition, p.64. The editor of the English text omitted ‘allegedly’ before ‘controlled’).

 

In October 1952 a journalist, claiming to be a Trotskyist critical of the POR, admitted that within the COB “the largest fraction is that of the POR; next comes the group of Lechín and Torres, that is the nationalist wing of the unions while the Stalinists are in third place with scarcely five votes”. (11)

 

It took the Russian Bolsheviks from February to October to obtain a majority in the Soviets and when they had got it they moved to insurrection. The POR however controlled the COB from its first moments. While the Bolsheviks were a minority within the Russian working class for these eight months the POR led the COB for the first crucial six months after the insurrection which dispersed the bourgeois army. The programme, the leadership and the press of the COB were the work of the POR. The main leader of the COB functioned by reading out speeches written by the POR.

 

However, there was a huge difference between the POR and Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks demanded of the Soviets that they should give no class support to the bourgeois-democratic, reformist coalition government and that instead they should break with the bourgeoisie and take all power in their own hands. The POR, in contrast, gave ‘critical support’ to the bourgeois government and asked to be given ministerial posts. While the Bolsheviks attacked the Mensheviks and the SRs without pity, seeking to remove them from leadership positions, the POR identified itself with the labour bureaucracy (for whom they drafted speeches and ministerial plans) and sought to transform the bourgeois party and its government. The Bolshevik strategy was to make a new revolution while that of the POR was to reform the MNR and its government. In short, while Bolshevism was Leninist, the POR was Lechínist.

 

Part 2: The Menshevik positions of the POR and of Lora in April

 

Trying to explain the behaviour of the POR as objectively as possible, Dunkerley maintains that those from the section of the Fourth International “were from an early stage highly critical of the MNR regime, they made no call for an immediate workers government, demanding instead a radicalisation of proposed reforms, the defence of the regime against imperialism and the revolutionary education of the masses”. (12) (Rebelión en las venas, p.52 – Verso Edition, p.46).

 

Just before the April events the POR had published “an open letter to the government, demanding that power be handed over to the Nationalist MNR without a new election”. (13) The strategy of the POR was limited to pressurising the government periodically so as to change the leadership of the bourgeois state with the aim of allowing the MNR to take over the presidency by constitutional means. In that way, a legitimate government could be restored, which, through pressure, would be forced to adopt radical measures and would also have to appoint worker ministers.

 

During the April events Lora had been in France where he gave statements to La Verité which The Militant then reproduced. They were the main weeklies of the Fourth International. In his history of the POR, Lora says that “Up to now not enough importance has been given to the call for the Trotskyist programme made by Lora in Paris a few days after the arrival of the MNR in power”. With great cynicism he states that there he said that the working class “in order to triumph had no other way than by going over the political corpse of the MNR and also over that of Lechínism”. (14) (Contribución …, G. Lora, Vol.2, pp.237-238). As far as we are concerned, we do not want to give ‘enough importance’ to such statements. Exactly the opposite was said. Let us see:

 

“The central slogans put forward by our party were:

 

1) Restore the constitution of the country through the formation of an MNR government which obtained a majority in the 1951 election.

 

2) The struggle for the improvement of wages and working conditions

 

3) Struggle for democratic rights

 

4) Mobilisation of the masses against imperialism, for the nationalisation of the mines, and for the abrogation of the UN agreement”. (15) (The Militant 12.5.52, Lora interview Part 1, SWP, New York.)

 

Of all these demands only the last one is really radical and even that did not go beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy, or what the anti-communist Paz would do a few months later. The first seeks a constitutional bourgeois state with a populist government. Instead of seeking to differentiate itself from the latter by raising anti-capitalist and class-based slogans, the whole of the POR platform was exactly the same as that raised by the bourgeois MNR. Lora did not put forward as his dominant idea any proletarian slogan (expropriation without compensation of the bourgeoisie, workers control, disarming the bourgeois armed forces and their replacement by worker and peasant militias, occupation mines, factories and land, etc.). Instead of wanting to make the COB into a soviet, break with the bourgeoisie and take all power, Lora called for the MNR bourgeois government to change direction and limited himself to asking for some reforms which did not go beyond the framework of the capitalist state.

 

“The subversive movement of the ninth of April was no surprise for our party and occurred as we had foreseen in our theoretical analysis”. (16)

 

If a party was aware that it was approaching the main revolution of its history it ought to have done all it could to have kept its most important individual in the country, or at least, not far away. However, Lora stayed in Paris for more than half a year after the end of the 3rd World Congress of the Fourth International which was why he was in Europe. By boasting that his party had predicted what was going to happen and with his view that he should stay outside in the imperialist world, Lora was either blustering, or worse, he did not place much importance on his own endeavours to get rid of the MNR but instead agreed with trying to put pressure on it.]

 

“The struggle which immediately began is a struggle of the masses to impose their demands on the April 9th government”. (17)

 

If the POR was in the forefront of the struggle its objective should have been to put itself forward as an alternative leadership which called on the COB to kick out Paz. However, Lora called for support of the bourgeois government and its ‘left-wing’ ministers. Instead of opposing the trap of inviting labour ministers into the capitalist cabinet, so attempting to improve the regime’s disguise preparatory to disarming and then counter-attacking the workers, Lora identified himself with the tactic. “The textile workers decided to impose their conditions on the right wing of the MNR, they obliged it to accept the working class elements in the new cabinet who constitute its left faction”. (18) (The Militant, 12.5.52, Lora Interview Part 1).

 

“In this connection, the essential mission of the POR is to assume the role of the vigilant guide to prevent the aspirations of the workers from being diluted by vague promises or by manoeuvres of right wing elements”. (19)

 

For the POR, the enemy was not the bourgeois government but only the ministers who were to the right of the anti-communist Paz. As far as Paz was concerned, ‘the government was to be defended to the utmost’.

 

Lora wanted to uphold this reformist position by characterising the regime as petty bourgeois. The petty bourgeoisie is incapable of installing its own mode of production and regime. Small property engenders large property. A society of small owners is impossible and cannot avoid competition so forcing some to enrich themselves to accumulate while others become poor and are turned into proletarians. When the petty bourgeoisie is not allied to the proletariat it is marching behind the bourgeoisie aiming to reform its state.

 

A government that is not subordinate to the Soviets and workers militias is one that is against the proletariat. A petty bourgeois government which oscillates between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie cannot exist. By upholding such a possibility, Lora put forward the view that these ‘petty bourgeois’ governments, should have pressure put on them to try to fill them with extra labour ministers, with the aim of gradually achieving a workers and peasants government. This is a gradualist and reformist conception that led the POR to prop up the military socialist dictatorship, and it would later lead them to ask for ministers in the cabinet of General Torres. Whenever you try to put ‘red’ ministers in the populist governments of the bourgeoisie and sow further illusions, the more the ruling class is helped make use of these demagogues so as to confuse and disorientate the masses and to prepare a reactionary coup.

 

Neither the MNR government nor the party were petty bourgeois. The MNR, like every party with popular support, reflects the composition of the society in which it operates. A populist party, even though it has a majority of members from the most oppressed strata, just as elsewhere within capitalism, is run from the top down. Almost all the top leadership of the MNR were people who came from the oligarchic families, who had collaborated with German imperialism, propped up the bloody nationalist dictatorship of Villarroel and who were socially, ideologically and organically, an expression of a sector of the national bourgeoisie. The MNR, like Bolivian society, might have a majority of members and voters in the petty bourgeoisie, but it was led by politicians of and for the bourgeoisie.

 

Part 3: International repercussions of the interview with Lora

 

These scandalous declarations were published in the mouth-piece of those who called themselves bastions of ‘anti-pabloism’: the SWP (USA) and PCI (France). From ‘Pabloists’ to ‘anti-Pabloists’ all fully supported these positions. In all of the factional struggles which were to split the Fourth International in 1953, nobody ever objected to this criminal Menshevik policy which betrayed the Bolivian Revolution.

 

The only discordant voice known within the Fourth International at that time was that of a small tendency in California, headed by Vern and Ryan. This had the great merit of severely questioning the Menshevik declarations of Lora.

 

“The POR has been presented the opportunity of leading a revolution and thereby rendering a great service to our international movement.”

 

“The MNR is a bourgeois party, which politically exploits the masses.”

 

“… it is incontestable that the present Bolivian government is a bourgeois government, whose task and aim is to defend by all means available to it the interests of the bourgeoisie and of imperialism (…) This government is therefore the deadly enemy of the workers and peasants, and especially of the Marxist party.”

 

“A united front with a bourgeois party with the aim of establishing a bourgeois constitution and placing the bourgeois party in power is not a united front but a people’s front.

 

“The united front that the Marxists advocate aims to unite the workers and peasants on a minimum programme embodying a stage of the revolutionary transitional program. This united front, in a revolutionary situation, turns into workers’ and peasants’ soviets. And even in the soviets the struggle goes on. Far from accepting the conciliationist programme which may be imposed on the soviets, the Marxists advocate their own programme, calling on the soviets to break with the bourgeoisie, their parties and their government, and take the complete power, establishing a workers’ and peasants’ government.

 

“But comrade Lora does not raise the question of a break with the bourgeois government. The workers’ and peasants’ government he advocates appears as some ultimate conclusion to a gradual reshuffling of the personnel of the bourgeois government, whereby the right wingers will be forced out and the cabinet take on a more and more left tinge”. (20)

 

The Vern-Ryan tendency received no reply to its criticism against the Menshevik line in Bolivia. From then until today, all the currents which derive from the ‘anti-Pabloist’ International Committee continue to ignore these questionings of a policy which they, opportunistically, totally endorsed.

 

In spite of the progressive nature of its criticism this tendency soon dissolved itself. Its positions, although on the left of the deformed Fourth International, contained a series of ambiguities. The most important of them was its conception that a government directed by a Stalinist military apparatus would be enough (regardless of whether capitalist social relations had been expropriated or not) to recognise the creation of a new deformed workers state.

 

Part 4: Rebelión against the Permanent Revolution

 

The POR was proud that it edited the mouthpiece of the COB bureaucracy.

 

“Our points of view were imposed by a crushing majority and the newspaper Rebelión of the COB presented our own political position in the workers camp”. (21) (Boletin Interno, No.13, POR, undated, p.10)

 

“The three first issues of Rebelión, the last of which was published on the occasion of the First Congress of the COB (31st October 1954), appeared under the direction of M. Alandia and wholly expressed the programme of the Centre at that time. The first issue contained a hearty greeting to the General Secretary of the POR”. (22) (La revolución boliviana: Análisis crítico, G. Lora, La Paz 1963, p.254).

 

But what did this mouthpiece have to say? Did it put forward a revolutionary policy whose basic principles could only be a demand for the COB to break with Paz and call for the occupation of the mines, factories and the land, and to take power? On the contrary, Rebelión identified itself with the bourgeois regime. It stated that the MNR government was its own and that it had to be propped up. In its first issue under POR direction it said:

 

“The defeat of the oligarchy and the birth of the MNR government is the work of the working masses; it is our creation (…) in order to survive the present government requires from the workers that the workers supporting it, being vigilant will be able to attain great achievements”. (23) (Rebelión, 1.5.52, pp.8-9)

 

They not only mortgaged themselves to the MNR but paid homage to the memory of a military man, Gualberto Villarroel, who was involved in the Catavi massacre of 1942, and who was a pro-imperialist dictator overthrown by a popular uprising. (24) “Our proletarian homage to the memory of the martyr president” (ibid., p.9).

 

How could that be the position of a revolutionary? This was an orientation which could only help to disarm and demobilise the COB, asking it, in spite of having the real power, to continue helping a bourgeois government that was destined to line up behind imperialism and massacre the workers.

 

In June, Lucha Obrera maintained that the MNR should thank the POR for helping it achieve power and for its support. Its task would now be to put pressure on the MNR to carry out reforms which would benefit the working and middle classes.

 

“If the MNR has to give thanks to anyone, and greatly for our help, it is without doubt, to the POR (…) The POR will continue in carrying out its task of guiding the proletariat and of ensuring that the actions which deposed one government and raised up another, which enjoys the support of all the people, are carried out in a way beneficial to the proletariat and the oppressed sectors of the middle class”. (25) (LO, 12.6.52, p.3).

 

“Never before had a party like the MNR that can count on uniform backing from an armed people and proletariat, achieved power; and never, therefore, did anyone have the opportunity of adopting measures with a real revolutionary content. The government has closed its eyes, or has not wanted to see the magnificent opportunity, and has preferred to deceive the proletariat which supported it unconditionally”. (26) (LO, 29.6.52, p.4)

 

Never before had the party had such an opportunity to make a social revolution, but the MNR hesitated. The POR opposed the view that the deficiency was because of the bourgeois class character of the MNR, but said it was due to its lack of tactical ability. The task was to open its eyes and make it see the magnificent opportunity. The whole policy of the POR was completely Menshevik. Instead of calling on the workers to reject the MNR and to struggle to put the COB into power, the POR boasted of having served the MNR and of wanting it to mull over things and see reality – an orientation that was simply limited to seeking to serve as an adviser to the MNR in order to reform it.

 

Part 5: The POR supports the bourgeois government

 

Nine days after the uprising of 9th April, the mouthpiece of the POR declared that:

 

“to the extent that it carries out the promised programme, it supports the Government which arose out of the popular insurrection of 9th April, (…) It had two worker ministers in the petty bourgeois cabinet, but was entirely controlled and tied to the decisions of the COB”. (27) (LO, 18.4.52, p.2).

 

Under no circumstances can the proletariat support the government of a section of its exploiters. On the contrary, the aim of a Marxist party should be to undermine it and to struggle for its revolutionary overthrow. Supporters of it would be compromised with a policy of maintaining backward and semi-colonial capitalism. In the case of an attempt at a reactionary coup the Trotskyists should have followed the same policy as Russian Bolshevism in the face of the Kornilov revolt. Without giving an ounce of support to the Kerensky government the Leninists joined its supporters in the streets to fight with arms in order to crush ultra-reaction. At all times they called on the workers to have no confidence in, or to give support to, the government, and to prepare to depose it in a revolutionary way, once the monarchist coup attempt had been crushed.

 

However, in Bolivia at the time imperialism had no intention of carrying out a coup. It much preferred to help Paz and Siles, who knew how to use demagogy together with reformists like Lechín and their agents in the POR, in order to exhaust the masses, so that they could free themselves from working class pressure and succeed in rebuilding the bourgeois armed forces and so maintaining semi-colonial capitalism. The rightist coups (such as the adventure of the MNR right-wing in January 1953) could not count on the patronage of the USA. The Yanks had no wish to provoke a popular counter-reaction. They knew that the MNR was led by bourgeois and they knew how to use such people against the workers.

 

The USA never armed a counter-revolutionary guerrilla force as it did later in Nicaragua, Angola or Afghanistan. Nor did it encourage bellicose sentiments among the reactionary governments of the region for an invasion. The imperialist trump card was Paz. They knew that the latter would be made to nationalise the larger mines and to carry out some social reforms. But they also knew that he did it under pressure of the armed masses and that he would try to moderate those reforms when he could. As soon as populist demagogy had helped the rebuilding of the repressive bourgeois military machine and the workers activity had ebbed, that would be the time for a policy of destabilisation. The Eder and Triangular plans applied later by Paz, Siles or Lechín would seek to follow the designs of imperialism against the exploited of Bolivia.

 

To believe that ministers in a cabinet could have a policy contrary to that of the government was shown to be a reactionary illusion. Rather, those ‘red’ ministers were obliged to implement the decisions of an anti-working class government. It was not the COB that controlled its ministers, but it was the government, through its trade unionist ministers, which controlled the COB.

 

During the April events, the “Central Committee issued a resolution in the form of adhering to the revolution, advancing a programme of immediate demands. The fundamental points demanded a struggle for (…) A Bolivian government that would obey the will of the Bolivians”. (28) (Boletin Interno, No.13, 1953, p.7).

 

In May, Lucha Obrera called for a struggle to change the direction of the Victor Paz government. It demanded “A Bolivian government which will obey the will of the Bolivians and not of the Yanks”. “The petty bourgeois government, owing to the force of political circumstances, has the possibility of being transformed and changed into a phase of the Workers and Peasants government”. (29) (LO, 25.5.52, p.3).

 

The Bolivians living in that country are from every class. A government ‘of the Bolivians’ can only be that of the ruling class of the said republic. The POR, instead of struggling to overthrow the bourgeois government in order to create one of the workers and peasants, suggested that the MNR should rather take up the aim of developing a sovereign national bourgeoisie and that it should stop conciliating the USA to such an extent. If it did the latter it would be able to turn itself into a workers’ and peasants’ government.

 

For Marxism, the proletariat can come into power only on the basis of the destruction of the existing state machinery and the removal of the bourgeoisie from power. For the POR, the workers could attain power by Bolivianising and improving the regime of the bourgeois MNR. The POR faithfully followed the teachings of Aguirre and Marof, of trying to serve nationalist governments with the aim of changing their direction.

 

Part 6: Co-Government

 

After the success of the April revolution a quarrel began between the different wings of the MNR about sharing out the quotas of power. When Lechín withdrew, protesting at the few posts given to him for his followers, the leader of the right-wing gave way. According to Lechín’s story, Siles followed him as far as the palace staircase: ‘Juan, come back and we will talk. Put your points of view, and so that they can be carried out, name four ministers’. Lechín went back, named four minsters almost at random, and thus co-government was born”. (30) (ibid. p.301).

 

“The top layer of the left-wing supported by some union leaders, were content to impose two worker ministers and three centrists in the cabinet and to challenging the right to posts and positions in the administrative bureaucracy”. (31) (Boletin Interno, No 13, of the POR, undated, p.8.)

 

As far as the POR was concerned Lechín should have fought for more portfolios and perhaps some for the POR.

 

Supported by all the POR votes the newly born COB resolved:

 

“To grant comrades Juan Lechín and Germán Butrón the absolute confidence of the working class and to reaffirm its solidarity and support in the ministerial posts they hold at present”. (32) (Movimiento obrero y procesos politicos en Bolivia: Historia de la COB 1952-1987, Jorge Lazarte, EDOBOL, La Paz 1989, p.280).

 

The POR, after identifying itself with the Lechínist ministers, did ask them to resign in protest about the delay in nationalising the mines. But, on other occasions, later, the POR was once more to demand the capture of ministries on behalf of Lechínism.

 

In July, the POR said:

 

“When the COB was organised the situation of the worker ministers in the cabinet was defined as spokesmen of the working class in the government and agents of the government in the workers’ camp. The action of the workers ministers, as a minority, is difficult. Faced with that fact, there was undoubtedly no other alternative but to resign”. (33) (LO, 15.7.52, p.1).

 

In November, the POR issued a ‘self-criticism’: “In spite of all their bold statements, these workers representatives, instead of proletarianising the cabinet as had been proposed, only succeeded in ministerialising the Central Obrera Boliviana”. (34) (LO, 29.11.52, p.2)

 

Towards the end of 1953, the POR leadership presented a Report in which it stated that:

 

“The new upsurge comes from the demand to Lechín to leave the cabinet put forward by the mining unions, backed by the COB and curbed by Lechín. Our union fraction then took up a neutral and vacillating position”. “We have no doubt that this new period of upsurge will culminate with the adoption of our political theses”. (35) (Boletin Interno, No.13, POR, p.11).

 

The POR admitted that its trade unionists adapted to the pressures from Lechín. The policy of demanding the resignation of the labour ministers was an opportunist manoeuvre. It did not accompany the call for the COB to take power. Some weeks later, during the key events which frustrated the rightist January coup, the POR was to demand that ‘the comrade President’ Bolivianise his government and allow them to join it. For those reasons, the ‘new period of upsurge’ did not end with the victory of the POR theses but in the victory of the MNR, which was to succeed by absorbing most of the membership and periphery of the POR.

 

Part 7: The POR Seeks to enter the bourgeois government

 

During the 1952 revolution it was vitally important that any party, in the slightest way Marxist, had to have a policy of total independence from and opposition to the new bourgeois government of the MNR. The POR not only did the opposite, supported this new regime and identified itself fully with its ‘Leftist’ ministers, but even tried to enter it. At its 3rd World Congress in 1951, the Fourth International, unanimously adopted a line favouring the POR joining a future MNR government, and the POR had already previously joined the military ‘socialist’ government.

 

A journalist, claiming to be Trotskyist, related how:

 

“One of the old militants of the POR told us likewise with pride, that the MNR offered two ministries to the POR.” (36)

 

“The Executive Power invited the revolutionary painter Alandia to take up the post of Minister of Culture (…) The POR authorised its member to accept the invitation”. (37) (LO, 1.6.52, p.2).

 

Alandia, who until the end of his life was a well-known leader of Lora’s POR, succeeded in being the Editor of the trade union organ of the MNR bureaucracy, and he joined the government in the capacity of Minister of Culture.

 

The Californian Trotskyist Ryan sent a letter to the leadership of the SWP and the Fourth International, demanding that it give an answer with information on the details of POR participation in the government. Up until now we are not aware of any explanation or denial of such facts, just as we are unaware of any source which can ascertain their reliability or otherwise:

 

“According to these reports received from non-Trotskyist sources, the POR is accepting posts in the government machinery: Guillermo Lora, former secretary of the party, has been appointed [to] the Stabilization office; Comrade Moller, present Secretary of the POR, is director of the Workers Savings Bank, which is controlled by Juan Lechín, a member of the Cabinet; Ayala Mercado, another POR leader, is a member of the Agrarian Commission.” (38)

 

Bolshevism emerged in the struggle against ministerialism. The followers of Lenin were opposed to socialists entering bourgeois-democratic governments in Western Europe and equally that of Kerensky in the Russia of 1917. The only governments in which the Bolsheviks would have participated critically, would be those based on workers militias and councils which could attack and disarm the capitalist class. The Fourth International was founded in the struggle against the POUM of Nin which joined the anti-fascist bourgeois government of Barcelona in 1937. Taking part in a non-working class government only serves the enemies of the proletariat by confusing it and preparing the conditions for a later offensive against it.

 

In 1952, the POR had a ministerialist attitude. If it did not succeed in getting portfolios in the government but only managed secretarial posts in ministries or departments, it is because the MNR did not consider it to have any weight independent of the Lechínist faction, and it could point to its presence as a way of calming the masses. It preferred to keep the POR outside the cabinet but subordinate to it through the union bureaucracy.

 

Part 8: The collaborationist programme of the POR

 

In every issue of Lucha Obrera after April 1952, a new version of The Programme of the Exploited, was reproduced, which we reprint in its entirety:

 

“1. To prevent the revolution that begun on 9th April being strangled within the bourgeois and democratic framework.

 

2. The Strengthening of the working class, and consolidating the COB.

 

3. The mobilisation of the peasants behind the slogan of nationalisation of land and expropriation of the large estates without compensation, in order to allow the revolutionary process to end in victory.

 

4. The gaining of democratic guarantees for the exploited. The development of union democracy within the unions. Freedom of propaganda for revolutionary parties. The cancelling of all privileges for the rosca (39) counter-revolution.

 

5. Armed workers militias as a substitute for the regular army.

 

6. Better conditions of living and work. A basic living wage and sliding scale of wages. Collective contracts.

 

7. Nationalisation of mines and railways without compensation and under workers control.

 

8. The expulsion of imperialism. The cancelling of the international treaties which bind the country to imperialism. The rejection of the agreement on technical aid with the UN”. (40) (LO, 25.5.52).

 

We are not questioning those slogans, but the absence of key and essential slogans. That programme is limited and is adapted to the tastes of the Lechín wing of the MNR. The union bureaucracy could accommodate itself to all these slogans.

 

The central demands which were completely ignored in the POR press during those months were those of the occupation of the Mines, factories and large estates; no support for the new bourgeois government nor for the Lechín union bureaucracy; no to Co-government; that workers ministers should resign from the capitalist cabinet; All Power to the COB.

 

The POR talked about “preventing the revolution being strangled” when they themselves were strangling it with ‘critical’ support to the capitalist government. They demanded the “consolidation of the COB” but they opposed struggling for the most elementary tasks of achieving such an aim: an open struggle against the bureaucracy of Lechín and the MNR for the election and recall of all leaders by rank-and-file mass meetings and for an immediate conference of the COB in order to equip it with a soviet-type structure and for it to take complete power. The POR did not struggle to transform the COB into a Supreme Soviet in order to seize power, but wanted to put pressure on its summit so that it would recite its speeches and improve governmental decrees.

 

It called for the nationalisation of the land, mines and railways but did not demand its imposition by the workers and peasants with their own hands through occupations. Its position was limited to requesting and putting pressure on the government to carry out such measures, which created dangerous illusions in the masses, helping to demobilise them and keeping them in a state of dependency (instead of calling on them to do things themselves). At no time did it call for the bourgeoisie to be expropriated. Workers’ control was only demanded for state enterprises. The factories (Said, Soligno, etc.), shopping chains (Casa Grace, etc.) and other private companies continued operating as before. There was no demand for their nationalisation (not even with compensation), for workers, control, or the payment of higher taxes.

 

They wanted “freedom of propaganda for revolutionary parties”. By this the POR acknowledged that, apart from itself, other ‘revolutionaries’ existed, among them the MNR and Stalinism. What was correct was to call for the broadest democratic liberties. At the same time there had to be a struggle for the expropriation of the mass media and its handing over to organisations of workers and ordinary people. “The cancellation of all privileges of the rosca counter- revolution” was demanded. But what does the cancellation of privileges mean? What was needed was the demand for its total expropriation along with the creation of people’s courts to try the executioners and butchers of the oligarchic regime.

 

The slogan about expelling imperialism was very vague. It was not tied to demands to expropriate all its enterprises or to repudiate the foreign debt. Anyway, the POR itself said repeatedly that, if it got into power, it would try to force the USA to recognise it and establish diplomatic relations.

 

Neither did the POR raise the main slogan for a thorough-going bourgeois democracy: the sovereign Constituent Assembly, where all those over the age of 18 (or 16) would have the right to vote and to be elected. New elections on as democratic and as broad a basis as possible, and the creation of a new Constituent Assembly where the main national problems could be debated, would have let the revolutionary party more easily unmask the nature of the MNR and of parliamentarianism. The POR envisaged something else which flung dust in the workers’ eyes: to restore the reactionary constitution which put Paz into the Presidential Palace.

 

This programme lacked the slightest internationalist slogans. It did not call for solidarity with the other workers of the world and with anti-imperialist struggles, the defence of the workers’ states against imperialism, support for revolutions against the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracies, the internationalisation of the revolution; and for the building of the United Socialist States of Latin America and of the world, not to mention the struggle for the worker-peasant government or for the socialist republic. The POR merely wanted to pressurise the bourgeois government behind whose ‘left’ wing it was always searching for a compromise to carry out the programme further.

 

The POR action programme was that of a party which had repudiated the strategy of permanent revolution and which only wanted a bourgeois-democratic transformation within the segregated framework of one, isolated, landlocked and backward country.

 

Part 9: The POR did not struggle for the occupation of the Enterprises.

 

After the April events, the bourgeois armed forces were virtually destroyed. All power was in the hands of the peoples’ and workers’ militias and the COB. In those circumstances the next step on the agenda was to call on the COB to cease to support a non-working class government and to take all power in its own hands.

 

According to Lora:

 

“From the 9th of April on, the unions of the most important districts simply took over the solution of the vital problems, and the authorities, thus replaced, had no other course than to accept their decisions. It was these unions which operated as organs of workers power and raised the issue of the duality of local and national authority. Controlling the daily life of the masses, they took on legislative and executive attributes (they had the power of compulsion to execute their decisions), and even succeeded in administrating justice. The union assembly was turned into the ultimate arbiter and the supreme authority. This phenomenon was almost general in the mines and, on occasion, could be seen in the factories.

 

Unfortunately, this reality was not fully understood by the vanguard of the proletariat and a favourable moment for carrying out the demand for the immediate occupation of the mines, which would have made the proletariat fight a battle to determine the question of dual power in its favour, was thrown away. In this first period the union leadership and assembly operated as organs of workers’ power”. (41) (ibid., p.277).

 

“One of the POR slogans which most gripped the workers was that of the occupation of the mines (…) Why was this demand not carried through by workers action, at the time of their greatest mobilisation and radicalisation? If the mines had been occupied, and it was possible that this could have occurred, it is clear that the course of the revolution would have undergone a radical change (..) The occupation of the mines would have raised, sooner or later, the question of power, and created the basis for the rapid supersession of the nationalist positions adopted by the working class; at the same time, the POR would have been able, quite quickly, to recover its control”. (42) (Contribución …, G. Lora, Vol 2, p.231-232).

 

If the issues of Lucha Obrera and the POR programme for 1952 are examined, the slogan of immediate occupation of the mines, factories and land will be found. The only time an enterprise is was taken over was to prevent the closure of the Corocoro mine.

 

The reason the POR did not raise that slogan is connected to its refusal to call for workers’ control for the private businesses, to nationalise the factories and to formulate anti-capitalist demands. The POR was tailing Lechín and pressuring the Paz government.

 

Part 10: All power to the COB!

 

“Through the COB, the working class left-wing was a government within the government and, in a certain sense, more powerful than the government itself. The COB had a basis of support greater than that of the party of which it officially formed a part. It proposed that the MNR assume the power and responsibility of government and of governing the state officially, but the COB set itself up as a centre without rival capable of initiative and veto in relation to the central power. That is to say it had the power of government but not the responsibility”. (43) (Bolivia: la revolución inconclusa, James M. Malloy, Ceres, La Paz 1989, p.243).

 

“In reality, the COB was the real government of the Bolivian workers and, hence, of the national economy. In fact, it possessed the symbolic and functional characteristics of a sovereign entity, including executive, deliberative and judicial organs, a defined area of authority, electors and, what is more important, armed forces”. (44) (ibid, p.243-244).

 

“The COB was the master of the country, and indeed for a certain period it was the only centre of power worthy of the name”. (45) (A History …, Lora, p.281). “For the majority of the masses, the COB was their only leader and their only government.” (46) (ibid., p.284).

 

The situation in Bolivia after 9-11th April 1952, was similar to that in Russia after the February 1917 revolution. Two powers existed in the country, but the strongest, the one with mass character, was that of the peoples’ and workers’ organisations, which, owing to their conciliatory leaderships, handed over power to a weak bourgeois government. The governments of Kerensky and Paz had to flirt with the upsurge and demands of the masses at the same time as they tried to spin out time to exhaust them, and then, by rebuilding the armed forces and their authority, to open the way to a situation of bourgeois stabilisation.

 

In order to face up to such a situation, the Bolsheviks demanded that the Soviets break with the leftist provisional government of the bourgeoisie and take all power themselves. In the Bolivian case, the demand should have been to struggle for all power to the COB. The COB, just as with the Russian Soviets, had the arms and the power but, because of its conciliatory leadership, gave away the latter to the bourgeoisie. The seizure of power by the Soviets and the COB could have been done peacefully. The old military apparatus had already collapsed through a violent revolution. The road was open for workers power, which had its own arms and the people behind it, and could have had total power. The only obstacle to the COB and the Russian Soviets carrying out that task was that their leadership was so insistent on rescuing the bourgeoisie.

 

In spite of the COB being the real power in the country and the POR being its main directing force, the section of the Fourth International opposed the slogan of All Power to the COB. On the contrary, it called on the COB to join the bourgeois government, thus weakening its alternative power and so becoming a body more and more subordinate to the bourgeois government. The slogan of the POR was that of shifting the Paz administration leftwards via ministerial changes. With that treacherous line it helped Paz and Lechín to dilute the power of the COB and go on to reconstitute the bourgeois state and the army.

 

In his ‘self-criticism’ Lora recognised that:

 

“The POR brigade used these events to launch the slogan of ‘total control of the cabinet by the left’ (…) The slogan, however, contained the signs of an enormous ideological error: to believe that the workers could attain power via Lechín – behind the slogan of ‘All Power to the COB’”. (47) (La revolución boliviana: Análisis crítico, Lora, La Paz 1963, p.267).

 

“The watch-word of ‘All Power to the COB’ could have led to the victory of the workers on two exceptionally favourable occasions. The first was when the agitation around the immediate nationalisation of the mines without compensation and under workers’ control reached its high point (first half of 1952). The second arose with the defeat of the coup d’etat on 6th January 1953. Not taking due advantage of these opportunities and adapting to marching behind and mouthing the slogans of the MNR left, were the greatest errors of the POR”. (48) (ibid., p.270).

 

As we have seen, on the first occasion the POR did not call for the seizure of the enterprises but for support to the MNR government. On the second occasion, the POR insisted on the treacherous line of support for, and pushing for a change of policy by, Paz.

 

“On the morning of the 6th January 1953, the Minister of Peasant Affairs was kidnapped, as a preliminary to a coup d’etat (…) But towards evening the failure of the coup attempt was already evident (…) The COB called the workers and peasants militias to a mass mobilisation on a national scale. On the morning of 7th January, a massive demonstration, sponsored by the COB, took place. The demonstrators demanded immediate and unrestricted agrarian reform (…) Paz took measures against the rightists but in a moderate way (…) The government dissolved the Grupos de Honor and demoted and exiled many of the key conspirators. There was no bloodletting (…) Among the measures included were wage increases, vouchers, protection against dismissal, rent control, price control, subsidies to food stores and a series of measures on social security and other aspects of ‘consumption’ (…) sacked workers were re-employed”. (49) (ibid., p.298-299).

 

In the massive demonstration of 7th January, Edwin Moller, secretary of the POR at the time, spoke for the COB in the Plaza San Francisco. In his speech, instead of calling on the workers to have no confidence in the bourgeois government of Paz and to make its own Trade Union Centre take power, he ended his intervention saying “We want, comrade Paz Estenssoro, a government of Bolivians for the Bolivians”. (50) (LO, 23.1.53).

 

On that occasion, when Lora himself recognised that it would have been enough to have agitated around the slogan ‘All Power to the COB’, in order to have gained victory for the proletarian revolution, the POR put forward exactly the opposite. The POR called upon its ‘comrade’ president to set up a bourgeois nationalist government. In the crucial moments of the revolution, the POR showed that its strategy was limited to correcting the bourgeois government and not to overthrow it with a workers uprising.

 

“The counter-revolutionary forced obliged the MNR to base itself more and more firmly upon the left. In an attempt literally to frighten the opposition in order to obtain its agreement, the centrist tendency of the MNR and the leftist axis of the COB called demonstration after demonstration of their armed might. Militias of miners and peasants were brought permanently to the city in lorries and marched there in front of the population, crazily discharging their rifles”.

 

In spite of those extraordinary conditions, the POR delayed almost a year before launching the slogan for a COB government. In March 1953, Lucha Obrera argued: “That the culmination of the Altiplano Revolution cannot be anything else or occur in any other way than by a government formed by the COB embodied as the organ of power”. (51) (LO, March 1953, p.1).

 

However, it must be said that there are distinct ways and methods of launching such a slogan. The position of ‘All Power to the COB’, which was launched too late by the POR, was a variant of its idea of ‘all power to the left of the MNR’. For the POR, the launching of that slogan was not in order to unmask the Lechín leadership, but was more bothered to govern jointly with it. Instead of trying to oppose the COB to the MNR government, the position of the POR consisted in continually replacing the Paz cabinet with ministers from the COB until finally there would be a government of the COB bureaucracy of the MNR. The slogan of ‘All Power to the COB’ should have gone hand in hand with the raising of anti-capitalist slogans with an impeccable denunciation of the ‘left’ of the MNR.

 

Lechín has often said that his great mistake was not taking power in April 1952. (52) (see interview in Facetas, 5.7.87.) If Lechín had been anointed president based on the COB, it would not have created a revolutionary workers’ government. Villarroel’s ex-prefect would have done everything possible to maintain capitalism and to co-exist with the national and world bourgeoisie. A revolutionary party would only have been able to participate critically in that government if it had broken with the bourgeois MNR, based itself directly on the working class organisations and their militias and attacked and disarmed the bourgeoisie. Such an eventuality was highly unlikely. A Lechín government would have been a government of the Kerensky type or a bourgeois labour government. In the exceptional circumstances of the revolutionaries participating in a COB government as a minority, it would necessarily have required conditions of a considerable differentiation with Lechínism and the unmasking its counter-revolutionary character. They would have had to have persisted in brandishing the Trotskyist programme in opposition to its waverings and would have to seek to displace it from power so that it could give way to a Trotskyist dictatorship. (53)

 

(Nahuel Moreno always claimed that he called for ‘All Power to the COB’, as opposed to the POR policy of adaptation to the MNR left-wing. But Moreno’s slogan was only a variant of the popular-frontist resolutions of the 3rd congress of the Fourth International and the ‘government of the MNR left-wing’ position. In May, his paper put forward the “Demand that the worker ministers elected and controlled by the Miners Federation and the new Workers Centre are taken into the Paz Estenssoro government”. (Frente Proletario, 29.5.52. Quoted in Prensa Obrera 131, 3.5.86 – presumably PO Argentine – eds.).

 

Moreno’s position was akin to Lora’s. In reality, co-government was a cabinet of all the wings of the MNR. The worker ministers constantly reported back in detail to the COB, but that, instead of modifying the government and changing it into a proletarian one (an impossibility) simply confused the class. Moreno’s paper said that “the two wings which now exist within the MNR express the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie”. (ibid.). Presumably Lechín represented the proletariat. But a sector that stays within a bourgeois party cannot represent the interests of the proletariat. By 1953 Moreno was proposing the “development, support and strengthening of a left wing inside the MNR”. (Estrategia, April 1966, quoted in ibid.). One proposed a government of Lechín’s faction of the MNR, while the other preferred a government of Lechín’s bureaucracy of the COB – the same jam but in different jars. Anyway the slogan ‘All Power to the COB is invalid once a dual power situation no longer exists (that is since 1952.) It only generates illusions in its bureaucracy.)

 

Part 11: Turn the COB into a Soviet!

 

For Lenin and Trotsky, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat could be based only on bodies like the Russian Soviets of 1917. In every revolution it is vital to struggle to give Soviet features to the mass organs and organs of power created by the exploited. A Soviet is an organ of struggle of the proletariat whose delegates are directly elected and revocable in rank-and-file assemblies, which include all workers, small- holders, peasants, soldiers, housewives, unemployed and other oppressed sectors of the area. While the unions are bodies which unite workers in an enterprise or branch of production, Soviets are territorial organisms which encompass the broadest masses, both non-unionised and unionised.

 

In the eyes of the POR, the COB, like a mass meeting or an open town council meeting, was a Soviet. Not every Soviet has dual or alternative power, Not every dual power is a Soviet. A parallel power could be a parliament, an army or another institution which possesses an armed force and governmental authority over a significant part of a country.

 

The COB, although it had Soviet tendencies, was an organism with trade union, vertical and bureaucratic features. “One of the gravest errors in the organisation of the COB consisted in its originating from the top summit leaders, who would soon end up completely tied to the petty bourgeois government, and it crystallised through the middle layers of leadership (…) The correct thing would have been to proceed in the opposite way, that is to say, from the bottom up. The workers adhered to the COB through their trade union leaders (…) The founders of the COB called upon the old leaders and not on the democratically elected rank-and-file delegates. This organisational defect already contained the cause of its infirmity, which eased its bureaucratisation, its isolation from the masses and the skilful control of it by the government”. (54) (La Revolución Boliviana, G. Lora, p.262-263).

 

The COB delegates were neither elected nor controlled and subject to recall through rank-and-file mass meetings. The first congress of the COB took place two and a half years after its foundation. The bureaucracy did everything possible to run the union with boss’ type bureaucratic criteria. A revolutionary party should have struggled for the immediate organisation of a congress a few days or weeks after it was founded. Only in this way could the COB have been democratised and have acquired soviet-type features. However, the POR was in the top leadership of the COB and did not object to a bureaucratic structure which allowed it to get along better with Lechín, in order accommodate to him.

 

The COB was founded at a meeting called by the Miners’ Federation on 17th April 1952. The leaderships of the confederations of factory workers, railway workers and peasants, the federation of bank employees and allied branches, commercial and industrial employees, and graphical, construction, bricklayers and bakers unions took part in that assembly. (55) (Movimento obrero y processos politícos en Bolivia, Jorge Lazarte, p.6). Note that fact that the squatters, the unemployed and rank-and-file soldiers were not organised within it. The COB aimed to be a union centre based on leaderships elected at labour congresses every ‘X’ years. A Soviet should be based on all the oppressed sectors and directly elected at rank and file assemblies. In this way, the organisation can grow and be de-bureaucratised. This meeting elected an executive committee which held office until the congress in October 1954.

 

It was headed by Lechín (Executive Secretary), Germán Butrón (General Secretary) and Mario Torres (Secretary of Relations). As the two key figures in the COB had to be ministers, the job of day-to-day leadership at the centre fell on PORists like Edwin Moller (Organisation Secretary), José Zegada (Minutes Secretary) or Miguel Alandia Pantoja (Director of the Press). “This first Management Committee was declared provisional until the election of a proper committee by a national congress which would meet shortly.” (56) (ibid., p.7). However, that congress took place with extreme delay, after the COB had ceased to be an alternative dual power and had surrendered to the official bourgeois power.

 

The COB developed in the same way like all organs of ‘popular power’ that bourgeois nationalists governments create. The ‘Committees in Defence of the Revolution’ in Nicaragua, the ‘Shoras’ in Iran or the ‘Popular Assemblies’ in various nationalist processes are organisations which unite union leaders and those of mass bodies, to ensure that they support nationalist regimes or projects. Instead of structuring themselves as alternative workers’ power which fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to consolidate all power, these organisms are committed to building a popular basis for nationalism. They use ‘anti-imperialism’ in order to discipline the masses and to maintain themselves against their enemies.

 

Dual power cannot last for long. One power must rule over the other. If a workers’ power does not crush that of the bourgeoisie then the latter will be imposed (whether via bloody liquidation or by regimentation and domestication). (57)

 

(As Stuart King so rightly says:

 

“Is not Workers Power absolutely right when it describes the COB as an ‘embryo’ or ‘proto-Soviet’ which could have developed into a full Soviet only through political struggle against the bonapartist project of the MNR? This would have involved concentrating on building Soviets both in and outside La Paz, drawing in and organising peasant syndicates in the localities, calling for the construction of rank and file soldiers committees in the army, drawing their delegates into the Soviets, strengthening and placing under Soviet discipline the militias, and ensuring that all delegates were elected by rank and file factory and workplace committees subject to immediate recall”. Permanent Revolution, No.2, p.36).

 

The POR did not fight to make the COB soviet. To do so required a constant daily battle against the MNR and the Lechínist bureaucracy. On the contrary, the POR, was one of the main causes of the COB being limited, bureaucratised and tied to officialdom.

 

Part 12: The MNR-POR government

 

At its 1952 congress, the Fourth International, with no votes against, adopted the slogan of an MNR-POR government. After April 1952, the POR tried to apply this recipe with a small difference. It demanded the removal of the MNR right wing:

 

“The worker-peasant government is not the dictatorship of the proletariat: it is in transition toward it, an inevitable period in the sense that, as a political party of the working class, we do not yet constitute a majority of it (…) The Worker-Peasant government will surely emerge before the dictatorship of the proletariat in Bolivia, on the fundamental basis of two important political forces: the POR and the MNR left-wing, to which we should try to give the essential organisational consciousness, security and firmness, so that the way to political power is opened to us, which the militant working masses will offer us in the future”. (58) (Boletin Interno, No.13, POR, p.12).

 

This worker-peasant government notion is more like that of Stalinism than of Leninist Trotskyism. In its earlier period, Stalinism also spoke of the worker-peasant government, but in a stageist sense. It proposed a dictatorship together with class collaboration in which the proletariat had to give up its own objectives and subordinate itself to the bourgeois-democratic programme of the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie. For that same reason, Trotsky objected to using the slogan for a time, and only did so after explaining that his strategy was that of a government of workers and poor peasants led by the proletariat and aiming to apply a socialist programme.

 

The idea of the centrist Fourth International and the POR was that of a joint government where the so-called workers party was led by a party of another class. But the MNR did not represent the peasantry (and even less the poor or landless sectors), and neither did the MNR bother to organise this class or to place in its top leadership some leader from the national majority. The MNR was an unmistakably bourgeois party. Its members came from various capitalist and cacique parties that had presided over anti-working class government. Paz had been the governor of the Central Bank and Finance Minister in two bosses governments. The MNR had sympathised with the German Führer who massacred the biggest labour movement of the world. When they were in the government they repressed the left and put in power a pro-imperialist dictatorship which was thrown out by a popular insurrection.

 

“For the solution of the basic national tasks, not only the big bourgeoisie but also the petty bourgeoisie was incapable of producing a political force, a party, or a faction, in conjunction with which the party of the proletariat might be able to solve the tasks of the democratic bourgeois revolution”. (59) The Third International After Lenin, Trotsky, Pathfinder, New York, 1970, p.181. Stalin, el gran organizador de derrotas, La III Internacional despues de Lenin, Trotski, El Yunque, Bs As. 1974, p.241).

 

The proletariat should not dilute its programme and accept the democratic one of the bourgeoisie, whether petty, medium or big. Under this programme it is impossible to break with imperialism and backwardness. The only manner of resolving the outstanding bourgeois democratic tasks is through a Socialist revolution which, in passing, completes the unfinished democratic tasks within a framework of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, of a socialised and planned economy established by popular and workers councils, and by the internationalisation of the revolution.

 

In its more than 55 years of existence the POR has never put forward the strategy of the internationalist socialist revolution. It was born calling for an anti-imperialist and agrarian revolution in order to establish a multi-class and capitalist government which could be achieved by a military coup or the metamorphosis of a bourgeois government. Later, in the Theses of Pulacayo, it put forward the idea of a bourgeois democratic revolution led by the proletariat. That position held similarities with that of Parvus, which meant, according to Trotsky’s argument “the conquest of power by the proletariat was seen as the path towards democracy and not to socialism”. (60) Through the strategy of opposing a socialist revolution in order to limit itself to a bourgeois-democratic and national one, the POR was subservient to strategic blocks with and behind Lechínism, and then with the whole MNR and Stalinism.

 

An MNR-POR government would be a bourgeois one with ‘Trotskyist’ ministers, good at helping Paz and Lechín to confuse the workers and at compromising themselves by defending the capitalist regime.

 

In the Fourth Congress of the Communist International Lenin and Trotsky clearly differentiated five types of workers’ government. Liberal and Social Democratic workers governments can never be supported by communist ministers. In certain circumstances a workers’ government or worker-peasant government could emerge in which the communists would be able to join the cabinet as a minority.

 

“The two types (of workers government) in which the communists may take part, do not represent the dictatorship of the proletariat, they are not even a historically inevitable transition stage towards the dictatorship. But where they are formed they may become an important starting point for the fight for the dictatorship. The complete dictatorship is represented only by the real workers’ government which consists of communists”. (61) (The Communist International 1919-43: Documents, Ed. Jane Degras, Vol.1, Cass, 1971, p.427.)

 

The author is wrong, Zinoviev drafted the theses which represented a compromise between the lefts and the right. In Dialogue with Heinrich Brandler (Marxism, Wars and Revolutions, Deutscher, Verso, 1985) the latter says “Radek was accused by Moscow of being the author of my definition of the five forms of workers government. In reality he tried to prevent this definition from being adopted; not because he thought it incorrect but, as I learned years later, because it irritated Zinoviev, and Radek found this inconvenient for his factional struggle in Moscow.” pp.158-159. Brandler advanced it at the 8th Congress of the KPD in January 1923 just after the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in Nov-Dec 1922.) See Revolutionary History Vol.2 no.3 pp.1-20.)

 

The conditions advanced by the CI were very clear. “The overriding tasks of the workers’ government must be to arm the proletariat, to disarm bourgeois and counter-revolutionary organisations, to introduce the control of production, to transfer the main burden of taxation to the rich, and to break the resistance of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie”. (62) (ibid., p.426).

 

“In certain circumstances communists must declare themselves ready to form a workers’ government with non-communist workers’ parties and workers organisations. But they can do so only if there are guarantees that the workers government will really conduct a struggle against the bourgeoisie in the sense mentioned above”. (63) (ibid., p.426).

 

However, whichever wing of the MNR was in government it would not have fulfilled these conditions. The MNR was a party representing an emerging bourgeoisie. Far from wishing to disarm and expropriate itself, that is to say, to commit suicide as a class, the MNR bourgeoisie aspired to strengthen the state through reforms which would extend the internal market. A government of one or more wings of the MNR would have been a government for the defence of the bourgeois state.

 

To sum up: an MNR-POR government of whatever variant would have been the opposite of a worker-peasant government. It would have been a bourgeois government with a decoration of workers.

 

Part 13: All Power to the MNR Left Wing!

 

“When the struggle within the cabinet between the right and left tendencies of the MNR broke out (within the latter tendency were numbered the “worker” ministers who were the base of Lechínism), the POR launched the slogan of more workers’ ministers and, thereby, the expulsion from the government of the right, a demand which turned out to be far too ambitious for Lechín and Co.”. (64)

 

(Contribución a la historia politica de Boliviana, Lora, Vol.2, La Paz 1978, p.253).

 

At its 9th national conference, the POR ratified the line of identifying with the national-reformist wing of Lechín and Ñuflo Chavez. “The national political report fixed the position of the POR before the government in the following points: 1) Support to the government in face of the attacks by imperialism and the rosca, (2) Support for all the progressive measures it enacts, always indicating their scope and limitations (…) 3) In the struggle of the MNR wings, the POR supports the left (…) The POR will support the MNR left in its struggle against the right of the party, in all its activity that tends to destroy the structures on which the feudal bourgeoisie and imperialist exploitation rest, every attempt to deepen the revolution and to carry out the workers programme, such as the complete control of the government so replacing the right wing”. (65) (LO, 11.11.52, p.3).

 

In that same newspaper it also says:

 

“The working class must actively intervene in the formation of the new Cabinet. It is the workers who must run the state with a revolutionary programme that will start to destroy the capitalist structure. The COB, representing the worker-peasant forces, must join in the new cabinet with a majority of ministers who come from it, representing the different sectors of workers”. (66) (LO, 11.11.52, p.2).

 

The MNR is clearly a bourgeois party. Within every populist bourgeois party which tries to discipline the unions there is always a workerist wing that tries to mediate between the pressures of the workers and the needs of following a bourgeois policy. A party of various classes cannot be. The one which commands is the one that owns the capital. A horse and its rider are not in an equal alliance. One rides the other. The union bureaucracy and the reformist wings are like a saddle. They lie on the proletariat to relieve the weight and rule of the capitalist boss in order to help him to continue giving orders.

 

The ‘left’ wing of the MNR is not a proletarian or revolutionary wing. The fact is that it claims the bourgeois programme as its own and its insertion in such a conglomerate of capital makes it a counter-revolutionary sector. It is always possible that youth and worker sections in the nationalist movement will shift to the left towards centrism, and, if so, everything possibly must be done to conquer their prejudices and win them to Trotskyist politics. However, known bureaucrats, with a long career of betrayals, who have served a dictatorship such as Villarroel’s and have brought forth an anti-communist party that did not at first disguise its flirtation with racism and nazi-fascism, cannot evolve in a revolutionary direction.

 

The Lechín and Chavez ‘left’ wing defended capitalism and so only wanted to reform it. The MNR needed them in order to be able to control the masses. With the right hand it initiated the reorganisation of the armed forces, set up the para-military commandoes and the secret-police (the ‘Commando Politico’), stirred up anti-communist hysteria to mobilise the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian ‘excesses’ and pressed for approaches to imperialism. With its left hand it tried to flirt with working class radicalism while aiming to tame it. MNR trade unionists, while they uttered the most incendiary speeches, did everything possible to use that authority hold back the COB’s mobilisation and demands, tried to empty it of its dual power content and turn it into a force that would be subordinated to, and would collaborate with, the bourgeois regime.

 

Faced with a struggle between two wings of a bourgeois party, the proletariat should try to assert its own class independence and its opposition to both wings. Of course we must undertake very limited practical actions of a mass direct action character with the MNR ‘left’ when it undertakes the defence of popular and working class demands. But preferably, we should take the initiative and try to unmask those ‘leftists’ with a policy that constantly asks them to fight and break with the bourgeois party.

 

However, the POR did more than serve Lechínism. They edited its union paper, they wrote its speeches and totally supported it. While Paz wanted to line up behind imperialism, Lechín lined up behind Paz and the POR behind Lechín.

 

From the first weeks of the 1952 revolution until at least the end of 1953, the POR “works so that the masses and the left-wing sector of the governing party will proceed to their logical conclusion, that is to say, evolve towards a worker-peasant government”. “The evolution towards the left of the government and its consequent transformation will be determined by the exploited. Owing to the pressure to political circumstances, the petty bourgeois government may possibly be superseded and be turned into a stage of worker-peasant government. It is the most probable tendency of that unstable moment and only in this sense do we speak of the only outcome. The aforementioned involves the political defeat of the right and the active participation in the state of the proletariat and the peasants”. (67) (LO, 25.5.52, p.3).

 

According to the POR, a month after the creation of the COB, it was probable that the exploited would put pressure on the MNR to the point that it had to shift leftwards and be transformed into a worker-peasant government. Paz and the MNR were not ‘neutral’ forces or ‘wild-cards’ flitting between the various classes. The MNR was an unswervingly bourgeois force and incapable of changing its class content. However much a monkey wants to learn to fly it is impossible. Paz’s MNR had absolutely no possibility of evolving into a worker-peasant government. The only ones who could evolve were the PORists … but towards a greater conciliation with the bourgeois MNR. Revolutionaries do not call upon the workers to have a more ‘active participation’ within the state but to overturn it.

 

In the second half of 1953, they still persisted. The 10th POR conference stated that:

 

“The total predominance of this sector (MNR ‘left’) would profoundly modify the nature of the MNR and would enable it to come significantly closer to the POR (…) Only in such conditions could one speak of a possible coalition government of the POR and the MNR, which would be a form of creating the formula of the ‘worker-peasant government’, which, in its turn, would constitute the transitory stage towards the dictatorship of the proletariat”. The Political Bureau of the POR, on 23rd of June, 1953, raised the call, “The whole of this struggle must revolve around the slogan: Total Control of the State by the Left Wing of the MNR.”

 

Liborio Justo correctly made the following observation:

 

“The POR would support the left in its struggle against the right, it would help it to position itself ideologically, it would push it forward towards the most advanced positions and simultaneously it would mobilise the MNR rank-and-file so that it called on the leftist leadership to adopt the programme of proletarian revolution. That is to say, that the revolution would be carried out by the MNR left wing, which the POR ‘instructed’ to cease being petty bourgeois and an agent of the reaction and this would help its rank-and-file push it to adopt the programme of the proletarian revolution’”. (68) (Bolivia: la revolución derrotada, Liborio Justo, Cochabamba 1967, p.224). This was just a utopia to disarm the class.

 

In August, after a ministerial crisis had occurred, Lucha Obrera opined: “The only political outcome of the present situation: the displacement of the MNR right-wing from power by the left-wing.

 

“All power to the left”! is a suitable slogan in the case of a cabinet crisis. Such a new kind of MNR government would carry out the new tasks of the revolution. Total control of the state by the left (…) the POR will help the left in this job, it will guide it politically and support it critically”. (69) (LO 2.8.53, p.1)

 

Instead of fighting to unmask and politically destroy the ‘left-wing’, the POR offered itself as a prop and adviser to the left of the official bourgeois party. Instead of struggling for a worker-peasant government it asked for a ‘new kind of MNR government’. Instead of wanting to overthrow a social class, the POR was limited to asking for a new cabinet to which it would lend itself and offer its services. Instead of calling for the overthrow of the bourgeois state, the POR called for its regeneration under the control of the left of bourgeois officialdom.

 

Even though the ‘left’ wing of the MNR would have had the majority and even every ministry, the state that they would have controlled and defended would been bourgeois.

 

When the Bolsheviks agitated for ‘All Power to the Soviets’ they knew that the government could end up falling into the hands of the reformists. Lenin thought that a collaborationist government without capitalist ministers was preferable. But he always said that even if an entirely Menshevik-Socialist Revolutionary government emerged, the Bolsheviks would not support or enter it. The only compromise that he would adopt was that of struggling together with them against any reactionary coup and of renouncing any attempt to take power as they had not won a majority among the workers and in the soviets.

 

The MNR ‘left’ wing was in no way a reformist workers party (as was Menshevism) with a certain degree of independence with respect to other capitalist paries. It was part of the same bourgeois MNR party. While Lechín did break with the MNR some 11 or 12 years after 1952 (and with quite a pro-United States orientation) other ‘leftists’ carried on working with the MNR longer.

 

When an independent and mass organisation of workers exists, it is feasible for Communists to call for a critical vote for it or to help it get into power “as a noose supports a hanging man” said Lenin, with the aim of better unmasking its leaders. However that policy cannot be applied to a section of a party that includes a sector of the bourgeoisie from which it has not broken, that does not represent a step towards class independence, even in embryonic form. Stalinism, ignoring Leninism, always put forward the line of tailing this or that “progressive “ sector of the bourgeoisie. To follow the MNR ‘left’, or that of APRA or Peronism, is only helping to reinforce bourgeois nationalism and prevents the workers from breaking with it.

 

Calling on the labour leaders to break with the bourgeoisie and to struggle for an independent workers’ party is a very different tactic. In this case it encourages the class struggle and helps to unmask collaborators. Choosing which of the bosses executioners it is better or worse to follow, is an old Stalinist strategy that has always meant the disarmament of the exploited to benefit reaction. In any case it is a vicious circle that cannot be broken. Within the left there will always be another left, and within the latter yet another one. At the end of the this pursuit of left wings of the bourgeois parties the route to the proletarian revolution is lost and we are changed into vulgar followers of the bourgeois nationalists.

 

Not one leader of the MNR ‘left’ wing evolved towards forming a reformist workers party or even centrism let alone Marxism. In 1963 when Lechín split the MNR in order to form his own ‘leftist‘ party, the POR characterised it as reactionary and anti-working class. If the POR made a grave error in capitulating to Lechín in 1952, it adopted a sectarian policy when Lechín split from the MNR in 1963. It had then been necessary to attack Lechín implacably for having been Paz’s Vice-President and for having gone to China to abase himself before the Guomindang but at the same time, by putting forward the demand an independent working class candidate, the tactic of the workers United Front should have been used.

 

Ryan was correct when he maintained that “The POR occupies, on all the major questions, the positions occupied by Menshevism in the Russian Revolution, and by Stalinism in the Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27.” (71) In China Stalinism would first support the Guomindang and then its ‘left-wing’. Both ended up using the Chinese Communists to get more power and once they felt secure the Communists were massacred. It is worth pointing out that the Guomindang was, both in its origins and programme, more radical than the MNR. So while the MNR was born with a declaration of principles influenced by racism and Nazi ideas the Guomindang was at first a sympathising section of the Communist International.

 

Part 14: The POR adapts itself to the MNR left

 

The least that a party which called itself revolutionary should have done was to have constantly denounced the counter revolutionary and turncoat role of Lechín, the dictatorship’s ex-prefect and now the appointed union leader. But the POR went on tail-ending the corrupt old bureaucrat.

 

“There can be no doubt that with the creation of a political organisation of a left-wing, independent of the right that controls the MNR and government, the imminent split will ensure the vanquishing of all vacillating and centrist positions, ensuring that, faced with this situation, all the leftists in the MNR will turn to the Party initially with no other aim than to win positions from the right and so deepen the revolutionary process. (72)

 

According to the POR Lechín had to be helped to create an independent faction and this would guarantee the defeat of the “vacillators and centrists” and would “deepen the revolutionary process”. The POR believed that the revolutionary party would be Lechín’s with which it could then unite.

 

“A group of intellectuals within the leading layer of the POR had got the COB started with the full agreement of the Executive Secretary of the FSTMB with whom they were old friends through bonds forged in old struggles going back to the Theses of Pulacayo. The relationship was so close that they believed that they could control the Labour movement through him while he used them for his own aims.

 

“The POR could not hide its servile attitude to the Executive Secretary on every question which came up in the COB. For example all the members of the POR voted with the majority to reject the credentials of the delegates of the university students; but when their leader asked them to reconsider the matter they all changed their minds without hesitation.

 

“Many cases could be cited but the most serious, which is almost a betrayal of the proletariat, was to give way to the requests of the top leaders about the launching of a manifesto to nationalise the mines. On this the workers demanded workers control because they thought workers point of view to be absolutely revolutionary. But when the Executive Secretary intervened asking for the amendment to be withdrawn in accordance with government policy only one POR member stood firm and supported the workers, the rest softened their position and, docilely attacked the government directive, and in order to disguise things asked for the amendment to be sent to the government in a separate note.“So on a number of occasions, the POR’s slavish attitude to the main COB leader, led it to making concessions prejudicial to the real revolutionary mood of the working class”. (73) (Memorias del primer ministro obrero, Waldo Alvarez, La Paz, 1986, pp.283-84.)

 

According to Catoira, when Lechín was “put in charge of the COB by the government, as soon as he became Minister of HydroCarbons and Mining, he shed the Trotskyist clothing in which the POR had clad him and put himself forward as simply a loyal MNR supporter.” (74) (El Sindicalismo Boliviano, Ricardo Catoira Marín, La Paz, p.43.) Whereas according to Lora, “Lechín who went back to Trotskyist posturing immediately after 9th April could be found at Paz’s side, but not in advance of him and thus accommodated himself to the radicalisation of the masses. He surrounded himself with POR members and, where he could, recited speeches written by the latter. (75)(Contribución …, Vol 2 Lora, La Paz 1978, p.228)

 

Notice that Lora recognises that the COB’s great traitor had the same ideology in 1952. Some people thought Lechín had evolved from the MNR to the POR in 1952 whereas others thought the opposite. What is certain is that nobody knew for whom that crafty individual was working. Lechín made use of everyone. The MNR let him have a certain independence and verbal radicalism so that he could consolidate his position in the labour movement and tame it. The POR thought that by writing his theses, speeches and programmes it was using him to reach out to the class. But it was the clever bureaucrat who used the POR to gain authority over the most militant workers and thus negotiate for a share of power within his party and his government. In exchange for mouthing the POR’s incendiary slogans Lechín got mild criticism and even support from the POR.

 

During the revolutionary euphoria of the 1950’s Lechín lived in the Hotel Crillon, the most luxurious hotel in La Paz. In contrast the workers who had made him their irreplaceable leader have always lived in the most degraded conditions of squalor, a situation which remains the same today”. (76) (El Sindicalismo Boliviano …, p.48.) This was never denounced by his POR hacks who made such efforts serving as his secretaries.

 

The POR went as far as to claim the line of the Lechínist newspaper Vanguardia as its own: “Its orientation is defined and determined by the route that the proletariat boldly opened up during the April events (…) Take care! The people are not the servants of the government. The government are the servants of the people’. A revolutionary fluency can be seen incarnated in its editors, interpreters of the majority views of the rank and file of its party formed by proletarians, peasants and office workers (…) if Vanguardia maintains its line, the path on which it is set will bring these bold lads the object of their desires when the working masses judge that feudal exploitation in the countryside must be liquidated. With them we will be firm in principles and consistent in revolutionary practice”. (77) (LO. 3.5.52, p.3.)

 

The POR identified itself with the Lechínist slogan of making the government the servant of the people. Within the capitalist state it is impossible to imagine that any government can defend the proletariat’s aims. The POR bet on the MNR left being able to enlighten the popular and working class majority in the MNR so as to reorient it and enable it to put the MNR government “at the service of the people”. (78) (LO. 25.5.52, p.1.)

 

Part 15: The POR believed that Paz would be able to create an anti-capitalist government

 

The nationalisation of the mines was the main demand which the working class talked about. Paz did everything possible to delay and moderate the measure but finally he carried it out in August 1952. When the government delayed carrying out the measure the POR said, “We cannot understand how a government that has the proletariat on a war-footing and prepared to defend it against any counter-revolutionary, retreats after taking a step forward. (79) (LO, 12.6.52, p.1)

 

A Marxist on the other hand could clearly explain why the government oscillated. It was a bourgeois government under pressure from the masses trying to do everything possible to hold back the latter and, though making concessions, at the same sought time to maintain semi-colonial capitalism. The POR could not explain the tremendous shifts of the regime because of the tremendous illusions that it had.

 

Like gullible petit-bourgeois the POR believed that the government was a product of the ‘revolutionary will of the masses’ and therefore they should be subordinated to it. “With arms in hand, the working class will know how to consolidate and carry forward any step in this sense made by the present government thrown up by the revolutionary will of the masses.” (80) (LO, 12.6.52, p.2.) Instead of seeing the MNR government as its own, which only needed a push, the party of the proletariat should have denounced it as a usurper which had to be deposed.

 

The illusions of the POR went to the extreme of believing that Paz himself could initiate a turn to revolution.

 

“It is possible that the President could have made some good proposals for achieving a real economic transformation of the country. But the reactionary element in the cabinet and its brigade of technicians are all openly right wing and therefore make it impossible to improve conditions for the proletariat (..) The left wing will not be able to stand up to the crushing majority which constitutes the MNR right wing unless it is based on the mobilisation of the masses. Meanwhile the present President of the Republic has his hands tied in front of his party comrades and, faced with creating of government of the people or staying President, seems to have chosen the latter”. (81) (LO 12.6.52, p.3.)

 

The job of a revolutionary party should have been to do everything possible to make the workers distrust Paz and to propose his removal by a new insurrection. For the POR on the other hand he had to be convinced to create a ‘government for the people’. In order to help the President ‘achieve a true economic transformation’ his most right wing ministers had to be removed.

 

While the POR’s aim was attempting to build up and influence the left of the bourgeois MNR, the latter in its turn was to influence the President to shift his position. The POR abandoned the promotion of class struggle. It replaced it by class persuasion. All revolutionary politics were replaced by a series of pressures on the leadership with the aim of reforming the official bourgeois bureaucracy and thus the President himself.

 

Every time that President started a speech to ingratiate himself with the radicalised masses, a Marxist should have denounced it as a trick to disorient the masses and an attempt to dress the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

 

“The bourgeoisie will make you any promises you want! It will even send its delegates to Moscow, enter the Peasants’ International, adhere as a ‘sympathising’ party to the Comintern, peek into the Red International of Red Trade Unions. In short, it will promise anything that will give it the opportunity (with our assistance) to dupe the workers and peasants, more efficiently, more easily, and the more completely to throw sand in their eyes – until the first opportunity, such as was offered in Shanghai”(82) (The Third International after Lenin, L.D. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New York, p.169-170.)

 

However the POR always ended up saluting every demagogic outburst by Paz. “His speech of the 21st July (1952) is quite clear. He not only offered to ‘nationalise the mines and carry the revolution to the countryside regardless of the consequences’ but promised ‘to arm the miners and factory workers’ so that they could defend the revolution in their own way.” (83) (LO, 3.8.52, p.3.)

 

This policy of sowing illusions in the revolutionary and even anti-bourgeois potential of Paz was to continue until after the first year of the revolution: “The President, revising the whole of his past political attitude, points to anti-capitalist and not merely anti-imperialist and anti-feudal aims for the revolution. This speech can very easily be regarded as Trotskyist (…) With these words Victor Paz has gone further than all his leftist collaborators who are so determined to hold back and obstruct the liquidation of the latifundia (…) in order that the left turns its victory into effective governmental influence (…) its only solution to the situation created was for the left to impose the total domination of the left in the cabinet”. (84) (LO, 5.8.53, p.1.)

 

Its complete adaptation to Paz was such that it believed that he was capable of breaking with and expropriating his own social class!

 

The origins of this individual whom the POR believed would open the road to an anti-capitalist government must be remembered. Víctor Paz came from a family of aristocrats and generals from Tarija. He had been a lawyer for the Patiño concern. He made his debut in politics supporting the bonapartist dictatorships which tried to imitate certain features of fascism (Toro, Busch and Villarroel). He was the President of the Central Bank and Finance Minister in the anti-working class governments of Peñaranda and Villarroel. He founded the MNR with a clearly anti-semitic, racist, ferociously anti-communist platform inspired by nazism and sympathetic to the imperialist axis of Hitler, Mussolini and the Mikado. When his party was in power from 1943 to 1946 it did not touch even one big mining concern or ranch.

 

On the contrary the MNR aimed its repression at union leaders and at peasants who occupied land. Its symbol was a dictator who was lynched,(85) it massacred the oppressed and took part in the butchery at Catavi. In 1947 it supported Hertzog for the Presidency. Then it spent the whole six years of reactionary rule conspiring with whatever butcher and rosca minister it could. In power it became the best weapon that imperialism had for holding back and reversing the revolution. Once he reorganised and revived the bourgeois state and armed forces Paz accentuated the turn to the right. Víctor Paz was directly responsible for the carnage at Sora-Sora (1964) as well as the atrocities during the period of Banzer’s dictatorship. When he returned to the government in 1985 he was the author of the worst attack on the social gains of the Bolivian workers in history. In just one month he raised prices by fifteen times and then sacked three-quarters of the mining proletariat.

 

It was a serious crime for a party claiming to be working class to disseminate even the faintest illusion that it was possible that such a reactionary could have ever installed an anti- capitalist government. All wings and sections of the post-Trotsky Fourth International are besmirched with that significant historical betrayal since they always supported this policy and never questioned it.

 

Part 16: The nationalisation of the Mines

 

In order to make sure that the President carried out the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, a cabinet of the union bureaucracy had to be imposed. In a manifesto aimed at the February 1953 Convention of the MNR, the POR suggested to Paz that he alter his cabinet to achieve “the overcoming of the present bonapartist government by another anti-imperialist and anti-feudal one which would be sustained by a front of revolutionaries and workers” (86) (LO. 6.2.53, p.1.)

 

While Paz, supported by Lechín, did everything possible to ensure that the workers did not occupy the mines and instead waited for a solution from above, the POR, far from denouncing these manoeuvres, took pains to idealise Lechín:

 

“The Minister of Mines and Petroleum, supported by those round him, quite clearly advocated expropriation without compensation”. (87)(LO, 29.6.52, p.4.).

 

A revolutionary party should have done the opposite. It should have drawn attention to the fact that while Lechín spouted radical phrases he was, as events showed, preparing nationalisation with compensation for enterprises in a poor state.

 

“ We agree with comrade Lechín when he states that the decree nationalising the mines is just the start of the economic and social transformation of the country.” (88) (LO, 11.11.52, p.1.)

 

Just prior to the nationalisation of the mines the POR said: “The balance of forces favours the interests of the workers, who, with certainty and firmness, have been winning ground inch by inch in spite of the vacillations of the MNR left-wing which has yet to put itself at the head of events (…) the nationalisation of the mines which will be announced shortly will be the starting point that will make the continuation of the capitalist system on the basis of the classical forms of exploitation impossible.” (89) (Boletin Interno, No.13. POR, p.9.)

 

Nationalisation is not an anti-capitalist measure in itself. It can just as well be a mechanism used by the bourgeoisie to help its development. The nationalisation of large scale mining allowed the state to obtain more resources to invest within the country, the small and medium mining sectors of the bourgeoisie could grow without having to face the competition of the big private monopolies while the other bourgeois sectors could develop by commerce and the production of goods, tied to, or derived from, large scale mining.

 

The nationalisation of large scale mining was not the start of the open destruction of capitalism, it strengthened it. The POR helped that process by limiting itself to raising the bourgeois democratic programme and by tailing the MNR and its ‘left’.

 

The MNR adopted the demand for nationalisation without compensation under workers control. However it ended by paying up so as to keep in with imperialism. ‘Workers Control’ was applied in the following way: the directorate of the Corporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL) was run by Carbajal (the first General Secretary of the FSTMB) and two of its seven directors were nominated by the FSTMB. The latter were not elected with a mandate and they were not recallable by rank and file assemblies. In actual fact this sort of ‘workers control’ was getting the participation of the workers in the business in order to stop them striking and so get them to break their backs for ‘their’ company. Workers control means the workers supervising the administration of the business with the aim of creating a dual power there that will gradually be extended. Of necessity it should culminate in workers control of every enterprise with a national committee of workers control and a struggle for power.

 

But when exercised by bureaucrats, with no control by the rank and file, it turns into the integration of a layer of workers, who had sold out, into the directorate of the business. “The worker leader Torres admitted that he earned 90,000 bolivianos per month for running COMIBOL (…) when a skilled worker earned 4,000 bs per month.” (90) (Revolution Bolivienne 1952-1954, Pierre Scali, La Verité, sup.333, 22.4.54, p.20.)

 

The POR limited itself to asking for workers control only in state enterprises while it did not question the prevailing regime in the private sector. It adapted to the bureaucracy controlling COMIBOL. Later on it raised the reformist alternative of getting a majority on the COMIBOL board. Faced with this position it should have tried to ask for the opening of the accounts of all enterprises and of the government so that they could be controlled and inspected by the workers through rank and file meetings and by delegates supervised by them with the aim eventually the forming soviets and struggling to seize power.

 

At the international level the POR said: “We demand a free market for tin”. (91) (LO, May 1953, p.2). What was really required was a producers’ cartel instead.

 

Part 17: The disintegration and reorganisation of the armed forces

 

After the April events in the armed forces “All the units had to face a serious problem: the troops recruited a few weeks previously had very little combat training and instruction. A large part of their working hours in the previous weeks had been used for practice drills for the military parade planned to coincide with the repatriation of the remains of Eduardo Avaroa. The soldiers were able to parade very well but they did not know how to fight”. (92) (Poder y Fuerzas Armadas 1949-1982, General Gary Prado Salmón, Cochabamba 1984, p.33.)

 

“In the first months of the revolution, only the COB possessed an armed force, the armed worker and peasant militias. The arming of the workers began with union militias when conditions did not exist for the formation of a similar force linked to the MNR. The meetings were impressive parades of armed workers and peasants (…) The COB assembly and the rank and file organisations, unlike the Executive Committee, were serious about the task of consolidating these militias, improving their armament, disciplining them and creating a unified command. Paz Estenssoro and Lechín instructed their followers to obstruct the efforts being made to strengthen the armed workers nuclei as they represented the greatest threat to the government. Taking advantage of the resources available because of their monopoly of power they began to organise militias in the zonal commands of the MNR, independent of the trade union militias and gave them the job of overseeing the main centres; the moviemento leaders, closely helped by Stalinism were given the means to sabotage the consolidation of the COB militias.” (93) (La revolución boliviana, G. Lora, p.271.)

 

A key problem in every revolution is the armed forces. A revolutionary party should have opposed the reorganisation of the bourgeois army in any form and put forward the demand to replace it by the armed people organised in militias. As the revolution deepens the repulse of any external or internal aggression should be based on the latter so as to move towards an internationalist and proletarian Red Army.

 

But this was not the policy of Lechín and his followers in the POR. While the MNR did everything possible to reorganise the traditional armed forces, Lechín tricked the workers with the fable that he only wanted a peaceful, technical and construction brigade type of bourgeois army. An armed force like that does not stop being guard dogs of capital, and its benign postures tend to give it popular support in order to justify its armed defence of the capitalist state. Costa Rica does not possess an army but a national guard that serves capital very well in terms of making the exploited work. Yankee imperialism has now sought to dismantle the Panamanian army in order to replace it by Civil Guards.

 

In July the POR identified with Lechín: “The position of the miners’ leader is well known as it has been put forward many times on workers demonstrations locally and elsewhere: he opposes the army which existed before the insurrection of the 9th April and favours instead the creation of a new technical army with industrial and farming functions.” (94) (LO, 15.7.52, p.1.)

 

Immediately after the April insurrection, the Bolivian armed forces were disintegrating. The well-known anti-communist general Gary Prado tells us what it was like at that time:

 

“In the barracks the situation was tense as the officers were split between those who supported and those who condemned the revolution. Nobody did anything except stand guard so that as much military equipment was preserved from the revolutionary host. A sense of defeat however was made worse when we learned the details of what had occurred in the three days of fighting confirming that the army had been beaten on every hand. The flight of the High Command made the officers feel even more abandoned. A number, fearing repression, deserted their units without delay and sought asylum in foreign embassies or voluntarily went into exile. Others, forgetting their duty, went home to await developments. A few stayed in the barracks trying to regroup their units, control the soldiers and keep an appearance of order and discipline.” (95) (Poder y Fuerzas Armadas 1949-1982, p.40.)

 

While this was happening (the 17th June 1952) the COB adopted (…) the draft presented by the mining representatives that said:

 

“The National Corps of Armed Militias of the Central Obrera de Bolivia will be organised in the following way 1. The National Command 2. Departmental and Special Commands. The National Command will consist (of) the National Leader, Comrade Víctor Paz Estenssoro. Commander-in-Chief, Comrade Juan Lechín Oquendo (…) The commanders of the cells will be elected by the departmental militiamen, by the Departmental Centres and the National Command of the COB.”

 

Gary Prado continues with his analysis:

 

“The analysis of the military commands is different. They thought that resolution was an attack on the institution of the Armed Forces and furthermore it was humiliating. However, faced with the impossibility of putting forward arguments at the time good enough to prevent the formation of militias in the prevailing political situation and by the precarious balance occurring then and in order to enable the army to survive it was decided to try to maintain some degree of control over the militias in some way.”

 

“With that aim by means of deceit, the Chief of the General Staff Germán Armando Fortún, offered to supply the COB with all the advice needed to improve the organisation of the Armed Militias such as the appointment of enough instructors to instil into the militiamen disciplined attitudes, basic military training and responsibility on the understanding that the militias will be, in the final analysis, the reserve of the Armed Forces of the Nation”.

 

“The General Staff offer was warmly accepted by the COB (…) In this way it succeeded to a certain extent in dealing with the problem of the militias, at least inasmuch as it prevented them from becoming a structure that would turn them into a parallel army. The National Command of the militias never functioned properly”. (96) Poder y Fuerzas Armadas 1949-1982, pp.52-54.)

 

Instead of struggling to make the workers militias independent and opposed to the previous bourgeois armed forces which carried out the massacres of Uncia, Catavi, Villa Victoria and others, the COB leadership of Lechín and the POR “warmly accepted” the proposal of the high command of the defeated genocidal army which had as its aim the castration of the militias to make sure that they did not transcend the boundaries of the bourgeois state and to subordinate them to the control of the armed spinal column of the class dictatorship of capital. They also accepted, as the national leader of the militias, a class enemy, Víctor Paz.

 

Lechín tried to avoid the construction of an independent force of armed workers the whole time. He wanted to transform them into the MNR’s armed guards or the militia reserves of the regular bourgeois army.

 

In his memoirs Lechín always boasts of having defended the ‘fatherland’ and ‘army’ in the slaughter of the Chaco War. He also boasts that in April 1952 he handed over to the police the arms thrown down by the soldiers. “I calculate that there were about 3,000 deaths. In Corioco Street many women and children and men died. Eventually we were able to take the Caiconi arsenal and all the arms captured we handed over to the Carabineros.” (97) (Historia de una leyenda: Vida y palabra de Juan Lechín Oquendo, Lupe Cajias, La Paz 1989, p.148.) However Lechín does not want to say that he was one of the authors of the military reorganisation and that he failed to establish people’s courts to punish the perpetrators of the massacres.

 

In mid-1952 there was a drunken brawl between militiamen and soldiers. This was used as a pretext for weakening the militias and encouraging the further re-establishment of the armed forces. The POR dealt with Lechín in a very fawning manner:

 

“The immediate re-organisation and ‘goose-stepping’ of the army that the said gentlemen tried to carry out, taking advantage of a bloody incident between drunks in the ‘Ciros’ night-club, instigated by falangists in the pay of the rosca, was soon stopped with singular energy by Minister Lechín. The above mentioned incident led to a triumph of the MNR left wing over the rightist, conciliatory and opportunist bureaucracy.

 

“We revolutionary workers see this with sympathy and, relying on our own forces, we fraternally salute all the triumphs of the MNR left-wing, represented by Lechín and the newspaper Vanguardia.” (98) (LO, 3.8.52, p.3.)

 

Part 18: The desire to transform the MNR

 

The huge adaptation of the POR to the MNR is seen not only in its attempts to shift the cabinet leftwards but in wanting to transform the bourgeois MNR so that it would be turned into an anti-capitalist revolutionary party. The POR went so far as to write an open letter to the MNR convention where it put forward the position that, if the MNR moved leftward, it could absorb the POR.

 

“The convention should be worker-peasant and not bureaucratic (…) The left wing should impose revolutionary demands without fear of reaction and imperialism”. (99) (LO, supplement, 3.2.53, p.4.)

 

The POR held the suicidal belief that Lechínism could declare and impose a revolutionary programme to turn the MNR in a revolutionary direction.

 

“The MNR is certainly a party in transition from traditional or reformist politics to the new politics of the revolutionary transformation of the proletariat as the leader of the whole oppressed society.” (100) (LO 11.11.52, p.3.)

 

“The main essential doctrinal foundation required to play a decisive role in the present period can only be obtained by modifying, in its turn, the social composition of the party. Its uniform social nature could be achieved around the main social force of anti-imperialist struggle. The most powerful and decisive social force is made up of exploited workers and peasants. It is around these social forces that the unity of the party must be attained.”

 

According to the POR a struggle had to continue so that “the workers and peasants of the MNR impose a programme that reflects their own interests, and likewise impose a leadership that reflects the interests of the exploited. The present task is to ensure that the MNR must be controlled by the exploited masses”. The exploited will never be able to control a party created by and for the bourgeoisie.

 

“Only on condition that it takes the consistent progressive step of adopting a programme of principles in accord with the upsurge of the masses then carrying it out, will the MNR be able to play the role imposed on it by circumstances.”

 

“Solid worker cadres in the MNR, elimination of counter-revolutionary tendencies, a political programme which represents the interests of the exploited classes, in brief the absolute pre-eminence of the working class within the MNR ranks is the only thing that can give the MNR an important role in the revolutionary course towards the Worker-Peasant government.” (101) (LO, 11.11.52, p.3.)

 

The POR distinguishes counter revolutionary wings from another, or others, supposedly revolutionary ones. The one certain thing is that all wings of the MNR were and are counter-revolutionary.

 

“If the MNR wants to maintain its status as a mass party it will have to be more sensitive to their aspirations; it will have to integrate the demands for which they fought and which they will never renounce, into its programme. That will not be done unless the representatives of caciquism and imperialism are expelled from the party (…) This is the only possibility of survival remaining open to the MNR: to stop keeping the workers and peasants out of its ranks but, on the contrary, to give them the greatest influence over the party leadership.” (102) (LO, 29.11.52, p.2.)

 

“If the MNR does not organically change itself, expelling the rightists, freemasons, adventurers, businessmen and carpetbaggers from its ranks, it will become the gravedigger of the revolution (…) If the left wing succeeds in taking charge and having a working class face, the POR is ready to work with it and even to fuse with it. This new party form ought to be reflected in the forms of government which can only be a worker- peasant government.” (103)(LO, Supplement, 3.2.53, p.3.)

 

No matter how many workers a bourgeois party has it does not change its class character. While the POR struggled to get more workers into the MNR Trotskyists should have struggled for more workers to leave it. The POR’s line had been much more serious than simply seeking to reform the government and so advance towards a worker-peasant government. The POR based its whole strategy on trying to reform the solidly bourgeois MNR. This demanded greater participation of the labour bureaucrats in the leadership, greater ‘sensitivity’ from the top chiefs and more verbiage. All the problems of Bolivia could have been dealt with if more workers had been in the MNR and they had strengthened the left wing which would have been the most demagogic of them.

 

It proposed that the same party which only four years before it had labelled ‘nazi-fascist’ should now turn itself in the party of the social revolution. Furthermore if the rightist elements had been purged and the Chávez and Lechín left wing had taken charge the POR would have agreed to fuse with the MNR. A revolutionary party can never fuse with a counter-revolutionary one, even less so when it is leading the class enemy.

 

The positions of the POR were worse than those of Stalinism when it betrayed the Chinese revolution in 1927. In the latter, thanks to the policy of the Chinese CP which wanted to support and transform the Guomindang, bourgeois nationalism, once it had used the Communists to gain power, massacred them in the slaughter of Shanghai. Trotsky attacked the Stalinist Comintern for:

 

“consider(ing) the Kuomintang not as a bourgeois party, but as a neutral area of struggle for the masses (…) to assist the (summit) to convert ever broader masses into ‘cattle’, and under conditions most favourable to it to prepare the Shanghai coup d’etat (…) they imagined that by means of ordinary elections at Kuomintang Congresses power would pass from the hands of the bourgeoisie to the proletariat.” (104) (The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder, New York, 1970, p.218.)

 

The left wing was no more than a demagogic tribune used by that bourgeois party in order to distract the masses and to get them to accept a solution of complete capitulation to imperialism. Chávez ended up as vice president to the leader of the MNR right-wing. Lechín ended up supporting all the imperialists’ plans totally, such as the triangular one and by visiting Nationalist China with the object of getting US endorsement for his management of their semi-colony.

 

As a consequence of that line, in 1954, the whole of the POR old guard (Warqui, Ayala etc) all the POR leaders of the COB, (Moller, Zegada) and the great majority of Lora’s Leninist Workers Faction dissolved themselves and went into the MNR.

 

Part 19: The peasant uprising

 

The insurrections of 1936, 1946 and 1952 as well as the civil war and the great struggles undertaken between the end of the Chaco War and 1952, had the cities and mines of Bolivia as their arena. At that time at least 70% of the population lived in the country. The peasants lived on the margins of the national economy, did not vote and had little direct part in politics.

 

The peasant masses spoke Amerindian languages and the great majority were illiterate. Their main relations of production were still based on serfdom. The Indians had to pay the cacique in labour, products or money.

 

Villarroel had been demagogic in his calling of the congress of the indigenous peoples. The peasant masses were gradually awakening. When the army of the rosca collapsed the Indian tenants organised themselves and a few months after April 1952, a strong movement of land occupations broke out – mainly in the valleys of Cochabamba and Titicaca which had trading links with the cities. These movements were not guided by Marxist ideology. The MNR immediately took them over.

 

“The only substantial incident of ‘communist’ influence involved the POR, which under the direction of its erstwhile leader Warqui had established something of a presence among the peasants of Ucureña. This was soon to prove ephemeral and had only been made possible by supporting a faction in conflict with the leader of the regional confederation over financial questions.” (106) (Rebellion in the Veins, Dunkerley, Verso, pp.70-71.)

 

Once the peasant mobilisations for land began to get under way the POR succeeded in attaining great influence in the convulsed valley of Cochabamba. In 1953 it correctly launched the slogan of occupation of the land and expropriation of the latifundiae. However its agrarian programme did not go beyond the limits of the bourgeois democratic revolution.

 

When a peasant receivers a plot of land he becomes a petit- bourgeois. Competition and the operation of the market results in some small proprietors becoming rich and turning into bourgeois farmers, buying lorries or tractors, acquiring new land and hiring labourers while others lose their plots and sink into the proletariat. Land does not deal with all the peasantry’s problems and neither dos it mean that there will be a great increase in the supply of farming produce to the country. There must be electricity, mechanisation and modernisation of the agricultural sector as well as an improvement in communications and means of exchange.

 

In order to achieve the latter industry and the banks must be expropriated and placed under the control of the workers and small peasants. Thereby the peasants can more easily get credit and urban products. The expropriation of the rich and the nationalisation of large scale transport will mean investment in agriculture, lower transport costs and lower prices for goods traded between town and country. By eliminating the private distributors and middlemen and being in direct contact with their markets, the peasants will get better terms for their trade. The state monopoly of foreign trade will allow the agricultural sector to be protected and provided with goods at subsidised prices.

 

In order to do this it is vital that the revolution spreads internationally and it must try to control the main cities, banks and factories in the region. A workers state should try to encourage the peasants to develop associated forms of large scale production voluntarily. But such collective farms will inevitably fail if the revolution remains isolated in one country and a backward one at that.

 

Three more important problems for the peasant are education, culture and political democracy. Plans for literacy campaigns and education could only be carried out on the basis of substantial sums obtained by confiscation from the rich and by a general mobilisation of educational volunteers (something that the MNR did not want to do.)

 

Even now in Bolivia the majority of the population not only still live in the countryside but still speak Quechua, Aymara and other Amerindian languages. In order to try to integrate them into modern society and the struggle for socialism, the proletariat must unconditionally defend the right to national self-determination for these nationalities before the bourgeoisie. That should entail a struggle for the official recognition of the Amerindian languages so that the great majority of Bolivians can develop their own culture or be educated or examined in their own mother tongue. If a strong feeling for autonomy or separation emerges, the proletariat should struggle for the right of these nationalities to opt for that course but also to persuade them that the best course is that of a soviet region or republic in the framework of a socialist federation. The POR did not raise any slogan favouring self-determination of the Indian nationalities. When, decades later, it did so, it clothed itself in populism and idealised the obscurantist pre-Columbian religion.

 

The MNR introduced adult suffrage. The illiterate Bolivian peasants were able to vote for the first time. The POR did not make either that demand or the one for an Constituent Assembly. Later it demanded that illiterates be eligible for election and that the proletariat have a preferential vote.

 

The POR did not demand the expropriation of industry and credit in order to put them under workers control. It programme was limited to a bourgeois and national framework. The way to realise it was to put pressure on the ‘comrade President’, Paz.

 

“While we all waited for the government to make its position clear on the problem of the latifundia while taking up the hopes of the exploited masses, President Paz Estenssoro answered our worries with the needs of the Indian, of labour and sacrifices.” (107) (LO, 29.6.52, p.4.)

 

Once more the POR pinned its hopes on Paz. What was needed was to alert the masses constantly that the entire MNR was not interested in carrying out an agrarian revolution.

 

One of the personalities most supported by the POR was Ñuflo Chavez, one of the leaders of the MNR left wing, who had worked very closely with the POR and, in spite of being a rancher’s son, had been put in charge of peasant matters by the COB and was peasant’ minister. “The Minister of Peasant Affairs has forbidden the Federation to collect dues. Is this the way to encourage organisation in the countryside?” (108) (LO, 6.2.53, p.1) Once more the POR was surprised that its friend was inconsistent and pleaded with him to be consistent. The minister should have been denounced for wanting to disorganise the peasantry in order to moderate and regiment it.

 

Eventually the MNR adopted an agrarian reform that failed to pull the agricultural sector out of its backwardness. “between 1954 and 1968 only about eight million of some 36 million hectares of cultivated land changed hands. After two years 51% of the latifundia in La Paz, 49% in Chuquisaca and 76% in Oruro had been affected, but in Tarija the figure was 33% in Santa Cruz 36% and in Cochabamba only 16%, the national total being 28.5%.” (109) (Dunkerley, Verso, p.73.)

 

Part 20: The opportunist international orientation of the POR

 

The Bolivian revolution could never have overcome its impoverished capitalist semi-colonial condition by remaining isolated in a backward and landlocked country. The internationalisation of the revolution was vital in order to ward off counter-revolution and to establish the material basis for socialist construction.

 

The MNR did everything possible to isolate the revolution within its own boundaries. It did not even dare to organise or encourage insurgent movements in other countries of the continent however moderate the programmes of these insurgents were. Víctor Paz took great pains to be imperialism’s trump card. Lechín and his POR scribes took great pains to promote him.

 

If the POR press and its programme of action is examined no serious fight for the international expansion of the revolution will be found. It did not even call for a struggle for the Socialist United States of Latin America. Even the most pro-nationalist wing of the Latin American ‘Trotskyist movement’, the Ramos current criticised the section of the Fourth International for its provincialism. “the POR, far from basing its policy on the development of the struggle in Latin America, limits itself only to Bolivia. This is a suicidal but neither a working class nor revolutionary policy (…) A Workers Government is only conceivable on the plane of a revolutionary struggle in all Latin America, not in one of its isolated ‘provinces’.” (110) (Trotsky ante la revolución Latinoamericana, Juan Ramon Peñaloza, Bs As 1953, pp.152-154)

 

The POR has never been renowned for regarding international politics as important. However in the few articles written by the POR about other countries a line of colossal capitulation to counter-revolution can be seen.

 

A report from the POR CC said: “First Peron and Vargas in Argentina and Brazil, then Paz Estenssoro in Bolivia and later Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador and finally Ibañez in Chile, unifying the revolutionary and anti-imperialist aspirations of their own peoples, express in their broad electoral victories, not only the discontent of the working masses for the system of capitalist exploitation, but the fundamental defeat of imperialism’s subjection of our semi-colonial countries through the traditional methods of economic slavery. Such mass movements fully identify themselves with the revolutionary actions that are liberating China, Korea, Indonesia and Indo-China and which enable these markets to escape the influence and exploitation of imperialism (…)” (111) (Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, p.3)

 

The POR maintained that the bourgeois governments of Peron Vargas, Paz and Ibañez had defeated imperialism and “fully identified themselves” with the revolutions that were overthrowing the bourgeoisie in Asia. In Indonesia the bourgeoisie was never deposed and, furthermore, thanks to the popular frontist policy of the CP, it demobilised the workers and paved the way for a coup that would assassinate a million opponents. The nationalist Latin American governments did not question the backward capitalist semi-colonial nature of the countries that they ran. They simply sought to generate better conditions for the development of a national bourgeoisie. The aim of their social reforms was to widen the internal market and control the organisations of labour. All these regimes were anti-communist and ended up supporting imperialism and repressing the workers.

 

The POR openly showed its sympathy for the PSP of Chile. Instead of denouncing its reformist politics of entering a capitalist government, the POR promoted it and presented it as an anti- Stalinist party derived from Trotskyism and with a semi- Trotskyist orientation.

 

“The Partido Socialista Popular is a centrist party which recently shifted to the left and, for some time, gave the Ibañez government a socialist tinge. As to be expected, the policy of the PSP could not be achieved by the cabinet and its leadership, energetically pressured by its rank and file, had no other remedy than of giving expression to the popular discontent by the ministerial crisis (…) it should be noted that the PSP is anti-Stalinist and it is derived from the Left Opposition.” (112) (LO, 27.9.53, p.4.)

 

The POR’s most scandalous position was its open support for Zionism. In an article called Israel gives a lesson to imperialism the POR called for support to the main bastion of imperialism in the Middle East against Jordan. It is the duty of any Marxist to defend any Arab semi-colony (no matter how reactionary it regime) in face of the racist aircraft-carrier of imperialism.

 

“The tiny republic of Israel, also apparently received ‘free aid from the USA’. The conflict with Jordan had the virtue of showing the game played by imperialism. The Yankee chancellery told Israel to stop engineering works on the river Jordan under threat of a suspension of US aid to this tiny state. The reply of this young country with a population of less than two million was a hard lesson for Yankee imperialism. The Israeli Chancellor Moshe Sherrett declared that ‘Israel does not sell its sovereignty or independence for any type of help.’

 

“This lesson of not compromising national sovereignty to imperialism for a few tons of food should be learnt by every ruler.’” (113)(LO, 3.11.53, p.1.)

 

By that time Israel had destroyed the Palestinian state and had expelled hundreds of thousands of Arabs from its territory. The USA did not want its ‘guard-dog’ to continue carrying our further ‘excesses’. The POR saw in this even more reactionary attitude of Israel a dignified gesture for the MNR government to imitate. It is as if anyone today could be proud of a South African government which defied the USA by refusing to repeal racist laws.

 

Part 21: The leadership of the Fourth International identifies itself with this Menshevik policy

 

The whole of the treacherous policy of the POR was given total support by the Fourth International. Furthermore the latter admitted to being its guide.

 

The resolution adopted by the IEC of the Fourth International at its 12th Plenum (November 1952) said:

 

“The way in which the POR has operated so far is, in general correct, and corresponds both to the objective reality and to the real strength of the party.

 

“Ideologically preparing since before the events of 9th April, the POR was not surprised by them and, above, all it did not fail to correctly interpret them and to adequately adjust its policy (…) This double support was concretised in the critical support given to the MNR government” (114) (Contribución …, p.241)

 

Early in 1953 the journal Fourth International asserted: “The POR began by justifying granting critical support to the MNR government (…) it gave the government critical support against attacks of imperialism and reaction and it supported all progressive measures.” (115)(Fourth International, January- February 1953, p.16.)

 

“Ideologically prepared in advance for the events of April 9, the POR was not surprised by them and above all did not fail to interpret them correctly and to adequately adjust its own policy.” (116) (International Information Bulletin, January 1953, SWP, New York, p.24.)

 

In 1953 the factional break-up of the Fourth International began between the International Secretariat of Michel Pablo, Ernest Mandel and Posadas and the International Committee of the SWP (USA), the French PCI of Bleibtreu-Favre and Lambert and the groups of Gerry Healy and Nahuel Moreno. The split was the result of the latter grouping’s rejection of the tactic of deep entrism within Stalinism. Nevertheless the IC carried out, or would later, deep entrism into social democracy or bourgeois nationalism.

 

During the split the Bolivian revolution was not discussed. All had supported the POR line. The split was not between ‘orthodox’ and revisionist’ forces but between two wings which had already supported the centrist orientation of seeking to reform dissident Stalinists (such as Tito) or nationalists (such as the MNR).

 

Much later in the search to find arguments for their factional battles, the anti-Pabloists discovered the betrayal of 1952 which they had endorsed at the time.

 

The International Committee of Healy published a vast collection of seven books entitled Trotskyism versus Revisionism which contained hundreds of letters and documents which were supposed to show its struggle against revisionism. However in none of those volumes is the 1952 revolution mentioned. The extensive first volume is dedicated to the split with Pabloism. More than fifty texts of that polemic are reproduced. Nevertheless in all those documents Bolivia is only mentioned in two brief and passing references of a purely administrative nature. The Vern and Ryan texts are totally ignored. All this merely confirms that the ‘anti-Pabloists’ never questioned the Menshevik strategy at all which was unanimously adopted by the Fourth International and that the latter had already shifted towards centrism between 1948 and 1951.

 

At the beginning of the 70s the Healy current was to develop a particular interest in Bolivia arising from its wish to engage in a factional manoeuvre against the PCI of Lambert, at that time linked to Lora and because it had begun to form its first very active South American section in Peru. In 1971-72 it launched a massive political offensive against the POR, accusing it, correctly, of having conciliated the nationalist Torres government. But these criticisms were made from a sectarian angle as it denounced Lora for having dared to engage in joint anti- gorilla actions with Torres and for not having dared to agitate for the slogan ‘Down With Torres!’ which would have been a blunder at the time as only reaction would have replaced him. Later the journal Clave, in its first number, published an analysis of the crisis of the Trotskyist movement in which many of the criticisms made at the time by the anti-defencists Shachtman and Robles were repeated.

 

However all these criticism were made under pressure. Healyism supported the pro-nationalist line of the POR in 1952. Its sectarian orientation in the Andes ran counter to its total capitulation to the bourgeois movements of Khomeini, Arafat, Qaddafi and Ortega at the same time. Healyism went so far as to justify the massacres by the theocratic dictatorship of Iran of the Kurds, women refusing to wear the oppressive veil and ‘Trotskyists’.

 

In 1980 the currents of Moreno and Lambert fused to give birth to the Parity Committee and then the Fourth International – International Committee. In the programme that it adopted it said:

 

“The synthesis of Pabloist betrayal occurred in Bolivia. In this country the POR (Partido Obrero Revolucionario), Bolivian section of the international, led by the hand of Pablo, committed one of the greatest betrayals against the revolution so far this century, equal to, or greater than, that of the Mensheviks during the Russian revolution, than that of the social democrats during and after the First World War, than that of the Stalinists in China, in Germany, in Spain etc. In Bolivia the working class, educated by Trotskyism, carried out – at the start of 1952 – one of the most perfect working class revolutions known: it destroyed the bourgeois army, built up workers and peasants militias as the only real power in the country, and organised the Central Obrera Boliviana in order to centralise the workers movement and the militias. The bureaucracy that led the COB handed over power – which it had in its hands – to the bourgeois nationalist party the MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario). Bolivian Trotskyism was a power, it had great influence in the labour and mass movement, it had participated as co-leadership of the working class and popular insurrection that destroyed the army. The International Secretariat (IS), led by Pablo, laid down the treacherous and reformist line of critically supporting the bourgeois government. The present crisis of Bolivian Trotskyism, the present crisis of the whole of the Fourth International, the strengthening of Stalinism in Bolivia and of all the petty bourgeois nationalist movements in Latin America, derives from that criminal policy of class collaboration which Pablo obliged the whole of the International to carry out in Bolivia. The Pabloite revisionist principle was always the same; the MNR pressured by the mass movement would see itself obliged to make a socialist revolution”. (117) (Actualización del programa de transición, Nahuel Moreno, Caracteres Ed, Bogota, 1990, pp.40-41.)

 

What this demonstrated was the greatest cynicism. Lambertism had worked very closely with Lora before subscribing to that position. It was the international current that showed the greatest eagerness to demonstrate that Lora’s POR had always advanced a revolutionary orientation. Pierre Broué, its great historian, wrote a small book in which he defended the official line of the POR in 1952.

 

The Moreno current never questioned the right-centrist policy of the POR in 1952. In fact it made it its own. While the POR capitulated to the MNR, Moreno was engaged in total adaptation to Peronism. For a decade he was to be dissolved inside it giving allegiance to the leadership and economic programme of the bourgeois Peron. When the POR began to break up in the mid-1950s, the SLATO (American Secretariat of Orthodox Trotskyism), headed by Moreno and Vitale, had a greater affinity with the majority of the Fracción Obrera Leninista of Moller which was dissolved into the MNR. In his major work Moreno admits that Vitale took great pains to win the Moller group to SLATO. Those who went over to the MNR did so under the powerful influence of the pro-Peronist PSRN, within which Moreno, Ramos and pro-Peronist social democrats worked together.

 

Another current that has just ‘discovered’ that Lora committed serious errors in 1952, is the Partido Obrero of Argentina. This current was one which had unconditionally defended the whole pro-nationalist line of the POR. Its historian Coggiola based the whole of his analysis of the history of Trotskyism in his country and continent, on the basis of total adherence to the conceptions and actions of the POR-MASAS. In its daily practice it has struggled to impose worker ministers onto Peronism and for a front with bourgeois sectors behind a bourgeois democratic programme and a joint presidential candidate. Now it has decided to break with Lora because he supported a dissident faction. Without drawing up any balance sheet of its co-habitation with Lora, Pablo Rieznik published a brief and deficient article in which he belatedly initiates an attack on Lora in 1952.

 

All the currents that claim to come from the Fourth International since 1951-52 are compromised with the historic betrayal of the Bolivian revolution. The lack of a radical balance sheet of the lessons of that crime has meant that all those currents continue to practice different varieties of adaptation to forces foreign to the proletarian revolution.

 

The heirs of Pablo’s IS capitulated before the FLN in Algeria, to Mao, Castro and Ho Chi Minh’s Stalinism, to Sandinism, to Khomeini, to Euro-Communism and bourgeois pacifism and ecology. The Latin American Bureau would end up following Posadas until its transformation into a puppet of the conservative Stalinists. The different variants of the IC would capitulate to the MNA in Algeria, Peronism & Belaundism in the 50s, where its sections ensconced themselves) Social Democracy and Sandinism. Healy would die converted into an emulator of Arafat, Gaddafi, Khomeini and Gorbachev.

 

The SWP(USA) has ended up openly reneging on Trotskyism and unconditionally hailing Castro, the FSLN and the FMLN. Lambertism survives wishing to form a new international and reformist parties like that of Lula in Brazil and based on the strategy of forming bourgeois democratic governments. Morenoism was always characterised by its embrace of whatever was in fashion among left currents (at different times it was Peronist, Castroist, Maoist, standard bearers of the formation of sections of the Social-Democrat Socialist International, apologists of Walesa’s ‘Solidarity’ and for the immediate capitalist unification of Germany.)

 

References

 

1. The CON was the predecessor of the COB.

 

2. Memorias del primer ministro obrero, Waldo Alvarez, La Paz 1986, p.188.

 

3. Lucha Obrera, 12.6.52, p.3.

 

4. Trotskyism in Latin America, Robert J. Alexander, Hoover Institution Press, California 1973, p.134.

 

5. Sindicatos y revolución, G. Lora, La Paz 1960.

 

6. La Revolución Boliviana: Análisis crítico, Guillermo Lora, La Paz 1963, p.254.

 

7. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, 1953, p.11.

 

8. Lucha Obrera, 18.4.52, p.2.

 

9. Rebelión en las venas, James Dunkerley, Ed Quipus, 1982, La Paz, p.50 – Verso edition p.45.

 

10. Rebellion in the Veins, Verso, London 1984, p.64. (The editor of the English text omitted ‘allegedly’ before ‘controlled’. Note by Eds of RH)

 

11. Labor Action, 27.10.52. Shachtman’s paper.

 

12. Rebelión en las venas, p.52, Verso Edition, p.46.

 

13. Labor Action, 7.4.52.

 

14. Contribución a la historia politica de Boliviana, G. Lora, Vol.2, pp.237-238.

 

15. The Militant, 12.5.52, Lora interview Part 1, SWP New York.

 

16. The Militant, 12.5.52, Lora interview Part 1, SWP New York.

 

17. The Militant, 19.5.52, Lora interview Part 2, SWP, New York.

 

18. The Militant, 12.5.52, Lora interview Part 1, SWP, New York.

 

19. The Militant, 19.5.52, Lora interview Part 2, SWP, New York.

 

20. “A Letter on the Bolivian Revolution”, S Ryan, 1.6.52, SWP Internal Bulletin.

 

21. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, undated, p.10.

 

22. La revolución boliviana: Análisis crítico, G. Lora, La Paz, 1963, p.254.

 

23. Rebelión, 1.5.52, p.8-9.

 

24. “Gualberty Villarroel (…) Our proletarian homage to the memory of the martyr president”, ibid., p.9.

 

25. Lucha Obrera, 12.6.52, p.3.

 

26. Lucha Obrera, 29.6.52, p.4.

 

27. Lucha Obrera, 18.4.52, p.2.

 

28. Boletin Interno, no.13, 1953, p.7.

 

29. Lucha Obrera, 25.5.52, p.3.

 

30. ibid., p.301.

 

31. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, undated, p.8.

 

32. Movimiento obrero y procesos politicos en Bolivia: Historia de la COB 1952-1957, Jorge Lazarte, EDOBOL, La Paz 1989, p.280.

 

33. Lucha Obrera, 15.7.52, p.1.

 

34. Lucha Obrera, 29.1.52, p.2.

 

35. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, p.11.

 

36. Trotskyism in Latin America, Robert J. Alexander, p.125.

 

37. Lucha Obrera, 1.6.52, p.2.

 

38. Internal Bulletin, no.17, August 1953, SWP, New York, p.40. The second Ryan letter, dated 4.8.53.

 

39. ROSCA was the mining oligarchy – Eds note.

 

40. Lucha Obrera, 25.5.52.

 

41. ibid., p.277.

 

42. Contribución a la historia politica de Boliviana, G. Lora, Vol 2, p.231-232.

 

43. Bolivia: la revolución inconclusa, James M. Malloy, Ceres, La Paz 1989, p.243.

 

44. ibid., p.243-244.

 

45. A History of the Bolivian Labour Movement, Lora, Cambridge, p.281.

 

46. ibid., p.284.

 

47. La revolución Boliviana: Análisis crítico, Lora, La Paz, 1963, p.267.

 

48. ibid., p.270.

 

49. ibid., p.298-299.

 

50. Lucha Obrera, 23.1.53.

 

51. Lucha Obrera, March 1953, p.1.

 

52. See interview in Facetas, 5.7.87.

 

53. Nahuel Moreno always claimed … in its bureaucracy.

 

54. La Revolución Boliviana, G. Lora, p.262-263.

 

55. Movimento obrero y processos politícos en Bolivia, Jorge Lazarte, p.6.

 

56. ibid., p.7.

 

57. As Stuart King so …. Permanent Revolution, no.2, p.36.

 

58. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, p.12.

 

59. The Third International after Lenin, Trotsky, Pathfinder, New York 1970, p.181. Stalin, el gran organizador de derrotas. La III Internacional despues de Lenin, Trotski, El Yunque, Bs As 1974, p.241.

 

60. The author may be incorrect in assuming that.

 

61. The Communist International 1919-1943: Documents, ed. Jane Degras, Vol.1, Cass, 1971, p.427. (The author is wrong. Zinoviev drafted the theses which represented a compromise between the lefts and right. In Dialogue with Heinrich Brandler (Marxism, Wars and Revolutions, Deutscher, Verso, 1984) the latter says: “Radek was accused by Moscow of being the author of my definition of the five forms of workers’ government. In reality, he tried to prevent this definition from being adopted; not because he thought it incorrect but, as I learned years later, because it irritated Zinoviev, and Radek found this inconvenient for his factional struggle in Moscow.” pp.158-159. Brandler advanced it at the 8th Congress of the KPD in January 1923, just after the Fourth Congress of the Communist International which took place in Nov-Dec 1922. See Revolutionary History Vol.2 no.3, pp.1-20. Eds note)

 

62. ibid., p.426.

 

63. ibid., p.426.

 

64. Contribución a la historia politica de Boliviana, Lora, Vol.2, La Paz 1978, p.253.

 

65. Lucha Obrera, 11.11.52, p.3.

 

66. Lucha Obrera, 11.11.52, p.2.

 

67. Lucha Obrera, 25.5.52, p.3.

 

68. Bolivia: la revolución derrotada, Liborio Justo, Cochabamba 1967, p.224.

 

69. Lucha Obrera, 2.8.53, p.1.

 

70. This reference is missing in the text available to me – ETOL

 

71. Internal Bulletin, no 17, August 1953, SWP New York, p.50.

 

72. ibid., p.10.

 

73. Memorias del primer ministro obrero, Waldo Alvarez, La Paz, 1986, pp.283-84.

 

74. El Sindicalismo Boliviano, Ricardo Catoira Marín, La Paz, 1987, p.43.

 

75. Contribución …, Vol.2, Lora, La Paz 1978, p.228.

 

76. El Sindicalismo Boliviano …, p.48.

 

77. LO, 3.5.52, p.3.

 

78. LO, 25.5.52. p.1.

 

79. LO, 12.6.52, p.1.

 

80. LO, 12.6.52, p.2.

 

81. LO 12.6.52, p.3.

 

82. The Third International After Lenin, L.D. Trotsky, Pathfinder, New York, pp.169-170.

 

83. LO, 3.8.52, p.3.

 

84. LO, 5.8.53, p.1.

 

85. Villarroel was lynched in 1946. Eds note.

 

86. LO, 6.2.53, p.1.

 

87. LO, 29.6.52.p.4.

 

88. LO, 11.11.52, p.1.

 

89. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, p.9.

 

90. Revolution Bolivienne 1952-1954, Pierre Scali, La Verité, supp. no.333, 22.4.54, p.20.

 

91. LO, May 1953, p.2.

 

92. Poder y Fuerzas Armadas 1949-1982, General Gary Prado Salmón, Cochabamba 1984, p.33.

 

93. La revolución boliviana, G. Lora, p.271.

 

94. LO, 15.7.52, p.1.

 

95. Poder y Fuerzas Armadas 1949-1982, p.40.

 

96. Poder y Fuerzas Armadas 1949-1982, pp.52-54.

 

97. Historia de una leyenda: Vida y palabra de Juan Lechín Oquendo, Lupe Cajias, La Paz 1989, p.148.

 

98. LO, 3.8.52, p.3.

 

99. LO, Supplement 3.2.53, p.4.

 

100. LO, 11.11.52, p.3.

 

101. LO, 11.11.52, p.3.

 

102. LO, 29.11.52, p.2.

 

103. LO, Supplement 3.2.53, p.3.

 

104. The Third International After Lenin, Pathfinder, New York, 1970, p.218.

 

105. This note seems to be missing.

 

106. Rebellion in the Veins, Dunkerley, Verso, pp.70-71.

 

107. LO, 29.6.52, p.4.

 

108. LO, 6.2.53, p.1.

 

109. Rebellion in the Veins, Dunkerley, Verso, p.73.

 

110. Trotsky ante la revolución nacional latinoamericana, Juan Ramon Peñaloza, Bs. As., 1953, pp.152-154.

 

111. Boletin Interno, no.13, POR, p.3.

 

112. LO, 27.9.53, p.4.

 

113. LO, 3.11.53, p.1.

 

114. Contribución a la historia política de Bolivia, G. Lora, Vol.2, La Paz 1978, p.241.

 

115. Fourth International, January-February 1953, p.16.

 

116. International Information Bulletin, January 1953, SWP New York, p.24.

 

117. Actualización del programa de transición, Nahuel Moreno, Caracteres Ed, Bogota 1990, pp.40-41.

 

 

 

Restoring Capitalism in China

 

 

 

Note from the Editor: Below we reprint a resolution published by the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) - the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI). It was originally published in 2000. This resolution provides a useful analysis of the process of capitalist restoration in China in the 1990s.

 

The RCIT has published a number of works on capitalism in China. They are collected in special sub-page on our website. A comprehensive analysis can be read in chapter 10 of Michael Pröbsting's book "The Great Robbery of the South. It can be read online here.

 

Michael Pröbsting is the International Secretary of the RCIT.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

At its Fifth Congress this summer, the LRCI concluded that capitalism had been restored in China by 1996 and that this was made possible by changes in the class character of the state in 1992. But why has the triumph of capitalism in China not been accompanied by the same political upheaval as in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union?

 

Capitalism was restored in China by 1996. The fact that this was carried out relatively smoothly under the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party was made possible by two principal factors.

 

First, nearly two decades of “market reforms” had created powerful capitalist sectors within China, and secondly, the crushing of working class political opposition in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square had removed the most important social obstacle to capitalism’s return.

 

The key to understanding the Chinese pattern of restoration lies in the bonapartist character of the political regime established after the revolution of 1949 – a regime sufficiently detached from the pressure of the main classes in society to pursue a determined policy in the face of determined resistance.

 

The Chinese Communist Party’s own bureaucratic-military rule was assembled during the war against Japan after 1937 and this became the basis of the new administration after 1949.

 

With its social basis in the peasant majority, high prestige amongst the small urban working class and a bourgeoisie that had lost most of its wealth under Chiang Kai-shek, the CCP faced almost no social constraints when it decided to adopt the Soviet model of bureaucratic command planning to modernise China.

 

But from the outset factional struggles and the consequent shifts in policy rocked society. Three years of famine with twenty million dead resulted from the voluntarist experiment of the Great Leap Forward and the People’s Communes, while the Cultural Revolution closed down all education.

 

The decisive turning point in the succession of factional battles came with the return of Deng Xiaoping from internal exile in 1978. By this time, growth rates in both agriculture and industry were declining, not fundamentally because they were subject to centralised planning but because the dictatorship of the party suffocated the initiative and denied the creativity of workers and peasants themselves.

 

Deng’s solution in agriculture was to encourage the movement away from the communes and allow the peasants to decide for themselves what to grow and how to grow it. Releasing the peasantry from bureaucratic control led to immediate improvements.

 

In industry, however, Deng’s reforms were unsuccessful because they could not address the inherent limitation of the Soviet model of planning.

 

Although it is possible to construct and operate the basic industries by bureaucratic command, it is not possible either to raise productivity or to dynamise consumer goods production without the creativity and enthusiasm of the workers themselves. But this required democracy in the planning process – the one thing the Stalinist bureaucracy could not contemplate.

 

Instead, Deng relied on greater autonomy for the enterprise managers. Throughout the 1980s, a series of reforms were introduced to allow them to retain profits, seek new markets, reduce the workforce and increase production.

 

However, the overall mechanisms of the command planning system could not accommodate factory level decision-making. An important basis of support for the whole regime was the planning bureaucracy it had itself created.

 

Time and again the reforms were delayed, diluted and even derailed by the powerful and entrenched interests within the state sector.

 

Quite apart from factional opposition to reform, the actual structure of the planned sector militated against change. Managers often wanted to introduce greater financial stringency or new product lines.

 

But it was impossible to evaluate costs, obtain raw materials or invest in newer technology in a system where all resources were allocated from on high and prices were laid down by Beijing.

 

The only way in which the system could increase production was by building new capacity and taking on new workers. As a result, although productivity stagnated, output continued to grow in the state sector.

 

Nonetheless, a combination of constant pressure from the Politburo, headed by Deng, and the consequences of other reforms such as those in agriculture, the Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs), the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and the introduction of foreign direct investment, did begin to loosen controls and increase managerial autonomy from the mid-1980s.

 

Economically, increased contact with the TVEs allowed industrial managers to start making profits, “on the side” whilst more than fulfilling their quotas for the planning authorities.

 

At the same time, decentralisation of the planning authorities themselves strengthened provincial institutions, especially banks, which extended credit for the building of yet more new capacity, thereby adding indebtedness to the problems of the state sector.

 

Politically, tensions increased both within party and state as different factions proposed different courses of action. It became impossible to keep these arguments secret and by the mid-1980s a semi-public discussion over economic policy was under way.

 

Attempts by the authorities to suppress this movement only served to highlight the lack of “democracy” within China and thus the seeds of the “democracy movement” were sown which grew after 1987.

 

Popular discontent, however, was not confined to political issues.

 

Fuelled by inflation, which rose to 18 per cent in 1988, and the manifest corruption of the new rich and many officials, economic grievances drew in the working class. At first, the leadership of the party was slow to respond to the rising discontent. Its own ranks were seriously divided.

 

The “reformers”, supported by an increasing number of managers and economists who had already given up any hope of reforming the planned economy, tended to support the demands for greater openness and public debate but the defenders of the “old regime” sympathised with the anti-corruption demands of the masses.

 

However, when protests became huge the leadership began to close ranks. Zhao Ziyang, who was believed to be sympathetic to the demonstrators, was replaced by Li Peng.

 

Finally, when increasing numbers of workers’ delegations from around the country began arriving in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Deng and Li decided to send in the reliable troops from rural provinces.

 

Although the immediate consequence of this bloodbath was a return to power by the military and supporters of command planning, the destruction of the workers’ movement inevitably strengthened the pro-restorationist forces in the long run.

 

To regain stability, the regime not only froze prices and purged a number of conspicuously corrupt officials but also raised wages and restored many central controls over the economy.

 

In the short term the suppression of the Democracy Movement showed both the solidity of the regime’s support in the countryside and the continued strength of the factions opposed to the market reforms. However, over the next two years, it became clear that a return to the past was impossible.

 

Although inflation was brought under control and production in State Owned Enterprises briefly rose in 1991, by 1992 it was the southern provinces – especially Guangdong – which were the most market-dominated and which were growing fastest.

 

Having crushed and cowed the industrial working class and emboldened by the inability of the “old guard” to reverse earlier reforms, Deng and the “technocrats” around Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji decided the time was ripe for a decisive change of policy.

 

This was first signalled by Deng’s “Southern Tour” in January 1992 during which he praised the Shenzhen SEZ as the way forward for the whole of China.

 

This was then codified into a series of policy statements including the opening up of the border regions to trade, relaxation of foreign investment regulations in cities along the Yangzi River and in a further 18 provincial cities, the complete opening for foreign trade of a series of coastal cities and the abolition of the Production Office of the State Council and its replacement by the State Council Office of Economic Trade, under Zhu Rongji.

 

The change of policy culminated in the adoption of a new programme for a “socialist market economy” by the Fourteenth Party Congress in October 1992. At the time, Workers Power judged this programme to be similar in vein to the “market socialist” policies that had been adopted years earlier in, for example, Hungary and Yugoslavia.

 

These had weakened, but not destroyed, the fundamentals of central planning in those countries. In the light of the events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union where capitalist restoration took the form of the so-called “big bang” strategy of closing down planning ministries, liberalising prices and, thereby, practically halting production, we concluded that Beijing had chosen to retain some modified form of central planning. We were wrong.

 

With hindsight we can now see that this was the point at which the character of the state changed. Whilst continuing to be a bonapartist regime that had to secure its own economic base and at the same time balance between the main social classes, it consciously decided to transform its economic base from a planned economy to a state capitalist one.

 

Politically, the old guard had to be ousted from all positions of decisive power but a thorough purging was not necessary because the two years after 1989 had proved that they were, ultimately, a spent force, especially as their only realistic basis of support – the working class – had been suppressed in 1989.

 

Economically, the shift in policy was possible because the planned sector was by now only responsible for slightly more than 50 per cent of production. Any serious shortfalls in production could be made good either from the private and TVE sectors or from the world market.

 

The crucial evidence that the government was committed to the destruction of the planned economy came at a Central Committee Plenum in November 1993 which adopted “Fifty Articles for a Market Economy”.

 

This laid down the strategy for systematically dismantling the planning controls over the state owned enterprises and their transformation into independent “trusts”.

 

At the same time, it proposed a radical reform of banking, a move towards convertibility of the Renminbi, removal of restrictions on where foreign investment would be allowed and the end of the “iron rice bowl” labour regulations which guaranteed urban industrial workers job security, education rights, housing, healthcare and pensions.

 

Similar proposals had been made before but had not been implemented and although, in 1993, the state sector for the first time produced less than 50 per cent of all industrial production, it continued to dominate the industrial core, the “commanding heights” and remained the single most important sector.

 

Since no actual dismantling of the planning system had yet taken place, we continued to characterise China as a degenerate workers’ state. We should have recognised it as a bourgeois restorationist state which was still preparing to push through its programme.

 

The next two years, however, saw a dramatic change in the Chinese economy under the impact of “trustification”, the first closures of planning ministries and a flood of foreign capital. In fact, a serious degree of economic instability developed as enterprise managers sought to take advantage of growth rates of up to 18 per cent .

 

Characteristically, many opted for extending their production facilities rather than improving the productivity of existing plant and equipment. As a result, the state owned sector continued to grow at an annual rate of some 8 per cent even though this left a majority of its firms in debt and unable to make a profit.

 

It was during this period that the basis of production shifted decisively in favour of capitalist methods. Figures for 1996 show state owned industry producing only 28.3 per cent of industrial production while the collectively owned, mainly TVE industry, accounted for 39.4 and, very significantly, production in private hands (15.5 per cent ) and foreign owned companies (16.6 per cent ) amounted to 32.1 per cent .

 

In subsequent years, state policy focused on the incorporation of the 1,000 biggest and most productive plants in the state sector, leaving some 49,000 smaller enterprises to find their own solutions in the new economic landscape.

 

The majority of them appear to have been privatised at give away prices to their own managers. Others have merged to form more viable units and the remainder have been closed altogether.

 

However, there is now a clear trend towards not just “corporatising” state owned enterprises, as envisaged in the mid-1980s, but towards full privatisation in the form of shareholding joint stock companies.

 

The Fifteenth Party Congress in September 1997 officially sanctioned such companies, justifying them by the remarkable argument that they were a form of collective ownership and, therefore, entirely compatible with its socialist principles. This represents an important shift towards the developing bourgeois class within China.

 

Since that Congress, Zhu Rongji has been made Premier by the People’s Congress and, as head of the first government that contains no military figures, has overseen the dismantling of the remaining planning ministries, the divesting of the PLA’s entire industrial empire and the negotiation of an agreement with the USA to allow China to enter the World Trade Organisation. This deal, which included the opening of China to foreign firms and banks, is likely to result in a further dramatic restructuring of the Chinese economy.

 

The prospect for China, therefore, is one of mounting instability. The imposition of capitalist norms in industry has already led, according to the World Bank, to some 10 million redundancies per year for the last three years and this has generated a wave of political struggles across China.

 

Two decades of reform, culminating in the restoration of capitalism have not only changed the face of China but transformed and massively enlarged the Chinese working class, now the biggest single working class in the world. Out of its experiences and its current struggles, that class will find its own political voice and create its own political organisations.

 

The task of revolutionaries everywhere is to ensure that these are won to a revolutionary programme that destroys for good the dictatorship of the bureaucracy, expropriates the new capitalists and takes power into the hands of workers’ councils and a workers’ militia.

 

 

 

 

 

Restoring capitalism: Planting the seeds of capitalism

 

 

 

 

How the Chinese Communist Party brought more market relations into the fields

 

On the eve of the 1978 reforms, agriculture employed between 70 and 80 per cent of the total workforce. It was organised on the basis of the “People’s Communes” which embraced whole districts, the production brigade, numbering up to 100 households, and the production team which was essentially the traditional village or hamlet.

 

All decisions over production were taken at Commune level in keeping with the requirements of the central planning authorities. Although the system brought some advantages in spreading modern techniques and organising large scale projects such as irrigation, its disadvantages were beginning to outweigh these.

 

In particular, concentration on single crops not only ignored local variations but also required expensive transportation of products that could have been produced in all localities. Prices for agricultural goods were almost entirely laid down by the state.

 

By the mid-1970s, the rate of increase in food production had been overtaken by the rate of growth of the population. In several provinces, peasants were already turning away from the communes and returning to “family farming” and local party officials were turning a blind eye because the results were greatly improved harvests.

 

Faced with the choice of losing authority altogether or a second famine, Beijing sanctioned the break up of the communes

 

What emerged was the “Household Responsibility” system in which peasants decided their own land use but were obliged to deliver a quota of specified crops to the state at fixed prices. Production in excess of the quota could be sold on the free market or to the state at a “negotiated price” between the fixed prices and the free market

 

To ensure adequate supplies, the state guaranteed to buy everything above the quota output.

 

The result was an immediate increase in production; grain production rose by 3.7 per cent per year for the next six years, cotton by 18 per cent per year and meat by 8.9 per cent . Overall, peasant incomes rose by 12.3 per cent per year in the same period.

 

This increase in production and income stimulated other economic activity. The number of rural markets increased from 38,000 in 1980 to 67,000 by 1993. In addition, the agricultural sector was the initial stimulus to the development of local small scale industrial and commercial activity in the so-called TVE sector

 

It was a source of capital accumulation, not only in farming but in associated sectors, and a new developing indigenous capitalist class, a social force that had been eradicated for nearly four decades.

 

 

 

Restoring capitalism: Enclaves of capitalism

 

 

 

The role of Special Export Zones in China

 

Originally, the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) which were set up after 1979, were kept entirely separate from the rest of the Chinese economy. Their role was to attract foreign capital investment, high technology and to give China access to modern management techniques and foreign currency.

 

Their output was destined for export, not for the domestic market. In return, foreign companies were offered tax breaks, cheap labour and subsidised infrastructural development.

 

In the 1980s, the SEZs developed rapidly with double digit growth rates throughout the decade. As they grew, they shifted their emphasis from the original cheap labour assembly of toys and plastic goods to textiles and then to electronic and optical instruments.

 

By the 1990s production facilities of all sorts had begun to move away to lower wage areas such as the Pearl River delta between Hong Kong and Canton. The SEZs were increasingly concentrating on “service” industries such as real estate management, insurance and banking.

 

From this it is clear that, despite their character as supposedly sealed enclaves, separate from the rest of China, the SEZs began to have an impact beyond their borders within a decade of their foundation. Not only did they provide employment they were also a growing market for all kinds of goods and services, often supplied from the TVE sector.

 

Over the last ten years the influence of the SEZs strengthened as the barriers to the domestic market were lowered and foreign firms were allowed to set up elsewhere.

 

As sources of foreign trained management and legitimisers of, for example, short term contract labour and what has been called “frontier capitalism”, they have exerted an immense gravitational effect.

 

Especially in the coastal provinces, they have diverted resources from the state sector, pulled the TVEs into their own orbit and established economic links between the world market and the non-state sectors.

 

Today, their “special” status is being relinquished under the terms of the World Trade Organisation agreement signed last November. From the point of view of the restorationists, their job has been done.

 

 

 

Restoring capitalism: The role of foreign investment in capitalist restoration

 

 

 

What is the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) on China's path to capitalism?

 

Until 1979, foreign investment in Chinese enterprises was simply forbidden. Given the country’s political instability, it is doubtful whether there would have been many volunteers even without the ban.

 

FDI was very slow to take off to begin with. Until 1984, only 250 state owned enterprises were allowed to take in foreign partners as “joint ventures”. Between 1979 and 1984 only US$1.8bn was actually invested, although the state borrowed some US$11bn as well.

 

Although the figures did increase for the rest of the decade, before falling back sharply in the aftermath of the Tienanmen massacre, it was not until the fundamental change of policy in 1992 that the floodgates opened. By 1994 China was second only to the USA in terms of FDI – attracting US$33bn that year.

 

Enterprises were dropped and all provinces were allowed to invite in foreign investment. By 1995, according to the official industrial census, there were 59,000 firms in China with foreign investment. They employed nearly nine million people, 13.6 per cent of the industrial workforce and produced 13.1 per cent of total industrial output.

 

Investment on this scale clearly has implications for the character of the economy. While loans to the government are guaranteed a return, investment into joint ventures on a shareholding basis, or into wholly owned companies, is obviously investment in production and foreign capitalists will want to ensure their profits by influencing, if not controlling, production.

 

Consequently, the availability of huge volumes of foreign capital acted as a solvent of the production and distribution linkages established under the planned economy and accelerated the creation of new ones determined by the pursuit of profit.

 

This is particularly important with regard to the scrapping of controls on foreign investment into the large scale industry of the state sector after 1992.

 

 

 

Restoring capitalism: Let a thousand enterprises bloom

 

 

 

How is capitalism growing in China?

 

The Township and Village Enterprise sector (TVE), as it has come to be called, was a direct product of the agricultural reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s.

 

When the communes were formally dissolved, in 1994, the workshops and small scale industries which they had developed passed into the hands of the local authorities, de facto the party secretaries.

 

In keeping with central demands for initiative and economic growth, they were then developed to respond to increased farm incomes by supplying building materials, tools, transport, slaughterhouses, food processing plants and similar products.

 

From these humble origins, and often using the networks of contacts of the state and party officials, the TVEs grew rapidly in the 1980s to become not only an important source of manufactured goods (32 per cent of industrial production by 1992) but also the provider of employment for 130 million rural workers (30 per cent of all rural workers, 1996 figures).

 

According to official statistics for 1995, the TVE sector as a whole produced 44 per cent by value of total national industrial output.

 

The precise status of the TVEs has caused considerable confusion because they are listed as “collectively owned” in Chinese statistics. As a result, western commentators, particularly those who wish to deny the progress of capitalist restoration, have added them to the “state sector” to show that some 70 per cent of the economy is "not capitalist".

 

They make a double mistake. The first is terminological. Despite the characterisation as “collectively owned”, 90 per cent of the total number of TVEs in 1994 were owned by individuals, although these were very small scale and accounted for only 30 per cent of output by value.

 

More importantly, whether these enterprises are capitalist or not is not primarily a matter of legal definitions of property forms. The point is that these are all independent enterprises, not part of any planned system of production.

 

Two-thirds of output is produced by wage labour, all production is for the market and their investment funds originate either in retained profits or commercial credit. They are, in a word, capitalist.

 

Numerically, the majority are very small capital formations but the development of the sector as a whole follows a predictable pattern from small, local and labour intensive operations to increasingly larger, more highly capitalised firms which are capable of operating not only across the whole home market but even abroad on the world market.

 

As the TVE sector has grown and become more capital intensive, the sector has been unable to absorb labour at the same rate as it could in its early days and adds to mounting rural unemployment.

 

The importance of the TVE sector when assessing the character of the Chinese economy is not simply its percentage of total industrial output, significant as this is. Production is still in small units and the sector could not be said to dominate the national economy as a whole.

 

However, it does employ a growing percentage of the working class, it is a source of capital accumulation and it is the basis of a new industrial bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie able to take advantage of the privatisation drive of the state since the mid-1990s.

 

 

 

Gramsci and the Revolutionary Tradition

 

 

Note of the Editorial Board: The essay below was first published in the journal Permanent Revolution No. 6 (Autumn 1987). Permanent Revolution was the theoretical journal of the British section of our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International. The founding cadres of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) were expelled from this organization in 2011 when they fought against its centrist degeneration. The RCIT has today sections and activists in 11 countries.

 

We republish this article because it elaborates a Marxist assessment of the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci. It recognizes his important activities to found and build the Communist Party in Italy in the early 1920s. However, it also critically evaluates his theoretical conceptions which disabled him to fight against the Stalinist degeneration of the Communist International. It is important for Marxists today to combine appreciation for Gramsci’s activities as well as insights with a clear demarcation of his centrist theoretical conceptions (“hegemony”, “war of position“ etc.) which could later be misused by various Stalinists and reformists.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the death of the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci. In 1926 he was arrested by Mussolini’s fascists and two years later sentenced after a show trial to twenty years imprisonment. Although released in 1937 he was too ill to survive. He died in April that year.

 

The commemoration of his death has once again provided the occasion for quite distinct tendencies on the left to wrestle over his legacy. Marxism Today (MT), the journal of the Euro-Stalinist CPGB, reminded its audience in its April issue that:

 

‘Without doubt, Gramsci has been the most important single theoretical influence on Marxism Today over the last decade.’(1)

 

This influence was filtered through the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Yet the PCI had not always been so ready to recognise Gramsci’s contribution to Marxism. It was ten years after Gramsci’s death before the PCI decided to publish an edition of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, suitably censored to remove any favourable references to Trotsky or hints of oppositon to Stalin’s policies in the 1930s.

 

But the crisis of Stalinism after 1956 produced an ideological vacuum in the ranks of the western Stalinist parties. In Gramsci the PCI found an ‘Italian Marxism’ that could fit the bill. It could claim continuity with the formation of the PCI, yet distance itself from the ‘excesses’ of Stalinism in the 1930s; it could claim to find in Gramsci’s work a critique of ‘statism’ that could allow it to reject the monolithism of Stalinism without collapsing into social-democratism or conceding to the revolutionary (i.e. Trotskyist) critique of Stalinism.

 

The PCI were to argue that Gramsci’s conception of ‘hegemony’ lent support to their policy in the 1970s for parliamentary backing to the anti-working class government of Christian-Democracy (the ‘historic compromise’).

 

In the last few years, however, the reformist trajectory of the PCI has led this party to put some distance between itself and Gramsci. Earlier this year the PCI leader, Natta, claimed that Gramsci was too ‘fundamentalist’. It is no surprise, therefore, to find it increasingly common for anti-Stalinists to lay claim to Gramsci’s heritage.

 

Fifty years ago in an obituary to Gramsci the Italian Trotskyist Pietro Tresso said it was vital to not allow the Stalinists to ‘make use of Gramsci’s personality for their own purposes’(2). This remains the case. But modern centrism attempts to go further. For example Livio Maitan’s appreciation of the Italian revolutionary’s life in the Mandelite review of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International seeks to establish that there is a ‘completely revolutionary core’ to Gramsci’s work and that ‘Revolutionary Marxists have the right and the duty to claim the heritage of Antonio Gramsci’(3)

 

The Socialist Workers Party (GB), while correctly taking Stalinism to task for seeking to depict Gramsci as a reformist, have, like Maitan, failed completely to generalise out of the Italian revolutionist’s life a communist appraisal of his contribution to Marxism. John Molyneux says of the years 1922-26:

 

‘Even a casual glance at Gramsci’s writings of this period show that he remains firmly on the terrain of revolution.’(4)

 

Chris Harman’s pamphlet for the SWP — Gramsci versus reformism—adopts a similarly one-sided view of Gramsci. For Harman it is good enough that Gramsci believed in revolution not reform, never abandoned the insurrectionary road and recognised both the need for a Bolshevik-type party and the seeds of a workers’ state lodged within the factory councils’ movement.

 

In essence, Harman, Molyneux and Maitan only display an inverted error to the Stalinists. In their account Gramsci’s contribution to the PCI up until his arrest is unproblematic and shows him to stand four square on the ground of the revolutionary Comintern. The ‘Lyon Theses’ of 1926 are represented as the pinnacle of his political work. His work after that time, as found in the Prison Notebooks, whilst containing certain errors, does not represent a rupture with the revolutionary Gramsci. For Maitan, ‘there is an undeniable continuity in Gramsci’s thought and approach from his writings in the years of the Russian revolution . . . to the 1935 notes when the Notebooks end(5). ‘In Harman’s view, it was simply that the fascists succeeded:

 

‘. . . in preventing his Marxism from fully realising the potential displayed in L’Ordine Nuovo and the “Lyons Theses”.’(6)

 

In effect these accounts only serve to underline the truth of Trotsky’s adage that it is very difficult for centrists to recognise centrism in others. It is necessary to analyse things more deeply than this. It is precisely because the present day SWP or USFI judge matters from a series of revolutionary principles and disdain to measure their own (or others) contributions by the yardstick of programme, that they fail to assess Gramsci’s political theory and practice against the background of the leadership and policies of the Comintern in the period 1919-26.

 

When analysed from this perspective it is possible to show that while Gramsci was never a reformist, his politics were in serious measure at variance with the practice and theory of Lenin and Trotsky while they were in the leadership of the Comintern. In short, it can be seen that in fact Gramsci traversed a classical centrist evolution, in his case from ultra-leftism to right-centrism.

 

 

 

Gramsci 1915-21

 

 

 

Born in Ales on the island of Sardinia, Gramsci went to Turin in 1911 to study at the University. It was there that he was to come into contact with the powerful Turin labour movement whose centre of gravity was to be found in the Fiat car plants and related industries. In 1913 he joined the Socialist Party (PSI).

 

Drawn more and more into the work of the party Gramsci gave up his studies in November 1915 to join the editorial board of the PSI paper Il Grido del Popolo. Within months he was writing for the Turin edition of the official PSI daily Avanti!. In these years as an active militant but before the Russian Revolution of 1917 shook the foundations of European social democracy, Gramsci’s politics were a considerable distance from those of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, despite the fact that Italy and Russia presented very similiar strategic and tactical tasks. By the time Gramsci became a conscious revolutionary in 1915 the Bolsheviks had gone through the experience of one revolution and counter-revolution and in the process had clearly formulated their positions on the revolutionary party and the agrarian question. The implications of these positions were to elude the lefts in the PSI until 1921. By 1915 Lenin had come to grasp the reasons for the collapse of the Second International in the face of imperialist war and the need for a complete political break with it. Gramsci and the left in the PSI were ignorant of Lenin’s attitude to these events.

 

Gramsci’s own political apprenticeship had been markedly different to Lenin’s. It was not the classically ‘orthodox’ Marxist tradition of Kautsky and the German SPD or Plekhanov which formed Gramsci’s background but rather a specifically Italianised version of Marxism which found its way to Gramsci through the works of Croce, Labriola and Gentile. It was to these figures that Gramsci turned for a remedy to the weaknesses that he perceived in the practice and theory of the right wing in the Second International and the PSI. Gramsci felt that the passivity and fatalism of this trend was itself related to an original flaw in the historical materialism of Marx and Engels. He considered that Marx’s critique of political economy as found in Capital was in fact mechanical materialism which ignored the role and power of the subjective factor (the working class) to become conscious of its own exploitation and rise up to overthrow a system regardless of economic conditions. Thus he saw the materialism of Marxism as deficient and in need of a return to Hegel, which Croce advocated, in order to inject a dose of idealism and provide an adequate account of the subjective political factor in revolutionary politics.

 

Lenin and Trotsky’s approach to the problems of the Russian Revolution were very different to this. As early as 1899 Lenin, in polemics with the Narodniks, argued against their mechanistic interpretation of Marx’s political economy which led them to conclude that the backwardness of Russia’s internal market meant that the development of capitalism in Russia could be avoided. As early as 1905 Trotsky outlined in his theory of ‘permanent revolution’ that Russian capitalism had to be understood in the context of the uneven and combined development of capitalism on a world scale. In alliance with European, especially French, capitalism, the Tsarist autocracy had overseen the rapid extension of capitalism in Russia. Precisely because of this both Lenin and Trotsky contested the legal Marxist view, however, which insisted that because of this development the leadership of the bourgeois revolution against the Tsar fell to the Russian bourgeoisie.

 

They proved that the weakness of an indigenous Russian bourgeoisie and the social weight of the Russian proletariat combined to guarantee that the former would bloc with reaction against the working class when faced with a real fight to force through bourgeois democratic demands.

 

Whereas for Gramsci the revolution in backward Italy had to be carried through despite its social relations through an act of will, for Lenin and Trotsky the revolution in backward Russia would occur precisely because of the contradictions in the material fabric of Russian capitalism. The flaws in Gramsci’s methodological grasp of Marxism betrayed a real weakness in his grasp of historical materialism. For a while in the 1920’s, as Gramsci was propelled towards the positions of the revolutionary Comintern, the significance of these weaknesses became obscured. The full significance of them were only to be fully revealed in the Prison Notebooks in his discussion of ‘civil society’ and the ‘state’.

 

 

 

Gramsci and the Russian Revolution

 

 

 

It was with this method that Gramsci greeted the Russian Revolution of 1917. While welcoming it as a ‘proletarian act . . . [which] must naturally result in a socialist regime’(7), he regarded it as a confirmation of his own view of Marxism. He considered it a ‘Revolution against Das Kapital’ and saw in the Bolsheviks’ work ‘the continuation of Italian and German idealist thought, and which in Marx was contaminated by positivistic and naturalistic incrustations.’(8)

 

Yet despite this attack on ‘Marxism’ in methodological terms his real target was the Menshevik strategy which believed that there was a:

 

‘. . . fatal necessity for a bourgeoisie to be formed in Russia, for a capitalist era to open, before the proletariat might even think of rising up, of their own class demands, of their revolution.’(9)

 

In Lenin he saw the kind of leader that could force the pace of history by an act of organised will rather than someone who could give a conscious expression of the social contradictions in Russian society.

 

As the revolutionary crisis deepened in Italy in the years after the Russian Revolution Gramsci had occasion to reflect further on the lessons that could be learned from Lenin. In August 1917 workers in Turin led an insurrection against the local state which was supported by a general strike throughout the whole of the Piedmont region. Eventually defeated at the cost of 500 lives and another 2,000 casulties the Turin workers refused to be subdued. The working class movement rose again in an unprecedented manner during the years 1919-20. In these years the PSI grew from 81,000 in 1919 to 216,000 in 1920. The trade union federation under the direction of the PSI—the GCL—mushroomed from 320,000 to 2.3 million between 1914 and 1920.

 

In April 1919 Gramsci with others set up the paper L’Ordine Nuovo. Very quickly Gramsci steered it away from a simple diet of abstract propagandism with a heavy emphasis on cultural items towards a paper that sought to transform the growing movement of factory committees into something akin to the soviets in Russia. In June he wrote of the workers’ state:

 

‘This state does not pop up by magic: the Bolsheviks worked for eight months to spread and make their slogans concrete: all power to the Soviets, and the Soviets were already known to to the Russian workers in 1905. Italian communists must treasure the Russian experience and save on time and labour.’(10)

 

In October 1919 the PSI affiliated to the Comintern and the following month fought a general election on a programme which called for the dictatorship of the proletariat. They won the largest bloc of seats in the new parliament—156 seats out of 508. In early 1920 the PSI went on to win control in over half the municipal councils. Without question the Italian workers were seeking the path of revolution.

 

By the spring of 1920 the struggle in the factories had risen to a higher stage with the formation of the Internal Commissions which enabled the workers to control whole aspects of the factory. Throughout the summer of 1920 in excess of a half a million workers were involved in the commissions and councils. Gramsci grasped exactly what was at stake:

 

‘Under the capitalists the factory was a minature state, ruled over by a despotic board. Today after the workers occupations, this despotic power in the factories has been smashed; the right to choose passed into the hands of the working class. Every factory that has industrial executives has become an illegal state, a proletarian republic living from day to day, awaiting the outcome of events.’(11)

 

But this was the crux of the matter: how to direct the ‘outcome of events’? How to turn dual power in the factories into a challenge for national state power? Here Gramsci’s weaknesses over the party question were cruelly exposed.

 

Certainly the maximalist leadership around Serrati were guilty of refusing to take responsiblity for organising the working class through the party to prepare for the seizure of state power. But Gramsci had always failed to strive for a revolutionary communist party. Even after the affiliation to the Comintern Gramsci was reluctant to fight the Turati reformist wing up to the point of expulsions. He did not even share Bordiga’s grasp of the need to organise to fight for one’s factional views on a national scale within the PSI.

 

It is a remarkable fact then that Harman in his pamphlet should skate over the failings of Gramsci and the party with the remark that when it came to valuing the role of Marxist intervention in the class struggle:

 

‘His own activity in 1919-20 and 1924-26 was a shining (although not, of course, perfect) example of such intervention.’(12)

 

Lenin and Trotsky were much harder on the failings of all sections in the PSI. Trotsky said of the PSI:

 

‘The Party carried on agitation in favour of the soviet power, in favour of the hammer and sickle, in favour of Soviet Russia, etc. The Italian working class en masse took this seriously and entered the road of open revolutionary struggle. But precisely at the moment when the party should have drawn all the practical and political conclusions from its own agitation it became scared of its responsibilty and shied away, leaving the rear of the proletariat unprotected.’(13)

 

Lenin was equally harsh:

 

‘Did a single communist show his mettle when the workers seized the factories in Italy? No. At the time there was as yet no communism in Italy.’(14)

 

In fact Gramsci retrospectively was a lot harder on himself than Harman is prepared to be. In 1924 he wrote:

 

In 1919/20 we made extremely serious mistakes which ultimately we are paying for today. For fear of being called upstarts and careerists we did not form a faction and organise this throughout Italy. We were not ready to give the Turin councils an autonomous directive centre, which could have exercised an immense influence throughout the country for fear of a split in the unions and of being prematurely expelled from the Socialist Party.’ (15)

 

It was this quality of self-criticism—no matter how closely connected personally to the events and how costly the mistakes proved—a quality possessed by all great revolutionists, that enabled Gramsci to turn to the Comintern.

 

 

 

The Formation of the PCI

 

 

 

The failure of the PSI in the revolutionary situation in Italy in 1920 did at least force the left in the party to finally break with the reformist leadership. The Communist Party of Italy (PCI) was finally formed in January 1921 at Livorno. It was established in a period of ebb in the international class struggle; in Italy’s case a period of strengthening reaction and the growth of fascism.

 

At its founding conference the PCI had between 40,000 and 60,000 members. By the time of Mussolini’s march on Rome (a fascist coup) in October 1922 the party had shrunk to 25,000. Under the impact of the first round of repression that followed membership fell to around 5,000 by early 1923.

 

In these difficult years the PCI’s leadership found itself in conflict with the Comintern’s leadership as it sought to develop its perspectives for the early 1920’s. By the time of the PCI’s formation there had already been two Comintern congresses (1919, 1920). The perspectives and tactics outlined at these had been designed to take full advantage of the crisis of the bourgeoise in Europe and the weakness of social democracy. It was a time of resolute splits with reformism and the formation of communist parties, of preparing for the seizure of power.

 

By the time of the PCI’s founding congress and the Comintern’s Third Congress in June/July 1921 the situation was changing. Opportunities had been lost, the bourgeoisie had endured the worst and survived. It gathered confidence and returned to the offensive. Social democracy, despite its treacherous aid to the ruling class, had been strengthened. A re-evaluation of perspectives and tactics was essential.

 

This reassessment was clearest around the question of the united front tactic. This tactic, applied by the Bolsheviks in the years leading up to the revolution, was codified and generalised in the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Comintern in 1921 and 1922. With reformism rather than communism in the ascendancy it was essential to break the working class from reformist and centrist organisations.

 

The resolution on tactics at the Fourth Congress stated:

 

‘The systematically organised international capitalist offensive against all the gains of the working class has swept across the world like a whirl wind . . . is forcing the working class to defend itself.

 

There is consequently an obvious need for the united front tactic. The slogan of the Third Congress, “To the masses”, is now more relevant than ever . . . Using the united front tactic means that the communist vanguard is at the forefront of the day to day struggle of the broad masses for their most vital interests. For the sake of this struggle communists are even prepared to negotiate with the scab leaders of the social democrats.’(16)

 

Of course, merciless criticism of the shortcomings and treachery of the leaders of the reformist parties and unions was obligatory if this joint action was to lead to the strengthening of the Communist Party.

 

The PSI rejected this outlook. Moreover in 1921 there was hardly an ounce of difference in the political outlook of Gramsci and the ultra-left leadership grouped around Amadeo Bordiga. Both resisted attempts to implement fully the Comintern’s line of the Third and Fourth Congresses and instead gravitated towards the ultra-left positions of Bukharin who, in Trotsky’s words:

 

‘. . . fought against the policy of the united front and the transitional demands, proceeding from his mechanical understanding of the permanence of the revolutionary process.’(17)

 

In December 1921 the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) issued a document outlining its united front policy towards the socialist parties and the trade unions. In January 1922 the Comintern published an appeal to the international working class based upon it. A month later an enlarged meeting of the ECCI took place with representatives of the PCI present to discuss the united front question at which the PCI delegates were in a minority.

 

At the same time as these events the PCI leaders, including Gramsci, drew up theses for the forthcoming Rome Congress of the PCI. They were published in January 1922 and revealed just how far the PCI was from Comintern thinking.

 

At one level the ‘Rome Theses’ accepted that there was no contradiction between:

 

‘. . . participation in the struggles for contingent and limited objectives, and the preparation of the final and general revolutionary struggle.’ (18)

 

Indeed, to this end the PCI agreed to participate:

 

‘. . . in the organisational life of all forms of the proletariat’s economic organisation open to workers of all political faiths . . . which involves entering into the thick of struggle and action and helping the workers to derive the most useful experience from them.’(19)

 

But the PCI refused to contemplate agreements for common action between different political parties despite the fact that the PSI continued to hold the allegiance of a majority of the vanguard workers in Italy. Whereas the PCI would consider supporting:

 

‘the demands put forward by the left parties . . . of such a kind that is appropriate to call upon the proletariat to move directly to implement them . . . the Communist Party will propose them as objectives for a coalition of trade union organisms, avoiding the setting-up of committees to direct the struggle and agitation in which the Communist Party would be represented and engaged alongside other political parties.’(20)

 

It believed that only in this way would the PCI remain:

 

‘. . . free from any share in responsibility for the activity of the parties which express verbal support for the proletariat’s cause through opportunism and with counter-revolutionary intentions.’(21)

 

This distinction between trade union and political blocs was an artificial one when approached from a correct understanding of the united front. Such an approach agrees to struggle for limited political or economic demands if they mobilise broad layers in a fight for them and their achievement would be a limited gain for the working class, strengthening its political independence and organisation thus taking the proletariat further along the path of revolution. The communists do not take responsibility for the failure of the socialists in either the economic or the political sphere.

 

The danger of the PCI approach is that it implies opportunism in relation to the trade union united front, only to be compensated for by a rigid sectarianism in the political field for fear of the consequences of such opportunism on the communist party. For example the Rome Theses stated that:

 

‘Communists taking part in struggles in proletarian economic organisms led by socialists, syndicalists or anarchists will not refuse to follow their actions unless the masses as a whole, in a spontaneous movement, should rebel against it.’(22)

 

It is this attitude to spontaneity, embedded in the very foundations of Gramsci’s politics, that motivated the PCI’s ultra-leftism. Years later Gramsci admitted that such positions were ‘essentially inspired by Crocean philosophy’(23). Spontaneous economic or trade union struggles are good in and of themselves and can be followed uncritically. Political struggles, unless under the leadership of the PCI are not. But ‘bitter polemics’ and prophecies of treachery will eventually lead the masses to break with the PSI. Such was the PCI method.

 

The twin dangers of opportunism and sectarianism come through clearly in a passage from the theses which manages to get the method of the united front completely the wrong way round:

 

‘It [the PCI] cannot propose a tactic with an occasional and transitory criterion, reckoning that it will be able subsequently, at the moment when such a tactic ceases to be applicable, to execute a sudden switch and change of front, transforming its allies of yesterday into enemies. If one does not wish to compromise one’s links with the masses and their reinforcement at the very moment when it is most essential that these should come to the fore, it will be necessary to pursue in public and official declarations and attitudes a continuity of method and intention that is strictly consistent with the uninterrupted propaganda and preparation for the final struggle.’ (24)

 

For Lenin and Trotsky, the making of principled agreements and the breaking of them when one’s ‘allies’—by their irresoluteness or treachery faced with carrying through this agreement—transform themselves into ‘enemies’ represents precisely a ‘continuity of method’ that prepares the way to the ‘final struggle’.

 

Gramsci stood by this PCI position through 1922 and the Fourth World Congress and continued his bloc with the Bordigists in the June 1923 Enlarged Executive meeting of the Comintern leadership. This meeting, at which Trotsky and Zinoviev headed a unified Executive delegation, witnessed the PCI majority (including Gramsci) and the minority around Tasca argue out their differences. Trotsky backed Tasca’s minority report critical of the record of the PCI leadership.

 

This report outlined how the PCI had obstructed the Fourth Congress’ decision to seek fusion between the PCI and the PSI by imposing ultimatistic conditions. While minimising publicity of the call for fusion the PCI did publish an editorial which characterised the PSI as a ‘corpse’, which of course played into the hands of the anti-fusionists in the PSI who were able to play ‘on the “patriotism” of workers who feel a certain attachment to their party’(25). The PCI showed just how little they had adopted the united front tactic of Lenin and Trotsky when they further wrote in Il Lavoratore in May 1923:

 

‘We conceive the tactic of blocs and of the united front as a means to pursue the struggle against those who betray the proletariat on a new level . . . That is why we have proposed it.’(26)

 

As Tasca and the Comintern leadership concluded of Gramsci and the PSI majority:

 

‘The conception which these comrades have of the party and its relations with the masses is perfectly designed to maintain the “sect” mentality which is one of the most serious defects of our organisation’(27)

 

 

 

Gramsci’s Objections

 

 

 

Beyond his flawed attitude to spontaneity there were other reasons behind Gramsci’s opposition to the Comintern’s policy. At a conjunctural, tactical level he resisted it because he felt that the rightist minority in the PCI around Tasca who supported the Comintern theses would be strengthened and that they represented a liquidationist tendency in the PCI who had not fully broken with the politics of the PSI and who resisted the necessary re-orientation to illegal work in conditions of fascist repression. In June 1923 he said that:

 

‘The attitude of the Comintern and the activity of its representatives is bringing disunity and corruption into the communist ranks. We are determined to struggle against the elements who would liquidate our Party.’(28)

 

In short, Gramsci is indicating that he felt that it was necessary to bloc with the abstentionists around Bordiga, despite differences with them in order to complete the belated break with reformism and centrism in the period 1921/22. Some confirmation of this is found in a letter he wrote to the PCI leaders inside Italy in February 1924. He argued that he accepted the PCI’s ‘Rome Theses’ on tactics:

 

‘. . . only for contingent motives of party organisation and declared myself in favour of a united front right through to its normal conclusion in a workers’ government’(29)

 

In fact no record of such an opposition at that time exists and this letter was written after Gramsci had changed his position on the Comintern’s Fourth Congress resolutions and had decided to break with Bordiga. If true, however, it would have been an unprincipled position to have taken and one which only served to further fatally delay the crystallisation of a truly Bolshevik PCI.

 

But there is a far deeper reason for Gramsci’s unbending attitude to the politics of Lenin and Trotsky in these years. It was based on a conception of differing strategies for the ‘east’ and ‘west’ in Europe. Unless we understand this conception of Gramsci’s we cannot grasp how and why he was to change his attitude to the Fourth Congress resolutions without at the same time correcting his false political methodology.

 

The notion of ‘east’ and ‘west’ was less a question of geography and more a matter of political economy. For Gramsci the ‘east’ consisted of the ‘backward’ capitalist world whereas the ‘west’ was the advanced world of Western Europe. This dividing line was essential to Gramsci’s opposition to the Comintern. He wrote:

 

‘In Germany the movement tending towards the establishment of a social-democratic government is based on the working class masses; but the tactic of the united front has no value except for industrial countries, where the backward workers can hope to be able to carry on a defensive activity by conquering a parliamentary majority. Here [in Italy] the situation is different . . . If we launched the slogan of a workers’ government and tried to implement it, we would return to the socialist ambivalence, when the party was condemned to inactivity because it could not decide to be either solely a party of workers or solely a party of peasants . . . The trade union united front, by contrast, has an aim which is of primary importance for political struggle in Italy . . .

 

‘When one speaks of a political united front, and hence of a workers’ government, one must understand a “united front” between parties whose social base is furnished only by industrial and agricultural workers and not by peasants . . .

 

‘In Italy there do not exist, as in Germany, exclusively workers’ parties between which a political united front too can be conceived. In Italy the only party with such a character is the Communist Party.’(30)

 

After he had broken from Bordiga, Gramsci was to accurately describe the former’s rejection of such tactics as based on the reasoning that:

 

‘Since the working class is in a minority in the Italian working population, there is a constant danger that its party will be corrupted by infiltrations from other classes, and in particular from the petit bourgeoisie.’(31)

 

In the first place this view was profoundly at odds with the conception of an international programme, perspectives and tactics. The united front is a tactic designed to maximise working class unity in a struggle against the bosses and their state. But the working class finds itself confronted with these tasks across the world wherever it exists. The international character of this fight ensures that the tactic cannot be confined to either the ‘east’ or ‘west’.

 

In fact, in those countries where the peasantry is a large class and where imperialism has multiplied the problems of land hunger—such as in Italy—the ‘political’ united front has a greater application. This is so since the peasantry, as a petit bourgeois strata, gives rise to parties outside of the Communist or Socialist Parties with which it is possible to bloc in the fight against the unified camp of industrial capital and the large landholders. Such was the case in Italy.

 

Such a possiblity underwrote the Bolsheviks bloc with the left Social Revolutionaries after October 1917. The fact that in Italy the PSI and PCI were less well embedded in the peasantry of Southern Italy than they should have been only meant that the tactic of the united front was more, not less, urgent.

 

 

 

A Shift of Position?

 

 

 

During the course of 1923/24 the Comintern leadership began to have some success in driving a wedge between Gramsci and Bordiga. Although in a bloc within the PCI, their politics were never identical. Their differences over the factory councils in 1920 was symptomatic of the divergence. The politics of passivity and abstention were the hall mark of Bordiga. Whatever his ultra-leftism this was totally alien to Gramsci who saw the necessity to go beyond passive propagandism, merely stating fundamental truths and waiting for the inevitable process of disillusionment among the workers to benefit the PCI. After the Fourth World Congress in 1922 Bordiga became more and more intransigent and inward looking. Bordiga’s faction refused to serve on the leading committees of the PCI because of their divergences with the Comintern. Gramsci felt this was bound to deliver the PCI into the hands of the minority around Tasca who, Gramsci felt, was an opportunist towards the trade union leaders.

 

Events inside Italy also convinced Gramsci that passivity on the PCI’s part preventing it from intervening in the crisis of the fascist regime. In the spring of 1923 important divisions opened up within the Popular Party which had hitherto firmly backed Mussolini’s rule. Significant discontent with this support began to be voiced both in the Popular Party (which had a large peasant following) and increasingly within the urban republican petit bourgeoisie during the course of 1923 and 1924. The PCI needed tactics designed to relate to this discontent in a way that would prevent the republican bourgeoisie and social democracy being the beneficiaries.

 

Hence Gramsci came to the view, by the close of 1923, that it was impossible to make any concessions to Bordiga. A complete break with him and the creation of a new leadership of the ‘centre’ was essential if the party was to turn to mass work and lead the anti-fascist resistance.

 

Taken together these considerations pushed Gramsci back towards the Comintern. In September 1923 he abandoned his resistance to the ‘political’ united front in Italy and urged the PCI to adopt the call for a workers’ and peasants’ government in Italy. To all intents and purposes Gramsci had reconciled himself to the positions of Lenin and Trotsky. In January 1924 he wrote:

 

‘I absolutely do not believe that the tactics which have been developed by the Enlarged Executive meeting and the Fourth Congress are mistaken.’ (32)

 

He stressed in this letter to Scoccimarro that in launching a fight to redirect the PCI he would:

 

‘. . . take the doctrine and tactics of the Comintern as the basis for an action programme for activity in the future.’(33)

 

Gramsci articulated his shift in position in a manner that was identical to the arguments of Lenin and Trotsky. In a letter to Togliatti written from Vienna in February 1924 he argued that he could no longer agree with Bordiga on the united front:

 

‘Firstly, because the political conception of the Russian communists was formed on an international and not on a national terrain. Secondly, because in Central and Western Europe the development of capitalism has not only determined the formation of broad proletarian strata, but also—and as a consequence—has created the higher strata, the labour aristocracy, with its appendages in the trade union bureaucracy and the social democratic groups. The determination, which in Russia was direct and drove the masses onto the streets for a revolutionary uprising, in Central and Western Europe is complicated by all these political superstructures, created by the greater development of capitalism. This makes the action of the masses slower and more prudent, and therefore requires of the revolutionary party a strategy and tactics more complex and long term than those that were necessary for the Bolsheviks in the period between March and November 1917.’(34)

 

This was a genuine step forward for Gramsci and an important break with the methodology and theoretical justification for his previous position.

 

Previously, Gramsci had considered that Italy was part of the ‘east’ in which the united front was obsolete. Here he does not simply transfer Italy to the ‘west’ but rather, and much more importantly, he states that the tactic has international relevance. The possibility of avoiding ultra-leftism in the ‘east’ and opportunism in the ‘west’ is at least predicated on such a shift of analysis.

 

However, the practical consequences of this shift for the PCI in 1924 were less clear to see. In January 1924 the PCI proposed an electoral bloc to the other working class parties for the April 1924 elections. But the terms of this pact were designed to meet with a refusal. Togliatti—leading the party in Italy in Gramsci’s absence—wrote to the Comintern executive that the basis for the propaganda of this pact was that:

 

‘Fascism had opened up a period of permanent revolution for the proletariat, and the proletarian party which forgets this point and helps to sustain the illusion among the workers that it is possible to change the present situation while remaining on the terrain of liberal and constitutional opposition will, in the last analysis, give support to the enemies of the Italian working class and peasantry.’(35)

 

Being reformists and constitutionalists the PSI was being asked to abandon its raison d’être in order to be in the bloc, something they could hardly be expected to do.

 

The tragedy of Gramsci is that just as he was breaking with the ultimatism of Bordiga (rejection of the united front on principle) events in the Comintern leadership were to ensure that his complete progress to the positions of Lenin and Trotsky would be derailed.

 

 

 

The Rise of Stalinism

 

 

 

Events within the Comintern at the end of 1923 and its repercussions in the Russian party were to cut short Gramsci’s positive evolution. It was the defeat of the German revolution in October 1923 which gave an impetus to Stalinism. Trotsky argued that with this defeat capitalism had secured for itself a period of relative economic and political stabilisation. This unfavourable shift in the international balance of class forces demanded of the Comintern and its sections a recognition that considerable preparatory work was needed in order to win the masses again. He thus placed emphasis firmly on the united front tactic.

 

On the other hand Zinoviev and Stalin refused to admit that a serious defeat had occured. On the contrary, they insisted that the Comintern was confronted, especially in Germany, with an imminent revolutionary situation.

 

In June 1924 the Fifth Congress of the Comintern backed this ultra-left view. In the same month Stalin took up the pen to contest Trotsky’s view that bourgois stabilisation was also indicated by a strengthening of social democracy in Europe. Stalin rejected this by claiming that social-democracy was a form of fascism:

 

‘It would therefore be a mistake to think that “pacifism” signifies the liquidation of fascism. In the present situation, “pacifism” is the strengthening of fascism with its moderate, social democratic wing being pushed into the foreground’(36)

 

And since fascism and social democracy ‘do not negate, but supplement each other, they are not antipodes, they are twins’(37), a united front with the leaders of such parties was therefore out of the question. They excluded the use of the united front tactic except ‘from below’, that is, without the leaders of the reformist and centrist trade unions and political parties. The Fifth Congress declared:

 

‘The tactics of the united front from below are the most important, that is, a united front under communist leadership concerning communist, social democratic, and non-party workers in factory, factory council, trade union.’(38)

 

In short it was little more than an ultimatum issued to the rank and file workers in these organisations to abandon their parties unconditionally. Since these workers believed in their leaders it could be seen by them as little more than a trick and in fact help strengthen social democracy not weaken it.

 

So just as Gramsci had attained undisputed leadership of the PCI and was moving in the direction of the Comintern’s Fourth Congress positions, the Comintern in effect moved to encompass Gramsci’s own ultra-leftism. The PCI during the autumn of 1924, with Gramsci back in Italy, launched a campaign for workers’ and peasants’ committees and the Peasants Defence Association which the PCI ran and was counterposed to the socialist controlled peasants’ trade union federation.

 

In addition, during 1924 and 1925 the PCI set up Agitational Committees of Proletarian Unity, under their leadership but in open confict with the unions of the General Workers’ Confederation (CGL). Thus, while Gramsci accepted the applicability of the united front for Italy it was implemented in the Fifth Congress form. While he moved away from Bordiga’s rejection of the united front in principle he moved to a position of united front from below.

 

In fact the Fifth Congress resolutions on tactics and perspectives are pivotal to an understanding of Gramsci’s evolution from 1924 to the conceptions in the Prison Notebooks. While ultra-leftism had held sway since the German defeat the perspectives before the Congress were more moderated, not least because of the battle waged by Trotsky against them. In Section 13 of the ‘Theses on Tactics’, entitled ‘Two Perspectives’ Zinoviev outlined alternative developments:

 

‘The epoch of international revolution has commenced. The rate of development as a whole or partially, the rate of development of revolutionary events in any particular continent or in any particular country, cannot be foretold with precision. The whole situation is such that two perspectives are open: (a) a possible slow and prolonged development of the proletarian revolution, and (b) on the other hand that the ground under capitalism has been mined to such an extent and that the contradictions of capitalism as a whole have developed so rapidly, that the solution in one country or another may come in the not so distant future.’(39)

 

This was a very vague and flexible perspective. On the one side it justified the ultra-leftism then in force and yet it could also serve to justify a right-opportunist turn if necessary. In fact, of course, such a turn did occur in mid-1925. When it came Zinoviev, at the Sixth Plenum of the ECCI in early 1926, used the Fifth Congress resolution to justify it.

 

The right-centrist turn of 1925 was based on a belated recognition that stability had occurred in Europe. Given this and given the Stalinist conception that socialism could be built in the Soviet Union if outside intervention could be prevented the Comintern leadership began the search for alliances in the European countries that could help prevent such intervention. In Britain the Anglo-Russian Committee was set up in 1925 between the Russian and British trade unions with this in mind.

 

How did this right turn effect Gramsci’s understanding of the united front? At one level Gramsci was capable of formulating the problem of strategy and tactics in a formally correct manner. So in the ‘Lyon Theses’ for the PCI’s Third Congress in January 1926 Gramsci posed the problem in the following way:

 

‘The tactic of the united front as political activity (manoeuvre) designed to unmask so-called proletarian and revolutionary parties and groups which have a mass base, is closely linked with the problem of how the Communist Party is to lead the masses and how it is to win a majority. In the form in which it has been defined by the World Congresses, it is applicable in all cases in which, because of the mass support of the groups against which we are fighting, frontal struggle against them is not sufficient to give us rapid and far reaching results . . .

 

‘In Italy, the united front tactic must continue to be utilised by the party, in so far as it is still far from having won a decisive influence over the majority of the working class and the working population.’(40)

 

At one level this position is correct and a repetition of the statement of early 1924. But taken together with other writings of Gramsci during 1926 it is possible to detect the influence of the right centrist turn in the Comintern which we find amplified in the Prison Notebooks. In a report to the Party’s executive in August 1926 on the Italian situation Gramsci drew a distinction once again between ‘advanced capitalist countries’ (England and Germany) and ‘peripheral states’ such as Italy. In the first group ‘the ruling class possess political and organisational reserves’ which means that ‘even the most serious economic crises do not have immediate repercussions in the political sphere’ because the ‘state apparatus is far more resistant than is often possible to believe’.(41)

 

In countries such as Italy ‘the state forces are less efficient’. However, Gramsci does not go on to say, as he did with Bordiga in the early 1920’s, that the united front is only applicable in the first case but not the second. On the contrary he maintains that the tactic is applicable in both cases.

 

The purpose of drawing the distinction is different. In the ‘peripheral states’ there are many intermediate classes between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. These classes in the Europe of the mid-1920s are being radicalised to such an extent that the tasks of the party and the class are those ‘between the political and technical preparation of the revolution’. In Italy at this time it meant a united front under communist leadership based on a perspective of the imminent demise of Mussolini. In the advanced countries, however, ‘the problem is still one of political preparation’.

 

Drawing these distinctions is not an idle matter for Gramsci for in each case he is concerned to address a ‘fundamental problem’, namely:

 

‘. . . the problem of transition from the united front tactic, understood in a general sense, to a specific tactic which confronts the concrete problems of national life and operates on the basis of the popular forces as they are historically determined.’(42)

 

In the case of England Gramsci argued that the trade unions were the concrete form in which the ‘popular forces’ would operate. And it is at this point that we see the right centrist interpretation that Gramsci gave to the united front where long political preparation is necessary. Despite the experience of the betrayal of the General Strike of 1926, including the lefts in the TUC, Gramsci believed that:

 

‘The Anglo-Russian Committee should be maintained, because it is the best terrain to revolutionise not only the English trade union world, but also the Amsterdam unions. In only one event should there be a break between the communists and the English left: if England was on the eve of the proletarian revolution, and our party was strong enough to lead the insurrection on its own.’(43)

 

This contrasted sharply with the revolutionary assessment of the role of the Anglo-Russian Committee as expressed by Trotsky after the General Strike:

 

‘. . . the Politburo majority has pursued a profoundly incorrect policy on the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee. The point at which the working masses of Britain exerted the greatest opposing force to the General Council was when the general strike was being broken. What was necessary was to keep step with the most active forces of the British proletariat and to break at that moment with the General Council as the betrayer of the general strike . . . without this, the struggle for the masses always threatens to turn into an opportunist kowtowing to spontaneity . . . The line of the Politburo majority on the question of the Anglo-Russian Committee was clearly a transgression in terms of the revolutionary essence of the united front policy.’(44)

 

On Gramsci’s part all this is a reversion away from the international application of the united front that he espoused in early 1924 and back towards a differential application based on the ultimately false division between ‘east’ and ‘west’. At the same time, given he was dealing with England, he reverts to a rightist, an opportunist variant of this tactic. In a sense all Gramsci was doing was utilising the Fifth Congress positions for his own twin perspectives for the ‘east’ and ‘west’. His position on the Anglo-Russian Committee is a concrete expression of Zinoviev’s perspective of the ‘slow and prolonged development of the proletarian revolution’.

 

Having said this there was still a considerable distance between Gramsci’s strategic and tactical prescriptions and those in force in the Comintern under Stalin. It was precisely in 1926 that Stalin was insisting that in China the Communist Party dissolve itself into the Kuomintang and, under the slogan of ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’, abandon the Leninist position of the leading and directing role of the proletariat.

 

Gramsci at the Lyons Congress in January 1926 recognised that:

 

‘The proletariat must struggle to tear the peasants from the bourgeoisie’s influence, and place them under its own political guidance.’(45)

 

Indeed, Gramsci insisted to the PCI that given that the weak Italian bourgeoisie rested for its power on the peasantry this question ‘is the central point of the political problems which the party must resolve in the immediate future’.(46)

 

He recognised that the slogan of the ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’ was a way of drawing in the peasantry behind the working class, ‘the means to transport them onto the terrain of the more advanced proletarian vanguard (struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat).’(47)

 

Far from accepting, like Stalin, that the governmental alliance of workers and peasants was distinct stage separate to, and prior to, the struggle for socialism, Gramsci argued that:

 

‘. . . the party cannot conceive of a realisation of this slogan except as the beginning of a direct revolutionary struggle: i.e.of a civil war waged by the proletariat, in alliance with the peasantry, with the aim of winnning power. The party could be led into serious deviations from its task as leader of the revolution if it were to interpret the workers’ and peasants’ government as corresponding to a real phase of development of the struggle for power: in other words, if it considered that this slogan indicated the possibility for the problem of the state to be resolved in the interests of the working class in any other form than the dictatorship of the proletariat’.(48)

 

If anything Gramsci’s formulations indicate that right up until his imprisonment he veered in the direction of ultra-leftism.

 

 

 

Captive Thoughts

 

 

 

Gramci’s reflections on problems of strategy and tactics in the Prison Notebooks continue his rupture with ultra-leftism. But in its place he developed further the conception that owes its origin to the right-centrist turn of 1925-27. The final triumph of fascism in 1926 led Gramsci to reassess his views about the stability and strength of bourgois rule in the west including Italy. In the Prison Notebooks he states:

 

‘It seems to me that Ilitch [Lenin] understood a change was necessary, from the war of manoeuvre applied victoriously in the east in 1917, to a war of position, which was the only form possible in the west—when as Krasnov observes, armies could rapidly accumulate endless quantities of munitions, and where the social structures were of themselves still capable of becoming heavily armed fortifications. This is what the formula of the “united front” seems to me to mean, and it corresponds to the conception of a single front for the Entente under the sole command of Foch.’(49)

 

Here Gramsci has abandoned the idea he presented in 1926 of the united front tactic as a war of manoeuvre and turned it into a war of position in the west; that is, he has turned the united front into a prolonged strategy through which the party and the class succeed in capturing positions in society, gradually surrounding and laying seige to the state. This is the antithesis of the revolutionary use of the united front as elaborated and practised in the Comintern under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky.

 

At one and the same time Gramsci outlines in the Prison Notebooks a simplistically one-sided view of the Russian Revolution, with its absurd implication that the united front was absent from Bolshevik’s tactical armoury and that Lenin led a continuous ‘revolutionary offensive’ against an unfortified Tsarist state; yet he holds to an opportunist view of strategy in the west which sees a seamless united front in operation between the communists and the the reformists (and even liberal/democratic bourgeois forces) right up to the seizure of power. Gramsci is unaware that the ends and the means contradict themselves in this view. The seizure of power depends upon the growth in influence of the communist party and this in turn can only be done at the expense of, and in struggle with, the reformists and centrists. This can only occur if common fronts for specific limited actions are combined with ruthless criticism of the limitations of the partners in the alliance of struggle, exposing their half-heartedness and inconsistencies together with the limitations of their own prescriptions.

 

Did all this amount to reformism as the Euro-Stalinists insist? Not one bit! Gramsci may have turned a tactic into a strategy but this is not the same as turning revolution into reform. In part Gramsci’s right centrist conception in the Prison Notebooks was an undialectical response to the opposition he maintained to the ultra-left turn of Stalin in 1928/29, about the time he began to write his notebooks. If anything it is a Bukharinite rightist critique of the Third Period that we find in Gramsci’s Notebooks. This emphasises the distance between him and Trotsky, but it also serves to underline the gap that separated Gramsci from Stalin.

 

This gap is further evidenced by the reports of discussions with a fellow prisoner, Athos Lisa, from 1930. Commissioned and then supressed by Togliatti they underline that Gramsci objected to the Third Period, could not agree to the expulsion of oppositionists in the PCI and that he retained his belief in the need for an insurrection:

 

‘The violent conquest of power necessitates the creation by the party of the working class of an organisation of a military type, pervasively implanted in every branch of the bourgeois state apparatus, and capable of wounding and inflicting grave blows on it at the decisive moment of struggle.’(50)

 

Gramsci was no longer well enough to write by 1935, the year of the Stalinist Comintern’s definitive passage from bureaucratic centrism into counter-revolution and reformism. The signing of the Stalin-Laval Pact in that year gave a green light for the French Stalinists to embrace patriotism with the full backing of the Kremlin. There is nothing in Gramsci’s life or work which can give comfort to today’s Euro-Stalinists in their attempt to turn Gramsci into the patron saint of the Popular Front.

 

Quite the contrary. In a couple of striking passages by Gramsci in 1926 he explicity argues against a popular front to defeat fascism in a manner which almost anticipates the apologetic arguments of Togliatti ten years later about Spain. He disputes the arguments of the bourgeoisie who:

 

‘. . . have an interest in maintaining that fascism is a pre-democratic regime: that fascism is related to an incipient and still backward phase of capitalism.’(51)

 

This leads to the view that:

 

‘The best tactic is one whose aim is, if not an actual bourgeois-proletarian bloc for the constitutional elimination of fascism, at least a passivity of the revolutionary vanguard, a non-intervention of the Communist Party in the immediate political struggle, thus allowing the bourgeoisie to use the proletariat as electoral troops against fascism.’(52)

 

Whereas:

 

‘For us communists, the fascist regime is the expression of the most advanced stage of capitalist society. It precisely serves to demonstrate how all the conquests and all the institutions which the toilng classes succeed in realising . . . are destined for annihilation, if at a given moment the working class does not seize state power with revolutionary means.’(53)

 

 

 

‘Permanent Revolution’ or ‘Socialism in One Country’?

 

 

 

There is still another way to judge Gramsci’s evolution. What was his attitude to the theoretical underpinnings of centrism in the Comintern—‘socialism in one country’—and to its revolutionary critique—‘permanent revolution’?

 

His passages in the Prison Notebooks on these questions give no support to the arguments of those, like Perry Anderson, who see an affinity between the positions of Gramsci and Trotsky in their respective critiques of the ultra-leftism of Stalin after 1928.

 

The truth is that Gramsci, from the middle of 1924, is a savage critic of Trotsky’s theory. The last favourable reference to Trotsky on this score occurs in February 1924. He sympathetically surveys the Opposition’s attacks on bureaucracy in the USSR and says further:

 

‘It is well known that in 1905, Trotsky already thought a socialist and working class revolution could take place in Russia while the Bolsheviks only aimed to establish a political dictatorship of the proletariat allied to the peasantry that would serve as a framework for the development of capitalism, which was not to be touched in its economic structure. It is well known that in November 1917 Lenin . . . and the majority of the party had gone over to Trotsky’s view and intended to take over not merely political power but also economic power.’(54)

 

Yet within six months, by the time of the Fifth World Congress, Gramsci had abandoned this view and gone over to the faction of the Stalin/Zinoviev/Kamenev troika. The immediate impetus to this is Gramsci’s attitude to factional activity:

 

‘Trotsky’s conceptions . . . represent a danger inasmuch as the lack of party unity, in a country in which there is only one party, splits the state. This produces a counter-revolutionary movement; it does not, however, mean that Trotsky is a counter-revolutionary, for in that case we would ask for his expulsion.

 

Finally, lessons should be drawn fromthe Trotsky question for our party. Before the last disciplinary measures, Trotsky was in the same position as Bordiga is at present in our party.’(55)

 

This tragic mistake, namely, a right-opportunist identification of Marxism as ultra-leftism, is repeated and amplified many times in the Prison Notebooks. In the fervour of his own 1924 break with Bordiga he was only to willing to side with the majority in the CPSU in the campaign, launched at the Fifth Congress, of ‘Bolshevisation’. This was in fact the first step in the strangling of inner-party life in the communist parties and led Gramsci into opposing all factional activity.

 

While as late as October 1926 Gramsci was still prepared to argue for disciplinary leniency with regard to the Joint Opposition by the early 1930’s he argued that:

 

‘The tendency represented by Lev Davidovitch [Trotsky] was closely connected to this series of problems . . . an over resolute (and therefore not rationalised) will to give supremacy in national life to industry and industrial methods, to accelerate through coercion, from outside the growth of discipline and order in production, and to adapt customs to the necessities of work. Given the general way in which all the problems connected with this tendency were conceived it was destined necessarily to end up in Bonapartism. Hence the inexorable necessity of crushing it.’ (56)

 

Given this attitude and assessment it was not surprising that Gramsci would review his 1924 attitude towards Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution:

 

‘Bronstein [Trotsky] in his memoirs recals being told that his theory had been proved true . . . fifteen years later . . . In reality his theory, as such was good neither fifteen years earlier nor fifteen years later. As happens to the obstinate . . . he guessed more or less correctly; that is to say, he was right in his more general prediction. It is as if one was to prophesy that a little four year old girl would become a mother, and when at twenty she did one said “I guessed that she would”— overlooking the fact that, however, that when she was four years old one had tried to rape the girl, in the belief that she would become a mother even then.’(57)

 

This rejection of what he understands to be Trotsky’s theory is at the heart of his overall strategic and tactical conceptions in the Prison Notebooks. Thus the:

 

‘. . . political concept of the so-called “permanent revolution” which emerged before 1848 as a scientifically evolved expression of Jacobin experience from 1789 to Thermidor. The formula belongs to an historical period in which the great mass political parties and the great economic trade unions did not yet exist, and society was still, so to speak, in a state of fluidity from many points of view: greater backwardness of the countryside, and almost complete monopoly of political and state power by a few cities or even by a single one (Paris in the case of France); a relatively rudimentary state apparatus, and greater autonomy of civil society from state activity; a specific system of military forces and of national armed services; greater autonomy of the national economies from the economic relations of the world market, etc. In the period after 1870, with the colonial expansion of Europe, all these elements change: the internal and international organisational, relations of the state become more complex and massive, and the Forty-Eightist formula of the “permanent revolution” is expanded and transcended in political science by the formula of “civil hegemony”. The same thing happens in the art of politics as happens in military art: war of movement increasingly becomes war of position, and it can be said that a state will win a war in so far as it prepares for it minutely and technically in peacetime.’ (58)

 

So Trotsky is accused of being behind the times regarding strategy for the advanced west. He accuses Trotsky of being ‘the political theorist of frontal attack in a period when it only leads to defeats’.(59)

 

Such a conception forms the basis of modern day Euro-Stalinism’s critque of Trotskyism. The first thing that needs to be said is that Gramsci’s exposition which equates ‘permanent revolution’ with frontal attack or war of movement has got nothing to do with Trotsky’s theory. Trotsky took as his point of departure the combined, uninterrupted, character of the bourgeios and proletarian revolutions in certain situations. So Trotsky could not, and did not, apply this aspect of his theory to the ‘west’ where the bourgeois revolution had been completed in all essentials.

 

If anyone was guilty of the conceptions that Gramsci accuses Trotsky of holding then it is Bukharin at the Third and Fourth Congresses:

 

‘who held to his standpoint of the scholastic permanence of both the economic crisis and the revolution as a whole.’(60)

 

Gramsci agreed with Bukharin at the time. It could also be a conception attributable to Zinoviev and Stalin at the Fifth Congress, again which Gramsci did not dissent from.

 

The painful truth is that Gramsci held a position between 1922 and 1924 not dissimilar to the one he criticises here. He argued that the collapse of the fascist regime was both imminent and could not give way to a transitional regime of bourgeois democracy. In January 1924 he maintained that:

 

‘. . . in reality fascism has posed a very crude sharp dilemma in Italy: that of the permanent revolution, and of the impossibility not only of changing the form of the state, but even of changing the government, other than by armed force.’ (61)

 

After his ultra-left illusions were weakened with his break with Bordiga, and shattered for good with the final triumph of Mussolini in 1926, Gramsci altered his strategic conception to the right; but while attacking Trotsky’s theory he was in reality attacking his own ultra-left past.

 

The fact that Gramsci identified his own previous stance with that of Trotsky can only be explained by the fact that he accepted completely the Stalinist lies about ‘Trotskyism’ pushed in the Comintern after 1923. If Trotsky indeed had been guilty, as the Stalinists, claimed of advocating a ‘leap over’ the bourgeois stage of the Russian Revolution, if Trotsky had indeed ‘underestimated the peasantry’, as his opponents insisted, thus giving the Russian Revolution a purely ‘socialist’ working class character, then Gramsci’s jibes may have had some point. But they were not true. If anything it was Gramsci who ‘underestimated the peasantry’ in his ultra-left period.

 

 

 

A National Road

 

 

 

Nor did Gramsci remain silent on the other issue at stake between Trotsky and Stalin while in prison. He wrote several passages on the methodological questions at stake in the dispute over ‘socialism in one country’ which is intimately connected with the question of permanent revolution. He reasoned as follows:

 

‘Do international relations precede or follow (logically) fundamental social relations? There can be no doubt that they follow. Any organic innovation in the social structure, through its technical military expression, modifies organically absolute and relative relations in the international field too. Even the geographical position of a national State does not precede but follows (logically) structural changes, although it also reacts back upon them to a certain extent (to the extent precisely to which superstructures react upon the structure, politics on economics, etc)’ (62)

 

Gramsci gets it all upside down. By ‘fundamental social relations’ he means capitalist relations of production. He counterposes these to ‘international relations’ and thereby implicitly argues that capitalism is nationally defined. Having done that it is then possible, argues Gramsci, to examine the relations between the national and international. By analogy the international relations are the ‘superstructures and the national the ‘base’. This is the starting point for Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’.

 

Marxism reasons in an opposite fashion. It starts from the fact that capitalism is a world entity and its relations encompass the globe. National economies can be examined and are determined in this light.

 

For Gramsci, starting with the ‘national’ played the same role as starting from the ‘uneven’ nature of world economy instead of the ‘uneven and combined’ nature of that economy as Trotsky did. Gramsci, like Stalin felt that this was the only way to appreciate what was ‘unique’, and ‘specific’ about a particular country at a particular time:

 

‘In reality, the internal relations of any nation are the result of a combination which is “original” and (in a certain sense) unique: these relations must be understood and conceived in their originality and uniqueness if one wishes to dominate them and direct them. To be sure the line of development is towards internationalism, but the point of departure is “national”—and it it is from this point of departure that one must begin. Yet the perspective is international and cannot be otherwise . . . The leading class is in fact only such if it accurately interprets this combination—of which it is itself a component and precisely as such is able to give the moment a certain direction, within certain perspectives. It is on this point in my opinion, that the fundamental disagreement between Lev Davidovitch [Trotsky] and Vissarionovitch [Stalin] as interpreter of the majority movement [Bolshevism] really hinges. The accusations of nationalism are inept if they refer to the nucleus of the question. If one studies the majoritarian struggle from 1902 to 1917, one can see that its originality consisted in purging internationalism of every vague and purely ideological (in the perjorative sense) element, to give it a realistic political content. It is in the concept of hegemony that those exigencies which are national in character are knotted together.’(63)

 

Thus for Gramsci Lenin’s ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ was hegemonic and national while the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ was incapable of grasping and dealing with the specific realities of Russian society.

 

Of course, Trotsky did precisely what Gramsci accuses him of failing to achieve. Trotsky’s analysis of Russia was based on a detailed examination of its history and specific social relations. In his work, Results and Prospects, from 1906 Trotsky compares and contrasts the Russia of 1905 to France of 1870 and Germany of 1848 on the basis of tracing the evolution of international developments. Then he was able to outline in a remarkable manner the specific features that were present in Tsarist Russia which destined Russia to experience a socialist revolution before the ‘advanced’ and ‘mature’ countries and yet be unable to sustain it without international help.

 

Since the national is a specific combination of the international trends it is precisely impossible to really grasp the national without first understanding the international.

 

The connection between Gramsci’s view of the relation between national and international relations and the strategic and tactical tasks of the working class are fully revealed. Only the national is specific and hegemonic; what separates countries is more important than what connects them. Hence, although Italy and England can in one period be very different types of nation and then later in the same camp, the fact is that different types of united front are applicable depending on which type of country we are dealing with; united front from below and a war of manoeuvre in the ‘backward’ or ‘peripheral’ states, a strategic united front and a war of position in the advanced capitalist countries. Only briefly, in early 1924, having decided to break politically with Bordiga did Gramsci pose the problem correctly. But these insights were not sustained and Gramsci surrendered to rightism.

 

Conclusion

 

The prosecutor at Gramsci’s trial demanded that any sentence ‘stop this brain working for twenty years’. They failed. But it has now stopped working for fifty years. Many are eager to claim him as their own. This hagiographical attitude to the greatest of Italian revolutionists would have appalled Gramsci. We approach Gramsci’s political life critically. By breaking with the ultra-leftism of Bordiga in 1923-24 Gramsci set himself the conscious project of steering the infant and repressed PCI between the ultra-leftism of Bordiga and the opportunism of Tasca. In doing so his goal was to return to the postions of the revolutionary Comintern of Lenin.

 

In trying to reach that goal Gramsci was responsible for a considerable body of perceptive work on the errors of Bordigism, on the history, class structure and strategic problems of Italian society. Every revolutionary militant today will find much in his work that is valuable and inspiring.

 

But Gramsci failed to build Bolshevism in Italy precisely because the bureaucratic centrist ‘Bolshevisation’ of Stalin and Zinoviev intersected his evolution. In the period up until his arrest, this ensured that a PCI under Gramsci’s direction failed to expunge a milder form of ultra-leftism in Italy and an affinity for the growing right opportunism in the ‘west’. In prison, his further reflections based on a one-sided rejection of his own ultra-leftism and nurtured by the Stalinists’ myth about Trotsky, led Gramsci further into the camp of right centrism. Gramsci did not so much expand the boundaries of Marxism but rather narrowed its concerns. His insights were often not unique, once they transgressed the bounds of Italian history and society and were often overly abstract and even ambiguous. In the historical period that opens with the degeneration of the USSR it is Trotskyism, not Gramscism, that stands on the shoulders of Leninism and makes Marxism taller by a head.

 

Despite that, during this, the fiftieth year since Gramsci’s cruel and painful death, we can find inspiration in his life and struggle. We can only hope to preserve him from the grasp of his ‘friends’.

 

 

 

Footnotes:

 

1 Marxism Today, April 1987

 

2 O Blasco [Tresso], ‘Un grand militant est mort . . . Gramsci.’, La Lutte Ouvriére No. 44, 14 May 1937

 

3 L Maitan, ‘The Legacy of Antonio Gramsci’, in International Marxist Review, Summer 1987

 

4 Socialist Worker Review, April 1987

 

5 Maitan, op cit, p35

 

6 C Harman, Gramsci versus Reformism, p28

 

7 Quoted in A Davidson, ‘Gramsci and Lenin, 1919-22’, Socialist Register 1974, p131.

 

8 A Gramsci, Selections from the Political Writings, Vol 1 (SPW1), p34 (London 1977)

 

9 Ibid

 

10 Ibid, p68

 

11 Ibid

 

12 Harman, op cit, p16

 

13 L D Trotsky, Speech to the General Party Membership in Moscow

 

14 Lenin, Collected Works Vol 32, p465 (Moscow)

 

15 A Gramsci, Selections from the Political Writings, Vol 2 (SPW2) p189 (London 1978)

 

16 Theses, Resolutions and Manifestoes of the First Four Congresses of The Communist International, pp391-6 (London 1980)

 

17 L Trotsky,The Third International After Lenin , p90 (New York 1970)

 

18 SPW2, p96

 

19 Ibid, p97

 

20 Ibid, pp107-8

 

21 Ibid, p108

 

22 Ibid, p99

 

23 Ibid, p392

 

24 Ibid, p105

 

25 Ibid, p148

 

26 Ibid, p146

 

27 Ibid, p153

 

28 Ibid, p155

 

29 Ibid, p196

 

30 Ibid, p121-24

 

31 Ibid, p359

 

32 Ibid, p174-5

 

33 Ibid

 

34 Ibid, p199-200

 

35 Ibid, p489

 

36 J Stalin, ‘Concerning the International Situation’, Collected Works Vol 6, p295

 

37 Ibid

 

38 ‘Theses on tactics’, in Resolutions and Theses of the Fifth Congress, (London 1924)

 

39 Ibid

 

40 SPW2, p373

 

41 Ibid, p410

 

42 Ibid, p410

 

43 Ibid, p411

 

44 L Trotsky, On Britain, p253-55 (New York 1972)

 

45 SPW2, p331

 

46 Ibid

 

47 Ibid

 

48 Ibid, p375

 

49 A Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks (SPN), p237-78 (London 1971)

 

50 Quoted in Perry Anderson, ‘The Antimonies of Antonio Gramsci’, New Left Review No100, p72

 

51 SPW2, p414

 

52 Ibid, p359

 

53 Ibid, p414

 

54 Ibid, p192

 

55 Ibid, p284

 

56 SPN, p301

 

57 Ibid, p237

 

58 Ibid, p242-3

 

59 Ibid, p238

 

60 Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, op cit, p90

 

61 SPW2, p176

 

62 SPN, p176

 

63 Ibid, p240-241

 

 

Barbaric Trotskyism: a History of Morenoism (Part 1+2)

Below you find part 1 and, after this, part 2.

 

 

Morenoism - Part one; 1941–1978

 

 

Originally published in Trotskyist International No.1, Theoretical Journal of the League for the Revolutionary Communist International (1988)

 

Note from the Editor: The LRCI was the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency.


 

“I believe that we have made many more mistakes than Trotsky or the Bolsheviks. When I say that ours has been a barbaric Trotskyism it is because I believe it to be the harsh truth and I am not being demagogic.”1

It is little more than a decade since Nahuel Moreno’s Argentinian party (then the PST) declared itself to be “the largest Trotskyist party in the world”. Despite the possible objections to this claim we must accept that the International Workers League (LIT), built around that party, is numerically the largest international “Fourthist” organisation to arise in the semi-colonial world and is the group which has the greatest majority of militants in Latin America. Nowadays the Morenoites maintain that they, along with the Mandelites, are the only two truly international organisations in the “world Trotskyist movement”. In this article we propose to analyse the history and the programmatic ideas of Morenoism from its origin through to the late 1970s.

 

Moreno the anti-Peronist

 

During the early 1940s there appeared within the ranks of Argentinian Trotskyism an important discussion on the character of the revolution in the semi-colonial countries. One section maintained that the slogan of “national liberation” was reactionary and that the main enemy was their own national bourgeoisie. This position failed to understand that Argentina was a nation dominated by imperialism and that this gave a lop-sided and dependent character to the development of the productive forces in the country. By equating an oppressed nation with an oppressor nation this position would fall into the gravest error of identifying the nationalist and anti-imperialist movements of Latin America with European fascism. The other section of Argentinian Trotskyism, led by Liborio Justo, (“Quebracho”) maintained that the slogan of “national liberation” was part of the democratic programme that the proletarian revolution had to complete. Even though this position of Justo was the closest to that of Lenin, he nevertheless held a series of stageist and sectarian conceptions.

In 1941 the Socialist Workers Party, (SWP(US)) and the Fourth International (FI) sent Sherry Mangan to Argentina and Chile to try to reorganise the Trotskyist ranks in those countries. Mangan committed an error in encouraging an organisational unification without a sufficient programmatic basis around those who counterposed the class struggle and socialist revolution to the struggle for “national liberation”. Justo refused to join the fused organisation, the PORS, and by 1942 had broken with the FI. His organisation, the LOR, disintegrated shortly afterwards.

It was in the context of these discussions that the young Hugo Bressano (Nahuel Moreno) entered Trotskyist politics. Initially he was with the official section of the FI. He then went over to Liborio Justo’s group where he took the party name of Nahuel Moreno. Later he broke with this group to launch his own organisation, the GOM, in 1944, renamed the POR in 1946.

The relationship between the struggle for “national liberation” and the struggle for socialism was raised again, and with burning immediacy, during the rise to power of Colonel Juan Peron in the mid-1940s. The onset of war in Europe produced a growing economic and political crisis as the Argentinian government struggled to cope with the disruption of the country’s trade. While the USA could, and to some extent did, replace Britain’s exports of fuel supplies and manufactured goods to Argentina, US protectionism kept her markets firmly shut to Argentinian grain and beef. This provoked growing antagonism from the Argentinian bourgeoisie and encouraged anti-Yankee nationalism. This was exacerbated by the State Department’s attempts to bludgeon Argentina, through economic sanctions, into declaring war on Germany, Italy and Japan and joining the Pan-American Defence Alliance.

By 1943 the conservative government of Castillo, which was already fragmenting, was removed by a military coup. General Ramirez’s military government had a powerful nationalist faction represented by the United Officers’ Group, which included Peron. Peron’s group had gained the upper hand in the government by the start of 1944. Both “moderate” and “nationalist” wings of the military had been united by their anti-communism and the military regime marked its coming to power by breaking a major meat packers strike. Peron, however, recognised the need to lean on the working class organisations for support—both against the bourgeois and landowning opposition at home and against the pressures of US imperialism.

Through his control of the “Secretariat for Labour and Social Welfare” Peron set about winning over the trade unions to support the military regime. Through intervening in disputes and imposing settlements favourable to the workers as well as through introducing state welfare measures—such as accident insurance—Peron had increasing success. By 1944, when both the USA and Britain had broken off diplomatic relations and the USA had frozen Argentina’s gold assets and imposed an embargo on oil and machinery, the powerful railway workers’ unions could be mobilised to demonstrate in the regime’s defence. At the same time “opposition” unions, normally ones dominated by the Communist Party (CP) or Socialist Party, both of which supported the war and the allies’ pressure on the regime, were not recognised as having “legal standing”. These were often put under the control of government appointees.

Peron outlined his intentions very clearly to the Buenos Aires stock exchange in August 1944:

“Señores Capitalistas: don’t be afraid of my unionism. Never has capitalism been firmer than now. . . What I want to do is to organise the workers through the state, so that the state shows them the way forward. In this way the revolutionary currents endangering capitalist society in the post war period can be neutralised.”2

In this Peron succeeded. In 1945 an attempt from within the military to remove him from power resulted in the powerful strike movement of 17 October 1945. It restored Peron to power and led to his victory in the presidential elections of 1946.

Between 1946 and the early 1950s Peron consolidated his support amongst the urban workers and established control over a massively expanded trade union movement. The Peronist CGT went from half a million in 1945 to almost two and a half million in 1954. During this period, a favourable one economically for Argentina, the trade unions made significant gains in wages and conditions. Peron combined bombastic anti-imperialist rhetoric and demands for “national sovereignty” with very generous compensation for imperialist assets taken over (e.g. the British-owned railways). A nascent Labour Party formed out of the 1945 strike wave, which supported Peron as candidate in 1946, was dissolved by Peron in the same year and replaced by a Peronist “Party”. It claimed to be committed to “social justice” [“justicialismo”] as a supposed third way between capitalism and communism. Despite the fact that in the last years of Peron’s rule, before he was ousted by the military in 1955, the Peronist unions had become little more than the agents of the government’s austerity measures, the Peronist movement retained a lasting influence over the labour movement, tying the workers’ organisations to bourgeois nationalism.

The growth of Peronism from the mid-1940s disoriented the Argentinian Trotskyist groups even further. The group around Jorge Abelardo Ramos, an ex-member of the PORS, which published the journal October, went over from a sectarian position on the national problem to total opportunism. He began to develop a series of theories based on the idea that the national bourgeoisie was capable of taking revolutionary positions in the struggle against imperialism, that it was necessary to give critical support to anti-imperialist bourgeois governments and that it was necessary to move towards building a Latin American “national” left. Ramos would finally end up in the camp of bourgeois nationalism. Another group around Pedro Milesi refused to break with their economistic conceptions in relation to the national question and eventually disintegrated. The two most important Trotskyist groups that remained in existence during Peron’s rule were the GCI of Juan Posadas and the GOM/POR of Nahuel Moreno. While the GCI moved in the direction of adapting opportunistically to the rising Peronist movement and, as a result, became the official section of the FI by 1951, Moreno’s GOM/POR if anything tended to take a sectarian position in relation to the Peronist dominated trade unions and workers’ organisations.

Moreno’s GOM/POR correctly declared that “Peronism is a reactionary right wing movement”. It wrote in capital letters that it was the “VANGUARD OF THE BOURGEOIS OFFENSIVE AGAINST THE GREATEST GAINS OF THE WORKING CLASS”.3

While this was an accurate description of Peron’s aims it should not have led revolutionaries to ignore or write off the workers being organised into Peronist led unions. Doing just this the GOM/POR proposed the destruction of the Peronist inclined CGT, siding with the minority “CGT No 2” controlled by the CP and Socialist Party, whose leadership sided with the US embassy and had a record of sabotaging strikes which affected “anti-fascist” employers.

Sectarianism is the response of the opportunist who is afraid of his own shadow. The sectarian, on losing time and resources through his policies and on realising that this method is a dead end, then tries to recover lost time through opportunist policies. Sectarian abstention from the Peronist unions was transformed by Moreno into complete integration into the Peronist Party.

 

Moreno the Peronist

 

The 1951 third world congress of the FI not only endorsed and codified the centrist positions developed on Yugoslavia since 1948, but also extended these liquidationist positions to Latin America. The resolution “Latin America: Problems and Tasks”, while containing some orthodox general formulations on the relation of communists to “anti-imperialist movements”, was pervaded by exhortations to the sections not to “isolate” themselves from the masses through sectarianism.

At this time, a distinction was made between bourgeois nationalism—e.g. Cardenas, Peron, (Peron was described as “a reactionary government of the national bourgeoisie”)—and supposed “petit bourgeois anti-imperialist movements” such as the MNR of Bolivia, the APRA of Peru, Auténticos in Cuba, etc. These latter movements were held to be potentially “revolutionary” in their struggle with imperialism (later Peron was added to this list).

Thus in Bolivia the FI section was advised that in a situation where the (in fact bourgeois nationalist) MNR led a mobilisation against the government, they were not to abstain:

“. . . but on the contrary intervene energetically in it with the aim of pushing it as far as possible up to the seizure of power by the MNR on the basis of the progressive programme of the anti-imperialist united front.”4

In such a circumstance the section would advance the slogan of a “workers’ and peasants’ government” based on the Trotskyists and the MNR! Developing later out of this perspective was the idea of “entryism sui generis” into this movement, entering for long periods with the objective of winning over the left wing or even “winning over the whole movement”.

Moreno’s group which was present and participating in the congress, enthusiastically endorsed this resolution as well as the proposal to fuse all the Argentinian groups with the, now official, section, the GCI:

“Our party enthusiastically welcomes this revolutionary measure . . . According to this judgement the militants of the POR prepare themselves for entry into the section . . . The third world congress of the FI . . . has recognised one of the organisations that lays claim to the FI, the GCI, as its Argentinian section. The event is simply magnificent and trancends the limitations of our own Trotskyist organisations to become one of the most auspicious acts in the life of the Argentinian working class in particular and Latin America in general.”5

Despite this egregious praise the process of integrating Moreno into the Posadas group did not prosper. A little later Moreno joined with the SWP(US), the PCI (Lambert) and Healy’s group around Socialist Outlook to form the “International Committee”. This new organisation was born in dispute with the “Pabloite” leadership of the FI and was built as a new organisational alternative. The IC criticised Pablo for putting forward deep entryism into the Stalinist movement. However the sections of the IC would practise a much deeper entryism in the very heart of the social democratic and bourgeois nationalist movements, none more so than the Argentinian IC section under Moreno.

 

Change of line

 

In Argentina, while Posadas’ Pabloite group kept to an opportunist line but maintained an independent party, the Moreno group agreed to dissolve itself into Peronism. As one of the leaders of the POR at the time put it:

“We were opponents of the Peronista government, implacable adversaries until 1954, when we saw the coming of an imperialist and anti-labour wave, and we reacted against it.”6

Certainly by 1954 all the indications were that the ruling class was moving to get rid of Peron. Mobilised behind the Catholic Church, driven on by a deepening economic crisis, the bourgeois and petit bourgeois poured onto the streets until the army delivered the coup de grâs in September 1955. But far from defending an independent proletarian standpoint—being neither for Peron nor for bourgeois reaction—Moreno’s grouping made a 180 degree turn and became the most slavish opportunists in relation to Peron and his movement. In 1954 the POR dissolved itself to join the newly formed Socialist Party of National Revolution (PSRN), which was a pro-Peronist party, having split from the Socialist Party because of its anti-Peronist stance. In the PSRN the Morenoites joined up with the likes of Jorge Abelardo Ramos, who helped develop the PSRN programme. This was a classic “Stalinist” programme—first pressurise the national bourgeoisie to achieve independence from imperialism, then develop the proletarian revolution. Moreno soon controlled the PSRN mouthpiece La Verdad (The Truth) in Buenos Aires.

When Peron was overthrown in 1955 and the PSRN declared illegal, Moreno’s group continued to work with the Peronists producing a paper called Palabra Obrero (PO) which declared itself an “organ of revolutionary workers’ Peronism” produced “under the discipline of General Peron and the Peronist Supreme Council”. The paper was linked to a group of “left” Peronist trade union leaders called the “62 organisations” which acted as the transmission belt for maintaining the hold of Peronism—bourgeois nationalism—over the Argentinian trade unions.

The entry tactic, as developed by Trotsky and the ICL in the 1930s, was aimed at the social democratic parties—especially in Europe. The victory of fascism in Germany and the transparent responsibility of Stalinism had given rise to strong left currents in these parties, initially resistant to Stalinism and open to the revolutionary ideas of Trotskyists. Trotsky recognised the possibility of winning over these centrist currents to revolutionary communism by a short term entry into these parties, raising the Trotskyist programme and winning the best elements in a sharp struggle with the reformists. Moreno’s strategy was the opposite of this policy. Moreno entered an overtly bourgeois party, not a workers’ party, for a protracted period without raising any criticism of Peron.

An example of this is shown in issue 100 of PO of 4 September 1959. The edition is dedicated to reporting the first Congress of PO. In not a single congress resolution, nor in any part of the periodical can we find the least reference to Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky; instead we find a long quotation from Peron with his picture accompanied by fulsome and extensive praise. Neither are we liable to find the least reference to communism, socialism, a workers’ government or the need to build a workers’ party; instead we find the promise of the vindication of Peron and his programme:

“Palabra Obrera is not a publishing enterprise to show off photos of Peron . . . [we believe] in complying with Peron and the movement . . . Along the road we have, more than once, had to confront a campaign by our very own comrades, especially leaders, who allege that we are not Peronists, that we are splitters in saying what we think. Analysis of our progress shows that we do not pick fights with anyone; in order to maintain the unity of Peronism we propose to the best activists . . . that they join PO to give the Peronist movement the direction that the working class deserves, along with General Peron.”7

Throughout the whole of this special edition there is not a trace of a class analysis of Peronism. Instead of proposing that the working class breaks with this bourgeois movement which was ever more tied to the Yankees and anti-communism, they proposed that there should be more “worker” candidates on the lists of a bourgeois party that they defended more than anyone else, in order to preserve its unity!

According to PO, Peronism was made up of two wings: the “softs” and the “hards”. PO placed itself in the “hard” line, loyal to Peron:

“Workers’ Peronism of the hard line, PO carries to its ultimate conclusion the economic programme begun by General Peron.”8

The duty of all Marxists consists of prosecuting the class war, in preserving the independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie and its institutions. Morenoism, instead of attacking the most prominent and dangerous employers’ party there has been in the history of Argentina and trying to make the workers break with Peron, attempted the impossible by climbing on board the bourgeois bandwagon and identifying itself with Peronism. Morenoism not only renounced the strategy of building workers’ parties to make the proletarian revolution, but also took as its own the “economic programme begun by General Peron”. That is to say, one of the absolute defence of private property against the proletariat.

In the 1950s no other current claiming to be of the FI went to the same extreme of class collaboration. The “Revolutionary Workers Peronism” group of Moreno even found itself further to the right than the right-centrist Posadas.

In 1958 elections were staged in Argentina. Peron was not permitted to stand so he cobbled together an alliance with one of the right wing representatives of imperialism and the oligarchy. Bourgeois nationalism, increasingly anti-working class, sought legitimacy before the most conservative sections of its own dominant class. Thus Peronism called for a vote for the reactionary Frondizi. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of workers who had supported Peron refused to obey this order to vote for Frondizi. The whole of the mass electoral movement against Frondizi was expressed by a million abstentions, 36% of votes being blank.

In these circumstances it was essential to try to intervene in order to drive a wedge between the working class and the Peronist bourgeoisie and launch a campaign for workers’ candidates. Electoral tendencies to class independence did exist. Even the small party of Posadas, Pablo and Mandel presented itself in the guise of the “Workers’ Party” and in only three districts in the province of Buenos Aires they won a significant total of 15,424 votes.

The subordination of Morenoism before Peronism was so acute that they called for a vote for the oligarchist Frondizi:

“On deciding to call for a vote for Frondizi, Palabra Obrera, despite considering it extremely dangerous that splits could appear in the masses when everyone is ‘carried away’ with the blank vote, accedes in a disciplined way, not because it considers it better than a blank vote, but in order to safeguard the unity of Peronism and only for that.”9

The unity of Peronism was more important than the independence of the working class!

The Morenoites spoke the truth when they stated that “analysis of our progress shows how we do not pick fights with anyone, in order to maintain the unity of Peronism”. Peronism was an expression of private property. Morenoism was the guardian of its unity. Perhaps the famous call of Marx and Engels should have been changed to: “Workers of the world unite . . . behind General Peron!”.

This same line was applied in other areas. In Peru for example the group allied to Moreno participated in the creation of Belaunde’s party Accíon Popular. In 1956 the Peruvian POR split between those persuaded by the tactic of “entryism” into the APRA (supporters of the International Secretariat) and those who preferred to do the same with Belaundism (supporters of the IC). Belaundism was born as a bourgeois nationalist movement with a tenuous connection with the trade unions. Never at any time did it have any serious organic weight in the workers’ movement (as did other nationalist parties from the APRA to the MNR) and its political positions were always very timid. Inside the Belaundists the IC section edited the periodical Left. Years later the same Belaunde would go on to massacre the peasant rebellion and sentence Hugo Blanco and other Morenoites to long gaol terms.

The “Revolutionary Workers’ Peronism” of Argentina along with the POR of Chile and the POR of Peru were the basis of the foundation in 1957 of the Latin American Secretariat of Orthodox Trotskyism (SLATO) that under the dominance of Moreno, acted as the bureau of the IC for this continent. If this was orthodoxy what could revisionism do worse! In fact the apologists for the IC tradition dare not look at their Latin American representatives in this period.

 

From Peronism to Castroism

 

Moreno’s subservience to Peronism even led him for a short time to back Batista against Castro! Peron was on very close terms with Batista and Franco. When the 1959 revolution occurred Moreno equated it with the counter-revolution which overthrew Peron. The outcome was logical; it was necessary to have fought along with Batista against Castro.

After holding this reactionary position for a short time (through his attachment to Peron) Moreno rapidly became a Castroite (and also a Maoist) convert. By 1961 Moreno was more than willing to dump the theory of permanent revolution as the price for the favour of these Stalinist currents:

“Of course, life has brought out the gaps, omissions and errors of the programme of permanent revolution . . . The dogma that only the working class can accomplish the democratic tasks is false. Sectors of the urban middle class and peasantry are, on occasion, the revolutionary leadership . . . History has rejected the theory that the proletariat, in the backward countries, is the revolutionary leadership . . . Mao Tse Tungism, or the theory of guerrilla war, is the particular reflection in the field of theory of the present stage of world revolution.”10

It is little wonder that, given this developing position, by 1964 Moreno has joined the SWP(US) in reunifying with the International Secretariat to form the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI). The key to this reunification was uncritical support for the Castroites in Cuba, the recognition that a “blunt instrument” was indeed sufficient to achieve a socialist revolution. Thus Palabra Obrera declared:

“Fidel, like Peron here, brought together under his leadership diverse sectors of the Cuban economy, politics and society. With them he took power and smashed the corrupt bureaucracy of the old regime. But the Cuban employers and oligarchy did not want to compete for the fruits of victory with the peasants and workers. The oligarchy and imperialism put pressure on in a thousand different economic, political and military ways. And Fidel had to choose; continue the revolution to its ultimate end or build a bridge to conciliation. Fidel did not doubt for an instant; he broke all the bridges which connected him to the exploitative oligarchy and strengthened those which linked him to the most downcast sections of the people. A consequently revolutionary leadership thus forged its new revolutionary cadres with a programme and organisation linked closely to the Cuban poor.”11

Not a word of criticism of this regime is uttered. The suppression of the “Trotskyists” of the Posadas current, the purging of the trade unions, the stifling of workers’ democracy all go by without a protest from Moreno. The message is clear; Fidel Castro is a substitute for the revolutionary party. In Argentina we have to find from within Peronism a new Fidel and this principle can be applied elsewhere in Latin America.

In the 1950s the Morenoite strategy had consisted of integrating themselves with the bourgeois nationalist movements (such as Peronism). The 1960s saw the same method applied to Castroite currents. The Cuban revolution had an important impact on the left wings of both the nationalist and Stalinist parties. Now they were stirred to try to apply the old bourgeois anti-imperialist programme (which the traditional nationalist parties, MNR, APRA, etc, had put to one side in their pacts with the oligarchies) by armed methods. Thus were born everywhere new Castroite “movements”, “fronts” and “armies”. In 1964 Moreno’s group in Argentina fused with the openly Castroite current, the FRIP, to form the Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores (PRT). From then until 1968 Moreno was at one with the policy of the USFI leaders, supporting the “guerrillaist” turn.

Castroism was a special synthesis of classical Latin American revolutionary nationalism and Stalinism. Originally a petit bourgeois nationalist movement, Castroism was forced to break with its right wing and with the, at first reluctant, support of Moscow, bureaucratically expropriate the bourgeoisie in order to build what from the start would be a degenerate workers’ state. Encircled by imperialism, Castro chose to support all those governments and parties of the bourgeoisie that had not broken off relations with Cuba and as a form of blackmail support petit bourgeois guerrilla struggles in those countries which were for the blockade. The strategy of Castro was one of popular fronts and peaceful coexistence. The call to arms at specific moments was subordinate to this perspective. Castroism is inimical to the building of workers’ parties. Instead it favours armed petit bourgeois movements. The Castroite bureaucracy was the enemy of workers’ councils in Cuba, Czechoslovakia and anywhere else. Its goal was always to tie the proletariat to other social classes. It was to this movement that Moreno subordinated SLATO and later the USFI sections in Latin America with disastrous results.

 

The guerrilla line in Peru

 

The practical implications of Moreno’s turn towards Castroism and Maoism were not long in coming. In Peru, where the POR had split between International Secretariat supporters (POR(T)) and the supporters of the International Committee (POR), the latter rapidly turned towards the Stalinist and nationalist currents influenced by Castroism and Maoism. They proposed to these currents the formation of a single party. Their slogan was, “The dissident APRA, the Leninist Committee, the MSP and the independents must declare if they are with the party of the Peruvian revolution”. The dissident Apristas (APRA Rebelde) were a radical faction led by De la Puente and Valle Riestra which later became the MIR. The MSP was the party of Ruiz Elderdge, Sofocleto, Moncloa and other bourgeois third-worldists. Note that it is the Peruvian revolution that is spoken of—that is a national and not a proletarian, socialist or internationalist revolution. The programme they proposed for this fusion consisted of five points:

1 That elections are a fraud

2 That there was no peaceful road to the Peruvian revolution

3 For nationalisation of the large imperialist companies

4 Introduction of agrarian reform

5 Urban reform.12

Note that they did not propose that the nationalisations be under workers’ control and without compensation and moreover that they refused to call for the nationalisation of the property of the national bourgeoisie and the “small imperialist companies”.

This is a programme limited to bourgeois democratic demands and which accepts the maintenance of private property. It is also a little more moderate than the original five-point plan of the APRA.

With this line the Peruvian group formed the FIR (Front of the Revolutionary Left) in 1961. Similar positions led the Chilean POR to form the People’s Socialist Party (PSP) and then the Chilean MIR. In Argentina Moreno’s group united with the “Frente Revolucionario Indoamericanista Popular” of Santucho to found the PRT. These parties were created with populist policies sprinkled with Marxist phrases and abounding in the terminology of the armed struggle and Castroism.

The POR was the first group within the SLATO to implement the new guerrilla line. At its November 1960 congress, it adopted a set of “insurrectional theses” which outlined a strategy of guerrilla warfare, based on the peasantry, as a means of seizing power. A few months later, a full meeting of the Latin American Secretariat of Orthodox (sic) Trotskyism endorsed this line (April 1961) and promised to raise funds for the struggle going on in La Convencion Valley in Peru.

There, Hugo Blanco, a member of the POR recruited by Moreno in Argentina, had been working amongst peasant unions since late 1958. Returning to Cuzco in 1960, carrying the new guerrillaist line, the POR/FIR set about organising the armed struggle.

Blanco maintained at the time that the revolutionary party in Peru would have to be of a “special type” because it would be composed of the peasant unions. A union, as a united front body which groups together many diverse currents of thought and is composed generally of workers who have not broken with the ideology of the dominant class, can never replace the revolutionary party. Even less when the union is of a non-proletarian class—the peasantry. While the “Trotskyists” in Cuzco were bravely pursuing peasant unionism, in Lima the FIR was pulling the worker and university cadres out of their centres in order to dedicate themselves to the “expropriation” of banks.

The development of peasant organs of a soviet type and armed militias in the countryside is a correct policy that must be tied to the creation of similar proletarian movements in the cities. Alongside this must go a campaign to build a workers’ party. The formation of “liberated zones” which require the abandonment of work in the proletarian movement and its subordination to a petit bourgeois leadership is a strategy that has never and will never lead to the socialist revolution. This was the Maoist and Castroite strategy of “surrounding the cities from the countryside”, a strategy that relegated the proletariat of the cities to a passive, supportive role. The main theoretical work of the Peruvian Morenoites, the “Insurrectional Theses”, openly said that there was no need to apply the old model revolution of Lenin and Trotsky in Peru. Rather it was necessary to follow the road of China, Cuba and Algeria of proceeding from a prolonged war in the countryside to the city and thence to the construction of “popular revolutionary governments”.

This strategy led to disaster for the POR/FIR in Peru. The bank “expropriations” of late 1961 and 1962 led to massive repression in La Convencion and by 1962 Blanco and his small band of followers were on the run in the mountains, with most of the FIR members in prison or in hiding. Blanco was caught in 1963 and spent the next seven years in prison. The launching of the Chilean MIR led to similar disastrous results, with the “Trotskyists” being unceremoniously expelled as the MIR became assimilated to Castroism.

Blanco and Moreno were later to claim, in their faction fight with the Mandelites of the International Majority Tendency (IMT) over guerrillaism, that they had always opposed the worst excesses of the guerrillaist strategy. Certainly it was true that as things went badly wrong in La Convencion, Moreno drew back from the practical conclusions of the “insurrectional line” (endorsed by SLATO) as he was to do later in Argentina. But Moreno’s criticisms at the time were related to the universal application of the guerrilla strategy throughout Latin America and the danger of developing armed actions isolated from the masses. His critique drew not on the lessons of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, but instead held up the model of Mao’s Stalinist-led mass peasant movement in China.

 

The OLAS episode

 

In Argentina, Moreno was once more to become an enthusiast for Castroite guerrillaism at the end of 1967. Moreno’s slavish opportunism in relation to every twist and turn of the Castroites was demonstrated even more clearly in this period. The launching of the Organisation of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) in Havana in August 1967 was seen by the USFI leadership and Moreno as a signal that Castro was about to throw his weight behind the guerrilla organisations in Latin America. This, combined with the despatching of Che Guevara to Bolivia, turned Moreno into a fervent guerrillaist again. Once again the tactic of “entryism”, this time into OLAS, was placed firmly on the agenda. Moreno declared that:

“If in the past the trade union was our organisational vehicle for posing the question of power, today OLAS, with its national combat organisations for armed struggle, is the only organisational vehicle for power.”13

This position was justified retrospectively by Moreno on the basis that the whole USFI thought that the foundation of OLAS presaged the opening up of a “continental civil war” in Latin America in which the “Trotskyists” had to participate “critically”.14 Of course there was no criticism at the time, only a rush to “enter” OLAS.

Moreno only reversed his position when it became clear that the Cubans, following the disaster in Bolivia and death of Guevara, were quickly abandoning the OLAS strategy and mending their fences with Moscow and the Latin American Stalinist parties. When a section of the PRT (with the encouragement of Livio Maitan) prepared to launch a guerrilla movement, the ERP (Peoples’ Revolutionary Army), Moreno split the PRT and moved into opposition to “the guerrillaist turn” in the USFI, a turn he had helped to foster.

The examination of the positions and practice of the Morenoites during this period destroys two myths. Firstly, that the politics of the IC sections in Latin America represented any sort of “orthodox Trotskyism”, any revolutionary alternative to the centrism of the Posadas dominated “Pabloite” sections. The sections of SLATO committed as systematic and equally opportunist errors as their International Secretariat brethren. Both currents demonstrated again and again that they represented a form of centrism which had nothing in common with Trotskyism.

Secondly, the record dispels the myth assiduously peddled by Moreno himself as well as his epigones that this current stood against the guerrillaist wave which led many hundreds of militants adhering to the IS or IC fragments of the Fourth International to their deaths.

Sorry to say, there was not one tendency throughout Latin America which defended the proletarian perspective of Trotskyism against petit bourgeois guerrillaist deviations in the 1960s.

From Castroite parties to reformist socialist parties

The late 1960s saw the Morenoite current on a rightist turn. Moreno’s PRT (Verdad)—named after his journal—allied with Hansen of the SWP(US) to oppose the full scale guerrillaist turn launched at the ninth congress of the USFI in 1969. This belated retreat from the capitulation to Castroism and Maoism did not herald any fundamental change in Moreno’s politics. In fact, it represented an electoralist, rightist reaction to ultra-left adventurism, not a revolutionary critique of it.

By 1972, Moreno had found a new, social democratic group to fuse with, led by a long time reformist, Juan Carlos Coral of the Socialist Party of Argentina (PSA). The fusion programme of what became the PST was printed in the 13 November 1972 Intercontinental Press. In an accompanying interview, Moreno amazingly described the party as “95% Trotskyist”. In fact it put forward a democratic programme, albeit dressed up in revolutionary verbiage, rather than a communist transitional one. It called for the “building of a great socialist, a revolutionary workers’ party deeply rooted in the realities of the nation in solidarity with the socialist movement of Latin America and the world”.

The “socialist movement” was (deliberately) left unspecified. The reader could assume Castroism, Maoism or even the Second International. The unification agreement did, however, reject any “outside control or direction”, a token of its internationalist commitment! It called for the “democratisation of the armed forces” and the end of “their use in the service of capital” and the suppression of their “repressive role”. Whether this wretched social democratic formulation was considered by Moreno to be part of the 95% Trotskyism or part of the 5% something else was not made clear. Finally, the emergence of a “socialist” government was seen in purely parliamentary terms through the “Constituent Assembly [which would] appoint a workers’ and people’s popular government which would expel the [foreign] bases and construct a socialist Argentina”.15

Communists know that the armed forces have a central purpose; the defence of the interests of the dominant class and repression of the remaining classes. To ask the armed forces to stop being repressive is tantamount to asking a lion to stop eating its victims. This position is a classic social democratic and Stalinist one, sowing fatal illusions in the democratisation of capitalist armies. The demand for a workers’ government elected via a constituent assembly is a Menshevik demand but it remained a permanent Morenoite formula.

Revolutionaries are obliged to fight for democratic demands (including a sovereign constituent assembly) at the same time as maintaining that only direct action and the formation of workers’ councils can impose proletarian demands. The workers’ government must be the product of the workers’ councils and the armed militias. The reformists want the workers to believe that a socialist government may come out of a parliamentary majority. Communists know that although the “socialists” might control parliament, the real power resides with the bourgeoisie and its armed forces. To deceive the masses with the idea that socialism can come through the parliamentary road or by “abolishing the repressive role of the armed forces” is to politically disarm the proletariat and limit it to the arena of bourgeois democracy.

Moreno’s fusion with Coral’s Socialist Party represented a complete capitulation to social democratic reformism. Having taken on the colours of Peronism for many years, Moreno’s organisation was now to combine it with a chronic adaptation to “constitutionalism”. Far from “being a revolutionary workers’ party”, the PST distinguished itself by its fawning opportunism towards Peronism which, at this time, was on the verge of its “second coming”.

The overthrow of Peron had been followed by numerous regimes, either direct military ones or civilian regimes tolerated by the army as long as the Peronists were prohibited from participating in the elections. Peronism, however, remained the major political force in Argentina, especially within the trade unions. By the end of the 1960s there was a growing working class struggle, including an important popular struggle in Cordoba, led by the car workers in May 1969 which shook the regime. Major strikes accompanied by growing guerrilla actions by sections of the Peronist movement—the Montoneros, as well as by the ERP—provided a growing crisis in the military regime of General Lannusse in the early 1970s.

 

The PST’s accord with the bourgeoisie

 

There was a growing belief amongst the ruling class that the only person who could control the working class, through the Peronist trade unions, and disarm the left was Peron, who was in exile in Spain. Having participated in the Grand National Accord of General Lannusse, which aimed at a carefully controlled return to a restricted democracy, Avanzada Socialista (the PST’s paper) on 8 November 1972 commented on Peron’s imminent return: “Why is Peron coming? Hopefully it will be to impose fighting workers’ candidates and not to make deals with the oligarchy”. In peddling such illusions in Peron, the PST joined the rest of the Peronist “left” in looking to Peron to help fight the growing rightward forces.

Far from supporting the left Peronists, after his assumption of power in October 1973, Peron, with the support of the army and the Peronist bureaucrats in the CGT, proceeded to attack the Montoneros and the Peronist Youth Movement, introducing new measures against “terrorism”. Meanwhile, the activities of the “Argentinian Anti-Communist Alliance”—a right wing death squad linked to the federal police—were ignored. In the second half of 1974 this organisation murdered seventy prominent leftist intellectuals, lawyers and workers. By early 1975 they were kidnapping and killing leftists at the rate of fifty a week. Peron died in July 1974, leaving his wife, Isabel Peron, in control of an increasingly crisis-wracked regime facing a rising workers’ movement defending its living standards in a growing economic slump.

During this last period of Peron’s government the PST became a craven defender of “institutionalisation”, that is of the existing bourgeois democratic system. In March 1974, in the situation of increasing right wing killings and left wing guerrilla activity, the PST was drawn into an accord with six bourgeois parties and the CP. In the presence of General Peron the PST (represented by Coral), promised to adhere to “the institutional process”, that is to renounce revolutionary struggle. It took Avanzada Socialista three months, under pressure from the IMT, to announce that this had been a mistake (!) and that they had in fact not signed it!

Signed or not, their agreement with this perspective was clear. After one of many meetings in the government palace, Juan Carlos Coral is quoted as saying to Isabel Peron, then president:

“The PST declares its categorical opposition to a coup d’etat and violence in the form of terrorism and guerrilla activity which, although with different motives, are equal in provoking coups and thus stand in opposition to the democratic demands of the masses. We have no illusion that we can change the policy of the government by speeches but surely you Señora Presidente, and your ministers have taken note of some of our observations.”16

This scandalous equating of the “left” Peronist and ERP guerrilla forces with the right wing death squads was only equalled by the PST’s response to Videla’s coup when it actually came on 24 March 1976—a coup that was to lead to 30,000 dead and “disappeared” Argentinians.

A militant of the PST at the time explained the situation within the organisation thus:

“The coup d’etat found the party plunged into confusion. In December 1975 we had embarked on the preparations for the forthcoming elections, starting from the position that there existed a dominant ’institutionalist’ section in the armed forces, backed by wide layers of the bourgeoisie. When in March, one week before the coup, the strikes against the Mondelli plan spread across the whole of the country, and it was the time to press for a general strike against the government and the supporters of the military coup, there appeared in Avanzada an article on the situation explaining that the National Committee was not united and therefore we had no position! Once the coup had happened the party spread hopes in its moderate and democratic character.”17

The new press of the PST declared:

“We are in the presence of the most democratic military government in Latin America. It was impossible to wait for another nine months in this situation of nightmare until the election took place. The whole people were crying out against the government [of Isabel Peron] . . . The eruption of 24 March can be traced to these causes. Despite the principled objections that any healthy democratic person would raise against military coups or any concrete judgement of the measures of the present government, it is a fact that the military carried out in their own way what the popular wave of anti-government discontent was unable to do because of the defection of its leadership”.18

What could this mean other than that the dictatorship of Videla was progressive! The second issue of the PST’s press after the coup—it changed its name to La Yesca (The Flint) because it was a semi-legal publication—continued the same line despite the growing repression:

“La Yesca continues to exercise its right to freedom. Its continuation is proof that the democratic breach is widening and that freedom, this freedom with which it speaks to General Videla who has no wish for an obedient press, is strengthened.”19

General Videla responded to this craven appeal by banning both publications!

Morenoism was seeking to gain legal space by making political concessions to the most bloodthirsty dictatorship in the history of Argentina. Shortly after the defeat of the 1905 insurrection in Russia the Bolsheviks started calling the most rightwing Mensheviks “liquidationist” because they held that it was necessary to maintain a legal workers’ party at all costs by liquidating clandestine organisations and adapting them to what might be permitted by the Tsar. Moreno followed the liquidationists and not Lenin. On the occasion of the boycott of the world football championship of 1978 held in Argentina, the PST stated that, “the campaign mounted abroad by the ultra-left” had benefitted the dictatorship because:

“It only helped its plans with the ambiguous and utopian boycott tactic and by exaggerations [sic] and inaccuracies on the nature of the repression we endure . . . It is this inadequacy of the government’s response to human rights which is provoking the increased international outcry.”20

Morenoite policy consisted of pressurising the dictatorship into democratising itself and correcting its “inadequacies” on “the matter of human rights”. This led to the call to form a Popular Front with the civilian parties of the bourgeoisie in order to seek a return to the oligarchist constitution of 1853 (which defended private property and repressive forces against the workers):

“The socialists make a call for unity in action to all political parties, especially to the Justice Party [Peronists], the UCR [the party of Alfonsin] the PI and the PC [Communist Party], to launch a huge workers’ and popular movement for the full implementation of the 1853 constitution.”21

At the same time it led to the seeking out of an alliance with the gangster-like Argentinian union bureaucracy which, in contrast with many other countries, is so reactionary that never in any way has it bothered itself by getting involved with any reformist workers’ party and had assisted the dictatorship against many worker activists.

 

The Brazilian “Convergence”

 

In Brazil the military dictatorship halfway through the 1970s was facing growing opposition. In 1974 the Portugese revolution took place, which overthrew the fifty year old fascist dictatorship and which in turn affected many countries (especially Brazil). Morenoism was determined to capitalise on the leftest image of the Portuguese Socialist Party (PSP). To those many thousands of anti-militarist activists who put their hopes on the PSP of Soares, Moreno offered the idea of forming a grand Brazilian socialist party. Apeing the symbol of the Portugese SP (which even now is used by the Brazilian section) and brandishing a reformist programme, the Morenoites summoned a convergence of the socialists. His Brazilian section soon became the “Socialist Convergence”. They called upon such people as bourgeois ex-minister Alfonso to participate in this project. In the 1978 elections the Morenoites called for a vote for “worker” and “socialist” candidates of the MDB. This was the only opposition party permitted by the dictatorship, the forerunner of the current governing party in Brazil and it had an unmistakeably bourgeois programme. The Morenoites called for a vote for those candidates of a bourgeois pro-imperialist party that showed sympathy for social democracy!

Trotskyists would have proposed a totally different policy. Rather than attempts to form a reformist or centrist socialist party that would help the bourgeoisie tame the masses and eliminate any danger of going beyond the process of “democratisation”, it had to call for the formation of a workers’ party. Here it would have used the revolutionary workers’ party tactic developed by Trotsky in discussion with the SWP(US) in the 1930s. Fighting to build a mass movement of workers and trade unionists to break with the bourgeois parties and fighting within that movement for a revolutionary socialist programme to be adopted by such a party. Moreno’s “socialist convergences” and “movements towards socialism” were a centrist parody of this tactic.

Rather than the alternative of voting for one of two reactionary parties of the dictatorship, revolutionaries had to call for a spoiled vote. Rather than peddle reformist theses creating illusions in a parliamentary road to socialism, Trotskyists advocate a struggle for democracy fought for by revolutionary means, struggling to build workers’ and peasants’ committees against the dictatorship, mobilised around the demand for a sovereign constituent assembly. In this context Trotskyists would have argued for any workers’ parties to take up the burning demands of the masses: land to the tiller—for agrarian revolution, expropriation of the imperialist holdings and of the capitalists, for nationalised industry under workers’ control, for breaking up the army and its replacement by workers’ and popular militias. This was the method of struggle both for a revolutionary constituent assembly and for the struggle for workers’ councils—soviets—and a workers’ and peasants’ government.

In contrast to the revolutionary programme of Trotskyism Moreno’s group peddled only parliamentary cretinism:

“In the constituent assembly we will struggle for the workers to secure the vote for a constitution that will organise the country in a new way, under socialist planning. Or we will struggle for it to vote in a workers’ government and a socialist constitution that will create the basis for the construction of a socialist Brazil.”22

 

Blanco and FOCEP’s failures

 

In Peru despite the revolutionary possibilities opened up in the period 1978-80 the Morenoites showed themselves incapable of transcending their hopeless electoralism. A massive general strike in 1978 had forced the right wing military government of Bermudez to concede a “constituent assembly” based on a restricted franchise whose powers were limited to drawing up a constitution. While the Mandelites joined the UDP, an electoral coalition of Maoists, Castroites, the Stalinists and the bourgeois nationalists of the PSR, Moreno’s group the PST—led at that time by Hugo Blanco—helped form FOCEP (the Workers’, Peasants’, Students’ and People’s Front).

While FOCEP rejected alliances with bourgeois parties, a departure from Moreno’s normal practice, the PST was incapable of developing a revolutionary programme for power. The PST’s programme for the elections (which never once mentioned the fact that the party claimed to be Trotskyist!) did not even address the crucial question of the nature of bourgeois power and the need to break up the armed forces. Instead the transition to a socialist state is seen in terms of an evolution of mass struggles and “peoples’ assemblies” until a workers’ government emerged out of a coalition of workers’ parties based either on a future democratic constituent assembly or peoples’ assembly. None of the crucial tactics for achieving workers’ power—the use of the indefinite general strike, the formation of workers’ councils, the construction of workers’ militias, figure in this “programme”.

FOCEP’s success in gaining 12% of the vote was to strengthen further its parliamentary illusions. On arriving at the Constituent Assembly the FOCEP deputies, instead of denouncing the reactionary character of it and its right wing majority and calling for immediate elections to a sovereign constituent assembly, moved to the right of their initial programme. They proposed that the existing assembly take the power in order to carry out democratic and anti-imperialist tasks. It was a Menshevik slogan not only because it sowed parliamentary illusions but because of its idea of a transitional “socialist” government. Ledesma, the president of FOCEP, called for the transformation of the undemocratic assembly into a Paris Commune. The PST proposed that it elect Blanco President of the Republic! The first “Trotskyist” President of a bourgeois republic!

The programme the PST wanted Blanco to carry out was one that was limited and bourgeois. Blanco had to be president not in order to expropriate the bourgeoisie . . . but in order to call new elections within three months and thus democratise the dictatorship of the capitalist class! Such was the confusion of these “Trotskyist” deputies and parties once their mass fronts had placed them in the bourgeois parliament. Within less than two years the threadbare nature of these policies, their failure to offer the workers and peasants any concrete means of struggle, and thus their inability to turn mass support into a revolutionary party rooted in the work places and farms, led to a collapse of the Peruvian far left and with it the influence of “Trotskyism”. “Trotskyism” in Peru entered a decline so profound that today there are very few people who lay claim to these ideas in the country.

 

Launching the LIT

 

For the first three decades of its existence Morenoism had taken few steps to build its own international tendency. It had shown itself, like the other fragments of degenerate Trotskyism, capable of the most gross opportunism and capitulation in whichever faction it found itself at the time—the International Committee, USFI, Leninist-Trotskyist Faction, etc. In 1979 it was to launch its own international project under the banner of “orthodox” defender of the revolutionary party against the USFI’s liquidationism in Nicaragua. The second part of this article will look at the hollowness of this “left turn” and the increasingly crisis wracked nature of the Internationalist Workers Party (LIT) today.

 

 

NOTES:

1. Nahuel Moreno: “Conversations on Trotskyism”, in: Notebooks from “El Socialisa”, p. 47

2. Quoted in D. Rock: Argentina 1516-1987, London 1987, p. 257

3. Nahuel Moreno: “Anti-imperialist mobilizations or class mobilizations; in: Permanent Revolution (Theoretical Organ of the POR Argentina), No. 1, p. 20

4. “Latin America: Problems and Tasks”, Resolution of the Third World Congress; in: Fourth International, New York, November/December 1951

5. Proletarian Front, No. 72, 3 December 1951

6. Ezequiel Reyes, quoted in Robert Alexander: Trotskyism in Latin America, Hoover Institute, p. 61

7. Palabra Obrera, No. 100, 4 September 1959

8. Palabra Obrera, ibid

9. Palabra Obrera, ibid

10. Nahuel Moreno: La Revolucion Latinoamericana, Buenos Aires 1961

11. Palabra Obrera, 1964

12. Nahuel Moreno: La Revolucion Latinoamericana, op cit

13. Nahuel Moreno: La Revolucion Latinoamericana, Argentina y Nuestras Tareas; quoted in SWP(US): International Internal Discussion Bulletin, Vol. X, No. 4

15. “The Basis for Unification of the PSA/PRT”, in: Intercontinental Press 13, November 1972

16. Avanzada Socialista 15, October 1974

17. Quoted in “On the Positions of the Argentinean PST”, Politica Obrear Publications

18 Cambio No. 1, quoted in ibid

19. La Yesca (The Flint), quoted in ibid

20. Opcion, August 1978

21. Correo Internacional

22. Convergencia Socialista, No. 5, November 1978, p. 4; quoted in Internacionalism (Review of the FIT), Vol. 2, No. 4, April 1982

 

* * * * *

 

Barbaric Trotskyism: a History of Morenoism (Part 2)

 

Originally published in Trotskyist International No.9, Theoretical Journal of the League for the Revolutionary Communist International (1992)

 

 

 

Morenoism and the IWL: Opportunism and failed manoeuvres

 

 

 

Five years after the death of their leader, Nahuel Moreno, the International Workers’ League is undergoing its sharpest crisis yet. Jack Tully examines its record since its foundation in 1982

 

In January 1982 the International Workers’ League (Fourth International) (IWL) was founded at a conference of twenty delegates, held in São Paolo, Brazil and presided over by its leader, Nahuel Moreno.1 The foundation of the IWL completed the transformation of “Morenoism” into an independent and clearly defined international tendency. Previously it had constituted a primarily Latin American adjunct to one or other of the major international centrist tendencies claiming the mantle of Trotsky’s Fourth International (FI). 2

 

According to the IWL, their international influence had grown substantially over the previous period. In 1969 they claim to have had only 65 members outside of Argentina. At its foundation the IWL claimed to have 3,500 members,3 with sections in twenty countries. The Argentine section, the MAS—by far the largest component—has claimed up to 6,000 members.

 

A decade later, the IWL has been rocked by a serious split in the MAS, a third of whose members have left, taking with them the organisation’s parliamentary deputies. This followed hard on the heels of the IWL’s recent World Congress, held in February/March 1992, where four conflicting tendencies proved unable to resolve their differences. A new Congress had to be scheduled for 1994, the fourth in five years.

 

The IWL claims to represent “orthodox” Trotskyism as against the revisionism of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) and the other major tendencies. This is a false claim. The IWL is rooted in the common centrist degeneration which the Fourth International underwent between 1948-51. For this reason it commits exactly the same type of gross opportunist errors as its international rivals.

 

The IWL has been hit especially hard by the contrast between its wildly optimistic revolutionary perspectives and the serious reverses suffered by the working class and progressive forces in Argentina and the world after 1989. More specifically, it is suffering the consequences of a decade of opportunist electoral tactics since the Malvinas war and ensuing discredit and downfall of the military junta. The chase after electoral success in a rotten block with reformist figures led inexorably to the junking of more and more of the Trotskyist programme and the rejection in practice of the Leninist conception of a revolutionary party.

 

At its foundation, the most important section of the IWL was the Argentine Partido Socialista des Trabajadores (PST—Socialist Workers’ Party). At that time the IWL saw its most important task as being the consolidation of the PST which had been working in clandestinity since shortly after General Videla’s military coup of 1976.4

 

The unions and the left began to recover by the early 1980s. It was the recovery of the unions, including a major protest demonstration in March 1982, that drove General Galtieri to gamble on seizing the Malvinas. He was obliged to allow, indeed encourage mass anti-British demonstrations which clearly enabled the left and the workers’ organisations to organise on a mass basis.

 

Ten years later the MAS would say that this badly calculated military adventure was doomed to failure given the determination of British imperialism. But at the time the PST overestimated the revolutionary, anti-imperialist potential of the war itself.

 

They argued that with the sending of troops in April, “there begins the most extraordinary revolutionary ascent which has ever occurred in the country . . . the socialist revolution is on the march”. 5

 

When the war ended in defeat in June 1982, the traditional bourgeois parties and the left shared in the disorientation and demoralisation and failed to press home the attack on the junta. The combination of a severe economic crisis, divisions within the ruling class and military, the revival of working class militancy, and the demonstrations of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, all indicated that a pre-revolutionary situation existed. What was missing was a revolutionary leadership armed with a revolutionary programme.

 

The task facing Argentine revolutionaries in these conditions was to agitate around the key slogans of an action programme, raising demands to meet workers’ economic needs and democratic demands, focusing on the fight for a general strike to drive the military from power and convoke a sovereign constituent assembly. At the centre of all its slogans—economic, transitional and democratic—should have been the direct mass action of the working class.

 

In these conditions it was essential to pose the necessity of a break with the baleful legacy of Peronism, the building of a revolutionary workers’ party and the fight for a revolutionary workers’ government based on workers’ councils. The PST’s orientation was in sharp contrast to this.

 

In July 1982 bourgeois political parties were legalised and the PST also began to work more openly. By September it had decided that this meant a central focus on electoralism. The PST argued:

 

“The phase which is opening is not only legal, but fundamentally electoral. The conclusion is obvious: not only should we use legality by every means, but our main aim must be to intervene in elections, as long as we do not consider that a new phase has opened, that of mass struggles. If we recognise and accept the fact that the phase which has opened will be essentially electoral, our politics must also be so.” 6

 

In fact, throughout the second half of 1982 and early 1983 it was the developing mass movement that dominated the political scene, not elections. The latter were not to come until October 1983 and then only after a very brief election campaign. This itself was due to the timidity of the Peronist and Radical bourgeois opposition parties which did not even insist on immediate elections in their negotiations with the military.

 

There were tax and rates strikes in opposition to the government. But it was the movement headed by the mothers of the “disappeared” victims of the military junta and then, towards the end of 1982, the trade unions which took to the streets in increasing numbers. This phase culminated in a general strike and 100,000 strong march on 16 December, sealing the fate of the military, which was forced to set the date for elections.

 

For Trotskyists, no phase of politics—except the campaign itself—can be “essentially electoral”. To adopt this stance over a year before elections, months before they were announced, and in the face of a growing social protest movement, indicated a particularly crass electoral cretinism. In order to carry out this perspective, the PST began to cast around for electoral partners. They eventually found it in the shape of the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS—Movement Towards Socialism), a small social democratic organisation.

 

The idea was:

 

“. . . to create a socialist front which will use legality and will stand in elections, with as its minimum basis, a socialist Argentina as its programme and independence of all the bourgeois or popular frontist parties or electoral fronts . . . Fundamentally, we want to attract thousands and thousands of workers and militants to a broad, non-sectarian socialist front, in which it will not be a condition to be a Trotskyist.” 7

 

More succinctly, Nahuel Moreno himself explained to the PST Central Committee that the aim of the MAS was to create “a reformist, non-revolutionary front or party”.8

 

Consciously or not, this unprincipled scheme owed a great deal to Raymond Molinier and Pierre Frank’s project of “La Commune”, a “broad organisation” set up in France in 1935 in order to attract the masses to a centrist programme. The only difference was that whereas Molinier and Frank tried to found their organisation on a centrist basis Moreno set out to build his on a nakedly reformist programme.

 

The “La Commune” enterprise was bitterly attacked by Trotsky in terms which therefore apply with double force to Moreno nearly half a century later:

 

“Quite often revolutionary impatience (which becomes transformed easily into opportunist impatience) leads to this conclusion: The masses do not come to us because our ideas are too complicated and our slogans too advanced. It is therefore necessary to simplify our programme, water down our slogans—in short, to throw out some ballast.” 9

 

After seven years of dictatorship Moreno considered that Trotskyism would be too difficult for the masses to grasp. Undoubtedly, in the first phase of the democratic opening it was unlikely that the revolutionary party could seize the leadership of the masses. Bolshevism itself was unable to accomplish this in February 1917, despite its deep roots and spotless revolutionary record. But it was essential to address the vanguard of the working class: to patiently help it regroup politically whilst at the same time putting forward slogans that could unite the whole working class for concrete actions.

 

Rather than fighting for a clear revolutionary alternative, Moreno and the PST assessed that there was a social-democratic space opening up in Argentine political life. Judging that Menshevism was the next stage for the Argentine workers they set out to become Mensheviks. Bolshevism and Trotskyism would be a sheer encumbrance now and were relegated to a future stage.

 

Trained in the years of centrist degeneration of the FI Moreno looked for roughly adequate vehicles to carry forward the “revolutionary process”. One of the first items of ballast which Moreno threw overboard was the key Marxist position on the nature of the state and the armed forces. In its first May Day Manifesto (1983),10 which contains a long programme “for a socialist Argentina”, the MAS managed to say not one word about the state! When a position was finally adopted, it was Moreno’s old centrist formulation calling for the “democratisation” of the armed forces (see opposite)!

 

If you really want to appear to the masses as social democrats and co-habit with real reformists in a single party then indeed the Marxist position on the class nature of the state will have to be ditched. But probably in no country and at no time was such a policy more out of place than in Argentina, still reeling from the effects of brutal military rule which had claimed 30,000 victims.

 

The MAS centred its appeal to the Argentine working class around the old bourgeois nationalist slogan “For a second independence”. For the bourgeois nationalists, the first “independence” was from Spain, the “second” will involve the creation of a native capitalism and a sovereign bourgeois state independent from imperialism. The MAS aimed to give this call a left twist with an “action programme” which called for the nationalisation of the banks and monopolies. What it studiously avoided were any demands for expropriation of the capitalist class and the formation of a workers’ government that would be needed to carry this out.

 

Even one of the most burning necessities for Latin America, the repudiation of the external debt, was rejected in favour of the call “For the suspension of the payment of the external debt. For the formation of an international front of debtor countries to stop the payment of the debt.”11

 

The demand for “suspension” of the debt in Latin America is typical of bourgeois and reformist currents that seek not to pay the debt today but will be prepared to do the imperialists’ bidding tomorrow. This was no “mistake” but a deliberate tailoring of the revolutionary programme to meet the needs of an opportunist alliance with social democratic and bourgeois national forces.

 

Perhaps most indicative of the MAS’s whole orientation was its governmental slogan: “For the immediate resignation of the military government! For the immediate convocation of the 1976 Congress, which must elect a provisional government and call elections without any restrictions and without a state of siege.” 12

 

With the military dictatorship forced onto the defensive by a mass movement, the most these “revolutionaries” could find to say was to call on the discredited Peronist parliamentary majority of 1976 to form a new government! This was a criminal position not only because it abandoned the proletariat’s historic and immediate class goals. It did not even address the growing democratic illusions of the masses.

 

The political tide was turning away from the Peronists and towards the Radicals, clearly around the issue of “democracy not authoritarianism”. Alfonsin was able to portray Peronist corrupt corporatism as being little different from the military that displaced it in the 1976 coup. The idea of appealing to the status quo ante was suicidal. Even working class members and supporters of the Communist Party were being drawn behind the Radicals’ campaign.

 

Under these conditions the focus for political democracy should have been the call for a revolutionary constituent assembly, convened, supervised and defended by the mass workers’ and human rights organisations. This would have cut against the shallow and deceitful calls for democracy by the Radicals, who nevertheless were only too happy to work within the framework dictated by the retiring military junta. It would have aided the working class to break free from the Bonapartist political structures of the Peronist movement. Most importantly, it could have engaged all those determined to prevent the military from getting legal backing for their judicial whitewash over the “disappeared”.

 

But the MAS, when it came to political slogans, as well as its social programme, took its point of departure not from the revolutionary interests of the working class but from a schema based on a systematic centrist adaptation to Peronism’s influence in the working class.

 

The platform of the MAS, like all centrist programmes, does includes some elements extracted from the communist programme. This might tempt the unwary into thinking that here we have a qualitative improvement on reformism or nationalism. But the essence of the revolutionary programme does not lie in the excellence of one or another individual demands, but in the combination of them into a strategy for the conquest of power. A party, like the MAS, which routinely stands in elections on a platform that only includes disconnected parts of this revolutionary strategy and mixes them with parts of its direct opposite, the strategy of reform, is a party that would lead the working class to disaster in any serious test of the class struggle.

 

The October 1983 elections were a disaster for the MAS. Despite throwing thousands of members into the field, despite a supposedly vote-winning slogan of “A socialist Argentina, without generals or capitalists”, despite opening 600 local offices throughout the country,13 and despite a claimed 60,000 affiliated voters,14 the MAS only mustered around a third of the PST’s share of the vote in the 1970s. They polled less than 1% of the popular vote.15

 

Meanwhile the Radical Party candidate, Alfonsin, swept the board with 52% of the votes cast. This outcome did not sit easily with the MAS analysis, shortly before the elections, that Argentina had entered a revolutionary situation.16

 

Not only were the election results poor for the MAS, but the campaign had not led to any qualitative change in the structure and size of the organisation. The vast majority of members were still the “Trotskyists” of the PST. Both as an electoral front and as a recruiting stunt, the MAS was an abject failure. In these circumstances, the conversion of the organisation into an avowedly “Trotskyist” organisation was a simple affair.17

 

Nahuel Moreno recognised that one of his famous “self-criticisms” was called for. In the past they never resulted in any lasting change in political method, merely a temporary change in direction. Moreno accepted that there had been “an electoralist deviation”:

 

“We became drunk with our successes and with the welcome we received, and we stopped being objective. We stopped seeing reality, we stopped listening, we stopped recognising what was really happening in the working class.” 18

 

In fact, the criticism was only prompted by the failure of the opportunism to bring the expected results. In typical centrist fashion the search for scapegoats began with the working class whose “political backwardness” 19 was held to account, rather than the MAS’ failure to relate to the key concerns of the working class.

 

The leadership’s “self-criticism” was designed to pre-empt a more searching examination of the systematic centrist method that lay behind years of seemingly isolated tactical mistakes. Moreno swiftly shuffled off the blame: “It was a mistake by the whole party, by the rank and file as well as by the leadership.” 20 Perhaps the leadership should censure the membership for failing to correct it, indeed for leading it astray!

 

The inconsequential nature of such “self-criticism” was clear from the next bout of opportunist electoralism. The first two years of Alfonsin’s rule were dominated by the workers’ economic struggle. Disillusioned by the IMF-inspired austerity programmes that the government imposed upon them workers were returning to the fray.

 

By mid 1985 inflation was 2,000% p.a. By August that year real wages were 27% down on July 1984. In July 1985 Alfonsin froze prices and wages and an immediate recession set in for the rest of the year, with many job losses.

 

Workers fought back. In 1984 there were 717 strikes involving 4.5 million workers. In January of that year the CGT—which had split under the military—fused again. Moreover, a wave of new union elections strengthened rank and file organisation. In May 1985 the regime was rocked by two general strikes in protest against attacks on workers’ living standards. However, despite these struggles the Peronist CGT leadership remained firmly in control and committed to a social contract with the Alfonsin government.

 

On the political front the failure of the Peronist Justicialist Party to regain power in the October 1983 elections had led to it splitting into thirty different currents. By 1985, with growing disillusion in Alfonsin and many dissident Peronists emerging in opposition to the CGT leaders’ betrayals, the MAS was ready to return to the electoral arena, using the same method as before. Long negotiations with the Argentine Communist Party (PCA) and “Workers’ Peronism” led to the setting up in Autumn 1985 of the Frente del Pueblo (FREPU—Peoples’ Front).

 

FREPU’s programme was essentially a duplicate of the reformist MAS programme of thirty months previously. Its “socialist” demands were limited to calls for a ten year moratorium on the repayment of the debt, nationalisation of the banks and monopolies and for land reform. The question of the state was once more dealt with reformist sensitivity to the class rule of the bourgeoisie: “For the full respect and application of the democratic liberties contained in the National Constitution”,21 one of which, as in all bourgeois constitutions, was the right to hold private property!

 

Given the disillusionment with Alfonsin and the disarray in the Peronist Justicialist Party both main parties suffered a drop of 6% in their vote. The November elections indicated a polarisation of political life. The PI, a left split from the Radicals, got 6% in third place while FREPU won 360,000 votes (2%). On the right the UCD too doubled its vote over 1983.

 

But what did the workers vote for when they put a cross in the FREPU box? The lightweight reformist programme and the emphasis on state capitalist measures all corresponded to the bourgeois nationalist reformism of the Peronism. So too did the FREPU’s “FP” symbol, which deliberately aped the V-sign “FP” of the Peronists! In political terms it was the Peronist workers who had won over the “socialists” to their programme not vice versa!

 

Thus the vanguard workers could express their dissatisfaction with the disarray of the Justicialist Party while still not breaking from the limits of the Peronist programme in its leftist guise.

 

For the PCA, this gross adaptationism was hardly surprising. Stalinism has made the class collaborationist popular front a hallmark of its anti-working class politics since 1935. Such lifelong reformists and the “Workers’ Peronism” can agree on their fundamental perspective: the preservation and reform of the capitalist state. But for revolutionaries there can be no compromise on this question.

 

Revolutionaries win over reformist workers to their banner by united action around concrete struggles, and by an indefatigable struggle against reformist illusions, not by peddling such nonsense to the masses. But this was not the method of Moreno’s centrism in 1985, nor before, nor afterwards.

 

Argentina has always been the centre of the IWL’s activity. An International Executive Committee meeting in April 1988 restated the position by claiming that “Argentina is the central axis of the world revolution” 22 and that “the responsibility and the central task of the whole IWL-FI and in particular of its leadership is to maintain and deepen the political turn towards Argentina”. 23

 

The economic and political situation in Argentina in 1987-88 was not stable, but in many ways the most militant working class challenges to Alfonsin had already taken place. The army was restless, both because of the failure of the government to control the working class and also because of Alfonsin’s ambiguity faced with pressure to bring those responsible for atrocities and torture to trial. There were a series of barracks revolts (especially Easter 1987) and rumours abounded of an attempted coup.

 

In fact in April 1987 Alfonsin managed to steer a middle way by using the threat of a military coup to get all the major opposition parties—including the PCA—to sign a “Pact for Democratic Compromise” which involved fundamental concessions to the military.

 

The MAS refused to sign the pact and the FREPU electoral bloc with the PCA broke up. For the next period the MAS drifted with the stream, uncertain of how to orient itself. The September congressional and municipal elections of 1987 saw a revival in the fortunes of the Peronist party, which won important seats and major cities were brought back under its control.

 

Within a year, however, the decisive question of the PCA’s pro-Alfonsin position was forgotten, and the MAS was courting the Stalinists once again. In October 1988 the Izquierda Unida (IU—United Left) was set up between the MAS, the PCA and a number of fringe bourgeois and petit bourgeois parties. As with the FREPU, the IU’s programme was carefully tailored—first to suit the reformist politics of the PCA, then so as not to “scare off” the bourgeois nationalists.24

 

The IWL hailed the IU as having “a working class, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist programme”.25 Yet the programme envisages a parliamentary, reformist road to “socialism” (although the word is never mentioned!) Far from calling for the expropriation of capitalist property it only dares call for price controls on the leading companies “where they agree”!

 

In a situation where inflation was running at over 80% per month, the MAS did not even dare press the IU to raise the slogan of a sliding scale of wages! A strange form of “anti-capitalism”! Yet again the Morenoites jettisoned revolutionary baggage as the price of a rotten alliance with Stalinists and bourgeois nationalists.

 

In June 1988 the Third Congress of the MAS argued that the growing tensions in Argentine society would bring about:

 

“. . . the struggle of classes for political power. That is to say, the triumph of the workers’ revolution, the socialist October, or the bourgeois counter-revolution. Because the aim now is not the change of regime but the change of the class in power, to establish a workers’ state.” 26

 

The May 1989 parliamentary elections bought a sweeping victory for President-elect Menem’s Justicialist Party. But also at long last it brought a measure of success to the MAS’s electoralism. The IU garnered 500,000 votes, enough to win a national deputy’s seat for the MAS public figurehead, Luis Zamora, and a regional deputy’s seat for Silvia Diaz. The MAS felt the wind in their sails; the leadership felt even bigger successes lay just around the corner.

 

On 28 May 1989 the masses of Rosario, Argentina’s second city, rebelled against the 12,000% p.a. hyper-inflation in a three-day riot which left 15 dead and hundreds of shops looted. Barricades were set up and a state of emergency was declared. The following issue of the IWL journal, Correo Internacional, proclaimed “The socialist revolution has begun” and went on to explain that:

 

“Without instructions or political leadership and without institutionalising as yet an alternative workers’ power, they have made a massive popular anti-capitalist insurrection in the true Leninist sense.” 27

 

This revolutionary hyperbole was as far from Leninism as the reformist electoral programme on which they won their parliamentary seats. What is an “anti-capitalist insurrection in the true Leninist sense” except the seizure of state power by the armed militias of workers’ councils led by the revolutionary party? It is organised and planned action to resolve the duality of power which already exists in a fully developed revolutionary situation. Indeed, with an insurrection one can say that socialist revolution has been successful, not “begun”.

 

What in fact occurred in Rosario was a mass spontaneous uprising against the misery imposed by the government’s austerity measures. But without conscious, organised leadership it did not even develop into a nationwide strike wave let alone approach the creation of a situation of dual power. In short it did not herald the start of the socialist revolution but warned the bourgeoisie of the mounting tide of resentment to its policies.

 

This crass impressionism was codified at the Fourth Congress of the MAS, which drew a parallel between the Menem government and the Provisional Government set up by Kerensky after the February 1917 revolution. The implication was clear: if February was behind the Argentine masses, October could not be far away!

 

The MAS claimed that Argentina was characterised by “an atomised dual power” composed of various rank and file co-ordinating committees, trade unions and popular soup kitchens! 28

 

“We can win,” they argued, “because the government and the regime are weak, because the masses are struggling, because Peronism has split apart and because the party is winning mass influence.” 29 Are the masses then supposed to take state power armed only with soup ladles?

 

With a claimed circulation of 85,000 for the newspaper (but a membership stable at around 6,000) the MAS sought to orient towards Peronist workers disoriented and outraged by the actions of “their” government. This was of course absolutely necessary. The MAS proclaimed it had the intention of organising a “principled opposition”:

 

“We can and we must organise these hundreds of thousands of workers; act so that they naturally choose to take their place in the groups or amongst our periphery, as part of the party . . . Our proposal for action, which we address to the masses, and in particular to the Peronist workers who reflect the disarray of their party, is to call on them to build our party with us. We must do everything possible to encourage the Peronist workers to join our groups and branches! We must build the party with them!” 30

 

But the programme the MAS held out to these Peronist workers was as usual woefully inadequate. As well as overestimating the collapse of Peronism’s influence in the working class and the weakness of the Menem government, the MAS’s programme did not offer the critical Peronist worker a radical break with the politics they were supposedly gravitating away from.

 

The “revolutionary party” was to be built on a programme centred around four headings:

 

“Against the Menem government, for a workers’ and socialist government; For rank and file control! For democratic self-determination and of the labour and popular movement!; For the unification of the struggles of the Southern Cone of Latin America; Build the party together!” 31

 

As with the previous programmes put forward by the MAS for the masses, there was no call for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, for occupations, a general strike or for the sliding scale of wages; there was not one mention of the nature of the state or of the need to create workers’ defence squads to defend strikes and occupations and prepare themselves against the intervention of the army.

 

Most tellingly there was no programme for resolving the “atomised dual power” which the MAS claimed to be able to detect, no unifying or centralising demands that could overcome the atomisation and create, actual, developed dual power, i.e. genuine soviet-type bodies. No, for the MAS “rank and file control” was to be limited to the democratisation of the Peronist trade unions and support for the soup kitchens. This centrist paradox has always been a hallmark of Morenoism: a wild exaggeration of the revolutionary situation and a scandalously non-revolutionary programme for intervening in it.

 

Despite such intoxicating illusions it was not long before the real balance of class forces in Argentina after Menem’s election made itself felt in the MAS. The riots in Rosario were not the harbinger of revolution, the Argentine masses were not flooding into the MAS.

 

During the next two years Menem tore up many of the traditional planks of the Peronist-CGT alliance, rooted above all in state-owned industries and public sector services. Struggles against this did occur, often bitter and protracted ones. But the intervention of the CGT bureaucracy ensured their defeat and this pointed up the glaring crisis of leadership within the working class.32

 

By the autumn of 1991, sections of the IWL leadership began to admit that all was not as they had foreseen. And, as always, the key was Argentina. Despite having suggested in 1990 that support for the MAS was running at 16% in the Buenos Aires region, in the October 1991 elections the MAS got a mere 2.5% of the votes. Peronism, far from being fatally split, gathered together its forces and won a decisive victory in the elections.

 

The IWL’s explanation was straightforward:

 

“When Menem came to power he embodied the mass mobilisations and, for this reason, was weak. But the simple fact of staying in government and thus preserving the bourgeois democratic regime, despite the chaotic situation, enabled him to resolve the revolutionary crisis.” 33

 

If the IWL had been more honest they would have said: Menem did not embody the mass mobilisations, rather he embodied the masses’ illusions that a stop could be put to Alfonsin’s programme by a return to traditional Peronist measures. In short austerity could be stopped without further mass mobilisations. The expected mass radicalisation did not come about. Menem was able to use his Peronist credentials and democratic mandate to take on and defeat the workers section by section.

 

The hold of Peronism over the union bureaucracy greatly aided the imposition of a horrendous austerity programme which made the Argentine masses pay for the defeat of hyper-inflation. “Menem will not be able to derail this movement” the MAS had boasted.34 And yet that is just what Menem was able to do.

 

Nothing had happened the way the MAS had predicted. A culprit would have to be found. Stalinism fitted the bill perfectly. First, as far as Argentina was concerned, then on the world stage. As far as the MAS’s failure was concerned, this was explained thus. The Argentine bourgeoisie, like its brothers and sisters all over the world, had launched an ideological offensive identifying Stalinism with socialism (something the Stalinists had been fairly keen on, and which the IWL had been ambiguous about).

 

Despite breaking the proposed joint list with the PCA shortly before the elections (because of allegations of corruption), the existence of this “electoral alliance with the Argentine CP, that is the agent of the Stalinist bureaucracy in that country, had also weakened the Argentine Trotskyists’ ability to oppose this campaign of the bourgeoisie.” 35

 

In other words, thanks to a lack of political differentiation by the MAS, the differences between Trotskyism and Stalinism were not obvious to the working class. The MAS’s long-term electoral identification with the PCA had finally paid off—or rather backfired.

 

In December 1990 the MAS held an Extraordinary Congress. The leadership was split over perspectives and programme. At the subsequent Congress, held in spring 1991, around a third of the membership formed a “Moreno-ist tendency” arguing that the seizure of power was still close, that the crisis of Stalinism and of Peronism would inevitably bring their fruits and that the electoral alliance with the PCA must be maintained at all costs.

 

Not surprisingly, this grouping was led by those who had gained most from the strategic electoralist perspective of Morenoism, the MAS’s two parliamentary representatives, Zamora and Diaz.

 

The Fourth World Congress of the IWL, held in February/March 1992 was fiercely contested. Split into four tendencies, the IWL began a process of blood-letting and factional feuding which still continues. In the firing line were the perspectives the organisation had been functioning with, which were, in fact, methodologically the continuation of those adopted in 1982.

 

The IWL leadership ignored this essential point and concentrated on the most obvious errors, rather than seeking to find the root of the problem. As in Argentina, the IWL pinned the blame fairly and squarely on Stalinism’s ability to bewilder the poor Trotskyists by not collapsing in the way Moreno had predicted:

 

“At its Second and Third Congresses (July 1989 and May 1990), the IWL(FI) adopted an orientation which, today, the whole of the International agrees was ‘globally mistaken’. The two previous Congresses had mechanically drawn from the terminal crisis of Stalinism the mistaken conclusion that ‘the hour of Trotskyism’ had sounded and that the possibility had thus opened of ‘new Octobers’—that is of revolutions led by revolutionary Marxists. This superficial and ‘objectivist’ analysis led to the main sections of the International orienting themselves towards the ‘construction of mass parties’, also posing, in the case of Argentina, the question of the preparation of ‘the struggle for power’. The balance-sheet adopted by a majority at the Fourth Congress indicated that this orientation, ultra-left in its characterisations, had in practice led to a classic opportunist deviation.” 36

 

The Zamora-Diaz tendency, organised into the International Moreno-ist Tendency (IMT), had around 15% of the delegates, and basically argued for the line to continue as before. No sooner had the Congress finished its work than the MAS split. Shortly before May Day the “Moreno-ist Tendency” (MT), led by Diaz and Zamora, left taking around one third of the membership with them.

 

This has provided the remaining MAS leaders with a perfect opportunity to restore their flagging left credibility.37 In a speech to the 1 May rally MAS leader Ernesto González stated:

 

“In taking advantage of elections and other success, we forgot that our raison d’être was the workers’ movement. We dedicated ourselves more to the election campaigns than to binding ourselves closely to our class. We adapted to a democracy which is not ours, which is not workers’ democracy, but an electoral and parliamentary farce of the bourgeoisie and imperialism . . . We thought that the alliances with other currents that work in the labour movement, such as the Communist Party, were more important than the consolidation of the revolutionary party. At the same time we covered over this opportunist course with a shallow and foolish analysis of the world and Argentine reality. This got worse because, at the same time, in Europe the anti-bureaucratic revolution broke out. While the Berlin Wall fell and the workers started to crush the bureaucrats and the communist parties, we appeared in front of the masses arm in arm with Patricio Echegaray [PCA leader].” 38

 

There is more than a hint of opportunism in this. For decades many workers identified in the USSR and Cuba some kind of “socialism” and the MAS was happy enough to accommodate to this. Now that has changed and the MAS’s previous electoral allies must be dumped.

 

The truth is the defection of Zamora is functional for the MAS leaders. But the critique of the electoralist deviation is still only skin deep. As long as the MAS leaders affirm the record of “maestro” Moreno up to his death, until they go to the roots of the centrist degeneration of the FI between 1948 and 1951 all the errors will return.

 

In the wake of the MAS’s acknowledgement that the seizure of power was not on the agenda, the sections, which had all been faultless in their defence of the MAS’s opportunism, suddenly discovered their voice and spoke out with a bitterness born of betrayal. One of the leaders of the French section, which for many years had been reduced to a publicity agency for its Argentine comrades, expressed himself in the following way:

 

“It was in Argentina the deviation reached its culmination. Misinterpreting the first developments of the political revolution in the East, losing their heads following organisational successes which could partly be explained by conjunctural factors . . . the leadership of the MAS launched itself into adventurist speculations about the possibility of a short-term seizure of power by the workers . . . The drift from a conjunctural tactic which should serve to break up the obstacle represented by the Argentine Stalinist party to the conception of a quasi-strategic alliance (like the policy of the USFI), [was] spectacularly expressed at the May 1990 Congress of the MAS, when a section of the leadership went so far as to envisage the formation of a common party with the PCA.” 39

 

More significant still, two tendencies—the Tendency for the Unity and Reorientation of the IWL, based in Brazil and Europe, and the Colombian section—criticised the IEC majority, arguing that programmatic re-elaboration was necessary.

 

If either of these two critical tendencies want to go to the heart of the recent errors then they must re-examine the very foundations of the IWL and the MAS. Agreeing to dissolve the tendencies and settling for another Congress in 1994 will not help the process of breaking with the past. Despite the recent turn, the IWL is far from having broken with its centrist method.

 

An opportunistically motivated break with Stalinist bloc partners is not the same as repudiation of the method of the “revolutionary united front” and the restless search for non-Trotskyist half-way homes to reside in. Without such a repudiation other bloc partners—such as Peronists—will be courted in the future.

 

Many of the criticisms voiced now inside the IWL were made three, four and even ten years ago by the LRCI. Our criticisms were indignantly rejected then by members of the IWL. Today they have adopted some of them. The IWL has said that one of the themes of its next Congress will be “programmatic re-elaboration”. Three years ago, whilst the IWL was dreaming of taking power in Buenos Aires, the LRCI actually performed this fundamental programmatic task.

 

Our re-elaborated Transitional Programme, the Trotskyist Manifesto, provides many of the answers the revolutionary critics in and around the IWL are looking for. Our tradition, our intervention and our critical analyses can aid comrades who have seen through Morenoism but have not lost the ability to think and the will to struggle.

 

If we were to reach programmatic unity and a common democratic centralist discipline this would be a great leap forward in the work of reviving authentic Trotskyism. A starting point must be a critical examination of the whole history of Morenoism, and its roots in the centrist degeneration of the Fourth International.

 

 

 

NOTES

 

1 Less than a year earlier, amidst much pomp, they had fused with Pierre Lambert’s international organisation to set up the Fourth International (International Committee) (FI-IC). The FI-IC had been greeted by its creators as “the greatest step forward since the creation of the Communist International”. Within nine months the FI-IC had split into its component parts, blown apart by the political differences which it had sought to paper over.

 

2 See Trotskyist International 1, Summer 1988, for our critique of Morenoism up to 1979

 

3 LST (France) Bulletin Interne 4, p5

 

4 LST (France) Bulletin Interne, 29.9.83

 

5 Quoted in R Munck, Latin America: The Transition to Democracy (London 1989, p107)

 

6 “Projet de document national” (15.9.82) Bulletin Interne LST (France), N° 5, 1982, p9

 

7 Ibid., p12

 

8 Ibid. This opportunist project was not new. In 1972 Moreno had formed the PST by fusing with Carlos Coral’s social-democratic Partido Socialista d’Argentina.

 

9 L. Trotsky, The crisis of the French section (New York 1977) p97

 

10 Solidaridad Socialista 22.4.83

 

11 Ibid.

 

12 Ibid

 

13 MAS Internal Circular N° 27, 4.11.83

 

14 Tribune Ouvrière, 20.5.83, p4

 

15 This included 42,359 votes in the presidential elections.

 

16 Tribune Ouvrière 17, October 1983, p4. Despite this assertion, the key slogans advanced by the MAS for 1984, far from centering on the question of taking power as might be expected, were essentially economic demands calling for pay increases, for the reinstatement of workers sacked during the military junta, for factory meetings and the election of shop stewards. This failure to take its own analysis seriously suggests that, at most, Argentina was going through a pre-revolutionary situation in 1983-84. MAS Central Committee perspectives document 8.12.83

 

17 After all, Moreno had already gone through the process once before, following the failure of the initial PST bloc with Coral to attract the masses.

 

18 MAS Internal Circular N° 27, 4.11.83, p1

 

19 See R Munck op. cit.

 

20 MAS Internal Circular N° 27, 4.11.83, p1

 

21 Tribune Ouvrière 30, 29.11.85, p20

 

22 Tribune Ouvrière 52, July 1988, p12

 

23 Ibid.

 

24 For a reproduction of the IU programme and our full critique, see Trotskyist International 3, Summer 1989, p58-62

 

25 International Courier 38, January 1989, p37

 

26 Courrier International, November 1989, p28

 

27 Tribune Ouvrière 59, September 1989, p2

 

28 Tribune Ouvrière 60, October 1989, p5

 

29 Ibid., p4

 

30 Tribune Ouvrière 60, October 1989, pp8-10

 

31 Ibid., pp9-10

 

32 See the comments on Argentina in the article on South America in this issue.

 

33 Coordination 10, November 1991, p7

 

34 International Courier, November 1989, p21

 

35 Coordination 10, November 1991, p8

 

36 Coordination 14, April 1992, p6

 

37 Hoping that the rank and file will not remember Moreno’s conception of the MAS, they have had the cheek to claim that “the MT defended the conception of a ‘party of action’, the politics of which would be expressed in three or four slogans, as against the Leninist-Trotskyist-Morenoite(!) conception of a party of socialism with a transitional programme, building itself through a combination of agitational, propagandistic and organisational tasks.”

 

Coordination Supplément International 5, May 1992, p23

 

38 Solidaridad Socialista 6.5.92

 

39 Coordination Supplément International 5, May 1992, p23

 

 

 

 

1956: The Hungarian Revolution

 

Note by the Editor: The following article has been published by the predecessor organization of the RCIT (the League for a Revolutionary Communist International; later renamed into League for the Fifth International) in 2006. The founding cadres of the RCIT have been expelled from the LFI in 2011 when the protested against the centrist degeneration of this organization.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

In mid-October 1956 students in Szeged marched for the right to form their own organisation independent of party control. They also struck against the compulsory learning of Russian. The students of Budapest’s Technological University followed with a demonstration on the 23 October in solidarity with Poland.

 

The 23 October demonstration was the spark that lit the Hungarian revolution. The government asked the leaders of the Petofi circle, a discussion circle led by members of the Communist Party’s youth organisation that had been banned just a few months earlier, to lead the demonstration.

 

Balazs Nagy (later known as the Trotskyist Michel Vargas) said: “At this time, and subsequently also, the Petofi circle curbed rather than encouraged the movement, considering that the hastening of events could lead to a catastrophe."

 

From 1953 the leadership of the Hungarian Communist Party was split between Matyas Rakosi, the leader since the Stalinists came to power after the war, and Imre Nagy who wanted to pursue a policy called the New Course, which called for greater spending on consumer goods and would allow farmers to leave the collective farms. This struggle was given added impetus by the death of head of the Soviet Union Stalin and his denounciation by his successor Kruchshev in February 1956.

 

Throughout Eastern Europe, the Stalinists had expropriated capitalism after the war but created regimes that had no workers’ democracy and were instead ruled by Stalinist bureaucracies. Under Stalinism workers had been denied democratic rights including the right to strike or to form their own organsiations, and faced repression for criticising the regimes. In the factories, members of the party militia and trade unions policed workers, and suppressed any fightback against exploitation.

 

Krushchev’s speech gave the green light to the opposition in Eastern Europe to take to the streets. In June and July 1956, there were a series of strikes in Sepal and Budapest. On 28 July the workers of Poznan, Poland, demonstrated but were brutally fired upon by the internal security forces which killed 54 and wounded at least 300.

 

In Hungary it erupted again with the student demonstrations of October. “Now or never - Most vagy Soha - became one of the slogans of the uprising. The students presented 16 demands, including “New leadership, new direction, require new leaders!", “We shall not stop halfway - we will destroy Stalinism", and “Worker-peasant power!’. The masses also called for Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the central committee at the beginning of the year, to be reinstated.

 

The 23 October demonstration moved to the radio station where the crowds wanted their demands broadcasted. There the AVH (secret political police) opened fire on the demonstrators who returned fire from arms provided by fraternising Hungarians troops.

 

Now Nagy appeared, after refusing to attend the demonstration. His speech to the crowd showed how alien his bureaucratic outlook was from that of the students and workers. He said: “It is by negotiation in the bosom of the party and by the discussion of problems that we will travel the road that leads toward the settlement of our conflicts. We want to safeguard constitutional order and discipline. The government will not delay in arriving at its decision."

 

Faced with a massive demonstration, active fraternisation between workers and soldiers, including soviet soldiers, and armed clashes with the AVH, the Stalinists called on Soviet troops to restore order in Budapest and declared martial law. They also called on Nagy to head a new government.

 

Meanwhile groups of workers were already doing battle with Soviet tanks on the streets of Budapest. Throughout the length and breadth of Hungary, the workers responded to the Soviet intervention with strike action. By 26 October, virtually all work had stopped. Moreover these days saw the formation of workers’ councils in every factory and mine and also the link up of those councils into the regional revolutionary committees in major industrial centres, such as Gyor and Miskolc.

 

The revolutionary committees of Gyor and Miskolc also controlled local radio stations and broadcasted messages of solidarity to the Soviet troops.

 

Miskolc declared: “Our people did not revolt against you, but for the achievement of legal demands. Our interests are identical. We and you are all fighting together for a better socialist life."

 

Gyor workers committee addressed soviet soldiers with: "Soviet soldiers! We the workers from the railroad factory in Gyor inform you that in our democratic state, workers are the guardians of the socialist achievements. That means with all their might, they are speaking out against returning factories and banks to the capitalists. At the same time we are against any Rakosite Stalinist restoration."

 

These statements were typical of the workers: on the one hand wanting to preserve socialism against the capitalists but also fighting for democratic and political rights against a military clampdown.

 

In most areas the workers’ councils busied themselves with local or factory problems involved in maintaining the general strike and giving critical support to Nagy. The leaders of the movement saw their committees as alternative local government but ceded central political power to Nagy and his reformist faction in the Communist Party.

 

While the working class base of the party and certain elements of its apparatus went over to the insurrection, its leading circles sought desperately to diffuse the crisis and re-establish bureaucratic rule - behind Soviet tanks.

 

The repression of the uprising

 

At the end of October, under the pressure of the masses the Stalinists appointed Imre Nagy as Prime Minister. The country had been brought to a standstill by a general strike. The masses had driven out the hated secret police, the ÁVH, and were demanding the withdrawal of the Soviet troops.

 

The Soviet troops had been brought in swiftly from western Hungary to crush the uprising, evoking a non-existent clause of the Warsaw Treaty, but the soldiers quickly began fraternising with the locals. They had been in the country for some time and knew far more about the situation than the troops of the second intervention that were rushed in from Rumania. Many Soviet soldiers deserted to the Hungarians.

 

Each day the papers printed reports from the provinces that showed that the revolt was nationwide. Revolutionary councils were formed in the principle towns: Debrecen, Györ, Magyaróvár, Tatabánya, Miskolc, and Veszprém. Power was in the workers hands, as well as the railways, which refused to transport Soviet troops and supplies.

 

The Stalinists frantically tried to regain control as the Soviet intervention was falling apart. Then Nagy played the role he was brought in to play – to calm the situation, to call an end to the fighting, and to disarm the working class. He announced that the next election would be under the multi-party system; he called on the Soviet troops to withdraw from the capital and promised to begin negotiations for a complete withdrawal from the country. He recognised the organs set up by the revolution and asked for their support.

 

On 31 October, the fighting ended and the Soviet troops began to leave Budapest. The insurgents were releasing political prisoners – up to 5,500 were freed. Budapest began to look more like normal – the buses started running and work was beginning again in the large factories.

 

Although some budding revolutionary organisations, many formed from ex-members of the Communist Party, warned that the freedom fighters should not to lay down their arms until the demands of the revolution had been fully implemented, after a decade of severe state repression, their organisations were weak and they did not have the influence needed to lead the struggle.

 

The masses also believed that Nagy could resolve the issue of state power and so the workers’ councils refused to challenge him and the Stalinists for political power. The committees saw themselves as potential alternative local government but ceded central political power to Nagy.

 

At this point the effective power in Hungary was divided between the Nagy government and the armed people themselves, as represented and led by their national committees. It was dual power. But without a political party with a revolutionary programme that laid out in concrete terms the need for revolution, to struggle for power with the Nagy government, to call for “All Power to the Workers Councils”, to smash the stranglehold of the Stalinist bureaucrats and re-order society, the revolution would stall and eventually fail.

 

Nagy of course had no intention to resolve the question of power in the hands of the workers. “My friends, the revolution has been victorious,” he told a mass demonstration in front of the parliament on 31 October. He demobilised the people and lulled them into the belief that the struggle was over. Yet, at that moment, Nagy was in secret negotiations with Russian officers and their troops were already on their way back on the eve of 1 November.

 

Hungary was important for geo-political reasons, it was an important buffer for the Russians from the West, it was industrialised and had natural resources. But above all, if the they lost control of Hungary then revolutionary movements would spring up across all Soviet Republics, as was seen in Poland earlier in the year. It was necessary to repress the Hungarian uprising before the unravelling began.

 

On 2 November, the Soviet media launched an all-out attack against Nagy and the “clique of counter-revolutionaries who had come to power in Hungary”. On 4 November, after the Hungarian delegation had been arrested, the Soviet army launched a surprise attack on Budapest at dawn. Armed resistance was hastily organised but it was powerless to stop the Soviet forces.

 

Janos Kádár, the first secretary of the central committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (the re-named Stalinist party) announced that a new government had been formed which has appealed for the Soviet Union for military assistance: “The Hungarian Government of Revolutionary Workers and Peasants requests the assistance of the Soviet Army Command in helping our nation smash the forces of reaction and restore law and order to the country in the interest of our people, the working class and the peasantry.” Nagy sought political asylum in the Yugoslav embassy.

 

Despite a general strike and fierce street fighting against superior Soviet armoured units, the Soviet’s military intervention was effectively over by 10-11 November. Young workers accounted for 80 to 90 per cent of the wounded, while students represented 3 – 5 per cent. Nearly 20,000 Hungarians were killed and there was aerial bombardment of the major proletarian strongholds.

 

The workers tried to prolong the revolution by forming the Central Workers’ Council on 14 November, but it was too late – Stalinists had regained control and the repression began again. Thousands of people were sent to prison and Soviet forced labour camps. Some 2,00 people were executed.

 

The events of October and November 1956 in Hungary showed the workers’ and students’ will to fight when they took up arms against two Soviet military interventions. They toppled a hated Stalinist government and smashed the secret police, the ÁVH. They created workers and revolutionary councils that became the real power in every factory and most localities.

 

The workers organisations and the government were in a struggle for power and a dual power situation developed. The Hungarian revolution showed that without a revolutionary programme -and a political party to fight for it – the spontaneity of the masses could not develop a strategy to take power and the uprising was crushed.

 

The tragedy of the Hungarian revolution was that the workers were unable to create a revolutionary leadership and programme of action that could establish a government and take power to defend the political revolution and extend it to the rest of Eastern Europe and the USSR.

 

 

 

Vor 55 Jahren: Die Revolution der ungarischen ArbeiterInnen wird in Blut ertränkt

 

Revolutionär-Kommunistischen Organisation zur Befreiung (RKOB), 9. November 2011

 

 

 

Vor 55 Jahren, genauer gesagt im Oktober und November des Jahres 1956, fand in Ungarn ein Aufstand statt, der in seiner Größe zum damaligen Zeitpunkt eine Einmaligkeit darstellte. Noch nie zuvor in der Geschichte, hatte sich eine dermaßen breite Volksbewegung, noch dazu derart deutlich, gegen die stalinistische Unterdrückung in einem Ostblockland aufgelehnt. Es waren die ArbeiterInnen, Bauern und Bäuerinnen selbst - aber auch die StudentInnen -, die diese Bewegung vorwärts trieben, und eine verhaßte stalinistische Regierung zu Sturz brachten. Es kam zur Bildung von revolutionären ArbeiterInnen- und Bauernräten, die auch die meisten Fabriken und Agrosiedlungen kontrollierten. Leider aber endete diese hoffnungsvolle Massenbewegung in einem Meer von Blut, ohne viel bewirkt zu haben. Die Geschehnisse des Herbstes 1956 in Ungarn stellen sicherlich weit mehr dar, als nur die Auflehnung der Bevölkerung gegen eine ungeliebte Regierung, vielmehr waren sie eine der wenigen Chancen in der Geschichte der Arbeiterschaft in den stalinistischen Staaten Osteuropas die verhaßte, alles beherrschende Bürokratie durch die direkte Herrschaft der ProduzentInnen (ArbeiterInnen, Bauern und BäuerInnen) zu ersetzen.

 

Nach dem Tod Stalins im Jahre 1953, gab es einen gewissen Kurswechsel in Moskau. Die neue “kollektive” Führung (Troika) unter Malenkow, Chrustschow und Mikojan traute sich nicht, die Stalinsche Politik der äußerst harschen Konfrontation mit den ArbeiterInnen fortzusetzen. Letztlich braucht auch das stalinistische Terrorregime ein gewisses Ausmaß an Unterstützung oder zumindest Neutralität innerhalb der Massen. Folglich verkündete die neue Kremlführung eine (freilich limitierte) Lockerung der Repression, ein Aufholen der Konsumgüterindustrie gegenüber der Schwerindustrie und Zugeständnisse an jene Bauern und Bäuerinnen, die den Kollektivfarmen ablehnend gegenüberstanden.

 

In den osteuropäischen Ländern hielten die StalinistInnen seit dem Einmarsch der sowjetischen Armee in den letzten Kriegsjahren de facto den Staatsapparat in den Händen. Um ihre Macht nicht zu verlieren, sahen sie sich zu Beginn des Kalten Krieges Ende der 1940er Jahre gezwungen, den UnternehmerInnen die Betriebe wegzunehmen um mittels bürokratischer Wirtschaftspläne das kapitalistische Wertgesetz außer Kraft zu setzen. An dieser sozialen Revolution konnte die ArbeiterInnenklasse selbst nicht mitwirken - im Gegenteil, die StalinistInnen an den Schalthebel der Macht unterdrückten schon seit Kriegsende jede größere, eigenständige Bewegung der Massen. Das war auch der Grund, weshalb die Planwirtschaft an den realen Bedürfnissen und Möglichkeiten der arbeitenden Bevölkerung völlig vorbeiging, den utopischen Projekten der BürokratInnen (“Sozialismus in einem Land”) und den Privilegien der KP-Nomenklatur diente und daher zu ständigen Engpässen und Wirtschaftskrisen führte, deren Folgen dann erst recht wieder bürokratisch unterdrückt werden mußten.

 

Der “neue Kurs” in Moskau kam natürlich auch in den osteuropäischen Ländern zur Anwendung, nur hatte er dort weitreichendere Auswirkungen. Weshalb? Weil es in diesen Staaten eine unter Stalins Lebzeiten an den Rand gedrängte Fraktion innerhalb der stalinistischen KPs gab, die einen relativ unabhängigen Weg gegenüber Moskau gehen wollten. Ihr Vorbild war Titos Jugoslawien, das die Staatsmacht ja unabhängig von der sowjetischen Armee erobert hatte und daher nicht Wirtschaftsverträge mit der Sowjetunion, die eindeutig zum ökonomischen Vorteil Moskaus geschaffen wurden, eingehen mußte und keine Reparationszahlungen zu leisten hatten. Diese “national-stalinistischen” Fraktionen waren natürlich nicht weniger bürokratisch, erfreuten sich aber einer gewissen Popularität unter den Massen, weshalb sie auch in den Augen der Troika besser geeignet schienen, die stalinistische Herrschaft zu stabilisieren.

 

 

 

Ungarn Anfang der 1950er Jahre

 

 

 

In Ungarn wiederum war die “national-stalinistische” Fraktion extrem beliebt und Stalins Statthalter extrem unbeliebt. Das hängt damit zusammen, daß Ungarn bis in die 1940er Jahre vorwiegend ein Agrarland war und daher unglaubliche Arbeitshetze und politische Repression am Arbeitsplatz notwendig waren, um mittels des Arbeitsschweiß der ArbeiterInnen eine umfangreiche Schwerindustrie in nur wenigen Jahren aus den Boden zu stampfen. Viele Bauern und Bäuerinnen wurden in unproduktiven Kooperativen gezwungen und trauerten ihrer eigenen Scholle nach. Die Preise von landwirtschaftlichen Produkten wurden gemäß den Akkumulationsinteressen der Schwerindustrie festgelegt.

 

Es ist daher kein Zufall, daß der unbeliebteste Politiker dieser Zeit der “kleine Stalin” namens Rakosi war. Dieser lenkte die Geschicke der KP seit 1948, und führte das Land so nebenbei sozial in den Abgrund. Ihn völlig abzuservieren war der Moskauer Troika aber doch zu riskant und so einigte man sich 1953 darauf, als Zeichen der Erneuerung einen neuen Premier einzusetzen.

 

Dieser hieß Imre Nagy. Er konnte dem rechten Flügel innerhalb des Stalinismus zugeordnet werden, wurde aber bald zum Volksheld. Warum? Noch gar nicht lange im Amt, wurde er bereits 1955 wieder entlassen, und zog so das Wohlwollen der ArbeiterInnen und StudentInnen auf sich, sah man ihn doch als Rivalen des verhaßten Rakosi an. Abgesehen davon stand Nagys Unterschrift unter der ersten richtigen Bodenreform Ungarns kurz nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg. Den Adel und den Großgrundbesitz entmachtet zu haben - eine fortschrittliche bürgerliche Aufgabe, zu der das ungarische Bürgertum politisch immer zu schwach war - das vergaß die Landbevölkerung aber auch die “Bauern in Fabrikskittel” nicht.

 

 

 

Dem Aufstand entgegen

 

 

 

Große Wellen schlug damals auch der Fall “Rajk”. Rajk war innerhalb der ArbeiterInnenschaft relativ beliebt, weil er die ungarischen KP in der Illegalität während der deutschen Besatzung geleitet hatte, während sich Rakosi die Zeit im Moskauer Exil mit der Denunzierung von ArbeiterInnenführern an den Geheimdienst NKWD vertrieb. Die Popularität Rajks unter den ungarischen ArbeiterInnen ging der sowjetischen Führung dann doch zu weit, und er wurde nach Moskau ins “Exil” verfrachtet.

 

1954 wurde dann der sogenannte Petofi-Zirkel gegründet, ein offeneres Diskussionsforum, welches der bürokratischen Führung des Landes natürlich ein Dorn im Auge war. Also erzwang man - mit einer Welle von Verhaftungen - im Juni 1956 die Schließung des Petofi-Zirkels, der nachhaltig die Rede- und Pressefreiheit, sowie die Rückkehr Nagys in sein Amt gefordert hatte. Dies erzürnte natürlich auch die ArbeiterInnen.

 

Ermutigt durch die großen Streiks, die zur selben Zeit in Polen stattfanden, streikte man daraufhin auch in Budapest - und Moskau mußte erneut reagieren. Diesmal brachte man statt Rakosi einen gewissen Gero, der dessen bravster Gefolgsmann war.

 

Doch die ArbeiterInnen ließen sich nicht mehr täuschen: Am 6. Oktober war es soweit. Über 20.0000 Menschen demonstrierten für die Rückkehr Nagys nach Budapest. Rote Fahnen in den Händen der proletarischen Jugend waren zu sehen, und man konnte den Spruch lesen: “Wir werden erst aufgeben, wenn der Stalinismus zerstört ist”.

 

Und dann die Demonstration am 23. Oktober: Geführt vom Petofi-Zirkel, sang man die Internationale und forderte “Nagy an die Macht, Rakosi in die Donau”. Angesichts solcher Ausschreitungen, und insbesondere auch unter dem Gesichtspunkt der zunehmenden Verbrüderung zwischen ArbeiterInnen und Soldaten, hatte die ungarische KP akuten Handlungsbedarf, welcher sich folgendermaßen äußerte: Erstens forderte man Truppen vom großen Bruder aus Moskau an und zweitens brachte man Nagy tatsächlich erneut ins Amt, in der Hoffnung er könne die Massen alsbald beruhigen.

 

Aber nichts dergleichen war mehr möglich. Als die ungarischen Sicherheitskräfte unbewaffnete DemonstrantInnen aus dem Hinterhalt erschossen, strömte die Menge zu den Kasernen. Es bedurfte nicht langer Erklärungen, um die ungarischen Soldaten zu der Herausgabe von Waffen zu bewegen. Der Aufstand war ausgebrochen. Russische Panzer wurden losgeschickt, die auch auf Frauen und Kinder schossen, die sich um Brot anstellten.

 

Doch mitunter kam es anders. Denn auch die sowjetischen Soldaten waren nicht die blinden Kampfmaschinen, die sich Gero & Co. erhofft hatten. In der Erwartung, aus der Sowjetunion geschickt worden zu sein, um einen faschistischen Aufstand niederzuschlagen, mußte die Soldaten nur zu bald die Erfahrung machen, daß es sich hier um das pure Gegenteil handelte, nämlich um fortschrittliche, kämpfende ArbeiterInnen. Ein wichtiges Ereignis fand in dieser Hinsicht am 25. Oktober statt, als die sowjetischen Soldaten eine Gruppe jubelnder DemonstrantInnen zum Parlament geleitete und von den umliegenden Hausdächern durch ungarische Sicherheitskräfte beschossen wurden. Dabei starben 100 ZivilistInnen und russische Soldaten.

 

Mitunter wechselten selbst KP-Funktionäre die Fronten: Major Maleter, ein alter Spanienkämpfer, schilderte im Radio den Aufstands, den er mit seinen Truppen eigentlich niederschlagen hätte sollen: “Als ich dort hinkam, entdeckte ich, daß die Kämpfer für die Freiheit keineswegs Banditen sind, sondern vielmehr loyale Kinder Ungarns. Darum informierte ich das Verteidigungsministerium, daß ich mich den Aufständischen anschließen werde.” Ein anderes Mal sagte der Major: “Wenn wir die Russen endlich los sind, kehren wir sicher nicht zu den alten Zeiten zurück. Wir wollen nicht den Kapitalismus. In Ungarn wollen wir Sozialismus.” Diese Aussagen beweisen einmal mehr, daß die Aufständischen keineswegs „Agenten des Imperialismus“ oder „Faschisten“ waren (wie es die stalinistischen Bürokraten behaupteten), sondern für einen demokratischeren ArbeiterInnenstaat kämpften.

 

 

 

ArbeiterInnenräte

 

 

 

Ab 26. Oktober wurde die Arbeit total niedergelegt, Massenstreiks breiteten sich aus, was sehr bald zu Betriebsbesetzungen führte, um der Bürokratie ein Weiterlaufen der Fabriksmaschinen zu verunmöglichen. Spontan entstanden Koordinationsformen für diese Aufgaben: Räte. Auf dem flachen Land bildeten sich Bauern- und Bäuerinnenkomitees. Diese Räte und Komitees, die innerhalb kurzer Zeit überall in Ungarn aus dem Boden sprossen, waren das Herz der Revolution. Niemand konnte bisher flexiblere und effektivere Instrumente des Aufstandes “erfinden”, als es die Räte sind, in die die Massen KämpferInnen ihres Vertrauens entsandten.

 

Politisch gesehen waren die ungarischen Räte 1956 nicht geeint, sie stellten mitunter ziemlich unterschiedliche, auch lokale Forderungen auf. Das ist auch nicht verwunderlich, alles mußte schnell gehen, unmittelbare politische Erfahrungen gab es keine; von einer Partei, die den Aufstand angeleitet hätte, ganz zu schweigen. Insgesamt aber gab es innerhalb der Räte kaum Stimmen für eine Wiederherstellung des Kapitalismus oder ein Zurück hinter die Landreform.

 

Viele Forderungen waren eindeutig gegen die politische Repression durch den Stalinismus gerichtet (Rede- und Organisationsfreiheit), andere waren eher ein Reaktion gegen den bürokratischen Zentralismus in der Wirtschaft (Selbstverwaltung der Betriebe). Wandere Losungen forderten den Abzug der russischen Truppen sowie den Austritt Ungarns aus dem Warschauer Pakt - nationale Selbstbestimmung war neben den Kampf gegen die heimische stalinistische Repression überhaupt ein zentraler Motor.

 

Die Massen in Waffen und der politische Druck der Räte und Komitees zwangen die sowjetischen Truppen vorerst zum Abzug (31. Oktober). Ein erster Sieg für die Revolution.

 

 

 

Verrat und Niederlage

 

 

 

Trotz dieses enormen Potentials, hielten die Massen an einer - teilweise kritischen - Unterstützung für Nagy fest. Das ist auch nicht weiter verwunderlich, weil sich die Nagy-Fraktion – auch wenn sie ein überzeugter Stalinist war und somit dem System angehörte, das sie bekämpfen wollten – jahrelang innerhalb der KP-Bürokratie als Alternative gebärden konnte. Sie war ja auch nicht an der Macht gewesen und somit konnten die breiten Massen in der kurzen Zeit keine ausreichenden Erfahrungen mit ihr sammeln. Nun an die Macht gekommen, trieb die Nagy-Fraktion teils vor den Massen her (Nagy erklärte Ungarn für neutral und erkannte die Räte formal an), teils versuchte sie den Aufstand zu sabotieren (Nagy verkündete das Standrecht).

 

So benutzte Nagy das Vertrauen, das ihm von den Aufständischen entgegengebracht wurde. Aufgrund ihrer materiellen Lage als Teil der privilegierten Bürokratie wollte die Nagy-Führung natürlich nicht die erstarrte Bürokratie durch ArbeiterInnenräte ersetzen. Sie tat stattdessen das, was im Stalinismus immer bei solchen Gelegenheiten passiert: Um ja zu verhindern daß es zu einem gesunden ArbeiterInnenstaat kam, ging sie eine Koalition mit offen bürgerlichen und reaktionären Kräften ein. Am 27. Oktober präsentierte er seine neue Regierung, die zum Beispiel SozialdemokratInnen enthielt.

 

Gut möglich, daß dies als Fenster in Richtung Imperialismus gedacht war. Doch die ganze (auch internationale) Konstellation ließ in den 1950er Jahren eine Wiederherstellung des Kapitalismus noch nicht zu. Blieb für die ungarische KP (und ironischerweise auch für Nagy selbst!) nur Moskau.

 

Dafür mußte innerhalb der KP natürlich ein neuer Mann her - dieser hieß Kadar. Mit Hilfe neuer russischer Truppen aus Asien “normalisierte” er die Verhältnisse. Am 4. November beginnt die russische Armee einen konzentrierten Angriff auf Budapest. Die Revolution hat gegen diese Übermacht keine Chance und wird in die Defensive gedrängt.

 

Monatelang wehren sich noch die ungarischen ArbeiterInnen mit Streiks und passiven Widerstand. Am 14. November 1956 wird der „Zentrale Arbeiterrat von Budapest“ gegründet. Noch im Dezember ruft dieser Arbeiterrat zu einem 48-stündigen Generalstreik auf. Doch letztlich erstickte der Aufstand unter der Stahllawine sowjetischen Militärgeräts.

 

 

 

Fehlen einer revolutionären Partei

 

 

 

Der ungarische ArbeiterInnenaufstand 1956 war ein zentrales Ereignis der Nachkriegsgeschichte und einer der heroischsten Versuche des Proletariats, die grausame Herrschaft der stalinistischen Bürokratie zu stürzen und durch einen gesunden, sozialistischen ArbeiterInnenstaat zu ersetzen. Doch trotz der Entschlossenheit der Massen zum Kampf gegen die Bürokratie und der Schaffung von Räten der ArbeiterInnen und Bauern/Bäuerinnen endete die Revolution in einer Niederlage.

 

Die Hauptursache für diese Niederlage war das Fehlen einer revolutionären Partei. Die Massen waren spontan in der Lage, die Regierung zu stürzen und Räte aufzubauen. Doch spontan konnten sie natürlich nicht ein Programm der Errichtung der tatsächlichen Diktatur des Proletariats – also der Machtergreifung der ArbeiterInnenklasse und nicht der Kapitalisten oder der Bürokraten – entwickeln und die dafür notwendigen Taktiken ableiten. Ein solches Programm erfordert die wissenschaftliche Aufarbeitung der geschichtlichen Erfahrungen des internationalen Klassenkampfes, die Ausbildung von Kadern, die diese Lehren verstehen und in der Lage anzuwenden sind, und die im Proletariat verankert sind. Eine solche revolutionäre Partei existierte nicht und das war die fatale Schwäche der ungarischen Revolution.

 

Eine solche Partei hätte eine systematische Zersetzungsarbeit in der sowjetischen Armee eingeleitet, den Aufbau von ArbeiterInnen- und Bauernmilizen vorangetrieben und ein klares Programm der auf ArbeiterInnenräte und –milizen gestützten Regierung entwickelt. Sie hätte die Einheitsfronttaktik gegenüber der Fraktion Nagy betrieben und gleichzeitig vor deren unausweichlichen Verrat und Unzulänglichkeit gewarnt.

 

Die Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation zur Befreiung (RKOB) tritt für den Aufbau einer solchen revolutionären Partei ein. Wir können dem Heldenmut und dem sozialistischen Streben der ungarischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter am besten dadurch gedenken, im dem wir heute entschlossen und organisiert für die Sache der internationalen ArbeiterInnenrevolution kämpfen.

 

 

 

Anmerkung der Redaktion: Wir haben diesen Artikel erstmals in unserer damaligen Zeitung ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt im Oktober 2006 veröffentlicht und für diese Ausgabe überarbeitet und erweitert.

 

Russian Troops Out! Self-determination for Chechnya!

by the League for the Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) and the Trotskyist Faction, 30.06.1996


Note by the Editor: The following document is a resolution adopted by the predecessor organization of the RCIT (the League for a Revolutionary Communist International) and the Trotskyist Faction (an international tendency around the PTS in Argentina) in 1996.


* * * * *


In March the LRCI and the Trotskyist Faction agreed a joint declaration on the Russian occupation of Chechnya. This statement is part of the process of regroupment discussions set out by both tendencies in December 1995


In mid-January the war in Chechnya once again exploded, shaking Russia’s political system to its foundations.

When a 250-300 strong unit of guerrilla fighters loyal to Chechen president Dzhokar Dudayev —the “lone wolves”—launched a raid on an airfield in Kizlyar in neighbouring Dagestan. Forced to retreat they first occupied a hospital taking patients and a platoon of Russian OMON “special forces” as hostages.

After negotiations they departed in a fleet of buses for the Chechen border. A potentially disastrous humiliation faced Yeltsin, already beleaguered after the December elections in which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and assorted Great Russian nationalists trounced the radical market reformers. At the same time a wave of teachers strikes was coming to a head and the first national miners strike (over unpaid wages), since 1989, took place and Yeltsin was forced to quickly cave in. Since the elections Yeltsin has dismissed market reformers and pro-western officials like Anatoly Chubais and Andrei Kosyrev. Playing the Great Russian nationalist strong leader he announced he would crush the “Chechen bandits”.

Unfortunately for Yeltsin, Russian “crack units” bungled the task and the Chechen fighters successfully dug-in with their hostages at the border village of Pervomayskoye.

Three days of all out attack by the Alpha units of elite Russian assault troops failed totally to take it from the Chechen guerrilla fighters. Yeltsin then ordered a murderous bombardment by Grad multiple rocket launchers killing not only Chechen fighters but also hostages and villagers who remained.

Yeltsin proclaimed a great victory yet within days it was revealed that more than a hundred of the Chechen fighters, including their leader (Dudayev’s relative, Salman Budayev), had escaped from Pervomayskoye. The whole bloody fiasco brought down a storm of criticism on Yeltsin. But beyond the partial criticisms of this or that episode in the war, all political wings of the restorationist bureaucracy in Russia (from the CP to the liberal leaders of Yavlinsky, from Yeltsin and Chernomydin to the fascist Zhironovsky that urged him to “napalm Chechnya”) have placed themselves in the camp of Great Russian oppressor nationalism against the oppressed Chechen nation. For all these forces the war is for “reasons of state”. If Yeltsin has not fallen due to the great crisis into which Yeltsin has been put by the brave resistance of the Chechen people it is due precisely to the support “in the last instance” that his political rivals have extended him; all of them defend oppressor Great Russian chauvinism and are enemies of the self-determination of the oppressed peoples. Yet within weeks of the bloody fiasco at Pervomayskoe thousands of Dudayev supporters were demonstrating in Grozny in front of the wrecked presidential palace. By mid- February Russian troops were again making heavy work of surrounding and storming another guerrilla unit at Novogroznensky. Clearly the Russian army, divided and demoralised is unable to win a decisive victory over a small but courageous people fighting for its independence.

 

Conquest of Chechnya

 

The recent fighting is only the latest of a series of brutal attempts to crush the struggle for national independence by the Chechen people. Just over a year ago (11 Dec. 1994) Yeltsin sent the Russian armies into the mountain republic. The capital Grozny, with a mixed Chechen and Russian population of 400,000, was subjected to a savage bombing. But the land assault on the city turned into a near fiasco. Lightly armed Chechen fighters fought the Russian tanks street by street, destroying many of them and inflicting many casualties. Yeltsin mercilessly bombarded housing blocks and government buildings to rubble. Thousands of civilians were killed or injured and 400,000 refugees from Chechnya have fled into neighbouring republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan. Large numbers of Russian conscript soldiers met their death or suffered maiming whilst Yeltsin cruelly concealed their fate from their families. By January 1995 4,000 Russian troops had been killed and 5,000 injured in just over one year of war. Civilian casualties in Grozny alone were given as 8,500 in the same period (Nizavisimaya Gazzeta 30.1.’95)

For six months the Chechen fighters— commanded by Dudayev— held out in the presidential palace and the survivors broke through the encircling Russian forces and withdrew into the mountains.

Up to 60,000 are waging a guerrilla war against the Russian army of occupation. In June 1995 a unit humiliated the Russians by taking hostages in Budyonovsk in southern Russia. The Russians, however, installed a puppet regime in Chechnya, headed by Doku Zavgayev, the pre-1991 Stalinist leader of Chechen-Ingushetia. In December it was recently “legitimised” by a blatantly rigged election.

Dzhokar Dudayev is, according to Yeltsin, simply a gangster guilty of siphoning off his country’s resources to amass a huge personal fortune and linked to the so-called “mafia”. If this is true then he differs little from Russia’s rulers.

Minister of Defence Pavel Grachev is under suspicion of wholesale corruption during the Soviet exodus from Eastern Europe. Virtually all politicians in power in the former CIS states, virtually every banker or “businessman” is connected with the criminal gangs who go under the collective name mafia. Dudayev, whatever his reliance on the Chechen mafia, is also a nationalist politician, even a North Caucasian nationalist, militantly opposed to Russian rule over all the republics of the region.

Dudayev’s party Vainakh (Our people) won the 27 October elections with 85% of the votes against the Islamists (Islamic Revival Party), the Greens and other parties. A week later he proclaimed Chechnya’s independence and when the Ingush objected allowed them to secede peacefully. Dudayev originally won mass support by opposing both the old nomenklatura and the new privatising businessmen. Nevertheless he only wishes to seize the state assests for himself and his clique. Chechen (and Russian) workers have no reason to place any trust whatsoever in Dudayev. He is just as much an agent of capitalist restoration as Yeltsin and his agent Zavgayev. The republic was riven from the outset with factionalism between various clans and local mafias—fomented from Moscow. At one point there were nine large armed bands operating in the republic.

In early 1992 MVD and KGB troops flew into Grozny and abortively attempted to overthrow Dudayev. Met with a mass mobilisation of the armed populace they had to surrender and were bundled out of the country in humiliating circumstances. This merely gave Dudayev manifest reasons to refuse to sign the new Russian Federative treaty on 31 March 1992. Yeltsin proclaimed that this intervention was prompted by their concern for the Russian minority living in Chechnya yet there is no evidence that the country’s 300,000 Slav population were subject to any persecution or discrimination.

Since then Yeltsin has bankrolled every opposition and supervised Russian secret service operations. He imposed an air blockade and, with less effect, a land blockade in 1993. The Anti-Dudayev forces did make progress within Chechnya over the next two years. Dudayev’s regime narrowed rapidly into a military bonapartist dictatorship, dependent only on certain clans and more and more on the so-called Chechen mafia. This is in part because social base for Dudayev amongst a potential new ruling class was very narrow.

The former ruling bureaucrats, the Chechen nomenklatura continued to support Doku Zavgayev and his new master Yeltsin, whilst the pro-market intelligentsia opposed Dudayev because he would not privatise industry and the natural resources and instead imposed heavy taxes on profits. In addition his support amongst the workers and the poor, to whom he had made demagogic promises in 1991, declined sharply. The intervention of Ruslan Khasbulatov, speaker of the Russian parliament till November 1993 in Chechen affairs added to the divisions and conflict in the independent republic .

In mid-1994 the Chechen opposition forces sponsored by Russia headed by Labazanov and Khasbulatov invaded the republic. They scored early successes which testified to Dudadyev’s loss of support amongst Chechens. However, when the advance was halted overt Russian assistance deprived them of most of their popular support and they too suffered a crushing defeat. It was this further fiasco for their agents that forced Grachev and Yeltsin to resort to a full scale Russian invasion on December 1994. They claimed that they were intervening to crush a “criminal state” where the Mafia had seized power.

Yeltsin made his real objectives clear enough in his 1995 New Year address: “Russian soldiers are [in Chechnya] to defend Russian unity. Not a single territory has the right to withdraw from Russia”. This is a flagrant denial of the elementary democratic right to self-determination, the right to secede from the Russian Federation.

It is because Dudayev, whatever his crimes, defended the countries independence that Yeltsin launched the war. The majority of the Chechen people, rejecting centuries of Moscow’s rule under the Tsars and then under Stalinism, clearly support him in this if in nothing else.

 

Oppression of the Chechens

 

The Chechens are a historically oppressed people. The annexation of the Caucasus mountains by the Tsarist empire, which commenced in 1785 was not completed till 1864. The fiercest resistance from its largely Islamic peoples came from the Chechens, who subsequently revolted several times.

In 1921 after the Civil War the Bolsheviks recognised a unitary Mountain Autonomous Republic but in 1924, under Stalin’s Commissariat of the Nationalities, the process began of dividing up the north Caucasian peoples, fostering as many ethnicities and languages as possible. The Stalinists as well as dividing them denied them real self-determination or a federation free from Great Russian domination.

Under Stalin’s Great Purges (1936-38) thing’s went from ‘divide and rule’ to wholesale annihilation of the cultural elites and attempts to destroy Islam by forces. Nevertheless, Chechen uprisings took place in 1926, 1929-30 1940 and 1942.

But this was not the worst that the Chechen people had to suffer. In 1944 Stalin deported four entire Muslim Caucasian nations (including 400,000 Chechens) into the Kazakhstan steppe. One third of them perished during transportation alone. Stalin did this ostensibly as a collective punishment for the Chechen nationalist rising two years previously, which erupted when German forces entered the northern Caucasus. Not all Chechens supported this rising and in any case by 1944 the danger to the USSR from Germany had passed. In reality Stalin was simply trying to complete the depopulation of the region and settle it with Russians. Only in 1958, after riots in Grozny did Krushchev allow the exiled Chechens to return home en masse.

As a bonapartist with collapsing popular support, and with no majority in the parliament, Yeltsin is dependent on the high command of the army, or rather on the dominant faction within it. This faction, headed by defence minister Pavel Grachev, is itself fighting for its life within the army elite, accused of corruption on a grand scale. A whole series of top commanders have resigned over the Chechen war and a potential candidate for the presidency Alexandr Lebed, former commander in Moldova, has publicly denounced the war from the outset.

In addition to the issue of Yeltsin’s prestige there are real strategic and economic reasons to hold on to Chechnya. Whilst it has only medium sized oil reserves itself in an oilfield around Grozny it has large refinery complexes which produce aviation fuel for Russia and the other CIS states. Even more important is the fact that main the pipeline which links Russia to the enormous oil fields of Azerbaijan crosses Chechen territory. Azerbaijan itself has been openly threatened by Yeltsin for striking a deal with western oil companies and for planning to export oil via Turkey or Iran, rather than through Russia.

The Kremlin sees the whole region as a part of their “near abroad”, somewhere they must dominate if not rule directly. They fear that if Chechnya goes, others may follow and the entire region could slip out of Russian control. Tatarstan, for example, has a strong independence movement which has been crudely coerced into staying within the federation, as have the other north Caucasus republics.

Yeltsin was initially encouraged to intervene in Chechnya by the benevolent attitude shown by the Western imperialist powers who have insisted all along that “Chechnya is a part of Russia”. They were willing enough to see him as the local policeman of the New World Order amongst the “barbaric” peoples of the former Soviet Union in return for Russia’s support to pressure the Serbs into a deal in Bosnia.

But the imperialists are fickle friends. Once the invasion became bogged down in the bloody battles of Grozny Kohl and Clinton started to criticise him for the bloodshed. These hypocrites are in reality worried not by the piles of Chechen dead, but that Yeltsin himself might fall if the war is a complete fiasco.

Even if it is a success it may mark Yeltsin’s absorption into the most aggressive, would-be imperialist faction of the army and the secret police. Russia could become a “military threat” once more. In addition, they are terrified that a prolonged war with a Muslim nation may ultimately embroil others, both in the Caucasus and beyond.

But whilst imperialism’s support and understanding are important, internal pressures are the determining factor in making compromise or withdrawal impossible. Yeltsin is facing a deepening political crisis and continued economic stagnation on the road to completing capitalist restoration. As might be expected in a period of deep economic crisis, racism and the search for scapegoats, is rife in Russia.

The peoples of the Caucasus are a particular butt of racism. They are blamed for the corruption and lawlessness which the market economy has brought. Russia’s capitalist restoration process is in deep crisis and Yeltsin’s answer is an increasingly dictatorial government, using his bonapartist powers to rule and trying to recover some mass support by stirring up national chauvinist feelings against the Chechens.

Within the first year of fighting alone 4,000 Russian troops had been killed and 5,000 injured in just over one year of war, The Chechen war has however provoked opposition in Russia. There were immediate street protests when the troops went in. these involved involving veterans of the Afghan war and mothers of conscripts. The latter sent delegations to Chechnya to try to find out the fate of their sons. So far however, the widespread hatred of Yeltsin has not yet turned into mass action against him.

 

What is to be done?

 

It is vital that workers defend and extend the very limited democratic freedoms they gained after the disintegration of the Stalinist regime. Alongside defence of their political rights there is the vital task of defending jobs, wages and living conditions against the ravages of the restoration process. The recent strikes of the Russian miners and teachers show that workers are beginning to shake off illusions in the market-reformers and the paralysis which descended on them with the shock therapy of 1992.

The higher turn out in the parliamentary elections also shows a decline in political passivity which bodes ill for the present rulers. Defending the Chechens’ right to self-determination, as well as refusing to be fooled by the poison of Russian nationalism, are crucial if Russian workers are to defend themselves against the tribble social results of the attempt to restore capitalism. As Marx said “a nation which oppresses another can never itself be free”.

The Chechen fighters, the Russian workers, and the ordinary Russian soldiers themselves have the power to inflict a huge political defeat on Yeltsin. The workers have the power to use the crisis in Chechnya to drive Yeltsin and his warmongers from office.

Workers everywhere must support the right of the Chechen people in their struggle against Russian domination and oppression. The Russian people—beginning with the workers who have shown their potential in the recent strike wave—must unite their struggles and demands with those of their oppressed class brothers and struggle for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and for the unconditional right of self-determination for Chechnya.

It is the revolutionary mobilisation of the Russian people and of the ex-USSR who must call for the victory of the Chechen masses, and to have no confidence in Dudayev who at every turn wants to enlist “democratic imperialism” to help him.

As Trotsky said in his writings on Ukraine, ‘in the imperialist epoch the question of national independence is indissolubly linked to the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ For this reason we raise. the need to fight for an independent workers’ republic in Chechnya

Only the Chechen workers and peasants can do that. The Chechens as the foremost fighters for national freedom in a region with many intermixed national minorities cannot solve the question of their free and independent national life without reference to the other peoples. An isolated Chechnya will in any case be an economic disaster. That is why as a minimum they must set themselves the goal of a federation of all the peoples of the Caucasus.

Unless such a republic is based upon preserved and strengthened state ownership of large scale production and the natural resources then it will continue to be plundered by the mafia, to have a heavy toll levied on its exports by Russia and may even fall into the hands of the Western oil monopolies. Such nationalised production requires efficient and democratic planning— which only the working class of all the nationalities can bring about.

Therefore an independent federation of Caucasus republics has to be based on workers’ council (and militia) power allied to councils of the peasants and rural population. Such a power can prevent the national differences of the peoples of the Caucasus being used as playthings by restorationist elites and the Kremlin.

Last but not least the urban and rural workers of the region must unite with their Russian brothers and sisters to overthrow Yeltsin and his clique and all wings of the restorationist bureaucracy and reverse the restoration of capitalism—opening the road to a free and equal federation of workers states across the entire former Soviet Union and beyond.

In order to struggle for this perspective, which is nothing other that what Lenin and Trotsky stated in their time, it is essential to build an international Trotskyist party in Russia and the ex-USSR.

 

Save the Planet from Capitalist Destruction!

 

Note by the Editor: The following document has been discussed and adopted in 2008 by our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (renamed to League for the Fifth International in 2003). The founding members of our organization were partly long-time and leading members of this organization before they were bureaucratically expelled in April 2011 a few weeks after they formed a faction in opposition against the increasing centrist degeneration of the LFI. The expelled comrades built immediately after their expulsion a new organization and went on to build the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) together with a number of other comrades. Today the RCIT is present in 11 countries.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

The environmental question

 

 

 

1. Global warming, melting of large parts of the polar ice-caps, climate change, expansion of the deserts, urbanization and the destruction of the rain forest...

 

2. There can be no question that we are living through a period in which changes in the natural environment of humanity threaten the imminent destruction of the living conditions of millions, if not of the whole of humanity over a longer period of time.

 

3. This danger is now recognised by the whole of society. Even the most ignorant sections of the ruling classes can no longer ignore it. At the very least, they have to concede that an environmental question exists. For the first time this qualitative shift takes place not at the local or regional level but at the highest, global level in the form of climate change, along with a host of narrower, often related crises in global fish stocks, rainforest destruction, and mass extinction.

 

4. Even those ultimately responsible for the system, which threatens the whole of humanity with an environmental and social catastrophe, have to concede that something has to be done about it. No UN assembly, no G8 meeting, no governmental programme is complete without a claim to have prioritised the question and promises of action plans - but their results are pathetic.

 

5. The danger of the destruction of the natural foundations of human life has become a truly global question. Every political and social force has to put forward and, increasingly they do put forward, a programme to answer the “environmental question”.

 

6. Whole movements have developed around this issue. They started as movements and political currents of the middle strata, of the intelligentsia, larger sections of the youth in the imperialist and Stalinist states in the 1970s and ’80s. In this period, they met not only the outright hostility of the bourgeoisies in the imperialist and semi-colonial world but also of the Stalinist and social-democratic and trade union bureaucrats. They also met outright denial and ignorance of the very existence of the issues they raised, even by the organisations of the far left.

 

7. Today, nobody can deny these dangers anymore. Environmental issues have become issues for every party. The mainstream of the former radical petit bourgeois movement has become an “eco-reformist” or even “eco-marketising” party, with “green” companies manufacturing “green” commodities.

 

8. Other sections of the environmental movement still advocate various forms of petty bourgeois, backward and ultimately reactionary solution based on a return to forms of small-scale commodity production and the “de-industrialisation” of society.

 

9. It is an irony of history that the moment that were the Greens’ biggest successes, the taking up of their issues by all parties and the whole of society, has actually revealed the utopian and bourgeois, or petit-bourgeois, character of their solutions. The demonstration of the emptiness of their answers has also revealed the incorrect understanding of the environmental question by the main currents of the green movement, including its left wing, the eco-socialists.

 

10. At the same time as environmental issues have became everybody’s concern, the movements fighting against the effects of environmental destruction have also changed. For example, the struggles of the landless peasants, of indigenous people for land rights and against the large multi-nationals, the questions of fighting for humane conditions for the masses in the shanty towns of the mega-cities in the semi-colonies, the questions of the transport systems and energy systems in all their aspects, meant that the working class, the peasantry, the youth, the poor became active and central components of the struggles against the destruction of the human environment - but under the leadership and influence of petit-bourgeois or bourgeois forces and ideologies.

 

11. Such leaderships were able to dominate because of the political ignorance of the reformist bureaucracies, the social-democratic and Stalinist parties or bourgeois nationalists in the Third World. They could prevail also because of the adaptations made by the far left to ‘environmentalism’ as a distinct petit bourgeois ideological current.

 

12. This problem can only be overcome, if the working class advances its own programme, its own revolutionary solution to the environmental questions of the 21st century. The struggle against the destruction of the natural foundations for human life, and for a rational, conscious relationship between humanity and nature, is a central question of the socialist revolution today, a central question of building a classless, communist society.

 

13. Therefore, it is the task of revolutionaries to advance and fight for a programme of transitional demands to save the planet, a programme linking the daily struggles to the struggle for socialist revolution.

 

 

 

Humanity – Nature

 

 

 

14. The capitalist mode of production is not the first one to interfere in nature and so-called ‘natural equilibriums’ on a massive scale. Any notion or idea that humanity once had a ‘truly harmonic’ relation to nature that has been destroyed is thoroughly illusionary. Human society has always interfered, and had to interfere, in nature - and nature itself has always changed.

 

15. Only permanent change, the movement of matter, is a real constant in natural history. All species had to, and have to, adapt to this and cope with it. However, what distinguishes humanity from any other species is that the relation between man and nature is a social one from its very beginning, a relationship mediated via social labour.

 

16. From the very beginning, humanity has tried to ensure the reproduction of its own existence, which necessarily involves making the conditions for survival, the satisfaction of needs, permanent and to safeguard them against the constant uncertainties and dangers of natural development (as much as this is possible).

 

17. Certainly, at the beginning of human development, this was all very primitive, very limited, but it set in motion a process of social development that would also develop the collective knowledge of society concerning the conditions of its natural development, of the laws of motion of nature, of its purposeful change, of technical and technological interventions in nature, which allowed for the development of humanity to a higher level on the basis of a social labour process. The development of society, of civilisations, and their reproduction, was only possible in this way.

 

18. But the relation between man and nature is always on the basis of a more or less limited knowledge of natural developments and their lawfulness and has led to catastrophic developments throughout human history, including the breakdown of whole civilisations.

 

19. All societies have interfered in nature. All societies destroyed and formed the human environment, created it, just as their own development was also determined by the concrete, local or regional environmental conditions in which they evolved.

 

20. With the development of class societies, the relation between man and nature was not only differentiated along regional lines, but also along class lines.

 

21. ’Nature’, and the ‘natural’ environment, was never the same for the working classes, for those who fought with nature, as it was for the ruling classes who lived under safer and better ‘natural’ conditions and first developed a contemplative view of natural beauty.

 

22. On the other hand, actual knowledge about nature and natural processes was concentrated in the labouring classes, be they peasants, miners, craftsmen, and so on. At the same time, the ruling classes were forced to appropriate, to control and centralise this knowledge into their own hands (or at least certain functions of it).

 

 

 

Capitalism

 

 

 

23. With the development of bourgeois society and the capitalist mode of production, important changes took place. All previous modes of production had also massively interfered in the natural environment, had developed new techniques in agriculture, interfered in natural selection, and this had led to the extinction of whole species or promoted the development of others. What distinguished capitalism was, and is, the scale on which it intervenes. Capitalism is truly a global, a world system. It destroys the local peculiarities of previous modes of production.

 

24. At the same time, it also constantly revolutionises its productive basis but it does so on the basis of generalised commodity production, in an anarchic form. Therefore, the effects of capitalism on the environment are not only of a quantitative, but also qualitative character.

 

25. The material basis for this is the development of the productive forces - the development and combination of large scale industry and science. Large industry goes hand in hand with the industrialisation of agriculture, destroying the last resort of previous class societies. It forces the peasantry from the land to the city or turns the peasant into a rural labourer. However, by doing so, it also increases the separation of the land from the city. It develops agriculture by destroying the soil, thereby undermining the conditions for its own advance. This not only provides the means for the creation of an urban proletariat, but also develops them in a way that undermines the living conditions and the health of the workers. It does so by pushing the alienation of the producer from the means of production to its very limits.

 

26. Capitalist production, therefore, develops the technique and combination of the social production process by undermining the foundations of all its wealth: the earth and the labourer. However, large scale industry, the industrialisation of agriculture, the advance of science, do not only develop the problem. They also provide the basis for its solution - a rational combination of industry and science on an environmentally sustainable basis.

 

27. In pre-capitalist societies, the relation between town and countryside, the relation between man and nature, developed under naturally created conditions. Under capitalism, as generalised commodity production becomes dominant, production furthermore is social production, but under private appropriation. It therefore destroys not only the traditional bonds of the countryside but also their local or regional peculiarities.

 

28. The destruction of these bonds, also means that the creation of a rational, and conscious relation of industry and agriculture, of agrarian production and manufacturing, becomes a necessity, if one wants to avoid, or repair, the destructive effects of social production under an anarchic system based on private property.

 

29. Under capitalism it is impossible to create a rational, lasting relation between man and nature, a relation that could allow for a sustainable and lasting reproduction of humanity and its natural living conditions. As generalised commodity production, the success and rationality of all economic activity is measured post festum, whether or not a product finds buyer, a need on the market. Everything that does not conform to this is constantly threatened with elimination from social or natural reproduction.

 

30. Indeed, since capitalist production is geared towards creating surplus value, the rational decisions of the competing capitals to improve their competitiveness and profitability will necessarily clash with any rational and lasting relation to the environment.

 

31. For example, whilst ‘lean production’ reduces the cost of fixed capital for storage and thereby raises the rate of profit - one obvious effect is the increased use of transport and therefore of pollution - the costs of which have to be paid for by society.

 

 

 

The environmental question and the imperialist epoch

 

 

 

32. One of the features of capitalist production as social production is its increasing incorporation of science into production. With the development of the capitalist mode of production, science became more and more a branch of industry and even becames a commodity itself. This clearly went hand in hand with the enormous leap in centralisation and concentration of capital at the end of the 19th century, the formation of modern monopoly and finance capital.

 

33. The opening of the imperialist epoch also meant an enormous concentration of research and development of natural science in the hands of large monopolies, foundations or in state institutions that became more and more directly geared towards the interests of the capitalist class by the imperialist state.

 

34. Scientific research and its results have become private property, part of business plans and business secrets. Monopolisation has not only often meant that advances were only geared towards more profit making, it also inevitably meant that advances were held back, that research was not undertaken or was suppressed where it threatened profits.

 

35. This reflects the increasing social character of production and, on the other hand, the fetter that private property increasingly becomes on production.

 

36. Under imperialism, further massive leaps in the revolutionisation of agriculture took place, turning agrarian countries into industrial ones where the farmers or peasants only constituted a minimal part of the population.

 

37. Massive agrarian monopolies and scientific changes also turned agriculture in the semi-colonies upside down: destroying the old forms of production, expropriating the peasants from their corps and then from their land. However, in many cases, it also meant that new farming methods destroyed the soil, leaving devastation, poverty, hunger and flight from the land.

 

 

 

Monopoly capital accelerates the destructive effects of capitalism

 

 

 

38. The very measures to improve profitability under globalisation, for example, the privatisation of former state owned energy companies, the creation of large monopoly markets in energy, water, and the transport industry, credit geared towards these, the sheer amount of fixed capital embodied in them, all mean that the ruling classes of all major capitalist states cannot allow any effective means to combat climate change or global warming, since this would mean massive interventions into the private property of the imperialist bourgeoisie, of the large finance capitals of this world.

 

39. Furthermore, they unavoidably also come up against another central contradiction marking the imperialist epoch and globalisation in particular - the international character of production and exchange on the one hand and the continued nation state form in which it takes place. The “environmental question”, and the main threats it poses, are obviously international ones and can only be solved on the international level.

 

40. Whilst the bourgeois governments of all states are already pathetic in their internal actions against the destruction of the environment, they are even more so on the international level.

 

41. Secondly, all the measures of the national, as well as those from the international “community”, have the character of measures of bourgeois and imperialist “environmentalism”. They put the costs of measures onto the labouring classes and the semi-colonies. Trading with “pollution certificates”, destruction of the rainforest to grow crops for “biofuel” (and thereby further evictions of the landless in countries like Brazil) are just perverse, but highly profitable, forms of this “environmentalism”.

 

42. Eco-Taxes, calls on consumers to separate the waste which has first been produced by the large monopolies are all more or less hopeless and cynical means to make the poor pay for, and take responsibility for, repairing the damage done by the irrational character of a system humanity cannot afford much longer.

 

43. Today, we face the results of the capitalist production process of the last centuries and its effects on the human environment. We face dangers that threaten the future existence of humanity itself. Neo-liberal globalisation, the latest phase of imperialism, accelerates this tendency dramatically. The various measures to improve profits, to counter the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over the past decades, have all led to an enormous increase in the destructive effects of this mode of production on the natural environment of humanity. This is a necessary product of neo-liberalism, which goes hand in hand with its increased attacks on the working class, the peasants, the poor.

 

44. The environmental question has been a central question raised by the anti-capitalist movement from the very beginning, particularly in the semi-colonial world.

 

45. It has mobilised around questions of climate change, of transport, the land question, the privatisation and commodification of natural resources.

 

 

 

A programme to reclaim the human environment

 

 

 

46. Even the most modest calculations assume an increase in the average temperature on earth of between 1 and 1.5 degrees in the next 20 years. Others calculate it up to 4.5 degrees. In the last 100 years, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 20 percent. Larger and larger areas of the polar icecaps are melting, tides may shift dramatically and sea levels will rise. This will lead to enormous changes, including the flooding of whole coastal regions and large parts of some countries. It is no longer a question of whether these dramatic changes will happen - but only whether, and how, humanity can adapt to these changes and change the course of development rapidly and decisively to avoid exacerbating them further, by massively reversing emissions.

 

47. It would be foolish to think, that “the market” and the capitalist class would be able to solve these questions. They have already proved that they are unable to do this. Whilst the principal means for a rational reorganisation of what Marx called the “metabolism” between humanity and nature - large scale industry and science - are in existence, they can only become such a means if they are taken out of the hands of the ruling class, i.e. expropriated by the workers.

 

48. Only under a global planned economy can a system be developed that not only satisfies and develops the needs of humanity but is also self-sustaining and dynamic, that is to say, a metabolism between social production and nature that can adapt to the changes in the environment itself. The struggle for this goal must start by addressing, advancing and generalising the burning issues of the day.

 

49. Against the threat of global warming and in order to counter its development and prepare for its increasing impact, we fight for global and national emergency plans to reduce emissions, to reorganise energy and transport systems, but also to provide the means by which whole regions can be as well prepared as possible to survive the effects of climate change. Capitalist business and governments will not be able to develop or implement the radical measures needed, only a mass climate change movement based on the organisations and action of the working class can develop such a plan and fight to carry it out against the capitalists’ resistance

 

50. Such plans require that the means to achieve such changes - large scale industry in energy production, agriculture, the transport system, science and the financial resources to achieve them - have to be centralised and taken out of the hands of the large monopolies.

 

51. Large capital is not just “doing nothing”. The major capitalist forces are actively advancing their own plans, which will mean further advancing the destruction of the human environment, to make a profit out of “eco-business” or financial businesses that see opportunities for capital accumulation flowing from the on-going environmental crisis.

 

52. Often workers’ struggles will start with the call for opening the business plans, the books and the research plans of the polluting companies. We call for the opening of these books, for the opening of research, its results, and for the abolition of business secrecy. All scientific research has to be taken out of the hands of private capital and put under workers’ control. We call for an independent enquiry by the workers and climate change movements into the investment plans of the government and big business.

 

53. Under capitalism, science becomes a ‘servant’ of capital. This also means that research and development is directed to short term profit calculations. Many research projects, additional testing and proving of hypotheses, as well as ‘pure science’, that is, theoretical research into the foundations of science, are cut, since, for capital as a whole, they are just extra cost factors like any others.

 

54. Given our still very limited knowledge about the development and the laws of motion of the natural environment, the effects of our constant reshaping of it and so on, a drastic shift in the objectives of research, opening it up, generalising and exchanging results is needed, as is a massive increase in research itself.

 

55. We call for the expropriation without compensation of the large energy producers, of all those industries that monopolise basic goods (like water), of the large agri-businesses and the large transport companies like rail, airlines and road transport. They must be (re)nationalised under workers’ control.

 

56. We fight for the reorganisation of the energy and transportation systems to make them as energy-efficient effective as possible. This will include a plan to phase out the reliance on fossil fuels of the current energy system. In some cases - such as brown coal - we call for an immediate halt to production.

 

57. We call for a plan to phase out and replace fossil fuels and nuclear energy not only for environmental reasons, but also because the limited reserves of these resources make it necessary that they be replaced by sustainable and reproducible energy resources during this century. We do not call for the immediate closure of all these plants, but for a planned closure/phasing out - the tempo of which will have to take into account the different national conditions and their relation to other social objectives (e.g. electrification of country, fighting against hunger and poverty).

 

58. An emergency plan’s measures will not only affect the energy producers. It will also mean that the whole transport system has to be reorganised under workers’ control and public ownership. We call for a dramatic shift from the individual car to effective public transportation systems. This means a huge investment and extension of them. They should be provided for free at all levels.

 

59. Under neo-liberal globalisation, the transport system develops in the opposite direction - a shift to planes and the maintenance of the car as the main transport system. As a part of the struggle for a rational system, we give support to struggles against the further building of “mega” airports like Heathrow. Of course, this does not mean that we oppose the building of every airport on the globe, but it means that the working class not only can but also must be prepared to fight for a halt to projects that just add to the environmental hazards created by the ruling class.

 

60. But equally important is the shift of transportation in goods. Ultimately, this, like all the other problems, can only be solved in a planned economy, as part of the building of a socialist society. But it also means that we fight to force the capitalists to implement immediate beneficial measures, for example, a reduction in exhaust gases for motor vehicles, and we fight for taxation of these capitalists to pay for the damage they cause to the environment.

 

61. A programme on the environment must not be confined to just those sections of the capitalist class who make profits out of energy or transportation industries or those related to them. In all countries, we call for a programme of public works to introduce a more sustainable transport system, to repair and to improve housing to the highest energy-efficient standards, so that society is better equipped to deal with the degree of climate change that is already inevitable.

 

62. In the semi-colonial countries, it will often be impossible to generate the necessary resources from within the countries themselves. We call for the expropriation of imperialist capital and ventures in these countries without compensation, and for complete cancellation of the semi-colonial countries’ debts to the imperialist banks. But we also call for the imperialist governments to be forced to provide the means necessary to build and construct housing and facilities that can meet the effects of climate change, such as the flooding of whole regions. We reject green taxes and other measures that end up forcing the working class and poor to pay for these programmes and initiatives, they should be funded by taxing the rich and big business. We call for an immediate ban on luxury, wasteful forms of transport and where necessary rationing based on need, organised under the control of the workers and users in the industry and ultimately a workers’ state.

 

63. The agrarian question is a central part of the environmental question, as Marx already pointed out. In the semi-colonial world, in particular, capitalist agriculture led to destruction of rain forest, desertification, pollution, destruction of species and crop varieties, monopolisation, and the destruction of fertility as result of the short sightedness of agrarian production under large monopolies.

 

64. Urbanisation and disastrous living conditions in mega-cities are the other side of the same process, and are accelerated by impoverishment and privatisation of basic goods (water etc.)

 

65. We call for (re)nationalisation and expropriation of these industries and a programme of public works for decent housing, electricity, sanitation - all paid for by taxing the rich.

 

66. Some industries and forms of transport will need to be massively restructured, shrunk or even closed down (eg coal mines, junk mailers) in favour of sustainable, renewable alternatives. Marxists demand that the capitalists pay for the clean-up and conversion of these industries, with retraining programmes overseen by the workers and guaranteed jobs with no loss of pay, conditions or pension for the workforce. By means of such demands we would seek to win workers in such industries to the climate change movement, while within that movement and in the course of developing an emergency plan, we would fight all instances of sectionalism that placed the interests of particular groups of workers, defending their current forms of work and industry, above the global climate emergency. We condemn the union bureaucracy when it falls in behind the greenwash of the government or employer (eg British Air Line Pilots supporting government’s airport expansion plans, NUM arguing for coal expansion on the basis of currently untested carbon storage), putting loyalty to capitalism before humanity’s needs.

 

67. In agriculture, we fight for the expropriation of the large agri-business multi-nationals and chemical industries. We fight for control over research in new fertilisation techniques and genetic modifications and a halt to their implementation without previous testing. On the other hand, we are aware that GM could be a potential improvement of productivity and agricultural development, so that we call for massive research under control of the producers, agrarian labourers (workers and peasants) and consumers. Where governments or business have undertaken unsafe tests of GM crops or planted them without such tests, we support actions taken to destroy such crops

 

 

 

The workers’ movement must change

 

 

 

68. The struggle to save the planet has already awoken many working class people and peasants - be it by fighting for control of their land, against pollution, etc.

 

69. The environmental question also demonstrates the limits and, ultimately, the inadequacy not only of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois environmentalism, but also of ‘pure trade-unionism’, nationalism and reformism. Firstly, the limits of trade-unionism are clear enough. All too often, the trade union bureaucrats use narrow worker interests (for example, of workers employed in coal industries) as a means to promote ignorance about the general and long term interests of the class. This is a major means by which union bureaucracies tie these workers to “their” capitals.

 

70. Secondly, bourgeois nationalism in the semi-colonies and reformism, and also a wing of the Green movement, has promised “environmental” change via entering or forming bourgeois governments, sowing the illusion that one could implement such politics without challenging the power of the ruling class, the bourgeois state apparatus itself.

 

71. This meant not only that their “reforms” were indistinguishable from those of the “environmentalist” wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie itself but also that they used the state apparatus, that was supposed to implement their reforms, against movements fighting the destruction of their human environment (for example, the SPD/Green government in Germany or Lula against the land-occupations and protests against the latifundistas and agribusiness).

 

72. While we reject the bourgeois claims that corporate-engineered consumerism is natural, against the greens we insist that the majority of humanity’s living standards can continue to rise in a sustainable manner through democratic economic planning and voluntary, collective forms of living in order create a harmonious relationship between nature and humanity. State provided canteens, childcare, laundries, and more communal forms of housing and leisure could socialise the wasteful duplication of private household tasks, in the process liberating women from the “second shift”.

 

73. The destructive division of town and country, the pollution and overcrowding along with unplanned sprawl, can only be reversed with democratic planning of the economy in the hands of a workers state takes hold and begins to reshape the human environment.

 

74. Therefore, the fight on the environmental question is closely linked to the fight for organs of self-organisation, of control, of self-defence of the working class and the peasantry. The question of the destruction of the human environment also means that a programme for an emergency plan has to be a central part of the struggle for workers’ governments, the creation of working class power and for the transition to socialism by means of world revolution.

 

 

 

Rettet den Planeten vor der Zerstörung durch den Kapitalismus!

 

Thesen zur Umweltfrage

 

 

 

Vorwort der Redaktion: Im Folgenden veröffentlichen wir eine Resolution, die wir in unserer Vorläuferorganisation – der Liga für eine Revolutionär-Kommunistische Internationale (ab 2003 in Liga für die Fünfte Internationale umbenannt) – im Jahr 2008 diskutierten und annahmen. Sie wurde in Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 40 – unserem damaligen deutschsprachigen Organ – veröffentlicht. Die Gründer unserer heutigen Organisation – der Revolutionär-Kommunistischen Internationalen Tendenz (RCIT) – waren zum Teil langjährige führende Mitglieder der LRKI/LFI und wurden im April 2011 von der Mehrheit ausgeschlossen, als sie sich der zunehmenden zentristischen Degeneration der LFI widersetzten. Gemeinsam mit Genossinnen und Genossen in anderen Ländern bauten sie mit der RCIT eine neue internationale Organisation auf, die heute in 11 Ländern präsent ist.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

Die Umweltfrage - eine Kernfrage unserer Epoche

 

 

 

Globale Erwärmung, Abschmelzen größerer Teile der Poleiskappen, Klimaveränderung, Ausdehnung der Wüsten, Verstädterung, Vernichtung des Regenwaldes …

 

Es ist keine Frage: Wir leben in einem Zeitalter, in dem gewisse Veränderungen der natürlichen Umwelt des Menschen mit der unmittelbarer Zerstörung der Lebensbedingungen von Millionen, wenn nicht langfristig sogar der gesamten Menschheit verbunden sind.

 

Diese Gefahr ist inzwischen allgemein anerkannt. Selbst die borniertesten Elemente der herrschenden Klassen können sie nicht länger ignorieren. Zumindest müssen sie eingestehen, dass es eine „Umweltfrage“ gibt. Zum ersten Mal beruhen diese dramatischen Veränderungen nicht auf örtlichem oder regionalem Eingreifen des Menschen in natürliche Kreisläufe, sondern menschengemachte Natureingriffe haben in Gestalt des Klimawandels globale Folgen. Diese Bedrohung ist mit einer Reihe mehr oder weniger begrenzterer Krisen wie der Ausrottung der Fischbestände, der Zerstörung des Regenwaldes und des massenhaften Artensterbens, welche oft damit zusammenhängen, verbunden.

 

Selbst jene, die für das System verantwortlich zeichnen, das die komplette Menschheit mit Umwelt- und Gesellschaftskatastrophen bedroht, müssen zugeben, dass etwas geschehen muss. Keine UNO-Versammlung, kein G8-Treffen, kein Regierungsprogramm kommt mehr ohne Behauptungen aus, diese Frage in den Vordergrund gerückt zu haben, und ohne das Versprechen von „Aktionsplänen“ - auch wenn deren Resultate nur erbärmlich genannt werden können.

 

Die drohende Zerstörung der natürlichen Grundlagen menschlichen Lebens ist zu einer wahrhaft erdumspannenden Frage geworden. Alle sozialen und politischen Kräfte haben ein Programm zur „Lösung“ des Umweltproblems vorgelegt und überbieten sich dabei gegenseitig.

 

Ganze Bewegungen sind um dieses Thema herum entstanden. Sie starteten als Bewegungen und politische Strömungen der Mittelschichten, der Intelligenz, bedeutender Teile der Jugend in den imperialistischen und stalinistischen Staaten der 70er und 80er Jahre. In dieser Zeit stießen sie nicht nur auf die regelrechte Feindseligkeit der Bourgeoisien in der imperialistischen und halbkolonialen Welt sowie der stalinistischen, sozialdemokratischen und GewerkschaftsbürokratInnen. Sie gerieten auch mit einer „revolutionären“ oder „sozialistischen“ Linken aneinander, die selbst die Existenz der von ihnen aufgeworfenen Fragen geradeheraus leugnete oder oft nicht wahrhaben wollte.

 

Heute kann niemand mehr diese Gefahren ausklammern. Die „grünen“ Themen sind Punkte für jede Partei geworden. Die Hauptströmung der ehedem radikalen kleinbürgerlichen Bewegung ist „öko-reformistisch“ oder wurde sogar zur „öko-marktwirtschafts“-Partei mit „grünen“ Firmen für „grüne“ Erzeugnisse.

 

Andere Teile der Umweltbewegung treten noch für verschiedene Spielarten kleinbürgerlicher, rückwärts gewandter und letztlich reaktionärer Lösungen ein, die auf Rückkehr zur kleinen Warenproduktion und einer „Deindustrialisierung“ der Gesellschaft fußen.

 

Die Ironie der Geschichte will es, dass der Augenblick des größten Erfolgs der GRÜNEN, des Aufgreifens ihrer Sachthemen durch alle Parteien und die Gesellschaft, die utopische und bürgerliche bzw. kleinbürgerliche Natur ihrer Lösungswege enthüllt. Die offensichtliche Hohlheit ihrer Antworten hat auch das falsche Verständnis der Ökologiefrage seitens des Hauptzweigs der grünen Strömungen einschließlich ihres linken Flügels, der ÖkosozialistInnen, aufgedeckt.

 

Zur gleichen Zeit, als die grüne Thematik zur alltäglichen Tagesordnung wurde, änderten sich auch die gegen die Auswirkungen der Umweltzerstörung kämpfenden Bewegungen. Die Auseinandersetzungen der Landlosen, der einheimischen Bevölkerungen für das Recht auf Landbesitz und gegen die multinationalen Agrarkonzerne, das Eintreten für menschenwürdige Verhältnisse in den Slums der Megastädte der Halbkolonien, die diversen Verkehrs- und Energiekonzepte - all das deutet darauf hin, dass die Arbeiterklasse, die Bauernschaft, die Jugend und die Armut aktive und wesentliche Komponenten der Kämpfe gegen die Vernichtung der Umwelt geworden sind; aber sie unterliegen der Vorherrschaft und dem Einfluss bürgerlicher oder kleinbürgerlicher Kräfte und Ideologien.

 

Solche Führungen konnten die Oberhand gewinnen - aufgrund der Ignoranz durch reformistische Bürokratien, die sozialdemokratischen oder stalinistischen Parteien bzw. bürgerliche NationalistInnen in der „Dritten Welt“. Sie konnten sich auch wegen der Anpassung des Zentrismus an die „Umwelttümelei“ durchsetzen.

 

Das kann erst überwunden werden, wenn die arbeitende Klasse ihr eigenes Programm hervorbringt, ihre eigene Lösung für die Umweltfrage. Der Kampf gegen die Vernichtung der natürlichen Grundlagen des menschlichen Lebens und für ein vernünftiges, bewusstes Verhältnis zwischen Mensch und Natur ist heute zu einer zentralen Frage der sozialistischen Revolution geworden, einer zentralen Frage auch für den Aufbau einer klassenlosen, kommunistischen Gesellschaft.

 

Deshalb ist es die Aufgabe von RevolutionärInnen, ein Programm von Übergangsforderungen zu entwerfen und dafür einzutreten, das auch in diesen Fragen die Tageskämpfe mit dem Ziel der sozialistischen Revolution verknüpft.

 

 

 

Mensch und Natur

 

 

 

Die kapitalistische Produktionsweise hat nicht als erste massiv in die Natur und das „natürliche Gleichgewicht“ eingegriffen. Jede Ansicht oder Vorstellung, die Menschheit habe einst ein „wahrhaft harmonisches“ Verhältnis zur Natur gehabt, das verlustig gegangen sei, ist eine Illusion. Die Menschheit hat immer in die Natur eingegriffen - und musste es auch. Doch auch die Natur selbst hat sich stets verändert.

 

In der Naturgeschichte ist einzig der ständige Wandel, die Bewegung der Materie, eine wirkliche Konstante. Alle Lebewesen müssen sich diesem anpassen und damit fertigwerden. Was die Menschheit aber von anderen Spezies unterscheidet: die Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Natur ist von ihren ersten Ursprüngen her ein soziales, ein durch gesellschaftliche Arbeit vermitteltes Verhältnis.

 

Buchstäblich von Anfang an musste die Menschheit die Reproduktion ihrer eigenen Existenz sichern. Dies umfasste notwendigerweise, die Überlebensbedingungen, die Bedürfnisbefriedigung gegen die ständigen Unwägbarkeiten und Gefahren durch die Naturentwicklung zu verstetigen (sofern dies möglich ist).

 

Sicher war all das zu Beginn der Menschentwicklung sehr primitiv, sehr beschränkt, setzte aber eine Gesellschaftsentwicklung in Gang, die immer auch Entfaltung des gesellschaftlichen Wissens beinhaltete, in Bezug auf die Umstände ihres natürlichen Fortschritts, der Bewegungsgesetze der Natur, ihrer zweckgerichteten Umwandlung, die technischen und technologischen Eingriffe in die Natur, welche die Höherentwicklung der Menschheit auf Basis eines gesellschaftlichen Arbeitsprozesses gestatteten. Die Entwicklung von Gesellschaftlichkeit und Zivilisation war nur auf diesem Wege möglich.

 

Aber der Stoffwechsel zwischen Mensch und Natur vollzieht sich die ganze Menschheitsgeschichte hindurch stets auf der Grundlage eines mehr oder weniger beschränkten Wissens über Naturprozesse und deren Gesetzmäßigkeiten. Das hat zu katastrophalen Ereignissen in der Geschichte geführt, einschließlich des Untergangs kompletter Zivilisationen.

 

Alle Gesellschaften griffen in die Natur ein. Alle Gesellschaften vernichteten und formten die menschlich/natürliche Umwelt, ja schufen sie, so wie ihre eigene Entwicklung auch von den konkreten lokalen oder regionalen Umweltverhältnissen, in denen sie sich herausbildeten, geprägt war.

 

Mit der Entstehung von Klassengesellschaften unterschieden sich die Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Natur nicht nur nach Regionen, sondern auch nach Klassen.

 

„Natur“ und ihre „natürliche“ Umwelt waren nie das Gleiche für die werktätigen Klassen, die mit der Natur rangen, wie für die herrschenden Klassen, die unter besseren und sichereren „natürlichen“ Verhältnissen lebten und als erste eine beschauliche Sichtweise von „Naturschönheit“ an den Tag legten.

 

Andererseits konzentrierte sich wirkliches Wissen über Natur und ihre Vorgänge in den arbeitenden Klassen, seien es Bauern/Bäuerinnen, Bergleute, Handwerker etc. Zugleich waren die herrschenden Klassen gezwungen, sich diese Kenntnisse anzueignen, sie zu kontrollieren und in ihren Händen zu zentralisieren (oder wenigstens zentrale Teile davon).

 

 

 

Kapitalismus

 

 

 

Mit der Entwicklung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise vollzogen sich bedeutende Wandlungen im Mensch/Natur-Verhältnis.

 

Auch alle vorherigen Produktionsweisen hatten massiv in die „natürliche“ Umwelt eingegriffen, neue Ackeranbaumethoden hervorgebracht, die „natürliche Auslese“ beeinflusst. Das führte zum Verschwinden ganzer Arten und förderte die Entwicklung anderer. Was den Kapitalismus davon unterscheidet, war und ist die Dimension seiner Eingriffe. Sein explosives Wachstum industrieller Produktion war von Anfang an mit einem gegenüber früheren Epochen qualitativ höheren Wachstum der Nutzung fossiler Energieträger verbunden. Auf der Jagd nach diesem "Stoff" unterwirft er sich entlegenste Weltgegenden und hinterlässt Wüstenlandschaften. Der Kapitalismus ist ein wahrhaft globales, ein Weltsystem. Er planiert alle lokalen Besonderheiten vorangegangener Produktionsweisen.

 

Gleichzeitig wälzt er beständig seine Produktionsbasis um, aber auf der Basis verallgemeinerter Warenproduktion, auf anarchische Weise.

 

Folglich sind die Auswirkungen des Kapitalismus auf die Umwelt nicht nur quantitativer, sondern auch qualitativer Art.

 

Die materielle Grundlage dafür bildet die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte - das Hervorbringen und die Kombination von Großindustrie und Wissenschaft. Die Großindustrie geht einher mit der Industrialisierung der Landwirtschaft und zerstört die letzte Zufluchtsstätte vorheriger Klassengesellschaften. Sie vertreibt die Bauernschaft von Grund und Boden in die Großstadt oder verwandelt den „Kleinbauern“ in einen Landarbeiter. Mit diesem Prozess treibt sie jedoch auch die Trennung von  Stadt und Land auf die Spitze und fördert die Industrialisierung der Agrikultur. Die kapitalistische Form dieses Prozesses zerstört zugleich zunehmend den natürlichen Reichtum des Bodens und untergräbt damit langfristig die Voraussetzungen seiner eigenen Existenz. Auf diesem Weg entsteht also nicht nur ein städtisches Proletariat. Sondern die Großindustrie entwickelt dieses Verhältnis auf eine Art, welche die Lebensgrundlagen und Gesundheit der LohnarbeiterInnen untergraben. Sie treibt die Entfremdung des Produzenten von den Produktionsmitteln an ihre äußersten Grenzen.

 

Die kapitalistische Produktion vervollkommnet deshalb die Technik und Kombination des gesellschaftlichen Produktionsprozesses, indem sie zugleich die Grundlagen ihres Reichtums beschädigt: die Erde und den Arbeiter. Doch Großindustrie, Industrialisierung des Feldbaus, Fortschritt der Wissenschaften, treiben nicht nur das Problem auf neue Höhen. Sie liefern auch die Basis für dessen Bewältigung: eine rationale Verbindung von Industrie und Wissenschaft.

 

In vorkapitalistischen Gesellschaften entfalteten sich die Beziehungen zwischen Stadt und Land, zwischen Mensch und Natur unter natürlich gewachsenen Bedingungen. Im Kapitalismus als verallgemeinerter Warenproduktion ist die Produktion eine gesellschaftliche, aber die Aneignung erfolgt privat. Er zerreißt darum nicht nur die überlieferten Bande des Dorfes, sondern auch seine lokalen bzw. regionalen Eigenarten.

 

Das Zerreißen dieser Bindungen erfordert auch notwendig die Etablierung eines vernünftigen, bewussten Stoffwechsels zwischen Stadt und Land, zwischen Agrarproduktion und verarbeitendem Gewerbe, wenn man die zerstörerischen Auswüchse gesellschaftlicher Produktion unter einem anarchischen System, das auf Privateigentum beruht, vermeiden oder „reparieren“ will.

 

Im Kapitalismus ist es unmöglich, rationale, dauerhafte Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Natur herzustellen, die eine nachhaltige und fortwährende Reproduktion der Menschheit und ihrer Lebensbedingungen gestatten. In einer allgemeinen Warenproduktion werden Erfolg und Vernunft aller Wirtschaftsaktivitäten erst im Nachhinein ermittelt, ob ein Erzeugnis KäuferInnen, eine Nachfrage auf dem Markt findet oder nicht. Alles was sich damit nicht verträgt, ist ständig vom Verschwinden aus gesellschaftlicher oder natürlicher Produktion bedroht.

 

Da kapitalistische Produktion tatsächlich auf die Erzeugung von Mehrwert ausgerichtet ist, werden für im Wettbewerb stehende Einzelkapitale Entscheidungen, die ihre Konkurrenzfähigkeit und Profitabilität verbessern, notwendig mit jedem rationalen und stetigen Verhältnis zur Umwelt kollidieren.

 

Während z.B. die „schlanke Produktion“ die Kosten für fixes Kapital und Lagerhaltung mindert und deswegen die Profitrate steigert, sind ihre offensichtlichen Folgen vermehrte Transporte und massive Umweltzerstörung. Deren Kosten müssen von der Gesellschaft bezahlt werden.

 

 

 

Umweltfrage und imperialistische Epoche

 

 

 

Eine der Eigenarten kapitalistischer Produktion als vergesellschafteter ist ihre zunehmende Einverleibung der Wissenschaft. Mit der Entwicklung der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise geriet die Wissenschaft mehr und mehr zu einem Industriezweig und wurde selbst zur Ware. Das ging Hand in Hand mit dem enormen Konzentrations- und Zentralisationsschub des Kapitals Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, der Herausbildung des modernen Monopol- und Finanzkapitals.

 

Die Morgenröte der imperialistischen Epoche trug auch eine enorme Konzentration von Forschung und naturwissenschaftlicher Entwicklung in Händen großer Monopole, Stiftungen oder Staatsinstitutionen mit sich, die immer direkter durch den imperialistischen Staat gemäß den Interessen der Kapitalistenklasse gelenkt wurden.

 

Wissenschaftliche Forschung und ihre Resultate sind Privateigentum geworden, Teil von Geschäftsplänen und -geheimnissen. Die Monopolisierung bedeutete nicht nur oft, dass Fortschritte nur in Richtung Profitmacherei gelenkt wurden; sie hielt auch unausweichlich Verbesserungen zurück, behinderte Kontrollen oder stellte sie ein, wo sie Profite gefährdeten.

 

Dies spiegelt den zunehmend gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Produktion wider, verweist  aber andererseits darauf, dass das Privateigentum immer mehr zu einer Fessel wird.

 

Im Imperialismus erfolgten regelrechte Sprünge in der Revolutionierung des Ackerbaus, welche die Agrarländer in industrielle transformierten, in denen Farmer oder Landwirte nur einen Bruchteil der Bevölkerung ausmachen.

 

Riesige Agrokonzerne und wissenschaftliche Neuerungen stellten auch in den Halbkolonien die Landwirtschaft auf den Kopf, zerstörten die alten Kultivierungsmethoden, enteigneten Ernten und schließlich die Böden der Bauern. In vielen Fällen bedeutete dies auch, dass die neuen Bewirtschaftungsweisen den Boden zugrunde richteten und Verwüstung, Armut, Hunger und Landflucht bewirkten.

 

 

 

Das Monopolkapital beschleunigt die zerstörerischen Auswirkungen des Kapitalismus

 

 

 

Allein die Maßnahmen zur Steigerung der Profitabilität unter den Bedingungen der Globalisierung, z. B. die Privatisierung von früher staatlichen Energiekonzernen, die Schaffung von großen monopolisierten Märkten im Bereich Energie, Wasser und Transportindustrie, die durch Finanzgeschäfte weiter vorangetrieben werden, die enorme Menge von fixem Kapital, die darin steckt - all dies bedeutet, dass die herrschenden Klassen aller großen kapitalistischen Staaten keinen Einsatz wirkungsvoller Mittel zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels oder der Erwärmung der Erde zulassen können, denn das würde massive Eingriffe in das Privateigentum der imperialistischen Bourgeoisie und der großen Finanzkapitale mit sich bringen müssen.

 

Außerdem wären sie unausweichlich mit einem weiteren gravierenden Widerspruch konfrontiert, welcher der imperialistischen Epoche und der Globalisierung innewohnt: der internationale Charakter der Produktion und des Warenumschlags auf der einen Seite und die weiter bestehende nationalstaatliche Form, in der dies vonstatten geht. Die Umweltfrage und die damit verbundene weltweite Bedrohung sind dem Wesen nach international und auch nur international zu lösen.

 

Während die bürgerlichen Regierungen aller Staaten mit großen Worten ihre Maßnahmen im Kleinen gegen die Umweltzerstörung ins Licht zu rücken versuchen, tun sie dies erst recht in internationalem Maßstab.

 

Alle Maßnahmen der nationalen wie der „Weltgemeinschaft“ tragen die Handschrift des bürgerlichen und imperialistischen „Ökologismus“. Ob beabsichtigt oder nicht, werden die Kosten für die Maßnahmen den arbeitenden Klassen und den Halbkolonien aufgebürdet. Der Handel mit „Schadstoffzertifikaten“, die Zerstörung des Regenwaldes zwecks Anbau von „Biokraftstoffpflanzen“ (und damit die weitere Vertreibung der Landlosen in Staaten wie Brasilien) sind nichts als perverse, aber höchst profitable, Formen dieser Art von „Umweltschutz“-Ideologie.

 

Ökosteuern, Appelle an Verbraucher zur Trennung von Müll, der vorher von großen Monopolen produziert worden ist, sind mehr oder weniger hoffnungslose oder zynische Mittel, die Armen für die Ausbesserung von Schäden zahlen zu lassen und dafür verantwortlich zu machen, die durch den irrationalen Charakter eines Systems erst entstanden sind, welches sich die Menschheit einfach nicht mehr länger leisten kann.

 

Heute stehen wir vor den Folgen von Jahrzehnten und Jahrhunderten kapitalistischer Produktionweise und deren Einfluss auf die menschliche Umwelt. Gefahren drohen, die die Zukunft der Menscheit selbst in Frage stellen. Die neoliberale Globalisierung, die Endphase des Imperialismus, beschleunigt diese Tendenz dramatisch. Die verschiedenen Maßnahmen zur Profitmaximierung, um dem tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate in den letzten Jahrzehnten gegensteuern zu können, haben sämtlich zu einem wahnsinnigen Anwachsen der zerstörerischen Auswirkungen dieser Produktionsweise auf die natürliche Umwelt des Menschen geführt. Sie sind eine notwendige Folge des Neoliberalismus, die sich parallel zu den wachsenden Angriffen auf die Arbeiterklasse, die Bauern und die Armen entwickeln.

 

Die Umweltfrage ist ein zentrales Problem, das von der antikapitalistischen Bewegung von Anfang an und besonders in der halbkolonialen Welt aufgeworfen wurde.

 

Sie hat sich um Fragen des Klimawandels, des Transports, der Landproblematik, der Privatisierung und Verwandlung von natürlichen Vorräten in Waren gebildet.

 

 

 

Ein Programm zur Wiederherstellung menschenwürdiger Umweltverhältnisse

 

 

 

Selbst die nüchternsten Berechnungen unterstellen einen Anstieg der Durchschnittstemperatur von 1 bis 1,5 Grad Celsius auf der Erde in den nächsten 20 Jahren. Andere Zahlen gehen von einer Zunahme um 4,5 Grad aus. In den vergangenen 100 Jahren hat sich der Anteil von Kohlendioxid an der Erdatmosphäre um 20% erhöht. Immer größere Teile der Polkappen schmelzen, lebenswichtige Meeresströmungen könnten sich ändern, der Meeresspiegel steigt. Das führt zu gewaltigen Veränderungen, die etliche Küstenlandstriche und sogar große Teile einiger Länder überfluten werden. Es steht schon längst außer Zweifel, dass dieser einschneidende Wandel geschehen wird, es geht nur darum, ob und wie die Menschheit sich an diese neuen Bedingungen anpassen und den Lauf der Entwicklung schnell und entschlossen beeinflussen wird, um eine weitere Verschärfung der Lage durch massiven Rückgang der Emissionen vermeiden zu können.

 

Es wäre töricht zu glauben, dass der „Markt“ und die Kapitalistenklasse diese Probleme lösen könnten. Sie hatten hinlänglich Gelegenheit dazu und haben sich als unfähig erwiesen. Die grundsätzlichen Mittel für eine durchdachte Umgestaltung des - wie Marx ihn nannte - „Metabolismus“ (Stoffwechsels) zwischen Menschheit und Natur, Großindustrie und Wissenschaft, sind vorhanden; sie können aber erst dann nutzbringend angewendet werden, wenn sie den Händen der herrschenden Klasse entwunden, wenn sie vergesellschaftet werden.

 

Nur unter einer weltumspannend geplanten Wirtschaft kann ein System aufgebaut werden, das nicht nur die Bedürfnisse der Menschheit stillt und ausbaut, sondern das außerdem nachhaltig und dynamisch wirkt, d. h. einen Metabolismus zwischen gesellschaftlicher Produktion und Natur schafft, der sich diesen Umweltveränderungen anpassen kann. Der Kampf für dieses Ziel muss damit beginnen, sich den brennenden Gegenwartsfragen jetzt zuzuwenden, sie zuzuspitzen und zu verallgemeinern.

 

Gegen die Gefahr der globalen Erwärmung, ihre Folgen und deren zunehmenden Einfluss müssen wir auf Landes- und Weltebene Notpläne zum Abbau von Schadstoffaustoß, zur Umrüstung des Energie- und Verkehrswesens erarbeiten, aber auch Vorkehrungen treffen, dass alle Erdregionen so gut es geht die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels überleben können. Privatunternehmen und Regierungen sind unfähig, die hierzu notwendigen radikalen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen und durchzuführen. Nur eine massenhafte Bewegung, die sich mit dem Klimawandel befasst und von Organisationen und Aktionen der Arbeiterklasse getragen wird, kann einen solchen Plan ausarbeiten und ihn gegen kapitalistische Widerstände auch umsetzen.

 

54. Solche Pläne bedürfen der Zentralisierung der Mittel für deren Durchsetzung: großindustrielle Energieerzeugung, Großraumbewirtschaftung, engmaschiges Verkehrsnetz, Wissenschaft und großzügige Geldmittel - sie müssen den großen Monopolen aus der Hand genommen werden.

 

Das Großkapital ist in dieser Angelegenheit nicht einfach nur „untätig“. Die kapitalistischen Großmächte verfolgen ihre eigenen Pläne. Das bedeutet, sie zerstören die menschliche Umwelt immer weiter, versuchen Profit aus dem Ökogeschäft zu ziehen oder sich durch abgeleitete Finanzgeschäfte (Versicherungen usw.) zu bereichern.

 

Kämpfe dagegen können oft an die Forderung nach Einsichtnahme in die Geschäfts- und Forschungsplanungen sowie die Transaktionen solcher Konzerne anknüpfen. Wir fordern die Einsicht in alle Geschäftsvorgänge, Forschungen, ihre Resultate und die Abschaffung des Geschäftsgeheimnisses. Die Forschung muss dem privaten Kapital aus der Hand gerissen und unter Arbeiterkontrolle gestellt werden. Wir fordern eine unabhängige Untersuchung der Investitionspläne von Regierungen und Großkapital durch Arbeiter- und Umweltbewegung, die sich mit der Klimaveränderung auseinandersetzt.

 

Unter dem Kapitalismus wird Wissenschaft zum „Diener“ des Kapitals. Das bedeutet, dass Forschung und Produktentwicklung kurzfristigen Profitkalkulationen unterworfen sind. Viele Forschungsvorhaben, zusätzliche Tests und Beweise für Hypothesen werden genau wie der „reine Wissenschaftsbetrieb“, also die theoretische Grundlagenforschung, gekürzt, zumal diese für das Kapital als ganzes nur zusätzliche Kostenfaktoren sind wie andere auch.

 

Angesichts unserer noch sehr begrenzten Kenntnisse über Entwicklungen und Bewegungsgesetze der natürlichen Umwelt, der Folgen der ständigen menschlichen Eingriffe in diese Abläufe, ist eine völlige Neubestimmung der Forschungsziele, ihre Offenlegung, Verallgemeinerung und des Austauschs ihrer Ergebnisse notwendig, genauso wie ein massiver Mehraufwand an Forschung selbst.

 

Wir fordern die entschädigungslose Enteignung der Energiekonzerne und aller Industrien, die Grundversorgungsgüter wie etwa Wasser monopolisieren, der Großagrarindustrie und der großen Gesellschaften im Schienen-, Luft-, Wasser- und Straßenverkehr. Sie müssen unter Arbeiterkontrolle (wieder)verstaatlicht werden.

 

Wir setzen uns für die Umgestaltung der Energie- und Transportsysteme ein, um sie so sparsam und flächendeckend wie möglich zu machen. Darin soll ein Plan enthalten sein, um die Abhängigkeit von fossilen Brennstoffen in den gegenwärtigen Energiesystemen abzubauen. In manchen Fällen fordern wir allerdings den sofortigen Förderstopp.

 

Wir fordern einen Plan zum Auslauf und zur Ersetzung von fossilen Brennstoffen und der Kernspaltungsenergie - nicht nur aus Gründen der Umweltschonung, sondern auch, weil die begrenzten Vorräte dieser Rohstoffe es notwendig machen, sie durch nachhaltige und erneuerbare Energiequellen im Laufe des Jahrhunderts zu ersetzen. Wir rufen nicht zur sofortigen Schließung aller dieser Anlagen auf, sondern für eine geplante Stilllegung bzw. den Ausstieg aus der Energieform. Das Tempo dieser Maßnahmen wird mit Rücksicht auf die unterschiedlichen nationalen Gegebenheiten und ihr Verhältnis zu anderen gesellschaftlichen Zielen (z.B. Elektrifizierung des Landes, Kampf gegen Hunger und Armut) festgesetzt.

 

Ein solcher Notplan ist nicht nur für die Energieproduktion wichtig, auch das gesamte Verkehrssystem muss unter Arbeiterkontrolle in öffentliches Eigentum umgewandelt werden. Wir fordern einen konsequenten Umstieg vom Individualverkehr auf effektive öffentliche Verkehrssysteme. Dazu muss ein großes Investitions- und Ausbauprogramm aufgelegt werden. Die Verkehrsmittel sollten im Nah- und Regionalbereich kostenlos genutzt werden können.

 

Mit der neoliberalen Globalisierung entwickelte sich das Transportsystem in die entgegengesetzte Richtung - Verstärkung des Flugverkehrs und Festhalten am Auto als Haupttransportmittel. Im Sinne eines rationalen Systems sind wir gegen den Ausbau von „Mega“flughäfen wie Frankfurt/Main. Wir sind nicht gegen jeden Flughafen, aber die Arbeiterklasse kann nicht nur, sie muss allen Projekten Einhalt zu gebieten, die den umweltzerstörerischen Wahnsinn der herrschenden Klasse noch weiter treiben.

 

Genauso bedeutsam ist ein tiefgreifender Wandel im Güterverkehr. Auch dies kann - wie alles andere auch - letzten Endes nur in einer gesellschaftlich geplanten Wirtschaftsordnung als Teil des Aufbaus einer sozialistischen Gesellschaft gelöst werden. Gleichzeitig müssen wir aber auch versuchen, die Kapitalisten zu zwingen, positive Sofortmaßnahmen einzuleiten, etwa eine Abgasverringerung bei Autos und die Besteuerung der Firmen, die für die von ihnen verursachten Umweltschäden aufkommen müssen.

 

Ein Umweltprogramm darf jedoch nicht auf jene Teile der Kapitalistenklasse beschränkt sein, die Profite im Energie- und Transportwesen oder damit verbundenen Industrien machen.

 

Wir treten in allen Ländern für ein Programm öffentlicher Arbeiten ein, um ein nachhaltigeres Verkehrssystem einzuführen, um Wohnungen mit der besten Energietechnologie auszustatten, so dass die Gesellschaft für den unvermeidlichen Klimawandel besser gerüstet ist.

 

In den halbkolonialen Staaten wird es oft unmöglich sein, die notwendigen Ressourcen im eigenen Land aufzubringen. Wir fordern die entschädigungslose Enteignung des imperialistischen Kapitals und von Gemeinschaftsunternehmen mit der heimischen Bourgeoisie und die ersatzlose Streichung aller Schulden von halbkolonialen Ländern bei imperialistischen Banken. Aber wir rufen auch dazu auf, die imperialistischen Regierungen zu zwingen, die nötigen Mittel bereit zu stellen, um die Folgen des Klimawandels zu mildern, z.B. gegen die Überflutung ganzer Regionen. Wir weisen Ökosteuern und andere Maßnahmen zurück, die letzten Endes den ArbeiterInnen und Armen die Kosten für diese Programme und Initiativen aufhalsen. Sie sollten stattdessen aus Steuergeldern von den Reichen und dem Großkapital bezahlt werden. Wir fordern ein sofortiges Verbot aller verschwenderischen Luxusformen von Transport und, wo nötig, auch die Zuteilung nach Gesichtspunkten der Bedürftigkeit, organisiert unter Kontrolle der ArbeiterInnen und NutzerInnen und letzten Endes in einer Planwirtschaft.

 

Schon Marx betonte, dass die Landfrage ein zentraler Teil der Umweltproblematik ist. Besonders in der halbkolonialen Welt hat die kapitalistische Landwirtschaft zur Zerstörung des Regenwaldes, der Wüstenausbreitung, zu Verschmutzung und zum Aussterben von Tierarten und Verringerung der genetischen Pflanzenvielfalt, zu Monopolisierung und Unfruchtbarkeit als Folge der kurzsichtigen Agrarproduktion unter Kontrolle großer Monopole geführt.

 

Die Verstädterung und die katastrophalen Lebensbedingungen in den Megastädten sind die Kehrseite desselben Prozesses. Sie werden beschleunigt durch Verknappung und gleichzeitige Privatisierung von Grundversorgungsgütern wie z.B. Wasser.

 

Wir fordern die (Wieder)Verstaatlichung und Enteignung dieser Industrien und ein Programm von öffentlichen Arbeiten für menschenwürdige Wohnungen, Stromversorgung, Gesundheit und Hygiene, bezahlt durch Besteuerung der Reichen.

 

Einige Industrien und Formen des Verkehrs müssen zu Gunsten von nachhaltigen und erneuerbaren Alternativen massiv umgebaut, zurückgefahren oder gar abgeschafft werden (z.B. Kohlegruben). MarxistInnen fordern, dass die Kapitalisten für die Säuberung und Umwandlung dieser Industrien samt Umschulungsprogrammen unter Arbeiterkontrolle und Arbeitsplatzgarantien ohne Lohn- und Rentenverlust oder Verschlechterung der Arbeitsbedingungen bezahlen sollen.

 

Durch solche Forderungen versuchen wir, die ArbeiterInnen solcher Industrien für die Umweltbewegung in Hinblick auf den Klimawandel zu gewinnen. In dieser Bewegung und im Laufe der Erarbeitung eines Notplans werden wir alle Formen von Sektoralismus bekämpfen, die die Interessen von bestimmten ArbeiterInnen die ihre derzeitigen Arbeits- und Industriebedingungen verteidigen, über den globalen Klimanotstand stellen wollen. Wir verurteilen die Gewerkschaftsbürokratie, wenn sie die ökologische Schaumschlägerei der Regierung und der Unternehmer mitträgt, wenn z.B. Pilotenvereinigungen die Ausbaupläne für Flughäfen oder Gewerkschaften die Ausdehnung von Kohleförderung auf der Basis der gegenwärtig noch unerprobten Einlagerung von Kohlendioxid in tiefen Erdschichten unterstützen - aus Hörigkeit gegenüber dem Kapitalismus und gegen die Bedürfnisse der Menschheit.

 

In der Landwirtschaft engagieren wir uns für die Enteignung der großen internationalen Agrokonzerne und der chemischen Industrie. Die Forschung im Bereich Düngemittel- und Gentechnologien muss unter Arbeiterkontrolle gestellt werden und darf nicht ohne ausgiebige Überprüfungen angewendet werden. Wir sind uns jedoch bewusst, dass die Gentechnologie eine entscheidende Steigerung der Produktivität und des landwirtschaftlichen Anbaus mit sich bringen kann, so dass wir deren massive Erforschung unter Kontrolle der ErzeugerInnen, LandarbeiterInnen, Kleinbauern und VerbraucherInnen fordern. Wo Regierungen oder Firmen unsichere Tests von genmanipulierten Pflanzen oder deren Anbau ohne solche Tests genehmigen und durchführen, befürworten wir Maßnahmen zur Vernichtung solcher Anpflanzungen.

 

 

 

Die Arbeiterbewegung muss sich neu aufstellen

 

 

 

Das Ringen um die Rettung unseres Planeten hat schon viele ArbeiterInnen und Bauern wachgerüttelt, durch Kampf um ihr Land, gegen lebensfeindliche Zerstörung ihrer Umgebung usw.

 

Die Umweltfrage zeigt die Grenzen und letzten Endes das falsche Herangehen nicht nur des bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Ökologismus, sondern auch die Borniertheit des gewerkschaftlichen Ökonomismus, Nationalismus und Reformismus. Die Beschränktheit des Gewerkschaftertums ist klar: all zu oft nutzt die Bürokratie sektorale „Arbeiterinteressen“, z. B. die der Beschäftigten im Kohlebergbau, als Mittel, um die Missachtung von allgemeinen und langfristigen Interessen der Klasse zu fördern. Damit können die Gewerkschaftsbürokraten diese ArbeiterInnen leichter an „ihr“ Kapital binden.

 

Zum anderen haben der bürgerliche Nationalismus in den Halbkolonien, der Reformismus und ebenso ein Flügel der Ökologiebewegung einen Wechsel in der „Umweltpolitik“ versprochen, wenn sie in bürgerliche Regierungen eintreten oder sie bilden. Sie streuen die Illusion, dass eine solche Politik ohne Angriff auf die Macht der herrschenden Klasse, auf den bürgerlichen Staatsapparat, durchsetzbar wäre.

 

Ihre „Reformen“ waren einerseits ununterscheidbar vom „ökologistischen“ Flügel der imperialistischen Bourgeoisie; andererseits setzten sie den Staatsapparat, der engeblich ihre Reformen umsetzen sollte, gegen die Bewegungen ein, die die Zerstörung der menschlichen Umwelt bekämpften, wie z.B. die SPD/Grüne-Regierung in Deutschland oder die Lula-Regierung in Brasilien, die gegen die Landbesetzungen und Proteste gegen den Großgrundbesitz und die Agrokonzerne vorging.

 

Wir weisen die bürgerlichen Behauptungen zurück, dass Verbraucherbedürfnisse auf natürliche Weise von den kapitalistischen Konzernen mit ihren Produktionstechniken befriedigt werden. Genauso beharren wir gegenüber den Grünen darauf, dass menschlichen Lebensstandards am nachhaltigsten durch demokratische Wirtschaftsplanung und freiwillige, kollektive Lebensformen angehoben werden können, um eine harmonische Beziehung zwischen Natur und Menschheit herzustellen. Staatliche Kantinen, Kinderbetreuung, Wäschereien und mehr gemeinschaftliche Wohn- und Freizeitformen könnten die verschwenderische Vervielfältigung von Aufgaben, die in Privathaushalten anfallen, vergesellschaften und damit v.a. Frauen von der „zweiten Schicht“ (nach der Berufsarbeit) befreien.

 

Die zerstörerische Spaltung zwischen Stadt und Land, die Umweltzerstörung, „Überbevölkerung“ und planlose Verschwendung ist nur umkehrbar, wenn sich eine demokratische Planung der Wirtschaft in der Hand eines Arbeiterstaates entfaltet und die menschliche Umwelt umzuwandeln beginnt.

 

Deshalb ist der Kampf um die Umweltfrage eng mit dem Kampf für Organe der Selbstorganisation, der Kontrolle, der Selbstverteidigung der Arbeiterklasse und der Bauernschaft verbunden. Das Problem der Zerstörung der menschlichen Umwelt macht auch ein Programm für einen Umweltnotplan zu einem zentralen Bestandteil des Kampfes für eine Arbeiterregierung, letztlich die Errichtung von Arbeitermacht und den Übergang zum Sozialismus durch die proletarische Revolution notwendig.

 

 

 

 

 

The EU Reform Treaty: what it is and how to fight it

By Michael Pröbsting

 

Note by the Editor: The following document is an abridged English translation of a pamphlet of comrade Pröbsting which the Austrian section of the League for the Fifth International published in spring 2008. It was published in Fifth International journal Vol.3, No.1, 2008.

Comrade Pröbsting – a member of the international leadership of the LFI at that time – was bureaucratically expelled from this organization in April 2011 together with other comrades a few weeks after they formed a faction in opposition against the increasing centrist degeneration of the LFI. The expelled comrades built immediately after their expulsion a new organization and founded together with sister organizations in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the USA the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) in April 2012.

We republish this document because, while it was written five years ago, its fundamental programmatic answer against the imperialist European Union remains correct.

 

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Part of the general attack by the imperialist bourgeoisie

 

 

 

What fundamentally is the purpose of the EU reform treaty? It is to take forward and strengthen the European Union as a common economic, political and military organisation of the imperialist ruling classes of Europe, that is, of European monopoly capital.

 

The EU reform treaty means the advance of turbo capitalism. “An open market economy with free competition” is to be written in as a fundamental basis of the EU constitution that will facilitate the privatisation by the capitalists of state property and the dismantling of social gains.

 

The EU reform treaty means permanent rearmament and war. In its struggle with the USA for worldwide spheres of influence, the EU is using the means of “Americanisation”: EU battle groups, under the hypocritical excuse of democracy and human rights will undertake wars to secure raw materials and geostrategic interests.

 

In order to achieve this, an EU state apparatus is to be built over and above the state apparatuses of the individual capitalist nation states and it will not be subject even to the minimal bourgeois democratic standards of parliamentarism in the individual states. The EU Commission President, Manuel Barroso has himself made clear the character of the future European Union: “sometimes I compare the EU with the model of organisation of an empire. We have the scale of an empire.” (1)

 

The question of the EU reform treaty, therefore, is objectively of the greatest importance for the class struggle in Europe and in Austria because the treaty would mean the consolidation and strengthening of EU imperialism and its wars against the working class domestically and against the oppressed peoples externally.

 

 

 

The EU reform treaty: the EU Constitution in new packaging

 

 

 

That is why the rulers want to force this treaty through at any price. It is why they want to prevent any referendums that would threaten defeats as in France and Holland in the spring of 2005. In order to justify this to the population, they have formulated the text of the reform treaty in even less clear language than the draft constitution. The Belgian Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht admitted this openly: “The aim with the constitution treaty was to make it more readable; the aim with this treaty is to make it unreadable. The constitution aimed at clarity while this treaty must be unclear. That is a success.” (2)

 

In fact, the EU reform treaty is simply a new edition of the defeated EU constitution. Thus it differs from the draft constitution in only 10 of the 250 proposals. In other words, 96 per cent of the text of the defeated constitutional treaty has been taken over.3 Leading representatives of European monopoly capital justify this. EU Parliamentary President Hans-Gert Poettering explained, “the substance of the constitutional treaty has been successfully defended.” (4) Even Giscard d’Estaing, the former President of France and, as the EU Convention President, the architect of the EU constitution, compared the EU reform treaty with the defeated constitutional draft in the tone of an arrogant imperial ruler: “with regard to the content the proposal is largely unaltered, it has simply been presented differently. The reason is that the new text should not look too similar to the constitutional treaty”. The EU governments have agreed upon “cosmetic changes so that the constitution can be more easily swallowed” in order to avoid the now risky referendums. (5)

 

The “amending treaty” alters two existing treaties; the “European Union Treaty” (EUT) and the treaty upon which the European Community was founded, now known as “the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union” (TFEU). (6)

 

 

 

Free-market economy

 

 

 

One important function of the reform treaty is the justification of the dismantling of workers’ rights and social gains and the extended privatisation of state property. Because of this the emphasis on the capitalist order runs like a red thread throughout the treaty with its various keywords such as “open market economy” and “free competition”. Thus, for example, article 119 says:

 

The activities of the member states and the union in the meaning of article 3 of the Treaty on the European Union embraces in the terms of the treaty the introduction of an economic policy which aims at the closer coordination of economic policies of member states, the domestic market and the identification of common aims and they are subordinated to the fundamental rule of an open market economy with free competition. Parallel to this, under the terms of the treaty, these activities embrace the therein anticipated measures for a unified currency, the euro, as well as the formulation and introduction of a unified monetary and interest rate policy with the objective of achieving price stability and alongside this general economic policy of the union and the observation of the fundamental rules of an open market economy with free competition.” (7)

 

Equally, free trade, that is trade that benefits the strongest corporations, is promoted. It is to be a task of the EU “to take forward the integration of all the countries in the world economy among other things through the step by step dismantling of all limits on international trade”. (8) Similarly, adherence to the neoliberal Lisbon Strategy is explicitly written into the treaty with reference both to the “Growth and Stability Pact” and the objective of achieving budgetary surpluses at time of economic growth. (9)

 

Thus we have here the treaty-based commitment of the states to advance neoliberal economic reforms and investments by corporations and, simultaneously, a commitment to massive savings in state expenditure, that is, above all, in social and health provision. Indeed, the policy is now to be made even sharper; according to Austrian Finance Minister Grasser it means not just a nil deficit in prosperous times but a budget surplus.

 

 

 

Privatisation of public services

 

 

 

In the same spirit, the EU reform treaty would mean subordinating public services to the rules of competition. Article 86 makes clear that it will be the EU commission alone that will decide over such matters. (10)

 

This establishes the danger that many service sectors that have for a long time been untouched by the “blessings of the free market economy” will now be privatised, beginning with water, electricity and waste disposal through to public transport. It is no accident, for example, that the section dealing with transport policy has been amended. Previously, unanimity by all member states was required in order to implement measures over a common transport policy if their implementation endangered quality of life, or the functioning of means of transport. With the EU reform treaty such matters are now only to be noted. The French anti-globalisation activist Pierre Khalfa rightly concluded that, “a defence of public transport facilities is hereby removed.” (11) Similar measures of liberalisation of the energy sector are also anticipated.

 

 

 

Armaments and military interventions

 

 

 

The reform treaty confirms and accelerates the militarist armament and expansion plans of the EU. The “common security and defence policy” will become an integral component of the union. The EU Defence Agency would now become treaty based. Equally, every member state would become obliged to develop their defence capabilities and involvement in European plans so that at the latest by 2010 they are able to provide armed units to participate as national contingents or as parts of a multinational unit in proposed missions. (12)

 

Armament and the formation of multinational troop units are obviously not ends in themselves but serve the military interests of EU imperialism. With interventionist units, the EU will be able to carry out military operations abroad. Chad, in which even Austrian troops are participating, is only the first taste of future colonial adventures by European imperialism. (13)

 

The justifications for leading such wars are consciously left broad and open. Thus, a case for war could be established even if just one single EU state were “attacked”: “in the event of an armed attack on the territory of a member state the other member states will provide all possible help and support in their power.” (14)

 

However, it does not even need to be an attack, it is enough if the “Values of the Union” are endangered: “the Council can commission a group of member states to undertake a mission in order to defend the values of the Union and in service of its interests.” (15)

 

But the ruling classes are not only interested in fighting wars abroad. They also need an army for civil war domestically. The solidarity clause in Article 188r of the Lisbon Treaty specifies the conditions, such as terrorist attack, natural catastrophe or “man-made catastrophe” in which the Union and “member states will act together, using the military means available to them to defend democratic institutions or if requested to give support to a member state’s political institutions.” (16)

 

It is not difficult to understand that behind these legalistic phrases is hidden the possible suppression of uprisings and unrest within the EU by a civil war intervention by EU armies. We have always emphasised that the central problem of the EU is that it is far weaker militarily than its competitor, the USA. Against a background of increasing rivalry between the USA and the EU, the ruling class of Europe needs a change of course:

 

However to become a power on a similar scale to the USA, Europe needs a fundamental change in its military policy. Which is why it is written into the constitution that European imperialism has the ability to undertake wars around the world in order to defend its political and economic interests (Values).” (17)

 

At first sight, the EU reform treaty appears to be contradictory. On the one hand it confirms close collaboration with NATO, which means that any powers within the EU that wanted to achieve any military policy independent from that of the US American competitors would not be able to carry this out fully. On the other hand, however, the powers around the German French block have opened the way to an independent military role, by the creation of their own confederation, the so-called “permanently structured cooperation”. (18)

 

 

 

Who is the boss?

 

 

 

The EU reform treaty, like the constitution before it, anticipates that the EU will be seen as an independent legal personality. The EU, or its representatives, could thus conclude treaties that would be binding on all members. (19)

 

In connection with this, the EU reform treaty foresees the formation of central state power structures. The ruling class sees in this the only possibility for building an effective central state apparatus that could overcome the conflicting interests between member states and force through measures against the working class. With this aim in mind, the number of decisions that can only be taken on the basis of unanimity has been greatly reduced, while the number that can be decided on the principle of “qualified majority” has increased, from 137 to 181. There has been conflict over what weight the individual states should have in this. In the end, an amendment to the advantage of the big countries was adopted. From November 1, 2014, the qualified majority will be changed to one half of the member states and 55 per cent of the population, with complicated transitional rules that will be valid until 2017.

 

Even more important, however, is the fact that, alongside the EU Council, that is the common representative of the governments of the member states, the EU Commission will play the central role. This is set out in the following Article: Article 9d:

 

1. The Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union and take appropriate initiatives to that end. It shall ensure the application of the Treaties, and measures adopted by the institutions pursuant to them. It shall oversee the application of Union law under the control of the Court of Justice of the European Union. It shall execute the budget and manage programmes. It shall exercise coordinating, executive and management functions, as laid down in the Treaties. With the exception of the common foreign and security policy, and other cases provided for in the Treaties, it shall ensure the Union’s external representation. It shall initiate the Union’s annual and multi-annual programming with a view to achieving inter-institutional agreements.

 

2. Union legislative acts may be adopted only on the basis of a Commission proposal, except where the Treaties provide otherwise. Other acts shall be adopted on the basis of a Commission proposal where the Treaties so provide.” (20)

 

The rights of the EU Parliament, by contrast, are minimal and citizens’ initiatives have only the right to make requests to the Commission. (21)

 

 

 

Reactionary ideology is written into the Constitution

 

 

 

Alongside the principle of the free market economy, the Constitution establishes further important ideological principles of the bourgeois order. The preamble to the “Treaty of the European Union” has been amended by the introduction of the following paragraph: “created out of the cultural, religious and humanist heritage of Europe from which the inalienable and inviolable human rights such as freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law have developed as universal values”. (22)

 

The reference to the “religious heritage of Europe”, in other words Christianity, is noteworthy. This is a religion in whose name innumerable wars and mass murders have been committed throughout history. This means, as the Catholic Church and the conservative forces demand, nothing less than the elevation of Christianity to the status of the constitution. This apparently innocent choice of words could, if necessary, be used by the ruling class as an ideological justification for numerous attacks, for example, setting aside the separation between state and religion, and for actions against atheists, questioning the right to abortion, justification of military intervention in defence of Christianity, for example, against Islam, and so on.

 

 

 

Fundamental causes: the decline of capitalism

 

 

 

It is obvious that all progressive organisations and activists oppose the EU reform treaty. However there is very little clarity about its origins and what alternatives there are and with what strategy we can fight it.

 

The EU reform treaty is not the result of a sudden lust for power on the part of the bourgeoisie, as various left reformist currents believe. Even less is it a conspiracy by various bureaucrats in Brussels, as in the fantasies of the editorial offices of the Kronen newspaper or in the Freedom party.

 

The struggle against the EU reform treaty cannot possibly be won if it is based on illusory and utopian foundations. The basic mistake of many Lefts today is to believe that the policy of the ruling class, which people usually call neoliberalism or militarism, is simply one of several possible options for the capitalist system. It is generally argued that the bourgeois rulers really have a range of possibilities as to how to exercise their power. The programme of relentless attacks on the social and democratic achievements of the working class and the imperialist war offensive is therefore not seen as an unavoidable, and from their own point of view absolutely necessary, policy of the ruling class but rather as a “mistaken policy” which could be replaced by a “correct policy” such as the development of the social state, full employment, disarmament and peace, whilst at the same time maintaining capitalism.

 

In reality, the neoliberal militarist offensive of the ruling class is the necessary result of the decline of capitalism against a background of increased competition between the monopolies and the great powers. Since the 1970s, the world economy has been characterised by a tendency towards stagnation of the productive forces. (23) This development holds true for the period of globalisation even though here we can see that there has been an uneven development where the tendency to stagnation dominates in the imperialist metropoles and in broad areas of the so-called Third World, while at the same time there are important exceptions such as China or India.

 

 

 

The formation of the EU as an answer of the imperialist capitals of Western Europe

 

 

 

It is the crisis ridden developmental tendency of the capitalist global economy which drives monopoly capital to sharper attacks on the working class and the increased exploitation of the semi-colonial world and, simultaneously, sharpens the competitive struggle between the great powers - above all between the two most powerful blocks, the USA and the EU. This results, on the one hand, in a common approach by the great powers when it is a matter, for example, of opening the semi-colonial countries to the great corporations but, on the other, also leads to political and economic conflict between the two blocks when their interests conflict.

 

The formation of the European Union as not only an economic domestic market but also as a political and military power bloc is the answer of the ruling class of Europe, above all of the core states, Germany and France, to increased competition and the necessity to pursue their interests in an increasingly unstable world with all the means at their disposal. We had already made this clear in an analysis three years ago: “the formation of a European capital and imperialism which can offer a rival to the USA as the leading world power is and remains a strategic aim of the German and French capitalist classes and their political executives.” (24)

 

That is why it is no accident that, after the ruling classes of Europe suffered the defeat of the referendum on the constitutional treaty in 2005, they soon began a renewed attempt. “The general attack on the workers will be maintained across the whole of Europe with unlimited, indeed increased, sharpness. Even if, in individual countries, there are short-term tactical retreats by the ruling class in response to mass mobilisations, these will lead quickly to even harsher attacks. The ruling classes will consciously take steps towards the formation of an imperialist bloc.” (25)

 

This remains our position: the aggressive policy of the ruling classes of Europe in the direction of a neoliberal dismantling of social services, militarisation and the building of the central EU state apparatus is the unavoidable result of the interests of capital in a time of stagnation, increased competition and instability. They have to pursue these policies otherwise the USA, and other powers, will in the long run degrade their European rivals from an advancing empire into a dwarf among the imperialist powers. Flowing from this, there will be rapidly developing sharp political crises up to the revolutionary situations. Any attempt to move the capitalist class to adopt different policies by negotiation or petitions is, therefore, nothing more than a reformist daydream.

 

That does not of course mean that absolutely no changes or modifications in the policy of the ruling class are possible without the immediate development of a revolutionary situation. It is possible to block this or that attack temporarily by hard class struggle or to reduce their impact. However, such changes are temporary defensive successes and, as long as the capitalist relations of exploitation remain, cannot lead to a fundamental and permanent improvement in the situation of the working class.

 

 

 

Reforming the EU in the interests of the oppressed?

 

 

 

A good proportion of the left holds a reformist politics that would like to change the EU and create a “social, peaceful and democratic Europe”. Two examples can be dealt with here. ATTAC, for example, demands the election of a constitutional assembly in the EU from which a reformed EU could proceed. (26) The ATTAC founder in Austria, Christian Felber, hopes that through such democratic and social reforms a more effective EU can be created: “the effectiveness of the EU in comparison to the present situation would be improved through such new structures.” (27)

 

Similar hopes are held by the European Left Party whose Austrian component is the Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPO): “we believe that the EU is in a position to disarm and should do this and that the military budgets of the member states should be reduced and they should give up thinking in military categories.” (28)

 

It is noteworthy that the Socialist Party youth organisation has never brought itself to make a clear rejection of the EU reform treaty. In their one public position they did indeed demand a referendum but did not take a position. At the same time, they opened the columns of their newspaper to Socialist Party propagandists for the EU reform treaty and declined to offer any criticism. Once again this shows that the Socialist Youth, unlike their self-characterisation, are neither autonomous nor Marxist but rather the left reformist drummer boys of the Socialist Party apparatus in the ranks of the youth.

 

Despite differences of nuance, these positions have in common a deeply reformist petty bourgeois logic. Namely, that it is possible to create a “democratic socially just and peaceful EU” without posing the question of property and power in Europe. How can a socially just Europe be possible as long as capitalist property relations are maintained, as long as a tiny minority of employers hold all the means of production in their hands? How can a peaceful Europe be possible as long as the corporations and the generals, who intend to further their interests globally by military means, exist? How can there be any real democracy so long as the ruling class is in power and is daily strengthening the police state?

 

Reformist politics have no clear class understanding that our society is divided between a ruling class, at whose head is monopoly capital and its professional politicians, and the working class, that is to say those dependent on wages and their families.

 

Naturally this lack of understanding is not accidental, it has a material basis. Behind the reformist view that neoliberalism is simply a “mistaken policy” which can be resolved through “another politics” with “another government”, there is a political perspective. Namely, the hope by forces such as the European Left Party that they can become part of a government coalition in the capitalist EU member states and thereby get their noses into the trough of power and its associated privileges. In Italy, this has already been carried out and the Rifondazione Communista (PRC) played a substantial role in the neoliberal and militaristic government of Prodi (which, with the help of the PRC, raised the pension age, participated in the occupation of Afghanistan and built up the NATO military base in Vincenza). In Berlin, the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS) has been in a coalition with the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) for three years and undertaken dismantling of social provisions. Behind the reformists’ phrases of a “social and peaceful Europe” is hidden the reality of their desire to participate in capitalist power.

 

The League for Socialist Revolution (the Austrian section of the L5I) stands for a socialist Europe and rejects the slogan of a “social Europe”. At best, this formulation leaves open which class should rule in such a Europe. But those who leave this question open are basically accepting that those who rule today shall also rule in the future. In other words, their “social Europe” is nothing more than a social democratic, that is, a bourgeois and imperialist, Europe.

 

We do not want to reform the EU, we want to destroy it – but not in order to return to the nation state, the form of social organisation which corresponded to the level of development of the productive forces in the 19th century. We want to go forwards: to a European revolution over the corpse of the EU towards the United Socialist States of Europe.

 

 

 

Is an exit from the EU an alternative for the working class?

 

 

 

An apparent alternative to this is the strategy of various left organisations such as the KPO Steiermark and the Communist Initiative, which propose that Austria should leave the EU. This demand for a return to the old nation state is deeply illusionary and dangerous. It is wrong to believe that Austria, if it were to free itself from the EU, would be any less reactionary, any less hostile to the working class, as a state. Austria is an imperialist state, it has not been led astray by the “bad EU”, rather, domestic capital sees its interests best served, for the moment, in the EU. The capitalists are not attacking the working class because of some “diktat from Brussels” but out of their own basic interests in profit. It is therefore all the more damaging when various lefts strengthen this excuse from fractions of domestic small and medium-sized capital and echo the lies that are spread by the bourgeois media. The ideology of the “good” old nation state would in reality mean the retreat of the working class from the stage of the class struggle by a united global proletariat and back to narrow, reactionary, national horizons. Austrian capital does not only exploit the working class here at home but also in numerous semi-colonies, above all in Eastern Europe, through its massive foreign investments from which it gains super profits. It was not for nothing that the ruling class of Austria was strongly in favour of the EU entry of the east European countries.

 

In the capitalist world, the individual capitalist states do not exist entirely independently of each other and neither could they. Rather, what we see is a constantly increasing involvement of individual countries within the global economy. Austria is one part of the global economy and cannot change this by leaving the EU. All of its involvements would continue to exist even if Austria were to leave the EU. The leader of the Russian October Revolution in 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, characterised nationally limited politics such as those of the “leave the EU” current very accurately:

 

The petty striving of petty states to hold aloof, the petty-bourgeois desire to keep as far away as possible from the great battles of world history, to take advantage of one’s relatively monopolistic position in order to remain in hidebound passivity—this is the objective social environment which may ensure the disarmament idea a certain degree of success and a certain degree of popularity in some of the small states. That striving is, of course, reactionary and is based entirely on illusions, for, in one way or another, imperialism draws the small states into the vortex of world economy and world politics.” (29)

 

At heart, the “leave the EU” perspective shares the same fundamental error as the left EU reformers, that is, they completely ignore the class question. Whose EU? Whose Austria? The EU that really exists is the EU of the corporations and the generals. And the Austria that really exists is equally the Austria of the corporations and the generals. As long as this class holds the power in the economy and the society there can be no long-lasting reforms. Only their overthrow will open the way to the future.

 

 

 

Revolutionary strategy

 

 

 

Today we are facing an all-embracing offensive by the ruling classes of Europe. They want to destroy the social and democratic gains of the working class, whatever the cost, and establish the EU as the second military superpower, alongside the USA.

 

Resistance to this can only be successful if we orient ourselves not towards appeals and petitions to the rulers or to the achievement of governmental posts but towards a Europe-wide organisation and struggle by the working class and youth. That is why we in the LSR, together with our international comrades in the League for the Fifth International, stand for mass demonstrations and strikes up to a general strike against the EU reform treaty and other attacks. This is necessary both in individual countries and across Europe.

 

We need an organisation of resistance from below at every level. That is why we call for the building of action committees, social forums and alliances at every level, local, regional and national. Equally, we need a European wide coordination of the struggles. This demand is directed at all organisations of the working class, all parties which are against the war and neoliberalism, all the groupings within the anti-globalisation movement, the antiwar movement, immigrant organisations, youth organisations and student representatives.

 

 

 

How can we stop the reform treaty?

 

 

 

The resistance against the EU reform treaty demands broad struggle both in Austria and across Europe. In this way we can build on a broad rejection of the EU reform treaty and popular demand for a referendum across the whole of Europe. Just in Austria, 70 per cent of those asked in the most recent opinion poll were in favour of a referendum and in another poll twice as many people saw a disadvantage in the treaty as those that saw an advantage, 39 per cent to 19 per cent.

 

The League of Socialist Revolution supports the demand for a referendum over the EU reform treaty as one form, although limited, of opposition. We are, therefore, active in the referendum campaign. The majority of organisations in this alliance see its priority as small media actions, press conferences, petitions and the winning of individual officials and sectors of the established parties, they hope for support from the Kronen newspaper and so on. We by no means reject such steps, in particular circumstances they could indeed play a subordinate but positive role. However, the centre of gravity of the resistance must lie in a working class, class struggle perspective in order to force a referendum. The whole campaign can only be successful if it concentrates itself on organising broad mass actions, meetings oriented towards the masses and the building of local committees rooted in the masses. In concrete terms we call for:

 

The trade unions as well as the student organisations and progressive immigrant organisations should be won to opposition to the reform treaty and a perspective of class struggle against it through strikes and demonstrations.

 

We propose coordinated interventions by the organisations participating in the campaign in the planned so-called “information meetings” over the EU reform treaty to be organised by the government.

 

We are in favour of the organisation of local action committees in factories, schools and universities and also locally, following the example of the 900 local Committees for a No against the EU constitution in France in 2005.

 

We propose the organisation of at least one major demonstration as well as further direct actions in the spring.

 

 

 

For a programme of struggle against the general offensive of EU capital

 

 

 

The struggle against the general offensive of capital cannot limit itself to the EU reform treaty but must include all fronts. For that it needs a clear programme of defensive struggles.

 

Stop the social attacks!

 

Unemployment, under employment and poverty affect millions and millions in Eastern and Western Europe. As unifying key demands in the struggle we propose:

 

• Europe-wide introduction of the 35 hour week with no loss of pay or jobs.

 

• A minimum wage established by the labour movement of each country.

 

• For a struggle against privatisation of public services and mass redundancies.

 

• For a programme of socially useful public works under the control of the workers, the unemployed and consumers.

 

• Progressive taxation of firms and the rich to finance these measures.

 

Fight racism

 

The division of the working class and the oppressed along national and ethnic lines is a central problem for any common struggle. The EU and the national bourgeoisies and governments are consciously deepening the divisions. Workers from Eastern Europe and from the semi-colonial countries outside the EU are excluded from the Western labour market, dealt with as second-class workers or forced into illegality where they have to work in the worst possible conditions.

 

Within the EU, national and ethnic minorities such as the Basques or the Roma are denied their democratic rights. Moslem, Turkish, Arabs and migrants from the Balkans or from Africa are subjected to systematic hate and oppression. Fascist and racist forces are spreading the poison of anti-semitism. Against all this we fight for:

 

• Full and equal social and political rights for all who live in Europe.

 

• We are against immigration controls, for open borders.

 

• For self defence organisations of the racially or nationally oppressed against fascist or racist attacks.

 

• For a common struggle of migrant and indigenous workers against such attacks.

 

• Down with all reactionary “anti-terror laws”

 

Against war and occupation

 

The EU and its member states are open or covert supporters of the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and of the US threats to Iran. Therefore we are:

 

• For the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

 

• Support the legitimate liberation struggle of the Iraqi and Afghan resistance against the occupiers and, likewise, the resistance of the Palestinians.

 

• EU states are not only passive supporters of the USA. Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia are practically colonies of the EU. Germany participates in the occupation of Afghanistan and France regularly intervenes in Africa. And now the EU and Austria are also sending troops into Chad.

 

• No to all EU interventions whether under US leadership, the EU or UN flags! Withdrawal of all troops stationed abroad!

 

No to the building of the police state

 

The ruling classes are consciously building a police state under the cover of security for citizens and the “war against terror”. Democratic rights are being systematically hollowed out or even completely repealed.

 

• Against the permanent surveillance state. Down with all permanent surveillance cameras in public places. No online surveillance.

 

• Stop all dragnets and bugging operations. Against all security police authority. For self defence units to defend demonstrations against attacks by the police.

 

• Police out of the localities. Maintenance of public order by self defence units based on elections and control by mass meetings in the factories and housing estates.

 

For a constituent assembly

 

The question of the EU reform treaty is a democratic question. It is a matter of determining the constitution of a future federation. The ruling class has been trying to bring this about with either undemocratic or plebiscitary measures. All future attempts by the ruling class will have a similar character because of the internal contradictions within the national capitalist classes. The question of a constitution and of democracy can and must, under these circumstances, be made into a means of mobilising the masses but not for some “other” bourgeois constitution as suggested in the reformist daydreams of groups like ATTAC. Instead, we need a consistent democratic form for the unification process, a constituent assembly elected by all the inhabitants of the EU as well as those countries that wish to join a united Europe.

 

Such a slogan has a revolutionary democratic character if it is understood as a means of mobilisation, a means of using bourgeois democratic hopes and illusions against the rulers in order to make it easier to take the steps necessary for the overthrow of the ruling class.

 

 

 

Through the European revolution…

 

 

 

A decisive, Europe-wide struggle by the working class, the youth and the migrants will, sooner or later, raise the question of power: who rules in Europe, the capitalists or the oppressed? In order to rid ourselves of social cuts, racism and war for good we must overthrow the power of the ruling class. For that, we need a Europe-wide socialist revolution. Such a revolution will not be brought about by proposals in Parliament or buy peaceful pressure on the streets but only by the struggle and armed uprising of the mass of the working class. Only through such a revolution can we really build our Europe, a socialist Europe.

 

Already, 160 years ago, in the year 1848, working class and oppressed layers first rose up against their rulers. Such a revolution, but this time with a clear socialist perspective, is more necessary than ever today in Europe.

 

The European revolution will not be a spontaneous process that grows organically out of a steady broadening and expansion in class struggle beyond the limits of the national states to a European level. Equally, it will not be a matter of conspiratorial and simultaneous coups in all the main EU countries. A precise description of how European working class revolution would develop is, of course, impossible. We can, however, make the following observations: the economic unification of Europe by capitalism will inevitably develop an Europeanization of the class struggle, even if it is delayed and distorted. The only progressive aspect of the development of the EU, an unintended side effect of the bourgeoisie’s policy, so to say, is an inevitable international linkage of struggles by workers, youth and migrants. We have already seen the first signs of this in Europe-wide strikes or the echoes in other countries of the rising by immigrant youth in the Parisian suburbs in 2005.

 

Against a background of a Europe-wide wave of class struggle, there will develop in this or that country, perhaps even across the continent, pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations. Against this background, in one or more countries, a revolutionary party based in the working class will lead the overthrow of the ruling class. If the revolution is victorious in one or more countries this will quickly have widespread effects across the rest of the European Union. It will have a dynamising and inspiring effect on other class brothers and sisters as well as alarming the capitalist classes. It is therefore likely that a successful socialist workers’ republic in one or more countries could not survive for very long, either it will extend itself across the whole continent to form the United Socialist States of Europe or it will be quickly destroyed by an armed counterrevolution.

 

It is obvious that a successful European revolution would have an enormous impact on the imperialist states, above all the USA, and in the rest of the world. In 1923, Trotsky made the following observations that, of course, cannot be applied directly today because of the changed historical situation. Nonetheless his observations summarise clearly and sharply the possible worldwide effects.

 

It must not be overlooked that the very danger arising from the United States of America (which is spurring the destruction of Europe, and is ready to step in subsequently as Europe’s master) furnishes a very substantial bond for uniting the peoples of Europe who are ruining one another into a “European United States of Workers and Peasants”. This opposition between Europe and the United States stems organically from the differences in the objective situations of the European countries and of the mighty transatlantic republic, and is not in any way directed against the international solidarity of the proletariat, or against the interests of the revolution in America. One of the reasons for the retarded development of the revolution throughout the world is the degrading European dependence on the rich American uncle (Wilsonism, the charitable feeding of the worst famine districts of Europe, American “loans”, etc., etc.). The sooner the popular masses of Europe regain the confidence in their own strength which was sapped by the war, and the more closely they rally around the slogan of “United Workers’, and Peasants’, Republics of Europe”, the more rapidly will the revolution develop on both sides of the Atlantic. For just as the triumph of the proletariat in Russia gave a mighty impetus to the development of the Communist parties of Europe so, and even to an incomparably greater degree, will the triumph of the revolution in Europe give an impetus to the revolution in America and in all parts of the world. Although, when we abstract ourselves from Europe, we are obliged to peer into the mists of decades to perceive the American revolution, yet we may safely assert that by the natural sequence of historical events the triumphant revolution in Europe will serve in a very few years to shatter the power of the American bourgeoisie.” (30)

 

 

 

…to the United Socialist States of Europe

 

 

 

The alternative of the League for the Socialist Revolution and the League for the Fifth International to the EU reform treaty of an imperialist Europe is therefore neither a reactionary return to “independent” national states and the reintroduction of schillings, Deutschmarks, French francs and other national currencies, nor a “social” but, in reality, social chauvinist, Europe.

 

The capitalist unification of Europe, the development of European monopolies and corporate alliances cannot be fought via reactionary and utopian attempts to turn back the wheel of history.

 

On the contrary, the fight against the formation of a European imperialism and European monopolies needs the working class itself at all levels to give a political answer to the problem of European unification. That means fighting the attacks of the ruling class and fighting for the United Socialist States of Europe as a step toward world revolution.

 

This would create a basis for a complete reorganisation of the European and global economy on the basis of democratic planning. Central problems such as mass unemployment can only really be solved on this basis. Only on this basis can long lasting national and racist oppression really be overcome. A socialist Europe would, for example, implement the right of self-determination for the Basques and it would allow the possibility of overcoming the national divisions on the Balkans. Both these tasks would be possible if we recognised the rights of the various nations to self-determination, while at the same time creating the possibility of voluntary alliance without allowing the profit interests of the imperialist capitals and the national bourgeoisies to intervene. The following declaration of the Marxist revolutionary and leader of the October revolution of 1917, Leon Trotsky, summarises our goals in the revolution for the United Socialist States of Europe:

 

In the person of the Opposition the vanguard of the European proletariat tells its present rulers: In order to unify Europe it is first of all necessary to wrest power out of your hands. We will do it. We will unite Europe. We will unite it against the hostile capitalist world. We will turn it into a mighty drill-ground of militant socialism. We will make it the cornerstone of the world socialist federation.” (31)

 

 

 

For new revolutionary parties, for the Fifth International

 

 

 

A revolutionary perspective remains an illusion if no fighting parties exist nationally or internationally. The League for the Socialist Revolution is under no illusions that the exploiting class will ever voluntarily and peacefully give up their rule. Only a socialist revolution in Austria and worldwide, only the armed insurrection of the working class, can open the door to the future of freedom and justice. Such an uprising will not come about spontaneously but demands systematic preparation and organisation of the revolution. For that it needs a party, an organisation in which the most conscious sections of the working class and the youth are organised under the banner of revolution. The creation of such a party of socialist revolution in Austria and worldwide, the Fifth International, is therefore the most urgent task of all workers and youth who wish to struggle for a socialist future with us. The building of such a party and international can accept no delay. We cannot wait until revolution is at the door. Then, as history shows us, it is already too late to begin serious political and organisational preparations.

 

Let us unite into an international party of the working class, in a Fifth International! Forward in struggle for socialist Europe! Forward in struggle for a socialist world!

 

 

 

Endnotes

 

(1) EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, Telegraph, 18.07.2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11weu111.xml

 

(2) http://www.free-europe.org/blog/?itemid=383

 

(3) http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/pressrelease.aspx?pressrelease...

 

(4) http://www.merkur-online.de/politik/art8808,869823

 

(5) Reform treaty: cosmetic changes to avoid referendums, says Giscard d'Estaing, 17.7.2007, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/003-9201-197-07-29-901-20070716IPR09200-16-07-2007-2007-false/default_de.htm

 

(6) References to the Treaties signed in December 2007 are according to the version published on December 17, 2007 and published on http://eurolex.europa.eu/

 

(7) TEU Article 119

 

(8) TEU Article 21e

 

(9) See: Final Act Declaration: Nr.30. Clarification of Article 104 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU

 

(10) Lisbon Treaty Article 86

 

(11) Pierre Khalfa: EU Reform Treaty: Both Method and Content are Unacceptable (August 2007)

 

(12) Protocol regarding permanently structured cooperation, according to Article 28a TEU, Article 13 “Article 28 1. The tasks referred to in Article 27(1), in the course of which the Union may use civilian and military means, shall include joint disarmament operations, humanitarian and rescue tasks, military advice and assistance tasks, conflict prevention and peace-keeping tasks, tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-making and post-conflict stabilisation. All these tasks may contribute to the fight against terrorism, including by supporting third countries in combating terrorism in their territories.

 

2. The Council shall adopt decisions relating to the tasks referred to in paragraph 1, defining their objectives and scope and the general conditions for their implementation. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, acting under the authority of the Council and in close and constant contact with the Political and Security Committee, shall ensure coordination of the civilian and military aspects of such tasks.” (Lisbon Treaty on Changing…)

 

(13) We have explained the our anti-imperialist position against the EU intervention in Chad in the declaration: Austria and EU: Get Out of Chad! Stop the imperialist military intervention! Solidarity with the resistance of the rebel movements in Chad against the Austrian and EU troops! 6.12.2007, http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/austria-and-eu-get-out-chad. A longer elaboration of this subject including a polemic against the reformist and centrist left can be read in German language in the article by Michael Pröbsting: Der Tschad-Einsatz und die Linke. Über jene Linke, die ihren Schein-Antiimperialismus mit marxistischen Phrasen tarnen; in: Unter der Fahne der Revolution, No. 2-3 (2008) (Theoretical Journal of the Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution).

 

(14) Lisbon Treaty on Changing…

 

(15) Lisbon Treaty on Changing…

 

(16) Lisbon Treaty on Changing… Article 188r

 

(17) Translated for this article from Michael Pröbsting: ‚Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang’. Widersprüche und Hausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der Europäischen Vereinigung. In Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr.35, Berlin, 2005 p.39

 

(18) Article 28a of the Lisbon Treaty refers to those powers which “have met the demanding criteria in respect of military abilities” forming this “Structured Cooperation” within the framework of the Union.

 

(19) This is to be found in the Final Act, Declaration on Priority

 

(20) Treaty of Lisbon

 

(21) Article 8b, para 4: Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties. The procedures and conditions required for such a citizens’ initiative shall be determined in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

 

(22) TEU

 

(23) By “productive forces” Marxists understand both the material means and the results of production, thus the term includes means of production (machinery etc) and produced goods and also the people who serve the means of production and, for this purpose, enter into particular forms of social division of labour. Obviously, means of production and people stand in a relationship to one another and, from the point of view of capital, the purpose of setting the worker to work on the means of production is to produce goods and, thereby, surplus value. Productive forces, therefore, are not simply a collection of things but include people and their living conditions. The point is discussed further in Michael Pröbsting: Die widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte in Kapitalismus, in Revolutionärer Marxismus 37, Berlin, 2007

 

(24) Martin Suchanek/Michael Pröbsting: EU in der Krise. Soziales oder sozialistisches Europa?; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr.35, Berlin, 2005, p. 6

 

(25) ibid, p7

 

(26) See: “Attacs 10 Prinzipien für einen demokratischen EU-Vertrag”, http://www.attac.at/uploads/media/10_Prinzipien_fuer_einen_demokratische...

 

(27) Christian Felber: Mein europäischer Traum; in: DER STANDARD, 5.12.2007 p28

 

(28) ELP: In the name of a democratic and social Europe: “THE GOVERNMENT’S TREATY MUST BE PUT TO REFERENDUM IN THE EU”, 19. October 2007, http://www.europeanleft.org/nc/english/news/news_archive/news_archive/br...

 

(29) V.I. Lenin: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution; in: Collected Works, Vol. 23, Moscow, p.86

 

(30) Leo Trotzki: Über die Aktualität der Parole „Vereinigte Staaten von Europa“ (1923); in: Leo Trotzki, Wohin treibt England/Europa und Amerika, Verlag Neuer Kurs, Berlin 1972, S. 95f.; in English: Is the slogan of “The United States of Europe” a timely one?; in: Leon Trotsky: The First Five Years of the Communist International, Vo. 2, London 1975, p. 344, http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/06/europe.htm

 

(31) Leon Trotsky: Disarmament and the United States of Europe in Writings, 1929, New York,.1975, p 357

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag, seine Hintergründe und die revolutionäre Strategie

von Michael Pröbsting, www.thecommunists.net

 

(Die Graphiken in diesem Dokument können in der unten angehängten pdf Version eingesehen werden.)

 

Vorwort der Redaktion: Die folgende Studie wurde erstmals im Frühjahr 2008 als Broschüre der Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution (LSR) veröffentlicht. die LSR war die damalige österreichische Sektion der Liga für die Fünfte Internationale (LFI).  Der Autor, Genosse Pröbsting, war damals Mitglied der internationalen Leitung der LFI. Er wurde im April 2011 gemeinsam mit anderen Genossinnen und Genossen von der Mehrheit der LFI-Führung bürokratisch ausgeschlossen, nachdem sie wenige Wochen zuvor eine Fraktion gegründet hatten, um der zentristischen Degeneration der LFI entgegenzuwirken. Die ausgeschlossenen Genossinnen und Genossen gründeten daraufhin umgehend in Österreich die Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation zur Befreiung (RKOB). Iim April 2012 schlossen sie sich gemeinsam mit Schwesterorganisationen in Pakistan, Sri Lanka und den USA zu einer internationalen Organisation – der Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) – zusammen. Die RCIT hat heute Sektionen und Aktivisten in neun Ländern. Michael Pröbsting ist heute der Internationale Sekretär der RCIT. Wie aus dem Dokument ersichtlich wurde es in der Zeit der Kampagne gegen den EU-Vertrag verfaßt. Wir haben uns zur Wiederveröffentlichung der Studie entschlossen, da sie in mehrerer Hinsicht von höchst aktueller Bedeutung ist. Die in ihr enthaltene marxistische Analyse der inneren Widersprüche der imperialistischen EU behält volle Gültigkeit.

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Der EU-Reformvertrag ist ein Anschlag auf die Interessen der breiten Bevölkerungsmehrheit Europas - der Lohnabhängigen, der Jugendlichen und der MigrantInnen. Er dient ausschließlich den Interessen der Konzerne und Machteliten in Europa und in Österreich. Deswegen müssen wir den EU-Reformvertrag verhindern. Dazu brauchen wir eine klare Analyse über die Ziele und Hintergründe des EU-Reformvertrages sowie eine klare Strategie für den Abwehrkampf. Eine solche Analyse, wie auch die daraus erwachsende Kampfstrategie muß den ureigensten Interessen der Lohnabhängigen, der Jugendlichen und MigrantInnen entsprechen. Sie muß hierfür eine Strategie des Proletariats sein, muß eine revolutionäre, marxistische Strategie sein, sonst werden alle Maßnahmen des Widerstandes im Nichts verlaufen. Aus diesem Grund legen wir im Folgenden die Ansichten und Vorschläge der Liga der Sozialistische Revolution (LSR) dar.

 

 

 

Teil des Generalangriffs der imperialistischen Bourgeoisie

 

 

 

Worum geht es bei dem EU-Reformvertrag in den groben Zügen? Es geht um die Stärkung und Vorantreibung der Europäischen Union als eine gemeinsame wirtschaftliche, politische und militärische Organisation der imperialistischen herrschenden Klassen Europas, d.h. des europäischen Monopolkapitals.

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag bedeutet die Vorantreibung des Turbo-Kapitalismus. „Offene Marktwirtschaft mit freiem Wettbewerb“ wird als Grundpfeiler der EU-Verfassung festgeschrieben und die Privatisierung von staatlichem Eigentum sowie der Abbau sozialer Errungenschaften für die KapitalistInnen erleichtert.

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag bedeutet permanente Aufrüstung und Krieg. Im Wettstreit mit den USA um weltweite Einflußsphären greift die EU zum Mittel der „Amerikanisierung“: EU-Battlegroups sollen – unter dem heuchlerischen Vorwand von Demokratie und Menschenrechte – Kriege für die Sicherung von Rohstoffquellen und geostrategischen Interessen führen.

 

Zu diesem Zweck wird über den Staatsapparaten der einzelnen kapitalistischen Nationalstaaten ein EU-Staatsapparat ausgebaut, der nicht einmal die minimalen bürgerlich-demokratischen Standards des Parlamentarismus auf einzelstaatlicher Ebene kennt. Der EU-Kommissionspräsident Jose Manuel Barroso selbst gibt den Charakter der Europäischen Union unumwunden zu: „Manchmal vergleiche ich die EU gerne mit einem Gebilde zur Organisation eines Imperiums. Wir haben die Ausmaße eines Imperiums[1]

 

Die Frage des EU-Reformvertrages ist also objektiv von großer Bedeutung für den Klassenkampf in Europa und in Österreich, da der Vertrag eine Konsolidierung und Stärkung des EU-Imperialismus und seines Krieges gegen die ArbeiterInnenklasse im Inneren und gegen die unterdrückten Völker nach Außen bedeutet.

 

 

 

EU-Reformvertrag: EU-Verfassung in neuem Gewand

 

 

 

Deswegen wollen die Herrschenden diesen Vertrag um jeden Preis durchboxen, deswegen wollen sie verhindern, daß es zu Volksabstimmungen mit drohenden Niederlagen wie in Frankreich und den Niederlanden im Frühjahr 2005 kommt. Um dies gegenüber der Bevölkerung zu tarnen, haben sie den Reformvertrag-Text noch unverständlicher als den Verfassungsentwurf formuliert. Der belgische Außenminister Karel de Gucht gesteht dies offen ein: „Das Ziel des Verfassungsvertrages war, besser lesbar zu sein; das Ziel dieses Vertrages ist, unlesbar zu sein… Die Verfassung zielte darauf ab, klar zu sein, während dieser Vertrag unklar sein musste. Das ist ein Erfolg.[2]

 

Tatsächlich ist der EU-Reformvertrag weitestgehend eine bloße Neuauflage der gescheiterten EU-Verfassung. So unterscheidet sich der Reformvertrag vom Verfassungsentwurf nur in 10 von 250 Vorschlägen, mit anderen Worten: 96% des Textes des gescheiterten Verfassungsvertrags wurden übernommen. [3] Dies stellen führende Vertreter des europäischen Monopolkapitals auch mit Genugtuung fest. EU-Parlamentspräsident Hans-Gert Pöttering meinte, „die Substanz des Verfassungsvertrages sei mit Erfolg verteidigt worden[4] Auch Giscard d`Estaing, der frühere Präsident Frankreichs und als EU-Konventspräsident Architekt der EU-Verfassung, vergleicht den EU-Reformvertrag mit dem gescheiterten Verfassungsentwurf offen im Ton eines arroganten Imperial-Herrschers: „In Bezug auf den Inhalt ist der Vorschlag weitgehend unverändert, er wird einfach nur auf andere Weise präsentiert. (…) Der Grund ist, daß der neue Text nicht mehr allzu ähnlich aussehen konnte wie der Verfassungsvertrag“ Die EU-Regierungen einigten sich daher auf „kosmetischen Änderungen, damit die Verfassung leichter geschluckt werden kann“ um so neuerliche riskante Volksabstimmungen vermeiden zu können. [5]

 

 

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag im Detail

 

 

 

Der „Veränderungsvertrag“ ändert die beiden existierenden Verträge, den „Vertrag über die Europäische Union“ (im folgendem abgekürzt mit VEU) und den Vertrag, der die Europäische Gemeinschaft gründet, der nun den Namen „Vertrag über die Arbeitsweise der Europäischen Union“ (VAEU) annimmt. [6]

 

 

 

Freie Marktwirtschaft

 

 

 

Eine wichtige Funktion des Reformvertrages ist die Rechtfertigung des Abbaus von ArbeiterInnenrechten, sozialen Errungenschaften und der ausweitenden Privatisierung des staatlichen Eigentums. Deswegen zieht sich die Betonung der kapitalistischen Ordnung mit ihren Schlagworten wie „offenen Marktwirtschaft“ und „freier Wettbewerb“ wie ein roter Faden durch den Vertrag. So besagt z.B. Artikel 119:

 

„(1) Die Tätigkeit der Mitgliedstaaten und der Union im Sinne des Artikels 3 des Vertrags über die Europäische Union umfasst nach Maßgabe der Verträge die Einführung einer Wirtschaftspolitik, die auf einer engen Koordinierung der Wirtschaftspolitik der Mitgliedstaaten, dem Binnenmarkt und der Festlegung gemeinsamer Ziele beruht und dem Grundsatz einer offenen Marktwirtschaft mit freiem Wettbewerb verpflichtet ist.

 

(2) Parallel dazu umfasst diese Tätigkeit nach Maßgabe der Verträge und der darin vorgesehenen Verfahren eine einheitliche Währung, den Euro, sowie die Festlegung und Durchführung einer einheitlichen Geld- sowie Wechselkurspolitik, die beide vorrangig das Ziel der Preisstabilität verfolgen und unbeschadet dieses Zieles die allgemeine Wirtschaftspolitik in der Union unter Beachtung des Grundsatzes einer offenen Marktwirtschaft mit freiem Wettbewerb unterstützen sollen.

 

Ebenso soll der freie Handel – also jener Handel, der die stärksten Unternehmen, die Konzerne, begünstigt – gefördert werden: Aufgabe der EU sei es, „die Integration aller Länder in die Weltwirtschaft zu fördern, unter anderem auch durch den schrittweisen Abbau internationaler Handelshemmnisse“ (VEU Artikel 21e).

 

Ebenso wird die neoliberale Lissabonner Strategie festgeschrieben:

 

In Bezug auf Artikel 104 bekräftigt die Konferenz, dass die Wirtschafts- und Haushaltspolitik der Union und der Mitgliedstaaten auf die beiden fundamentalen Ziele ausgerichtet ist, das Wachstumspotenzial zu steigern und eine solide Haushaltslage zu gewährleisten. Der Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt ist ein wichtiges Instrument für die Verwirklichung dieser Ziele. In diesem Zusammenhang erneuert die Konferenz ferner ihr Bekenntnis zu den Zielen der Lissabonner Strategie: Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen, Strukturreformen und sozialer Zusammenhalt.

 

Die Union strebt ein ausgewogenes Wirtschaftswachstum und Preisstabilität an. Deshalb muss die Wirtschafts- und Haushaltspolitik in Zeiten schwachen Wirtschaftswachstums die entsprechenden Prioritäten in Bezug auf Wirtschaftsreformen, Innovation, Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und Steigerung der privaten Investitionen und des privaten Verbrauchs setzen. (…) Die Konferenz kommt überein, dass die Mitgliedstaaten Phasen der wirtschaftlichen Erholung aktiv nutzen sollten, um die öffentlichen Finanzen zu konsolidieren und ihre Haushaltslage zu verbessern. Das Ziel ist dabei, in Zeiten günstiger Konjunktur schrittweise einen Haushaltsüberschuss zu erreichen, um in Zeiten der konjunkturellen Abschwächung über den nötigen Spielraum zu verfügen und so zur langfristigen Tragfähigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen beizutragen.[7]

 

Hier haben wir also die vertraglich-bindende Anhaltung des Staates, neoliberale Wirtschaftsreformen, Investitionen der Unternehmer usw. zu fördern und gleichzeitig massiv bei den staatlichen Ausgaben – d.h. vor allem bei den Sozial- und Gesundheitsleitungen – einzusparen. Diesmal wird der Kurs sogar noch mehr verschärft: Hieß es unter Finanzminister Grasser noch Nulldefizit in Zeiten der guten Konjunktur, soll nun sogar ein Haushaltsüberschuß erzielt werden.

 

 

 

Privatisierung der öffentlichen Dienstleistungen

 

 

 

Im gleichen Geiste werden mit dem EU-Reformvertrag die öffentlichen Dienstleistungen den Regeln des Wettbewerbs unterworfen. Es ist die EU-Kommission, welche alleine darüber entscheidet.

 

Für Unternehmen, die mit Dienstleistungen von allgemeinem wirtschaftlichem Interesse betraut sind oder den Charakter eines Finanzmonopols haben, gelten die Vorschriften der Verträge, insbesondere die Wettbewerbsregeln, soweit die Anwendung dieser Vorschriften nicht die Erfüllung der ihnen übertragenen besonderen Aufgabe rechtlich oder tatsächlich verhindert. Die Entwicklung des Handelsverkehrs darf nicht in einem Ausmaß beeinträchtigt werden, das dem Interesse der Union zuwiderläuft.

 

Die Kommission achtet auf die Anwendung dieses Artikels und richtet erforderlichenfalls geeignete Richtlinien oder Beschlüsse an die Mitgliedstaaten.“ [8]

 

Damit besteht nun die Gefahr, daß in vielen Dienstleistungsbereichen, die bislang von den „Segnungen der freien Marktwirtschaft“ verschont blieben, privatisiert werden: angefangen von Wasser, Strom, der Müllabfuhr bis hin zum öffentlichen Transport. Nicht zufällig wurde z.B. ein Absatz zur Verkehrspolitik verändert. So war früher die Einstimmigkeit der Mitgliedsstaaten erforderlich, um im Rahmen der gemeinsamen Transportpolitik, Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, wenn deren Anwendung, die Lebensqualität, die Anstellung oder den Betrieb der Transportmittel zu gefährden. Mit dem EU-Reformvertrag sind bei der gemeinsamen Transportpolitik solche Fälle nur noch „zu berücksichtigen“. Der französische Antiglobalisierungsaktivist Pierre Kalfa schlußfolgert zu Recht: „Ein Schloss zur Sicherung des öffentlichen Transportwesens ist hiermit gesprungen.[9]

 

Ähnliche Maßnahmen der Liberalisierung sind für den Energiesektor vorgesehen.

 

 

 

Aufrüstung und Kriegseinsätze

 

 

 

Der Reformvertrag befestigt und beschleunigt die militaristischen Aufrüstungs- und Expansionspläne der EU. Die ‚Gemeinsame Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik‘ wird zum integralen Bestandteil der Union. Die EU-Rüstungsagentur wird vertraglich verankert. Ebenso wird jeder Mitgliedsstaat verpflichtet,  seine „Verteidigungsfähigkeiten durch Ausbau seiner nationalen Beiträge und gegebenenfalls durch Beteiligung an multinationalen Streitkräften, an den wichtigsten europäischen Ausrüstungsprogrammen und an der Tätigkeit der Agentur für die Bereiche Entwicklung der Verteidigungsfähigkeiten, Forschung, Beschaffung und Rüstung (Europäische Verteidigungsagentur) intensiver zu entwickeln und spätestens 2010 über die Fähigkeit zu verfügen, entweder als nationales Kontingent oder als Teil von multinationalen Truppenverbänden bewaffnete Einheiten bereitzustellen, die auf die in Aussicht genommenen Missionen ausgerichtet sind, taktisch als Gefechtsverband konzipiert sind,…[10]

 

Aufrüstung und Bildung multinationaler Truppeneinheiten sind natürlich kein Selbstzweck, sondern dienen den militärischen Interessen des EU-Imperialismus. Mit einsatzfähigen Kriegstruppen will die EU Militäroperationen im Ausland durchführen. Der Tschad, an dem sich ja auch österreichische Truppen beteiligen, ist nur ein erster Vorgeschmack auf zukünftige Kolonialabenteuer des europäischen Imperialismus.

 

Die in Artikel 28a Absatz 1 vorgesehenen Missionen, bei deren Durchführung die Union auf zivile und militärische Mittel zurückgreifen kann, umfassen … Aufgaben der militärischen Beratung und Unterstützung, Aufgaben der Konfliktverhütung und der Erhaltung des Friedens sowie Kampfeinsätze im Rahmen der Krisenbewältigung einschließlich Frieden schaffender Maßnahmen und Operationen zur Stabilisierung der Lage nach Konflikten. Mit allen diesen Missionen kann zur Bekämpfung des Terrorismus beigetragen werden, unter anderem auch durch die Unterstützung für Drittländer bei der Bekämpfung des Terrorismus in ihrem Hoheitsgebiet.“ [11]

 

Die Rechtfertigungen, solche Kriege zu führen, sind bewußt breit und offen gehalten. So kann ein Kriegsfall bereits dann eintreten, wenn auch nur ein einziger EU-Staat „angegriffen“ wird: „Im Falle eines bewaffneten Angriffs auf das Hoheitsgebiet eines Mitgliedstaats schulden die anderen Mitgliedstaaten ihm alle in ihrer Macht stehende Hilfe und Unterstützung[12]

 

Aber es bedarf nicht einmal eines Angriffs – es reicht schon, wenn die „Werte der Union“ in Gefahr sind:

 

Der Rat kann zur Wahrung der Werte der Union und im Dienste ihrer Interessen eine Gruppe von Mitgliedstaaten mit der Durchführung einer Mission im Rahmen der Union beauftragen.“ [13]

 

Aber der herrschenden Klasse geht es natürlich nicht nur um das Krieg führen im Ausland, sie braucht auch eine Bürgerkriegsarmee im Inneren:

 

(1) Die Union und ihre Mitgliedstaaten handeln gemeinsam im Geiste der Solidarität, wenn ein Mitgliedstaat von einem Terroranschlag, einer Naturkatastrophe oder einer vom Menschen verursachten Katastrophe betroffen ist. Die Union mobilisiert alle ihr zur Verfügung stehenden Mittel, einschließlich der ihr von den Mitgliedstaaten bereitgestellten militärischen Mittel, um

 

(a) – terroristische Bedrohungen im Hoheitsgebiet von Mitgliedstaaten abzuwenden;

 

– die demokratischen Institutionen und die Zivilbevölkerung vor etwaigen Terroranschlägen zu schützen;

 

– im Falle eines Terroranschlags einen Mitgliedstaat auf Ersuchen seiner politischen Organe innerhalb seines Hoheitsgebiets zu unterstützen;

 

(b) im Falle einer Naturkatastrophe oder einer vom Menschen verursachten Katastrophe einen Mitgliedstaat auf Ersuchen seiner politischen Organe innerhalb seines Hoheitsgebiets zu unterstützen.

 

(2) Ist ein Mitgliedstaat von einem Terroranschlag, einer Naturkatastrophe oder einer vom Menschen verursachten Katastrophe betroffen, so leisten die anderen Mitgliedstaaten ihm auf Ersuchen seiner politischen Organe Unterstützung. Zu diesem Zweck sprechen die Mitgliedstaaten sich im Rat ab.“ [14]

 

Es ist nicht schwer zu erkennen, daß hinter diesem Polizeijuristendeutsch angesichts möglicher Aufstände und Unruhen innerhalb der EU der mögliche Hammer einer Bürgerkriegseinsatzes von EU-Armeen hervorlugt.

 

Wir haben immer betont, daß ein zentrales Problem der EU darin besteht, daß sie militärisch viel schwächer ist als ihr Konkurrent, die USA. Vor dem Hintergrund der verschärften Rivalität zwischen der EU und der USA braucht die herrschende Klasse Europas daher einen Kurswechsel:

 

Doch um eine Macht ähnlicher Größenordnung wie die USA zu werden, braucht Europa einen grundlegenden Wandel in seiner Militärpolitik. (…) Worum es geht, wird in der Verfassung unumwunden ausgesprochen: um die Fähigkeit des europäischen Imperialismus, rund um den Globus Krieg zu führen, um seine politischen und ökonomischen Interessen („Werte“) zu verteidigen.[15]

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag erscheint auf den ersten Blick widersprüchlich. Einerseits legt er eine enge Zusammenarbeit mit der NATO fest, was bedeutet, daß jene Kräfte in der EU, die eine vom US-amerikanischen Konkurrenten unabhängige Militärpolitik erreichen wollten, sich hier nicht vollständig durchsetzen konnten. Andererseits jedoch haben sich die Kräfte um den deutsch-französischen Block eine Möglichkeit für einen eigenständigen militärischen Weg eröffnet, nämlich der Schaffung eines eigenen Verbandes – der sogenannten Ständigen Strukturierten Zusammenarbeit:

 

Die Mitgliedstaaten, die anspruchsvollere Kriterien in Bezug auf die militärischen Fähigkeiten erfüllen und die im Hinblick auf Missionen mit höchsten Anforderungen untereinander weiter gehende Verpflichtungen eingegangen sind, begründen eine Ständige Strukturierte Zusammenarbeit im Rahmen der Union.[16]

 

 

 

Who is the Boss?

 

 

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag sieht – wie schon zuvor die Verfassung – vor, daß die EU mit einer juristischen Persönlichkeit versehen wird. Die EU bzw. ihre Vertreter können damit Verträge abschließen, die bindend sind für ihre Mitglieder.

 

Die Konferenz weist darauf hin, dass die Verträge und das von der Union auf der Grundlage der Verträge gesetzte Recht im Einklang mit der ständigen Rechtsprechung des Gerichtshofs der Europäischen Union unter den in dieser Rechtsprechung festgelegten Bedingungen Vorrang vor dem Recht der Mitgliedstaaten haben.[17]

 

Darüberhinaus sieht der EU-Reformvertrag den Ausbau zentralstaatlicher Machtstrukturen bzw. –befugnisse vor. Darin sieht die herrschende Klasse die einzige Möglichkeit, um einen schlagfähigen zentralen Staatsapparat aufbauen zu können, der die widerstreitenden Interessen zwischen den Mitgliedsstaaten überwindet und gegen die ArbeiterInnenklasse durchpeitschen kann. Diese Zielsetzung führt einerseits dazu, daß jene Entscheidungen, die nur nach dem Einstimmigkeitsprinzip getroffen werden können, massiv zurückgedrängt werden, während viele Entscheidungen nun nach dem Prinzip der „qualifizierten Mehrheit“ getroffen werden sollen. So wuchs die Zahl der Politikfelder, die mit qualifizierter Mehrheit beschlossen werden können, von 137 auf 181. [18] Daher gab es auch zuletzt einen Konflikt drüber, welches Gewicht die einzelnen Nationalstaaten haben sollen. Schließlich wurde eine Änderung zugunsten der großen Länder durchgesetzt. Ab dem 1. November 2014 ändert sich die qualifizierte Mehrheit und besteht dann aus der Hälfte der Mitgliedsstaaten und 55% der Bevölkerung, mit komplizierten Übergangsregelungen, die bis 2017 gelten können.

 

Noch wichtiger jedoch ist, daß neben dem EU-Rat – also der gemeinsamen Vertretung der Regierungen der EU-Mitgliedsstaaten – die EU-Kommission die zentrale Rolle spielt. So besagt der neue Artikel 9d:

 

(1) Die Kommission fördert die allgemeinen Interessen der Union und ergreift geeignete Initiativen zu diesem Zweck. Sie sorgt für die Anwendung der Verträge sowie der von den Organen kraft der Verträge erlassenen Maßnahmen. Sie überwacht die Anwendung des Unionsrechts unter der Kontrolle des Gerichtshofs der Europäischen Union. Sie führt den Haushaltsplan aus und verwaltet die Programme. Sie übt nach Maßgabe der Verträge Koordinierungs-, Exekutiv- und Verwaltungsfunktionen aus. Außer in der Gemeinsamen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik und den übrigen in den Verträgen vorgesehenen Fällen nimmt sie die Vertretung der Union nach außen wahr. Sie leitet die jährliche und die mehrjährige Programmplanung der Union mit dem Ziel ein, interinstitutionelle Vereinbarungen zu erreichen.

 

(2) Soweit in den Verträgen nichts anderes festgelegt ist, darf ein Gesetzgebungsakt der Union nur auf Vorschlag der Kommission erlassen werden. Andere Rechtsakte werden auf der Grundlage eines Kommissionsvorschlags erlassen, wenn dies in den Verträgen vorgesehen ist.

 

Die Rechte des EU-Parlaments hingegen sind minimal und Bürgerinitiativen haben gerade mal das Recht … die Kommission zu bitten! „Bürger der Union, in einer Anzahl von mindestens einer Million, die Bürger einer beträchtlichen Zahl von Mitgliedsstaaten sind, können die Initiative ergreifen, die Kommission, im Rahmen ihrer Zuständigkeit, zu bitten, einen Vorschlag zu Fragen zu unterbreiten, von denen diese Bürger meinen, dass ein Rechtsakt der Union notwendig ist, um die Anwendung der Verträge zu gewährleisten.[19]

 

 

 

Reaktionäre Ideologie in der Verfassung festgeschrieben

 

 

 

Neben dem Prinzip der freien Marktwirtschaft schreibt die Verfassung noch weitere wichtige ideologische Grundpfeiler der bürgerlichen Ordnung fest. So ist die Präambel des „Vertrag über die Europäische Union“ durch die Hinzufügung folgenden Absatzes geändert worden:

 

"SCHÖPFEND aus dem kulturellen, religiösen und humanistischen Erbe Europas, aus dem sich die unverletzlichen und unveräußerlichen Rechte des Menschen sowie Freiheit, Demokratie, Gleichheit und Rechtsstaatlichkeit als universelle Werte entwickelt haben,…".[20]

 

An dieser Änderung sind zwei Dinge interessant und bezeichnend für die Richtung, in die sich der EU-Imperialismus entwickelt. Erstens die Berufung auf das „religiöse Erbe Europas“ – also das Christentum, jene Religion, in deren Namen in der Geschichte unzählige Kriege und Massenmorde verübt wurden. Dies bedeutet – wie es den Forderungen der katholischen Kirche und der konservativen Kräfte entspricht – nichts anderes als die Hebung des Christentums in den Verfassungsrang. Diese scheinbar unverdächtige Wortwahl können die herrschenden Klassen bei Bedarf als ideologische Rechtfertigung für zahlreiche Angriffe ausnützen: z.B. die Aufhebung der Trennung von Staat und Religion und das Vorgehen gegen die atheistische Weltanschauung, die Infragestellung des Rechts auf Abtreibung, die Rechtfertigung von militärischen Interventionen zur Verteidigung des Christentums z.B. gegen den Islam usw. [21]

 

Zweitens kennen wir die Erklärung der „unverletzlichen und unveräußerlichen Rechte des Menschen sowie Freiheit, Demokratie, Gleichheit und Rechtsstaatlichkeit als universelle Werte“ aus dem Munde von George Bush und seinen neokonservativen Kriegstreibern. Universelle Werte haben per Definition weltweite Gültigkeit und können somit als Rechtfertigung für die Einmischung und militärische Intervention der Europäischen Union rund um den Globus verwendet werden. Vergessen wir nicht, daß der imperialistische Krieg in Afghanistan und in Irak neben den Vorwänden der Terrorismus-Bekämpfung auch mit dem angeblichen Einsatz für Menschenrechte und Demokratie geführt wird.

 

 

 

Tieferliegende Ursache: Der Niedergang des Kapitalismus

 

 

 

Es liegt auf der Hand, daß alle fortschrittlichen Organisationen und AktivistInnen den EU-Reformvertrag ablehnen. Aber die Frage, worüber bei Vielen Unklarheit herrscht, ist die der Ursachen des EU-Reformvertrages, welche Alternativen es dazu gibt und mit welcher Strategie wir dagegen kämpfen können.

 

Der EU-Reformvertrag ist kein Resultat eines Anfalls von Machtgeilheit seitens der Bourgeoisie wie es diverse links-reformistische Strömungen glauben. Noch weniger handelt es sich um eine Verschwörung irgendwelcher Bürokraten in Brüssel, wie es die Einfaltspinsel in den Redaktionstuben der Kronen Zeitung oder in der FPÖ daher phantasieren.

 

Der Kampf gegen den EU-Reformvertrag kann unmöglich gewonnen werden, wenn er auf einer illusionären, utopischen Grundlage aufgebaut ist. Der Grundfehler vieler Linker heutzutage besteht darin, daß sie die Politik der herrschenden Klasse – welche man gewöhnlich als Neoliberalismus, als Militarismus usw. bezeichnet – als bloß eine von mehreren möglichen Optionen im kapitalistischen Gesellschaftssystem betrachten. Es wird unterstellt, daß die bürgerlichen Herrschenden eigentlich verschiedene Möglichkeiten hätten, ihre Macht auszuüben. Das Programm der rücksichtlosen Angriffe auf die sozialen und demokratischen Errungenschaften der ArbeiterInnenklasse und der imperialistischen Kriegsoffensive wird daher nicht als unausweichliche, von ihrem Standpunkt aus notwendige, Politik der herrschenden Klasse verstanden, sondern als „falsche Politik“, die bei gleichzeitiger Aufrechterhaltung des Kapitalismus durch eine „richtige Politik“ – wie z.B. Ausbau des Sozialstaates, Vollbeschäftigung, Abrüstung und Frieden – ersetzt werden könnte.

 

Tatsächlich ist die neoliberale, militaristische Offensive der herrschenden Klasse das notwendige Resultat des Niedergangs des Kapitalismus und vor diesem Hintergrund eine verschärfte Konkurrenz zwischen den Monopolen und den Großmächten. Die Weltwirtschaft zeichnet sich insgesamt seit den 1970er Jahren durch eine Tendenz zur Stagnation der Produktivkräfte aus. [22] Diese Entwicklung hält auch in der Periode der Globalisierung an, auch wenn hier eine uneinheitliche Entwicklung zu beobachten ist, wo die Stagnationstendenz in den imperialistischen Metropolen und in weiten Teilen der sogenannten III. Welt vorherrschen, während es andererseits auch wichtige Ausnahmen wie China oder Indien gibt. Die in dieser Broschüre abgebildeten Tabellen sollen einen kurzen Überblick über die niedergehende Wachstumsdynamik des Kapitalismus weltweit und in den imperialistischen Zentren geben.

 

 

 

Tabelle 1: Wachstumsraten des Welt-Brutto-Inlandsproduktes (in % pro Jahr) [23]

 

 

 

1971-1980

+3.8%

1981-1990

+3.2%

1991-2000

+2.6%

2001-2006

+2.7%

 

 

 

Die gleiche Entwicklungstendenz findet sich auch im Herzen der Schaffung des kapitalistischen Mehrwerts – der Industrieproduktion. (siehe Tabelle 2)

 

 

 

Tabelle 2: Wachstumsraten der weltweiten Industrieproduktion (in % pro Jahr) [24]

 

 

 

1980-1990

+3.0%

1990-2000

+2.4%

2000-2004

+1.4%

 

 

 

Betrachten wir nun die imperialistische Staaten, wo auch die große Masse des Weltkapitals beheimatet ist, etwas genauer. (siehe Tabelle 3)

 

 

 

Tabelle 3: Wachstumsraten des Brutto-Inlandsproduktes in den imperialistischen Staaten (in % pro Jahr) [25]

 

 

 

 

Wachstumsraten des Brutto-Inlandsproduktes (in % pro Jahr)

 

imperialistische Staaten

USA

Japan

EU-15

 

BIP

BIP pro Kopf

BIP

BIP p.K.

BIP

BIP p.K.

BIP

BIP p.K.

1960-1969

+5.1%

+3.8%

+4.6%

+3.3%

+10.2%

+9.0%

+5.3%

+3.5%

1970-1980

+3.4%

+2.5%

+3.2%

+2.1%

+4.4%

+3.3%

+3.0%

+2.6%

1980-1990

+3.0%

+2.3%

+3.2%

+2.2 %

+4.1%

+3.5%

+2.4%

+2.1%

1990-2000

+2.5%

+1.8%

+3.2%

+2.2%

+1.3%

+1.1%

+2.0%

+1.7%

2000-2005

+2.2%

--

+2.8%

--

+1.3%

--

+2.0%

--

 

 

 

Exkurs: Marx und das Gesetz der kapitalistischen Akkumulation

 

 

 

Die Ursache dieser niedergehenden Wachstumsdynamik liegt in folgendem Dilemma der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise, auf welches schon Karl Marx hinwies. Der Zweck der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise ist die Selbstverwertung der Kapitals, mit anderen Worten: die Akkumulation von Kapital zum Zwecke der Profitmaximierung. Unter Akkumulation des Kapitals verstehen MarxistInnen die „Anwendung von Mehrwert als Kapital oder Rückverwandlung von Mehrwert in Kapital[26] oder anders formuliert die Verwendung eines Teils des Wertprodukts nicht zur individuellen Konsumtion, sondern zur Vergrößerung des Kapitals. Dazu versuchen die KapitalistInnen beständig die Produktivkraft der Arbeit zu steigern. Das heißt, durch die Weiterentwicklung der Technik, der Organisation der Arbeit, Modernisierung des Maschinenparks etc. kann die Produktivität des einzelnen Arbeiters bzw. Arbeiterin gesteigert werden, er bzw. sie kann also mit seiner/ihrer Arbeitskraft eine stets größere Menge von Produktionsmitteln in Bewegung setzen. Dieser an sich für alle Gesellschaftsordnungen gültige Prozeß des technischen und ökonomischen Fortschritts besitzt nun im Kapitalismus eine besondere Eigentümlichkeit. Die kapitalistische Produktionsweise zeichnet sich nämlich gerade dadurch aus, daß der Arbeitsprozeß zugleich ein Verwertungsprozeß ist, d.h. die Produktionsmittel und die Arbeitskraft haben sowohl einen Gebrauchswert als auch einen Tauschwert.

 

Nun dient die Produktion von Waren, Tauschwerten, nicht der Herstellung von Gebrauchswerten, sondern umgekehrt, der Produktionsprozeß dient der Schaffung von Tauschwerten, sprich der Vermehrung des Kapitals (Akkumulation), sprich der Vermehrung des Mehrwerts, des Profits der KapitalistInnen:

 

„…daß das Kapital und seine Selbstverwertung als Ausgangspunkt und Endpunkt, als Motiv und Zweck der Produktion erscheint, daß die Produktion nur Produktion für das Kapital ist, und nicht umgekehrt die Produktionsmittel bloße Mittel für eine stets sich erweiternde Gestaltung des Lebensprozesses für die Gesellschaft der Produzenten sind.“ [27]

 

Die Verschärfung seiner inneren Widersprüche sind letztlich eine logische Folge des Kapitalismus als System, in denen Kapital als Einzelkapitale existiert und nur existieren kann, wenn diese miteinander in schärfster Konkurrenz stehen (was zeitweilige Allianzen keineswegs ausschließt, die jedoch unweigerlich zu umso schärferen Auseinandersetzungen führen). [28] Daher sind die KapitalistInnen und somit das Gesamtkapital gezwungen, sich beständig auszudehnen und zu akkumulieren. Marx beschreibt den Sachzwang, dem die KapitalistInnen unterliegen, folgendermaßen:

 

„... macht die Entwicklung der kapitalistischen Produktion eine fortwährende Steigerung des in einem industriellen Unternehmen angelegten Kapitals zur Notwendigkeit, und die Konkurrenz herrscht jedem individuellen Kapitalisten die immanenten Gesetze der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise als äußere Zwangsgesetze auf. Sie zwingt ihn, sein Kapital fortwährend auszudehnen, um es zu erhalten, und ausdehnen kann er es nur vermittelst progressiver Akkumulation.“ [29]

 

Der technische Fortschritt, die Entwicklung der Produktivkraft der Arbeit, die sich – verhältnismäßig – in immer mehr Produktionsmittel und immer weniger Arbeitskraft ausdrückt, führt also zur kapitalistischen Akkumulation, dem beständigen Anwachsen des konstanten Kapitals im Verhältnis zum variablen. Immer mehr Kapital wird in die Maschinerie (fixes konstantes Kapital) und in Rohstoffe (zirkulierendes konstantes Kapital) angelegt, immer weniger – im Verhältnis zum ersteren weniger – in Arbeitslöhnen (variables Kapital). Marx nennt diesen Prozeß die Erhöhung der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals.

 

Nun ist aber nur die lebendige Arbeit, anders ausgedrückt der variable, in Arbeitslöhnen steckende Kapitalteil, die einzige Quelle des Mehrwerts/Profits. Dies wiederum bedeutet, daß mit der verhältnismäßigen Abnahme dieses Teils auch der Profit geringer werden. Marx spricht hier vom Gesetz des tendenziellen Falls der Profitrate. Da aber der Profit die Triebfeder der kapitalistischen Produktion ist, wird die Akkumulation nur solange fortgesetzt werden, als sie eben profitabel ist.

 

Diese erzeugt mit der fortschreitenden relativen Abnahme des variablen Kapitals gegen das konstante eine steigend höhere organische Zusammensetzung des Gesamtkapitals, deren unmittelbare Folge ist, daß die Rate des Mehrwerts bei gleichbleibendem und selbst bei steigendem Exploitationsgrad (Ausbeutungsgrad, Anm.d.Red.) der Arbeit sich in einer beständig sinkenden allgemeinen Profitrate ausdrückt. (Es wird sich weiter zeigen warum dies Sinken nicht in dieser absoluten Form, sondern mehr in Tendenz zum progressiven Fall hervortritt.) Die progressive Tendenz der allgemeinen Profitrate zum Sinken ist also nur ein der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise eigentümlicher Ausdruck für die fortschreitende Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Produktivkraft der Arbeit. Es ist damit nicht gesagt, daß die Profitrate nicht auch aus andren Gründen vorübergehend fallen kann, aber es ist damit aus dem Wesen der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise als eine selbstverständliche Notwendigkeit bewiesen, daß in ihrem Fortschritt die allgemeine Durchschnittsrate des Mehrwerts sich in einer fallenden allgemeinen Profitrate ausdrücken muß. Da die Masse der angewandten lebendigen Arbeit stets abnimmt im Verhältnis zu der Masse der von ihr in Bewegung gesetzten vergegenständlichten Arbeit, der produktiv konsumierten Produktionsmittel, so muß auch der Teil dieser lebendigen Arbeit, der unbezahlt ist und sich in Mehrwert vergegenständlicht, in einem stets abnehmenden Verhältnis stehn zum Wertumfang des angewandten Gesamtkapitals. Dies Verhältnis der Mehrwertsmasse zum Wert des angewandten Gesamtkapitals bildet aber die Profitrate, die daher beständig fallen muß.“ [30]

 

Das Resultat dieser Entwicklung ist, daß das Kapital mit verschiedensten Methoden versucht, die Profitrate trotz der wachsenden organischen Zusammensetzung zu steigern bzw. deren Fall aufzuhalten. Marx spricht hier von den „entgegenwirkenden Ursachen“ und nennt darunter die Erhöhung des Exploitationsgrads der Arbeit, die Herunterdrücken des Arbeitslohns unter seinen Wert, die Verbilligung der Elemente des konstanten Kapitals, die relative Überbevölkerung, den auswärtigen Handel und die Zunahme des Aktienkapitals. Doch letztlich können diese entgegenwirkenden Ursachen den Fall der Durchschnittsprofitrate nicht aufhalten.

 

Für das Kapital wachsen also die Schwierigkeiten, Kapital profitabel anzulegen. Es existiert eine Überproduktion an Kapital im Verhältnis zu den real existierenden profitablen Anlagemöglichkeiten. Wir sprechen hier von einer Überakkumulation des Kapitals. Daraus folgt das verstärkte Suchen des Kapitals nach Gewinn in der Spekulationssphäre u.ä. Die Kehrseite davon ist die Verlangsamung der Akkumulationsrate. Akkumulation des Kapitals beschränkt sich mehr und mehr auf Rationalisierungsinvestitionen (Ersetzung bestehender Kapitalanlagen zwecks Abbaus von Arbeitskräften) und nicht Erweiterungsinvestitionen (Ausbau des Maschinenparks zwecks Erweiterung der Produktionskapazitäten). Aufgrund der Überakkumulation von Kapital sehen wir daher insgesamt, weltweit, eine abnehmende Dynamik der Kapitalakkumulation. (siehe Tabelle 4 und Graphik 1, die das Verhältnis von Netto-Investitionen zum Netto-Inlandsprodukt darstellt)

 

 

 

Tabelle 4: Wachstumsraten der weltweiten Kapitalakkumulation (in % pro Jahr) [31]

 

 

 

1980-1990

+3.9%

1990-2000

+3.2%

2000-2004

+1.2%

 

 

 

Graphik 1: Netto-Investitionen als Anteil am Netto-Inlandsprodukt in den imperialistischen Ökonomien, 1980-2006 [32]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Die Formierung der EU als Antwort des imperialistischen Kapitals Westeuropas

 

 

 

Es sind diese krisenhaften Entwicklungstendenzen der kapitalistischen Weltwirtschaft, die das Monopolkapital zu verschärften Attacken auf die ArbeiterInnenklasse und zur Steigerung der Ausbeutung der halbkolonialen Welt antreibt [33] und gleichzeitig den Konkurrenzkampf zwischen den Großmächten anheizen – allen voran zwischen den beiden mächtigsten Blöcken, den USA und der EU. Daher einerseits das gemeinsame Vorgehen der Großmächte, wenn es z.B. darum geht, halbkoloniale Länder zur Öffnung ihrer Wirtschaft für die Großkonzerne zu öffnen, andererseits aber auch die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Konflikte zwischen den beiden Blöcken wenn ihre Interessen aufeinanderprallen.

 

Die Formierung der Europäischen Union nicht nur als ein wirtschaftlicher Binnenmarkt, sondern auch als ein politischer und militärischer Machtblock ist die Antwort der herrschenden Klassen Europas – allen voran ihrer Kernstaaten Deutschland und Frankreichs – auf die verschärfte Konkurrenz und die Notwendigkeit, ihre Interessen in einer instabiler werdenden Welt mit allen zu Gebote stehenden Mitteln durchzusetzen. In diesem Sinne haben wir schon in einer Analyse vor drei Jahren festgehalten:

 

Die Formierung eines europäischen Kapitals und Imperialismus, der den USA als führende Weltmacht Paroli bieten kann, ist und bleibt daher das strategische Ziele der deutschen und französischen Kapitalistenklassen und ihrer politischen Exekutiven.[34]

 

Daher ist es auch kein Zufall, daß die herrschenden Klassen Europas nach der Niederlage bei den Referenden zum Verfassungsentwurf 2005 bald einen erneuten Versuch starteten.

 

Der Generalangriff auf die Lohnabhängigen wird in ganz Europa mit unverminderter, ja größerer Schärfe fortgeführt. Auch wenn es in einzelnen Ländern zu kurzfristigen taktischen Rückzügen der herrschenden Klasse aufgrund von Massenmobilisierungen kommen sollte, so nur, um bald noch heftigere Angriffe zu starten. (…)

 

Die herrschenden Klassen werden bewußt einen neuen Anlauf zur Formierung eines imperialistischen Blocks nehmen.[35]

 

Wir halten also fest: der aggressive Kurs der herrschenden Klassen Europas in Richtung neoliberaler Sozialabbau, Militarisierung und Aufbau eines zentralen EU-Staatsapparates ist das unausweichliche Resultat der Interessen des Kapitals in Zeiten von Stagnation, verschärfter Konkurrenz und Instabilität. Sie müssen diese Politik betreiben, sonst würden die USA – und auch andere Mächte – ihre europäische Konkurrentin für lange Zeit von einem angehenden Imperium zu einem Zwerg unter den imperialistischen Mächten degradieren. Damit einhergehend würden sehr rasch scharfe politische Krisen bis hin zu revolutionären Situationen ausbrechen. Jeder Versuch, die KapitalistInnenklasse durch Zureden oder Petitionen zu einer anderen Politik zu bewegen, ist daher nichts anderes als reformistische Tagträumerei.

 

Das bedeutet natürlich keineswegs, daß überhaupt keine Veränderungen, Modifikationen der Politik der herrschenden Klasse möglich wären, ohne nicht unmittelbar in eine revolutionäre Situation zu münden. Durch harten Klassenkampf ist es möglich, diesen oder jenen Angriff kurzfristig abzuwehren, diese oder jene Attacke abzumildern. Aber diese Änderungen sind vorübergehende Defensiverfolge und können nicht – solange die kapitalistischen Ausbeutungsverhältnisse weiter bestehen bleiben – zu einer grundlegenden, nachhaltigen Verbesserung der Lage der ArbeiterInnenklasse führen.

 

 

 

Ist eine Reform der EU im Interesse der ArbeiterInnen, Jugendlichen und MigrantInnen möglich?

 

 

 

Ein Gutteil der Linken hängt der reformistischen Politik an, die die EU verändern und eine „soziales, friedliches, demokratisches Europa“ schaffen möchte. Wir führen hier nur ein paar Beispiele an. ATTAC z. B. fordert die Wahl zu einer Verfassungsgebenden Versammlung in der EU, aus der dann eine reformierte EU hervorgehen könnte. [36] . Der ATTAC-Gründer in Österreich, Christian Felber, erhofft sich durch solche demokratischen und sozialen Reformen die Schaffung einer schlagkräftigeren EU: „Die Handlungsfähigkeit der EU wird durch die neuen Strukturen gegenüber dem Ist-Zustand verbessert“. [37]

 

Ähnlich illusionäre Hoffnungen hegt die Europäische Linkspartei, deren österreichischer Ableger die KPÖ ist: „Wir glauben, daß die EU in der Lage ist abzurüsten und dies auch tun sollte, daß sie die Militärbudgets ihrer Mitgliedsländer reduzieren und aufhören sollte, in militärischen Kategorien zu denken.[38]

 

Es ist bezeichnend, daß die SPÖ-Jugendorganisation – die Sozialistische Jugend – sich nicht einmal zu einer klaren Ablehnung des EU-Reformvertrages durchringen kann. In ihrer einzigen Stellungnahme fordert sie gerade mal eine Volksabstimmung, bezieht jedoch keine Position. [39] Gleichzeitig öffnet sie die Spalten ihrer Zeitung für die SP-Parteipropagandisten des EU-Reformvertrages und verzichtet dabei auf jegliche Kritik. [40] Einmal mehr zeigt sich, daß die SJ entgegen ihrer Selbstdarstellung weder eigenständig noch marxistisch ist, sondern die linksreformistischen Werbetrommler des SPÖ-Apparates in den Reihen der Jugend.

 

Trotz unterschiedlicher Nuancen haben diese Positionen eine zutiefst reformistische, kleinbürgerliche Logik gemein. Nämlich daß es möglich sei, eine „demokratische, sozial gerechte und friedliche EU“ zu schaffen ohne die Eigentums- und Machtfrage in Europa zu stellen. [41] Wie soll denn ein sozial gerechtes Europa möglich sein, solange die kapitalistischen Eigentumsverhältnisse unangetastet bleiben, solange also die kleine Minderheit der Unternehmer die wirtschaftlichen Produktionsmittel in ihren Händen hat?! Wie soll denn ein „friedliches Europa“ möglich sein, solange Konzerne und Generäle existieren, die ihre Interessen weltweit mit militärischen Mitteln durchzusetzen suchen?! Wie soll denn eine wirkliche Demokratie möglich sein, solange die herrschende Klasse an der Macht ist, die Tag für Tag den Polizeistaat ausbaut?!

 

Der reformistischen Politik ist  kein klares Klassendenken inne, kein Verständnis davon, daß unsere Gesellschaft gespalten ist in eine herrschende Klasse – an deren Spitze das Monopolkapital und seine Berufspolitiker steht – und die breite Mehrheit der Bevölkerung, die ArbeiterInnenklasse (also die Lohnabhängigen und deren Familien).

 

Natürlich ist dieses Unverständnis kein Zufall, sondern hat eine materielle Basis. Hinter der reformistischen Sichtweise, daß der Neoliberalismus bloß eine „falsche Politik“ sei, die durch eine „andere Politik“ mit einer „anderen Regierung“ abgelöst werden kann, steckt eine politische Perspektive. Nämlich die Hoffnung von Kräften wie der Europäischen Linkspartei, Teil einer Regierungskoalition in den kapitalistischen EU-Mitgliedsstaaten zu werden und so am Futtertrog der Macht mit den damit verbundenen Privilegien mitnaschen zu können. In Italien ist ihnen das bereits gelungen und dort spielt die Rifundazione Communista (PRC) eine tragende Rolle in der neoliberalen und militaristischen Regierung Prodi (die so mit Hilfe der PRC u.a. das Pensionseintrittsalter anhob, die Besatzungstruppen in Afghanistan beläßt, die NATO-Militärbasis in Vincenza ausbaut usw.). In Berlin bildet die PDS/Linkspartei seit Jahren eine Koalition mit der SPD und betreibt hemmungslosen Sozialabbau. Hinter den reformistischen Phrasen des „sozialen und friedlichen Europas“ verbirgt sich also in Wirklichkeit der Wille zur Teilhabe an der kapitalistischen Macht.

 

Die Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution tritt daher für ein sozialistisches Europa ein und lehnt die Losung eines "sozialen Europas" ab. Diese Formel läßt - bestenfalls - offen, welche Klasse in einem solchen Europa herrschen soll. Doch wer das offen läßt, beläßt es im Grunde nur dabei, daß jene, die heute herrschen, auch zukünftig herrschen. Das "soziale" Europa läuft also auf nichts anderes als auf ein sozialdemokratisches, das heißt bürgerliches und imperialistisches Europa hinaus.

 

Wir wollen die EU nicht reformieren, sondern zerschlagen. Zerschlagen aber nicht, um sie durch einen Rückschritt zum Nationalstaat – jener gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform, die dem Entwicklungsstand der Produktivkräfte des 19. Jahrhunderts entsprach – zu ersetzen. Sondern wir gehen vorwärts: auf dem Wege der europäischen Revolution über die Leiche der EU hin zu den Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa!

 

 

 

Ist der Austritt aus der EU eine Alternative für die ArbeiterInnenklasse?

 

 

 

Eine scheinbare Alternative dazu ist die Strategie diverser linker Organisationen wie der KPÖ Steiermark, der Kommunistischen Initiative oder der AIK, die einen Austritt Österreichs aus der EU propagieren. Doch die Forderung nach einem Zurück zum alten Nationalstaat ist zutiefst illusionär und gefährlich. Es ist ein Irrglaube, daß Österreich, wenn es sich nur von der EU befreien könnte, ein weniger reaktionärer, weniger arbeiterInnenfeindlicher Staat wäre. Österreich ist ein imperialistischer Staat, der keineswegs von der „bösen EU“ verführt wird, sondern in der das heimische Kapital seine Interessen momentan am besten aufgehoben sieht. Das Kapital greift die ArbeiterInnenklasse nicht wegen dem „Diktat aus Brüssel“ an, sondern aus seinen ureigensten Profitinteressen. Es würde diese Angriffe auch genauso dann durchführen, wenn Österreich nicht in der EU wäre. Umso schändlicher ist es, daß diverse Linke diese Ausreden von Fraktionen des heimischen Klein- und Mittelkapitals bekräftigen, und somit die durch bürgerliche Medien verbreiteten Lügen, mit denen die ArbeiterInnenklasse abgelenkt werden soll, nachplappern. Die Ideologie des „guten“ alten Nationalstaates würde in Wirklichkeit den Rückzug der ArbeiterInnenklasse von der Bühne eines Klassenkampfes des vereinigten weltweiten Proletariats hin zur reaktionären Nationalboniertheit bedeuten.

 

Das österreichische Kapital beutet nicht nur die ArbeiterInnenklasse hierzulande aus, sondern bezieht durch seine massiven Auslandsinvestitionen in zahlreichen Halbkolonien – v.a. in Osteuropa – große Extraprofite. Nicht umsonst hat sich die herrschende Klasse Österreichs für den EU-Beitritt der osteuropäischen Länder stark gemacht. [42]

 

In der kapitalistischen Welt existieren die einzelnen kapitalistischen Länder der Welt nicht unabhängig voneinander und können dies auch gar nicht. Vielmehr sehen wir stetig zunehmende Verflechtungen der einzelnen Länder mit der Weltwirtschaft. Österreich ist Teil der Weltwirtschaft und kann dies nicht durch einen Austritt aus der EU „abschaffen“. All diese Verflechtungen würden genauso existieren, wenn Österreich aus der EU austreten würde.

 

Der Führer der russische Oktoberrevolution 1917, Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, charakterisierte eine solche national-bornierte Politik des „Raus aus der EU“ treffend: “Kleinstaatliches Beiseite-stehen-wollen, kleinbürgerliches Streben, den großen Weltkämpfen fernzubleiben, die eigene relative Monopolstellung zu einem engherzigen Passivsein auszunützen das sind die objektiven gesellschaftlichen Umstände, die der Idee der Entwaffnung in einigen Kleinstaaten einen gewissen Erfolg und eine gewisse Verbreitung sichern. Natürlich ist ein solches Streben reaktionär und auf nichts als Illusionen gegründet, denn die kleinen Staaten werden so oder anders vom Imperialismus in den Strudel der Weltwirtschaft und der Weltpolitik hineingezogen.[43]

 

Im Kern teilt die „Raus aus der EU“-Perspektive den gleichen Grundfehler wie die linken EU-Reformer: nämlich das völlige Ignorieren der Klassenfrage. Wessen EU? Wessen Österreich? Die EU, die real existiert, ist die EU der Konzerne und Generäle. Und das Österreich, das real existiert, ist ebenfalls das Österreich der Konzerne und Generäle. Solange diese Klasse die Macht in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft inne hat, gibt es keine dauerhaften Reformen. Nur ihr Sturz eröffnet den Weg in die Zukunft.

 

 

 

Die Heuchelei der FPÖ und des BZÖ

 

 

 

An dieser Stelle sei nur kurz darauf hingewiesen, daß die Forderung von BZÖ und FPÖ nach Volksabstimmung über den EU-Reformvertrag nichts anderes als Demagogie ist. Sie soll davon ablenken, wie sehr diese Parteien in das EU-Machtkartell selber involviert sind. Mit Ausnahme einer einzigen Abgeordneten haben alle damaligen Mandatare dieser Parteien im Mai 2005 für die EU-Verfassung gestimmt! Diese Parteien haben jahrelang in der Regierung den EU-Kurs ohne Wenn und Aber mitgetragen. Diese Parteien haben in ihrer sechsjährigen Regierungszeit bewiesen, daß sie für die gleiche Politik wie die im EU-Reformvertrag festgeschriebene stehen: Militarismus und Sozialabbau. Mittels eines widerwärtigen Rassismus gegen MigrantInnen und die Türkei versuchen sie, von ihren politischen Verbrechen als rechte Einpeitscher von Militarismus und Sozialabbau abzulenken.

 

Unter den fortschrittlichen AktivistInnen taucht immer wieder die Frage auf, wie man sich angesichts der FPÖ-Kampagne gegen den EU-Reformvertrag und für eine Volksabstimmung taktisch verhalten sollte. Manche meinen, daß dies ein Grund gegen unsere Volksabstimmungskampagne sei, andere wiederum sehen einen Spielraum für taktische Manöver.

 

Die Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution lehnt jeden Versuch eines „taktischen Ausnützens“ von FPÖ und BZÖ ab. Im Gegenteil, die linke Bewegung für eine Volksabstimmung muß bei jedem Schritt und Tritt ihren frontale Opposition gegen die rechten Hetzer klar machen. Natürlich wäre es dumm, auf unsere Kampagne gegen den EU-Reformvertrag und für eine Volksabstimmung zu verzichten, nur weil die FPÖ das gleiche fordert. Tatsächlich wäre es ein politisches Verbrechen, würde man die wichtige Frage des EU-Reformvertrages den Rechten überlassen. Genausowenig lassen wir uns von unserer Ablehnung der imperialistischen Truppenentsendung in den Tschad abbringen, nur weil FPÖ, BZÖ und Grüne aus taktischen Gründen das gleiche fordern. Ebenso haben wir in den 1990er Jahren öfters erlebt, daß ein Jörg Haider gegen den Sozialraub der SPÖ/ÖVP-Regierung wetterte, was uns jedoch keineswegs zu Anhängern der kapitalistischen Raubritter werden ließ.

 

Jedenfalls darf es keine Überschneidungen zwischen unserer Kampagne gegen den EU-Reformvertrag und den rechten Demagogen geben. Der Graben, der zwischen uns und ihnen existiert, besteht nicht nur in den unterschiedlichen Zielen – wir wollen eine europäische Revolution zum Aufbau der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa während das ideologische Ziel der FPÖ der bürgerliche Nationalstaat (nach einer Massenvertreibung unserer migrantischen MitbürgerInnen) und das imperialistische „Europa der Vaterländer“ ist. Diese unterschiedlichen Ziele drücken sich auch in unterschiedlichen Kampfmethoden gegen Reformvertrag aus. Eben weil wir eine internationalistische Perspektive haben und weil uns die europäischen Klassenschwestern und –brüder genauso nahe sind wie die österreichischen, treten wir für einen europaweiten Klassenkampf gegen den EU-Reformvertrag ein und beschränken uns nicht auf Österreich. Und zu einer internationalistischen Kampagne gehört auch die Herausgabe mehrsprachiger Agitationsmaterialien, denn Österreich – wie auch die meisten anderen Staaten Europas – ist ein multinationales Land, in dem MigrantInnen einen wichtigen Teil der ArbeiterInnenklasse ausmachen.

 

 

 

Revolutionäre Strategie

 

 

 

Wir stehen heute vor einer umfassenden Offensive der herrschenden Klassen Europas. Sie wollen um jeden Preis die sozialen und demokratischen Errungenschaften der ArbeiterInnenklasse zertrümmern und die EU als zweite militärische Supermacht neben den USA etablieren. Sie müssen dies erreichen, sonst gehen sie im gnadenlosen weltweiten Konkurrenzkampf der imperialistischen Großmächte unter. Deswegen müssen wir uns eine umfassende Strategie des Klassenkampfes zur Verteidigung unserer Interessen zu Eigen machen.

 

Unser Widerstand kann nur dann Erfolg haben, wenn wir uns nicht auf Appelle und Petitionen an die Herrschenden oder die Eroberung von Regierungsposten orientieren, sondern auf die europaweite Organisierung und Kampf der ArbeiterInnenklasse und Jugend. Deswegen treten wir von der LSR gemeinsam mit unseren internationalen GenossInnen der Liga für die 5. Internationale (LFI) für Massendemonstrationen und Streiks bis hin zu Generalstreiks gegen den EU-Reformvertrag und andere Angriffe ein. Dies ist sowohl in jeden einzelnen Land notwendig wie auch europaweit.

 

Wir brauchen eine Organisierung des Abwehrkampfes von unten auf allen Ebenen. Deswegen treten wir für den Aufbau von Aktionskomitees, Sozialforen und Bündnissen auf allen Ebenen – lokal, regional, landesweit – ein. Und ebenso brauchen wir eine europaweite Koordinierung dieser Kämpfe. Diese Forderung richtet sich an alle Organisationen der Arbeiterbewegung, Parteien, die gegen Krieg und Neo-Liberalismus zu kämpfen vorgeben usw., alle Gruppierungen der Anti-Globalisierungsbewegung, der Anti-Kriegsbewegung, ImmigrantInnenorganisationen, Jugendorganisationen, SchülerInnen- und StudentInnenvertretungen.

 

 

 

Wie können wir den Reformvertrag stoppen?

 

 

 

Der Widerstand gegen den EU-Reformvertrag erfordert breite Kampfaktionen sowohl in Österreich als auch europaweit. Dabei können wir in ganz Europa auf eine breite Ablehnung des EU-Reformvertrages und auf die populäre Forderung nach einer Volkabstimmung in der ArbeiterInnenklasse aufbauen. Alleine in Österreich treten 70 Prozent der Befragten laut der neuesten IMAS-Studie für eine Volksabstimmung ein und laut einer anderen Umfrage sehen im Reformvertrag über doppelt so viele ÖsterreicherInnen mehr Nachteile (39% aller Befragten) als Vorteile (nur 19%)!

 

Die Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution unterstützt die Forderung nach einer Volksabstimmung über den EU-Reformvertrag als ein – wenn auch begrenztes – Widerstandsmittel. Wir arbeiten daher in der Plattform Volxabstimmung über den EU-Reformvertrag mit. Die meisten Organisationen in dem Bündnis sehen den Schwerpunkt der Protestaktivitäten auf kleine Medienaktionen, Pressekonferenzen, Unterschriftensammeln, Gewinnen von einzelnen FunktionärInnen und Sektoren der etablierten Parteien, Hoffnung auf die Unterstützung durch die Kronen Zeitung usw. Wir lehnen solche Schritte keineswegs vollkommen ab. Sie können als untergeordnete Begleitmaßnahmen in bestimmten Situationen durchaus eine positive Rolle spielen. Aber das Schwergewicht des Widerstandes muß auf einer proletarischen, klassenkämpferischen Perspektive liegen, um eine Volksabstimmung zu erzwingen. Die ganze Kampagne kann nur dann Erfolg haben, wenn sie sich auf die Organisierung von breiten Massenaktionen, von Agitationsveranstaltungen, die sich an die Massen richten, sowie in den Massen verankerte Basiskomitees konzentriert. Im Konkreten treten wir ein für:

 

* Die Gewerkschaften sowie die SchülerInnen- und StudentInnenvertretungen, wie auch fortschrittliche ImmigrantInnenorganisationen sollen für eine Ablehnung des Reformvertrages und eine Perspektive des Klassenkampfes dagegen (Streiks, Demonstrationen etc.) gewonnen werden.

 

* Wir schlagen koordinierte Agitationsinterventionen der an der Plattform beteiligten Organisationen bei den geplanten sogenannten „Informationsveranstaltungen“ der Regierung über den EU-Reformvertrag vor.

 

* Wir treten für die Organisierung von lokalen Aktionskomitees in Betrieben, Schulen, Universitäten und Stadtteilen ein – im Sinne der 900 lokalen Komitees für ein NEIN gegen die EU-Verfassung in Frankreich im Jahr 2005.

 

* Wir schlagen die Organisierung zumindest einer Großdemonstrationen sowie weiterer direkter Aktionen im Frühjahr vor.

 

 

 

Unsere Einschätzung der Plattform Volxabstimmung

 

 

 

Die Plattform Volxabstimmung gegen den EU-Reformvertrag ist ein breites Bündnis zahlreicher Organisationen und Einzelpersonen (u.a. Werkstatt für Frieden und Solidarität, SJ, KPÖ, KPÖ Steiermark, KSV, KJÖ, GLB, Initiative für eine sozialistische Politik der SPÖ, akin, ATTAC, ARGE Daten, Steirische Friedensplattform, diverse NGO’s, Leo Gabriel, Hermann Dworczak…). Politisch sind die meisten als reformistisch bzw. kleinbürgerlich zu charakterisieren, d.h. sie stehen für eine Politik innerhalb bzw. außerhalb der ArbeiterInnenbewegung, die glaubt, den Kapitalismus mittels schrittweiser Reformen verändern zu können.

 

Die Grundlage dieser Aktionseinheit ist die Forderung nach einer Volksabstimmung über den EU-Reformvertrag. Darüberhinaus haben die Organisationen unterschiedliche Positionen – teilweise sind sie für einen Austritt aus der EU und eine Perspektive eines neutralen Österreich (z.B. Werkstatt und KPÖ Steiermark), teilweise für eine „soziale und demokratische Reform der EU“ (z.B. ATTAC, KPÖ, SJ). Ebenso gibt es unterschiedliche Meinungen zur Frage der Sinnhaftigkeit eines Volksbegehrens für eine Volksabstimmung (v.a. IG EuroVision favorisiert ein solches) sowie der Propagierung einer alternativen EU-Verfassung und eines europäischen Bürgerkonvents (ATTAC, Leo Gabriel u.a.).

 

Die Frage, ob die Plattform tatsächlich zu einem kraftvollen Mittel des Widerstandes gegen den EU-Reformvertrag werden kann, die Frage ob sie somit unterstützenswert bleibt, entscheidet sich daran, ob sie sich für oder gegen eine Politik der Mobilisierung auf der Straße und der Gewinnung der ArbeiterInnenbewegung entscheidet.

 

 

 

Für ein Programm des Abwehrkampfes gegen die Generaloffensive des EU-Kapitals

 

 

 

Der Kampf gegen die Generaloffensive des Kapitals kann sich nicht nur auf den EU-Reformvertrag beschränken, sondern muß sich auf allen Fronten entfalten. Dazu braucht es eines klaren Programms des Abwehrkampfes.

 

 

 

Stoppt die sozialen Angriffe!

 

 

 

Arbeitslosigkeit, Unterbeschäftigung und Armut treffen Millionen und Abermillionen in Ost- und Westeuropa. Als vereinheitlichenden Schlüsselforderungen im Abwehrkampf schlagen wir vor:

 

* Europaweite Einführung der 35-Stunden-Woche bei vollem Lohn- und Personalausgleich!

 

* Ein Mindestlohn, der von der Arbeiterbewegung des jeweiligen Landes festgelegt wird.

 

* Kampf gegen Privatisierung des Öffentlichen Dienstes und Massenentlassungen!

 

*Für eine Programm gesellschaftlich nützlicher, öffentlicher Arbeiten unter Kontrolle der Beschäftigen, Arbeitslosen und KonsumentInnen!

 

* Progressive Besteuerung der Unternehmen und der Reichen zur Finanzierung dieser Maßnahmen.

 

 

 

Kampf dem Rassismus!

 

 

 

Die Spaltung der ArbeiterInnenklasse, der Unterdrückten entlang nationaler und ethnischer Linien ist ein zentrales Problem für einen gemeinsamen Abwehrkampf. Bewußt werden die Spaltungslinien durch die EU und die nationalen Bourgeoisien und Regierungen vertieft. ArbeiterInnen aus Osteuropa und aus den halb-kolonialen Ländern außerhalb der EU werden aus dem westlichen Arbeitsmarkt ausgeschlossen, als Beschäftigte zweiter Klasse behandelt oder in die Illegalität gedrängt, wo sie als Billiglöhner zu miesesten Bedingungen schuften müssen.

 

In der EU werden nationalen und ethnischen Minderheiten wie den Basken oder den Roma ihre demokratischen Rechte verwehrt. Moslemische, türkische, arabische aus dem Balkan oder aus Afrika stammende MigrantInnen sind systematischer Hetze und Unterdrückung ausgesetzt. Faschistische und rassistische Kräfte verbreiten das Gift des Antisemitismus. Dagegen kämpfen wir für:

 

* Gleiche und volle soziale und politische Rechte für alle, die in Europa leben.

 

* Wir kämpfen gegen alle Einreisekontrollen. Für offene Grenzen!

 

*Für Selbstverteidigungsorganisationen der rassistisch oder national Unterdrückten gegen faschistische oder rassistische Angriffe!

 

*Für einen gemeinsamen Kampf migrantischer und heimischer ArbeiterInnen gegen solche Angriffe!

 

* Weg mit allen reaktionären "Antiterrorgesetzen"!

 

 

 

Gegen Krieg und Besetzung!

 

 

 

Die EU und ihre Mitgliedsstaaten sind offene oder verdeckte Unterstützer der Besetzung des Iraks, Afghanistans und der US-Kriegsdrohungen gegen den Iran. Deswegen sind wir:

 

* Für den sofortigen Rückzug aller Truppen aus dem Irak, Afghanistan und Libanon!

 

* Unterstützung des legitimen Befreiungskampfes des irakischen und afghanischen Widerstandes gegen die Besatzer und des Widerstandes der PalästinenserInnen!

 

* Die EU-Staaten sind nicht nur passive Unterstützer der USA. Bosnien, Kosovo, Mazedonien sind praktisch Kolonien der EU. Deutschland führt die Besatzung Afghanistans mit an, Frankreich interveniert regelmäßig in Afrika. Und jetzt entsenden die EU und Österreich auch Truppenkontingente in den Tschad. Nein zu allen EU-Interventionen – egal ob unter US-Führung, EU oder UN-Flagge!

 

* Abzug aller im Ausland stationierten Truppen!

 

 

 

Nein zum Ausbau des Polizeistaates!

 

 

 

Unter dem Vorwand der Sicherheit der Bürger und des Krieges gegen den Terror bauen die herrschenden Klassen zielgerichtet einen Polizeistaat auf. Demokratische Rechte werden systematisch ausgehöhlt oder überhaupt abgeschafft.

 

*Gegen den allgegenwärtigen Überwachungsstaat! Weg mit den allgegenwärtigen Überwachungskameras in der Öffentlichkeit! Keine Online-Überwachung!

 

* Rücknahme von Rasterfahndung und Lauschangriff! Gegen alle sicherheitspolizeilichen Befugnisse! Selbstverteidigungseinheiten zum Schutz von Demonstrationen u.ä. gegen Angriffe durch die Polizei!

 

*Polizei raus aus den Stadtteilen! Aufrechterhaltung der öffentlichen Sicherheit durch Selbstverteidigungseinheiten, die auf Vollversammlungen in den Betrieben und Nachbarschaftsblocks gewählt und kontrolliert werden!

 

 

 

Die Verfassungsgebende Versammlung

 

 

 

Die Frage des EU-Reformvertrages ist eine demokratische Frage. Es geht dabei um die Verfaßtheit einer zukünftigen Föderation. Bislang hat die herrschende Klasse das über eine undemokratische oder plebiszitäre Weise zu tun versucht.

 

Auch alle zukünftigen Versuche der herrschenden Klasse werden einen ähnlichen Charakter haben, ja aufgrund der inneren Gegensätze der nationalen KapitalistInnenklassen haben müssen. Die Frage der Verfassung und der Demokratie kann und muß unter diesen Umständen zu einem Mittel der Mobilisierung der Massen gegen die herrschenden Klassen gemacht werden – nicht indem eine "andere" bürgerliche Verfassung im luftleeren Raum reformistischer Tagträume entworfen wird wie es ATTAC tut. Sondern indem eine konsequente demokratische Form des Vereinigungsprozesses eingefordert wird – eine Konstituierende Versammlung, die von allen EinwohnerInnen der EU wie der Staaten, die einem Vereinigten Europa beitreten wollen, gewählt wird.

 

Eine solche Losung hat einen revolutionär-demokratischen Charakter, wenn sie als Mittel der Mobilisierung betrachtet wird, als Mittel, die bürgerlich-demokratischen Hoffnungen und Illusionen gegen die Herrschenden zu bündeln und den notwendigen Schritt hin zum Sturz der herrschenden Klasse greifbarer zu machen.

 

 

 

Durch die europäische Revolution…

 

 

 

Ein entschlossener europaweiter Abwehrkampf der ArbeiterInnenklasse, der Jugend und der MigrantInnen wird früher oder später die Machtfrage aufwerfen: Wer hat in Europa das Sagen – die KapitalisteInnenklasse oder die Unterdrückten? Damit Sozialabbau, Rassismus und Krieg ein für alle mal aus der Welt geschaffen werden, müssen wir die Macht der herrschenden Klasse stürzen. Dafür brauchen wir eine europaweite, sozialistische Revolution. Eine solche Revolution wird nicht durch Anträge im Parlament und auch nicht durch friedlichen Druck auf der Straße stattfinden, sondern nur durch den Kampf und den bewaffneten Aufstand der Masse des Proletariats. Erst durch eine solche Revolution können wir UNSER Europa, ein sozialistisches Europa, aufbauen!

 

Schon vor 160 Jahren – im Jahre 1848 – erhoben sich die ArbeiterInnenklasse und die unterdrückten Schichten erstmals europaweit gegen die Herrschenden. Eine solche Revolution – aber diesmal mit einer klaren sozialistischen Perspektive – ist heute in Europa notwendiger denn je.

 

Die europäische Revolution wird kein spontaner Prozeß, der sich organisch aus einer schrittweiser Ausbreitung und Steigerung von Klassenkämpfen über die nationalstaatlichen Grenzen auf europäische Ebene ergibt. Genausowenig werden wir es mit einem verschwörerischen, gleichzeitigen Losschlagen in allen wesentlichen EU-Staaten zu tun haben.

 

Eine genaue Vorhersage des Entwicklungsganges der europäischen ArbeiterInnenrevolution ist natürlich unmöglich. Aber folgende Überlegungen lassen sich sehr wohl anstellen: Die wirtschaftliche Vereinigung Europas durch den Kapitalismus bewirkt notwendigerweise – wenn auch verspätet und verzerrt – eine Europäisierung des Klassenkampfes. Es wird früher oder später notwendigerweise – und dies ist der einzig fortschrittliche Aspekt der Herausbildung der EU, sozusagen ein von der Bourgeoisie unbeabsichtigter Nebeneffekt – zu einer internationalen Vernetzung von Kämpfen der ArbeiterInnen, Jugendlichen und MigrantInnen kommen. In Ansätzen konnten wir das bereits in der Vergangenheit bei einigen europaweiten Streiks sehen oder den Nachahmungen des Aufstandes der MigrantInnenjugendlichen in den Banlieues 2005 im Ausland.

 

Vor dem Hintergrund europaweiter Wellen des Klassenkampfes werden sich in einem oder mehreren Ländern – vielleicht sogar europaweit – vor-revolutionäre und revolutionäre Situationen herausbilden. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird eine in der ArbeiterInnenklasse verankerte revolutionäre Partei in einem oder mehreren Ländern den Sturz der herrschenden Klasse vorantreiben. Sollte die Revolution in einem oder mehreren Ländern siegen, wird dies rasch und umgehend massive Auswirkungen auf den Rest der Europäischen Union haben. Sie wird sowohl anfeuernd und inspirierend auf die anderen Klassenbrüder und –schwestern wirken als auch alarmierend auf die anderen KapitalistInnenklassen. Es ist daher wahrscheinlich, daß eine erfolgreich geschaffene sozialistische ArbeiterInnenrepublik in einem oder mehreren Ländern Europas nicht sehr lange als solches bestehen bleibt, sondern entweder sich ausbreiten und am ganzen Kontinent die „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“ errichten wird oder ziemlich rasch von der bewaffneten Konterrevolution zerschlagen wird.

 

Es liegt auf der Hand, daß eine siegreiche europäische Revolution enorme Auswirkungen auf die anderen imperialistischen Staaten – allen voran die USA – sowie die ganze Welt hätte. Im Jahre 1923 stellte Trotzki folgende Überlegungen an, die natürlich aufgrund der veränderten historischen Situation nicht eins zu eins auf heute übertragen werden können. Nichtsdestotrotz umreißen seine Überlegungen klar und scharf mögliche weltweite Auswirkungen:

 

Man darf nicht den Umstand übersehen, daß die Gefahr seitens US-Amerikas, das den Verfall Europas mit allen Mitteln fördert und sich schon bereit macht, das europäische Erbe anzutreten, die Notwendigkeit eines Zusammenschlusses der einander entgegenarbeitenden europäischen Völker und die Bildung der „Vereinigten Staaten der europäischen Arbeiter und Bauer“ besonders dringlich macht. Diese Gegenüberstellung von Amerika und Europa ergibt sich aus der Verschiedenheit der objektiven Lage der europäischen Länder und der transozeanischen mächtigen Republik und richtet sich natürlich keineswegs gegen die internationale Solidarität des Proletariats oder gegen die Interessen der amerikanischen Revolution. Im Gegenteil. Eine der Ursachen für die langsame Entwicklung der Revolution in der ganzen Welt besteht in der banalen europäischen Hoffnung auf den guten amerikanischen Onkel (Wilsonismus, philanthropische Unterstützung der hungernden Europäer, amerikanischen „Anleihen“ usw. usw.), je schneller die Volksmassen das Vertrauen zu den eigenen Kräften zurückgewinnen, desto enger werden sie sich unter der Parole „Union der Arbeiter- und Bauernrepubliken Europas“ zusammenschließen, desto schneller wird das Entwicklungstempo der Revolution sein – diesseits und auch jenseits des Ozeans. Ebenso wie der Sieg des Proletariats in Rußland einen gewaltigen Anstoß für die Entwicklung der Kommunistischen Parteien in Europa gegeben hat, wird auch der Sieg der europäischen Revolution – aber in einem unvergleichlich größeren Maße – ein Antrieb für die Revolution in Amerika und der ganzen Welt sein. Wenn wir oben die Aussichten für die amerikanische Revolution – unter Ausschluß europäischer Einflüsse – in die Ferne von Jahrzehnten gerückt sahen, so können wir, die Wechselwirkung der historischen Ereignisse berücksichtigend, mit Sicherheit behaupten, daß der revolutionäre Sieg in Europa die Machtstellung der amerikanischen Bourgeoisie in Amerika in wenigen Jahren erschüttern wird.“ [44]

 

 

 

… zu den Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa

 

 

 

Die Alternative der Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution und der LFI zum EU-Reformvertrag eines imperialistischen Europas ist also weder die reaktionäre Rückkehr zum "unabhängigen" Nationalstaat und die Wiedereinführung von Schilling, DM, Franc und anderer nationaler Währungen, noch die eines "sozialen", in Wirklichkeit sozialchauvinistischen Europa.

 

Die kapitalistische Vereinigung Europas, die Herausbildung europäischer Monopole und Unternehmensallianzen kann nicht bekämpft werden, indem man den reaktionären und utopischen Versuch unternimmt, das Rad der geschichtlichen Entwicklung zurückzudrehen.

 

Vielmehr geht es darum, die Formierung eines europäischen Imperialismus und europäischer Monopole zu bekämpfen, indem die ArbeiterInnenklasse selbst auf allen Ebenen eine politische Antwort auf das Problem der europäischen Einigung gibt. Das bedeutet den Kampf gegen die Angriffe der Herrschenden bündeln und für die Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa als Schritt zur Weltrevolution zu kämpfen.

 

Diese würden die Voraussetzungen schaffen für eine ausgewogene Reorganisation der europäischen und der Weltwirtschaft auf Grundlage demokratischer Planung. Zentrale Probleme wie die Massenarbeitslosigkeit können nur auf dieser Grundlage wirklich gelöst werden. Nur auf dieser Grundlage wäre auch die Überwindung langjähriger nationaler und rassistischer Unterdrückung möglich. Ein sozialistisches Europa würde z.B. das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Basken verwirklichen, es würde die Möglichkeiten einer Überwindung des nationalen Haders am Balkan schaffen, indem es einerseits den verschiedenen Nationen ihr Selbstbestimmungsrecht, andererseits die Möglichkeiten eines freiwilligen Zusammenschlusses schaffen würde, ohne daß die Profitinteressen der imperialistischen Kapitale wie der nationalen Bourgeoisien dazwischenkommen.

 

Folgende Deklaration des marxistischen Revolutionärs und Führers der Oktoberrevolution 1917, Leo Trotzki, gibt auch unsere Ziele der Revolution für die Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa wieder:

 

"In der Person der Opposition (der trotzkistischen Opposition, d. Red.) erklärt die Avantgarde des europäischen Proletariats seinen gegenwärtigen Herrschern: Um Europa zu vereinigen, ist es zu aller erst notwendig, die Macht euren Händen zu entreißen. Wir werden das machen. Wir werden Europa vereinigen. Wir werden es gegen die feindliche kapitalistische Welt vereinigen. Wir werden es in eine machtvollen Exerzierplatz des militanten Sozialismus verwandeln. Wir werden es zu einem Eckpfeiler der Sozialistischen Weltföderation machen." [45]

 

 

 

Für neue revolutionäre Parteien, für die 5. Internationale!

 

 

 

Eine revolutionäre Perspektive bleibt eine Illusion, wenn keine Kampfparteien national und international für die Revolution existieren. Die Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution macht sich keine Illusionen darüber, daß die Ausbeuterklasse freiwillig und ohne Gewaltanwendung ihre Herrschaft abtreten wird. Nur eine sozialistische Revolution in Österreich und weltweit, nur der bewaffnete Aufstand der ArbeiterInnenklasse kann das Tor zu einer Zukunft der Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit aufstoßen. Ein solcher Aufstand wird nicht spontan zustande kommen, sondern verlangt eine systematische Vorbereitung und Organisierung der Revolution. Dafür bedarf es einer Partei – einer Organisation, in der die bewußtesten Teile der ArbeiterInnenklasse und der Jugend unter dem Banner der Revolution organisiert sind. Die Schaffung einer solchen Partei der sozialistischen Revolution in Österreich und weltweit – der 5. Internationale – ist daher die vordringlichste Aufgabe aller ArbeiterInnen und Jugendlichen, die mit uns für eine sozialistische Zukunft kämpfen wollen. Der Aufbau einer solchen Partei und Internationale duldet keinen Aufschub. Wir können damit nicht warten, bis die Revolution vor der Türe steht. Denn – wie die Geschichte es uns zeigte – ist es dann zu spät, um ernsthafte politische und organisatorische Vorbereitungen zu treffen!

 

Vereinigen wir uns zu einer internationalen Partei des Proletariats, zu einer Fünften Internationalen! Auf in den Kampf für ein sozialistisches Europa! Auf in den Kampf für eine sozialistische Welt!

 



[1] EU-Kommissionspräsident Jose Manuel Barroso, Telegraph, 18.07.2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11/weu111.xml

[5] Reform treaty: cosmetic changes to avoid referendums, says Giscard d'Estaing, 17.7.2007, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/003-9201-197-07-29-901-20070716IPR09200-16-07-2007-2007-false/default_de.htm

[6] Die im Dezember 2007 unterzeichneten Verträge werden im folgendem nach der Version im „Amtsblatt der Europäischen Union, 17.12.2007“ zitiert (veröffentlicht auf der Homepage http://eur-lex.europa.eu/de/treaties/index.htm).

[7] Schlußakte Erklärung Nr. 30. Erklärung zu Artikel 104 des Vertrags über die Arbeitsweise der Europäischen Union

[8] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Artikel 86

[9] Pierre Khalfa: Veränderungsvertrag der EU: Sowohl Methode als auch Inhalt sind inakzeptabel (August 2007)

[10] Protokoll über die ständige Strukturierte Zusammenarbeit nach Artikel 28a des Vertrags über die Europäische Union, Artikel 1

[11] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Artikel 28b

[12] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Artikel 28a

[13] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Artikel 28a

[14] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Solidaritätsklausel Artikel 188r

[15] Michael Pröbsting: ‚Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang‘. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 39 bzw. 40

[16] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Artikel 28a

[17] Schlußakte, Erklärung Nr. 17. Erklärung zum Vorrang

[18] Siehe Centrum für Europäische Politik: Nizza – Verfassung – Reformvertrag, www.cep.eu/442.html

[19] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen …. Artikel 8 B

[20] Vertrag von Lissabon zur Änderungen … . Präambel

[21] Zur Rolle des Vatikans als Ideologielieferant für den europäischen Imperialismus siehe u.a. Michael Pröbsting: Das Christentum als Rechtfertigungsideologie des imperialistischen “Krieg gegen den Terror”; in: Unter der Fahne der Revolution (Theoretisches Journal der Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution), Nr. 1, September 2007, S. 15-20; www.sozialistische-revolution.org

[22] Unter Produktivkräften verstehen MarxistInnen sowohl die materiellen Mitteln und Resultate der Produktion – also Produktionsmittel (Maschinen etc.) und Waren – als auch die Menschen, die die Produktionsmittel bedienen und zu diesem Zweck bestimmte Formen der gesellschaftlichen Arbeitsteilung eingehen. Es liegt in der Natur der Sache, daß Produktionsmittel und Arbeiter einander gegenseitig bedingen. Vom kapitalistischen Gesichtspunkt aus gesehen besteht der Zweck der Anwendung der Arbeiter an den kapitalistischen Produktionsmitteln darin, Waren und dadurch Mehrwert zu produzieren. Produktivkräfte sind also nicht bloß eine Ansammlung von materiellen Dingen, sondern beinhalten auch und vor allem die Menschen und ihre Lebensbedingungen. Näheres dazu siehe in Michael Pröbsting: Die widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte im Kapitalismus; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus 37 (2007)

[23] Für 1971-2000 siehe World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2002, S. 234; für 2001-2006 siehe United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2007, S. 2 bzw. United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2008, S. 1. Die Zahlenreihe zwischen 1971-2000 beruht auf Weltbank-Berechnungen des GDP zu konstanten Preisen und Wechselkursen von 1995. Die Zahlenreihe zwischen 2001-2005 beruht auf UN-Berechnungen des GDP zu konstanten Preisen und Wechselkursen von 2000. Die 2.7% ergeben sich aus dem arithmetischen Mittel der Angaben für die Jahre 2001-2006 (1.6%, 1.9%, 2.7%, 4.0% 3.4% sowie 3.9%).

[24] World Bank Indicators 2005, http://www.worldbank.org/data/wdi2005/wditext/Section4.htm, World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.1 http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm

[25] Für die Jahre 1970-2000: OECD - Understanding Economic Growth (2004), http://213.253.134.29/oecd/pdfs/browseit/1104011E.PDF, S. 18f.; Die Statistik bezieht sich auf die 24 Mitgliedsstaaten der OECD. Sie umfaßt daher nicht nur imperialistische Länder, sondern auch Staaten – wie Ungarn, Tschechische Republik, die Slowakei, Mexiko oder Neuseeland – die einen halbkolonialen Charakter besitzen. Diese Länder hatten in den letzten Jahren eine Wachstumsrate, die über dem Durchschnitt der imperialistischen Ökonomien lag. Insoferne verzerren sie diesen OECD-Durchschnitt etwas nach oben. Nichtsdestotrotz sind diese OECD-Zahlen nützliche Annäherungswerte, da die halbkolonialen Staaten innerhalb der OECD gegenüber den imperialistischen Ländern nicht allzu sehr ins Gewicht fallen. Die Angaben für 2000-2005 beziehen sich – mit Ausnahme jener für die EU – auf: World Bank: World Development Report 2007, S. 295. Für die Jahre 1960-1969 haben wir die OECD-Statistik zitiert aus: Robert Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble. The US in the World Economy, London 2002, S. 47. Bei diesen Angaben beziehen sich die Zahlen für die imperialistischen Staaten auf die G-7. Die Angaben für die EU-15 für die Jahre 1960-1969 beziehen sich nur auf Deutschland. Die Angaben für die EU-15 für die Jahre 1999-2005 beziehen sich auf die 11 zur Euro-Area gehörenden EU-Staaten und entstammen folgender Quelle: European Commission: THE EU ECONOMY 2006 REVIEW, S.61, http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2006/ee606_en.pdf

[26] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band I, MEW 23, S. 605

[27] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 260 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[28] Begrifflich ist die Konkurrenz nichts als die innere Natur des Kapitals, seine wesentliche Bestimmung, erscheinend und realisiert als Wechselwirkung der vielen Kapitalien aufeinander, die innere Tendenz als äußerliche Notwendigkeit. (Kapital existiert und kann nur existieren als viele Kapitalien und seine Selbstbestimmung erscheint daher als Wechselwirkung derselben aufeinander.)“ Karl Marx: Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1858); in: MEW 42, S. 327

[29] Karl Marx: Kapiatl Band I, MEW 23, S. 618

[30] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 223 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[31] World Bank: World Development Indicators 2004, S. 220, World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.9 http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm

[32] Barclays Capital (2006) “Global Outlook: Implications for Financial Markets”, Economic and Market Strategy, December 2006, S. 17

[33] Zur Intensivierung der imperialistischen Ausbeutung der halbkolonialen Welt in der Periode der Globalisierung siehe auch Michael Pröbsting: Imperialismus, Globalisierung und die Ausbeutung der Halbkolonien; in: ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt Nr. 154, Oktober 2007, http://arbeiterinnenstandpunkt.net/phpwcms/index.php?id=18,332,0,0,1,0

[34] Martin Suchanek/Michael Pröbsting: EU in der Krise. Soziales oder sozialistisches Europa?; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 6

[35] Martin Suchanek/Michael Pröbsting: EU in der Krise. Soziales oder sozialistisches Europa?; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 7

[36] siehe: „Attacs 10 Prinzipien für einen demokratischen EU-Vertrag“, http://www.attac.at/uploads/media/10_Prinzipien_fuer_einen_demokratischen_EU-Vertrag_02.pdf

[37] Christian Felber: Mein europäischer Traum; in: DER STANDARD, 5.12.2007

[38] ELP: In the name of a democratic and social Europe: “THE GOVERNMENT’S TREATY MUST BE PUT TO REFERENDUM IN THE EU”, 19. October 2007, http://www.european-left.org/nc/english/news/news_archive/news_archive/browse/1/zurueck/news-archive/artikel/in-the-name-of-a-democratic-and-social-europe-the-governments-treaty-must-be-put-to-referendu/

[39] „Sozialistische Jugend fordert europaweite Volksabstimmung zu EU-Reformvertrag“ (13.12.2007); http://www.sjoe.at/content/oest/presse/pas/article/3641.html

[40] Interview mit Karin Scheele (Leiterin der SPÖ-Delegation im Europäischen Parlament): „Die europäische Integration braucht ein fundamentales Vertragswerk…“ in: Sozialistische Jugend: TROTZDEM, Dezember 2007, S. 8

[41] Dieser Fehler trifft im Grunde auch auf die anderen, nicht der ELP angeschlossenen, kommunistischen Parteien zu. Sie glauben zwar nicht an eine Reformierung der EU, sondern sind für den Austritt der einzelnen Mitgliedsstaaten. Aber auch sie halten die Schaffung eines friedlichen Europas – eben ohne Rahmen der EU – ohne vorhergehenden Umsturz der kapitalistischen Gesellschaftsordnung für möglich. Siehe z.B. die jüngste Erklärung: „Im tiefen Vertrauen, dass ein anderes Europa möglich ist, ein Europa der Zusammenarbeit, des wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Fortschritts und des Friedens, vereinbaren die Kommunistischen und Arbeiterparteien und weiteren fortschrittlichen Linkskräfte …“ (Kommunistische Parteien fordern Volksabstimmung über den EU-Vertrag, www.kominform.at)

[42] Siehe dazu auch Roman Birke: Welches Europa? Europa zwischen sozialer Rhetorik und imperialistischer Praxis; in: ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt Nr. 141, Jänner 2006

[43] Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin: Das Militärprogramm der proletarischen Revolution (1916); in: LW 23, S.99f.

[44] Leo Trotzki: Über die Aktualität der Parole „Vereinigte Staaten von Europa“ (1923); in: Leo Trotzki, Wohin treibt England/Europa und Amerika, Verlag Neuer Kurs, Berlin 1972, S. 95f. Trotzki’s Konzeption der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa wurde von der Kommunistischen Internationale im Juni 1923 offiziell angenommen und erst auf Stalin’s Druck im Jahre 1928 verworfen.

[45] Leo Trotzki: Disarmament and The United States of Europe (1929), in: Trotsky Writings 1929, S. 357 (unsere Übersetzung)

Die Frage der Vereinigung Europas im Lichte der marxistischen Theorie (2008)

Zur Frage eines supranationalen Staatsapparates des EU-Imperialismus und der marxistischen Staatstheorie.

Die Diskussion zur Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa bei Lenin und Trotzki und ihre Anwendung unter den heutigen Bedingungen des Klassenkampfes.

von Michael Pröbsting, www.thecommunists.net


(Die Graphiken in diesem Dokument können in der unten angehängten pdf Version eingesehen werden.)

 

Vorwort der Redaktion: Die folgende Studie wurde erstmals im April 2008 in der Zeitschrift „Unter der Fahne der Revolution“ (FAREV) Nr. 2/3 veröffentlicht. Das FAREV war das theoretische Organ der Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution (LSR), die damalige österreichische Sektion der Liga für die Fünfte Internationale (LFI).

Der Autor, Genosse Pröbsting, war damals Mitglied der internationalen Leitung der LFI. Er wurde im April 2011 gemeinsam mit anderen Genossinnen und Genossen von der Mehrheit der LFI-Führung bürokratisch ausgeschlossen, nachdem sie wenige Wochen zuvor eine Fraktion gegründet hatten, um der zentristischen Degeneration der LFI entgegenzuwirken. Die ausgeschlossenen Genossinnen und Genossen gründeten daraufhin umgehend in Österreich die Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation zur Befreiung (RKOB). Iim April 2012 schlossen sie sich gemeinsam mit Schwesterorganisationen in Pakistan, Sri Lanka und den USA zu einer internationalen Organisation – der Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) – zusammen.

Wie aus dem Dokument ersichtlich wurde es in der Zeit der Kampagne gegen den EU-Vertrag verfaßt. Wir haben uns zur Wiederveröffentlichung der Studie entschlossen, da sie in mehrerer Hinsicht von höchst aktueller Bedeutung ist. Die in ihr enthaltene marxistische Analyse der inneren Widersprüche der imperialistischen EU behält volle Gültigkeit. Auch die Auseinandersetzung mit der Haltung der marxistischen Klassiker zur europäischen Einigung sowie der revolutionären Taktik heute hat nichts an Aktualität eingebüßt.

 

* * *

 

In unserer Broschüre „EU-Reformvertrag – Hintergründe und revolutionäre Antworten“ haben wir den widersprüchlichen Charakter der Herausbildung eines supranationalen Staatsapparates des EU-Imperialismus behandelt. In diesem Beitrag wollen wir uns – nach einer kurzen Darlegung unserer Position zum EU-Vertrag – mit einigen damit verbundenen theoretischen Fragen auseinandersetzen.

* Welche Faktoren befördern und welche Faktoren behindern den Herausbildungsprozeß eines supranationalen Staatsapparates des EU-Imperialismus?

* Ist eine Vereinigung Europas auf kapitalistischer Grundlage überhaupt möglich?

* Auf welchen strategischen Überlegungen beruht die marxistische Losung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“?

* Welche Haltung nahmen Lenin und Trotzki zur Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa ein und welche Überlegungen steckten dahinter?

 

I.             Die Haltung der marxistischen Revolutionäre zum EU-Vertrag

 

Beginnen wir mit einer kurzen Zusammenfassung der Position der Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution (LSR) zum EU-Vertrag in einigen wenigen Thesen: [1]

1.            Der EU-Vertrag ist ein Anschlag auf die Interessen der Arbeiterklasse und aller unterdrückten Schichten - der Lohnabhängigen, der Jugendlichen, der Migranten. Er dient ausschließlich den Interessen der Konzerne und Machteliten in Europa und in Österreich. Er bedeutet eine Verschärfung der neoliberalen und militaristischen Offensive der herrschenden Klasse. Mit anderen Worten: er bedeutet für uns mehr Krieg, mehr Sozialabbau und weniger Demokratie.

2.            Deswegen tritt die LSR für einen massiven Widerstand gegen den EU-Vertrag ein: Demonstrationen, Streiks bis hin zum Generalstreik– in Österreich und europaweit. Wir fordern die Arbeiterbewegung – die Gewerkschaften, die verschiedenen Teilorganisationen der Sozialdemokratie usw. – auf, in diesem Sinne aktiv zu werden. Wir sind für den Aufbau von Aktionskomitees in den Betrieben, Schulen und Universitäten. Ebenso treten wir für eine europaweite Koordinierung des Widerstandes ein.

3.            Da die Kräfte, die eine solche klassenkämpferische Orientierung umsetzen würden, gegenwärtig sehr schwach sind, unterstützen wir die Forderung nach einer Volkabstimmung über den EU-Vertrag und arbeiten – als linker, revolutionärer Flügel – innerhalb der Plattform Volxabstimmung mit.

4.            Unsere Alternative zur imperialistischen EU ist weder die Rückkehr zum kleinen imperialistischen Nationalstaat Österreich noch eine „soziale, friedliche Reformierung“ der EU. Unsere Alternative ist die Zerschlagung der EU durch eine europaweite Revolution und der Aufbau der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa.

Zusammengefaßt lauten unsere Hauptlosungen:

* EU-Vertrag bedeutet mehr Krieg, mehr Sozialabbau und weniger Demokratie!

* Kampf dem EU-Vertrag! Für eine Volksabstimmung!

* Für Demonstrationen und Streiks gegen den EU-Vertrag – in Österreich und europaweit! Für den Aufbau von Aktionskomitees!

* Für eine europaweite sozialistische Revolution! Für die Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa!

 

II.           Einige Gesichtspunkte der marxistischen Staatstheorie

 

Wir haben in unserer Broschüre zum EU-Vertrag sowie auch an anderer Stelle den Prozeß der Herausbildung eines supranationalen – also nationalstaats-übergreifenden – EU-Staatsapparates und seine inneren Widersprüchlichkeiten festgestellt. [2] Doch bevor wir diese Frage genauer behandeln, ist es vonnöten, zuerst einige Worte über das Wesen des kapitalistischen Staates zu verlieren.

 

II.1.        Basis und Überbau. Staat und Ökonomie im Kapitalismus

 

Der Kapitalismus als System stellt die Gesamtheit sozialer Ausbeutungs- und Unterdrückungsverhältnisse einer in gegensätzliche – herrschende und beherrschte – Klassen gespaltene Gesellschaftsformation (Marx) dar. Die Basis dieser Gesellschaftsformation verkörpern die ökonomischen Produktionsverhältnisse – das Privateigentum an Produktionsmitteln –, welche der besitzenden Kapitalistenklasse die unentgeltliche Aneignung eines Mehrwertes (dem Profit) aus dem von der Arbeiterklasse geschaffenen gesellschaftlichen Wertprodukt erlaubt. Auf der Grundlage dieser ökonomischen Produktionsbedingungen erhebt sich ein politischer und ideologischer Überbau (Staat, Kultur etc.). Karl Marx beschrieb dieses Verhältnis folgendermaßen:

Die spezifische ökonomische Form, in der unbezahlte Mehrarbeit aus den unmittelbaren Produzenten ausgepumpt wird, bestimmt das Herrschafts- und Knechtschaftsverhältnis, wie es unmittelbar aus der Produktion selbst hervorwächst und seinerseits bestimmend auf sie zurückwirkt. Hierauf aber gründet sich die ganze Gestaltung des ökonomischen, aus den Produktionsverhältnissen selbst hervorwachsenden Gemeinwesens und damit zugleich seine spezifische politische Gestalt. Es ist jedesmal das unmittelbare Verhältnis der Eigentümer der Produktionsbedingungen zu den unmittelbaren Produzenten - ein Verhältnis, dessen jedesmalige Form stets naturgemäß einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe der Art und Weise der Arbeit und daher ihrer gesellschaftlichen Produktivkraft entspricht -, worin wir das innerste Geheimnis, die verborgne Grundlage der ganzen gesellschaftlichen Konstruktion und daher auch der politischen Form des Souveränitäts- und Abhängigkeitsverhältnisses, kurz, der jedesmaligen spezifischen Staatsform finden. Dies hindert nicht, daß dieselbe ökonomische Basis - dieselbe den Hauptbedingungen nach - durch zahllos verschiedne empirische Umstände, Naturbedingungen, Racenverhältnisse, von außen wirkende geschichtliche Einflüsse usw., unendliche Variationen und Abstufungen in der Erscheinung zeigen kann, die nur durch Analyse dieser empirisch gegebnen Umstände zu begreifen sind.[3]

Der Staat ist jedoch nicht einfach ein Beiwerk zur Ökonomie, sondern stellt eine notwendige Voraussetzung für das Funktionieren der wirtschaftlichen Ausbeutung einer Klasse durch die andere dar. In der Tat könnten die Ausbeutungsverhältnisse keinen Tag lang bestehen bleiben, würde es nicht einen sich über diese ökonomische Basis erhebenden politischen und ideologischen Überbau geben. Trotzki merkte einmal zu Recht an, daß „eine reine Ökonomie also eine Fiktion (ist)[4] Dies beginnt bei der Rechtssicherheit, die der Unternehmer beim Warenhandel benötigt und die durch staatliche Organe gewährleistet wird und geht bis zur Rolle des Staates bei der Aufrechterhaltung öffentlicher Dienstleistungen und einer Infrastruktur, ohne die der wirtschaftliche Organismus des Kapitalismus nicht pulsieren könnte. Darüberhinaus zeichnet sich die kapitalistische Klassengesellschaft durch enorme, scharfe Gegensätze aus. Warum sollten sich Arbeiter Entlassungen, Lohnkürzungen, Preiserhöhungen etc. gefallen lassen, während sich die Kapitalisten unabläßlich und offensichtlich bereichern? Warum sollten sich Migrant in allen Lebensbereichen als Bürger 2. Klasse benachteiligen und überausbeuten lassen? Warum sollten sich Jugendliche in der Schule von einem einzelnen Direktor (bzw. der über diesem stehenden Schulbehörde) Ablauf und Inhalt des Unterrichts aufzwingen lassen? Die Antwort darauf lautet: weil es einen bürgerlichen Klassenstaat und eine bürgerliche Klassenideologie gibt.

Der bürgerliche Staat zwingt die unterdrückten Klassen mit seinen ungeheuren Machtmitteln zur Respektierung der herrschenden Verhältnisse.

Die bisherige, sich in Klassengegensätzen bewegende Gesellschaft hatte den Staat nötig, das heißt eine Organisation der jedesmaligen ausbeutenden Klasse zur Aufrechterhaltung ihrer äußeren Produktionsbedingungen, also namentlich zur gewaltsamen Niederhaltung der ausgebeuteten Klasse in den durch die bestehende Produktionsweise gegebnen Bedingungen der Unterdrückung (Sklaverei, Leibeigenschaft oder Hörigkeit, Lohnarbeit).[5]

Der Kapitalist weiß daß er bzw. sie sich jederzeit auf die Hilfe der Polizei, der Justiz und anderer Staatsorgane verlassen kann und läßt dies auch die Lohnabhängigen wissen. Das gleiche gilt für alle anderen gesellschaftlichen Unterdrückungsbereiche. Marxisten bezeichnen daher den Staat als „besondere Machtorganisation, eine Organisation der Gewalt zur Unterdrückung einer Klasse.[6]

Ebenso dient die bürgerliche Klassenideologie der Aufrechterhaltung der herrschenden Verhältnisse. Die bürgerliche Klassenideologie setzt an den von der Arbeiterklasse spontan als undurchschaubar empfundenen kapitalistischen Ausbeutungs- und Unterdrückungsverhältnisse an – dem Warenfetischismus, der sich immerwährend als gesellschaftlicher Nebel über die kapitalistischen Produktionsverhältnisse erhebt. [7] Auf dieser Grundlage hämmert der bürgerliche Herrschaftsapparat den unterdrückten Klassen permanent zahlreiche Rechtfertigungs- und Vertröstungsideologien ein – angefangen von der Schule bis hin zu den Medien. Lenin beschrieb diesen Sachverhalt folgendermaßen:

Der Kapitalismus wäre kein Kapitalismus, wenn er nicht einerseits die Massen zu einem Zustand der Geducktheit, Unterdrücktheit, Einschüchterung, Zersplitterung (im Dorfe!) und Unwissenheit verurteilte und wenn er nicht andererseits der Bourgeoisie einen gigantischen Lügen- und Betrugsapparat in die Hände gebe, einen Apparat, um die Arbeiter- und Bauernmassen zu betrügen, sie zu verdummen usw. [8]

Kapitalismus setzt also nicht nur die Herstellung und Wiederherstellung von Waren und Kapital voraus, sondern auch – und damit naturnotwendig verbunden – die Herstellung und Wiederherstellung der gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen, die ersteres erst ermöglichen.

Der Prozeß der Reproduktion ist nicht nur ein Prozeß der Reproduktion der materiellen Elemente der Produktion, sondern ein Prozeß der Reproduktion der Produktionsverhältnisse selbst.[9]

 

II.2.        Der Staat als Maschine der Klassenherrschaft

 

Doch damit der Staat auch tatsächlich die kapitalistischen Ausbeutungs- und Unterdrückungsverhältnisse aufrechterhalten und verteidigen kann, bedarf er einer entsprechenden inneren Gestaltung. Der kapitalistische Staat kann nur deswegen diese Funktion erfüllen, weil er auch tatsächlich ein von oben nach unten, streng hierarchisch gegliedertes und eng mit dem Kapital verwobenes Instrument der Klassenherrschaft ist.

Ihrem Wesen nach ist der kapitalistische Staat eine bürokratisch-militärische Maschinerie”. [10] Wenn wir vom kapitalistischen Überbau, vom bürgerlichen Herrschaftsapparat sprechen, so meinen wir damit nicht nur die Repressionsorgane (wie Armee, Polizei, Gericht etc.), sondern auch den gesamten staatlichen Verwaltungsapparat, Ausbildungssektor usw. Darüberhinaus umfaßt der Herrschaftsapparat der Bourgeoisie nicht nur die staatlichen Organe, sondern auch diverse nicht-staatliche Organe wie Medien, Kirche u.ä. Nur diese Herrschaftsmaschinerie in ihrer Gesamtheit ist in der Lage, die von scharfen Gegensätzen zerfressene Klassengesellschaft zusammenzuhalten.

Wieso aber wird unter solchen Umstände das Gleichgewicht im Aufbau der Klassengesellschaft erreicht? Wieso zerfällt sie nicht in jedem Moment? (…) Es muß etwas geben, was die Rolle eines Reifens spielt, der die Klassen zusammenhält und die Gesellschaft hindert, zu bersten, auseinanderzufallen, sich endgültig zu spalten. Ein solcher Reifen ist der Staat. Der Staat ist eine Organisation, die mit unzähligen Fäden die ganze Gesellschaft umspinnt und sie in dem Netz ihrer Fangarme hält. Aber was ist das für eine Organisation? (…) Die staatliche Organisation ist ganz und gar eine Organisation der ‚herrschenden Klassen‘.[11]

Diese Maschinerie entstand in Europa in der Zeit der Feudalherrschaft und beruht auf dem Prinzip der Herrschaft von oben nach unten – also einem strikt autoritären Aufbau – aus.

Die zentralisierte Staatsmacht, mit ihren allgegenwärtigen Organen stehende Armee, Polizei, Bürokratie, Geistlichkeit, Richterstand, Organe, geschaffen nach dem Plan einer systematischen und hierarchischen Teilung der Arbeit – stammt her aus den Zeiten der absoluten Monarchie, wo sie der entstehenden Bourgeoisgesellschaft als eine mächtige Waffe in ihren Kämpfen gegen den Feudalismus diente. (...) änderte sich ihr politischer Charakter gleichzeitig mit den ökonomischen Veränderungen der Gesellschaft. In dem Maß, wie der Fortschritt der modernen Industrie den Klassengegensatz zwischen Kapital und Arbeit entwickelte, erweiterte, vertiefte, in demselben Maß erhielt die Staatsmacht mehr und mehr den Charakter einer öffentlichen Gewalt zur Unterdrückung der Arbeiterklasse, einer Maschine der Klassenherrschaft.“ [12]

Aufbau des Staates und herrschende Ideologie entsprechen also der Anatomie der ökonomischen Basis. Die Diktatur des Unternehmers im Betrieb findet ihr Gegenstück in der Diktatur des Direktors an der Schule, des Abteilungsleiters in der Verwaltung oder des Medienkonzerninhabers über die bürgerlichen Publikationen. Das gleiche schließlich auch in der zentralen Stellung Gottes in der Religion oder des „Recht des Stärkeren“ in diversen flachen Alltagsphilosophien.

Dieses Prinzip der Herrschaft von oben nach unten sehen wir in allen Teilbereichen des Staatsapparates – angefangen von der Armee und der Polizei, der Justiz bis hin zur Verwaltung, der Schule oder der Jugendfürsorge. Überall haben wir das Kommando von oben nach unten, nirgendwo werden die Leiter von der Basis – den Lohnabhängigen, der Jugendlichen usw. – von unten nach oben kontrolliert oder sind gar abwählbar.

Auch die demokratische Form der bürgerlichen Herrschaft – der Parlamentarismus – ändert nichts am autoritären Charakter des Staatsapparates. Denn die Parlamentswahlen ermöglichen bloß die Wahl der obersten Spitzenvertretern im Staat. Wie diese dann ihre Macht ausüben, ob sie ihre Wahlversprechen einhalten, welche Entscheidungen in den 4-5 Jahren zwischen den Wahlen stattfinden – all das entzieht sich der Kontrolle oder gar der Mitbestimmung der Bevölkerung.

In Wirklichkeit stellt die herrschende Klasse über unzähligen Mechanismen sicher, daß die politischen Machthaber im Interesse des Kapitals arbeiten – angefangen von Posten, Karrieremöglichkeiten, direkte Bestechung, zukünftige Jobs in Konzernen usw. Das Parlament ist daher auch nicht das wirkliche Machtzentrum. Denn in Wirklichkeit koordinieren die führenden Politiker die allermeisten wichtigen Entscheidungen in informellen Gesprächen mit Vertreteren der besitzenden Klasse – dem Kapital. (Industriellenvereinigung, Wirtschaftsbund, Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute, sogenannte unabhängige Experten, die in ihrer beruflichen Existenz zumeist direkt von Aufträgen von Regierung und Konzernen abhängen, EU-Offizielle usw.).

Bürgerliche Herrschaft bedeutet keineswegs, daß die mächtigsten Kapitalisten direkt die Regierungsgeschäfte leiten. Für diese Aufgaben halten sie sich politische Funktionäre (Schüssel ist als jahrzehntelanger Wirtschaftsbundfunktionär ein Paradebeispiel dafür). Im Umfeld der Herrschenden befindet sich jedoch stets ein Netz von Zuträgern, Interessensvertretern, Beratern, Medienmagnaten usw., die über unzählige Verbindungen, Aufträge, Geschäftsinteressen usw. miteinander verwoben sind. Zusätzlich gibt es stark entwickelte Institutionen der Herrschenden, deren Wort starkes Gewicht im Staatsapparat hat. So hat z.B. die Industriellenvereinigung oft Vertreter in diversen Expertenkommissionen, die von der Regierung eingesetzt werden.

Natürlich gibt es auch Interessenskonflikte innerhalb der herrschenden Klasse, die sich dann entsprechend in Fraktionsbildungen innerhalb der politischen Elite niederschlagen. Ihren Ausdruck findet diese dann in vielfältigster Form – angefangen von unterschiedlichen bürgerlichen politischen Parteien, unterschiedlichen „Expertenmeinungen“, unterschiedliche Zeitungen und Kommentare „angesehener“ Journalisten, gegensätzlichen Vorhersagen von Wirtschaftsforschungs- oder auch Meinungsforschungsinstituten usw.

Hinzu kommt der stetige Kampf zwischen den Klassen und zwar zuerst und vor allem zwischen der Bourgeoisie und dem Proletariat, aber auch den Interessenskonflikten der Zwischenschichten und –klassen wie der Bauernschaft, dem städtischen Kleinbürgertum, den Mittelschichten usw. Der Staat als der Staat der herrschenden Klasse ist der ideelle Gesamtkapitalist[13] Aber um eben seine Rolle als ideellen Gesamtkapitalisten erfüllen zu können, muß er in der einen oder anderen Form auch Kompromisse mit anderen Klassen eingehen, dieses oder jenes Zugeständnis machen oder bestimmte Allianzen schmieden, ohne deswegen seine grundlegende Funktion als Maschine des Kapitalistenklasse in Frage zu stellen.

Sollte sich dieses parlamentarische Netz bürgerlicher Herrschaft einmal als zu schwach erweisen, um die soziale Sprengkraft gegensätzlicher Klasseninteressen abzufedern oder sollte sich gar eine linke Mehrheit im Parlament erdreisten, radikale fortschrittliche Gesetz zu beschließen, dann greift die herrschende Klasse auf ihre sicheren Bataillone zurück: den Repressionsapparat (Polizei, Armee, Geheimdienst, paramilitärische Verbände). Unzählige Beispiele wie der Februar 1934 in Österreich oder auch der Oktoberstreik 1950, der Staatstreich in Chile gegen die linke Regierung Allende 1973 oder eines General Francos in Spanien 1936 legen beredetes Zeugnis davon ab.

Der Staat ist also eine kapitalistische Herrschaftsmaschine sowohl unter den Bedingungen der offenen Diktatur (Militärdiktatur, Faschismus etc.) als auch der bürgerlichen Demokratie. Während also reformistische Politiker und Theoretiker behaupten, daß der Klassencharakter des bürgerlich-demokratischen Staates neutral sei – also bei „richtiger“ Besetzung der Spitzenposten im Interesse der Arbeiterklasse ausnützbar sei – betonten die marxistischen Klassiker immer wieder den reaktionären, unreformierbaren Charakter des Staates:

Die höchste Staatsform, die demokratische Republik, die in unsern modernen Gesellschaftsverhältnissen mehr und mehr unvermeidliche Notwendigkeit wird und die Staatsform ist, in der der letzte Entscheidungskampf zwischen Proletariat und Bourgeoisie allein ausgekämpft werden kann - die demokratische Republik weiß offiziell nichts mehr von Besitzunterschieden. In ihr übt der Reichtum seine Macht indirekt, aber um so sichrer aus. Einerseits in der Form der direkten Beamtenkorruption, wofür Amerika klassisches Muster, andrerseits in der Form der Allianz von Regierung und Börse, die sich um so leichter vollzieht, je mehr die Staatsschulden steigen und je mehr Aktiengesellschaften nicht nur den Transport, sondern auch die Produktion selbst in ihren Händen konzentrieren und wiederum in der Börse ihren Mittelpunkt finden. Dafür ist außer Amerika die neueste französische Republik ein schlagendes Beispiel, und auch die biedre Schweiz hat auf diesem Felde das ihrige geleistet. Daß aber zu diesem Bruderbund von Regierung und Börse keine demokratische Republik erforderlich, beweist außer England das neue deutsche Reich, wo man nicht sagen kann, wen das allgemeine Stimmrecht höher gehoben hat, Bismarck oder Bleichröder. Und endlich herrscht die besitzende Klasse direkt mittelst des allgemeinen Stimmrechts. Solange die unterdrückte Klasse, also in unserm Fall das Proletariat, noch nicht reif ist zu seiner Selbstbefreiung, solange wird sie, der Mehrzahl nach, die bestehende Gesellschaftsordnung als die einzig mögliche erkennen und politisch der Schwanz der Kapitalistenklasse, ihr äußerster linker Flügel sein. In dem Maß aber, worin sie ihrer Selbstemanzipation entgegenreift, in dem Maß konstituiert sie sich als eigne Partei, wählt ihre eignen Vertreter, nicht die der Kapitalisten. Das allgemeine Stimmrecht ist so der Gradmesser der Reife der Arbeiterklasse. Mehr kann und wird es nie sein im heutigen Staat; aber das genügt auch. An dem Tage, wo das Thermometer des allgemeinen Stimmrechts den Siedepunkt bei den Arbeitern anzeigt, wissen sie sowohl wie die Kapitalisten, woran sie sind.“ [14]

Daran ansetzend betonte auch Lenin:

In der demokratischen Republik, fährt Engels fort, ‘übt der Reichtum seine Macht indirekt, aber um so sicherer aus’, und zwar erstens durch seine ‘direkte Beamtenkorruption’ (Amerika) und zweitens durch die ‘Allianz von Regierung und Börse’ (Frankreich und Amerika).

Heute haben Imperialismus und Herrschaft der Banken diese beiden Methoden, die Allmacht des Reichtums in jeder beliebigen demokratischen Republik zu behaupten und auszuüben, zu einer außergewöhnlichen Kunst ‘entwickelt’. Wenn beispielsweise schon in den ersten Monaten der demokratischen Republik in Rußland, sozusagen im Honigmond des Ehebundes der ‘Sozialisten’ – der Sozialrevolutionäre und der Menschewiki – mit der Bourgeoisie, Herr Paltschinski in der Koalitionsregierung alle Maßnahmen zur Zügelung der Kapitalisten und ihrer Raubgier, ihrer Plünderung der Staatskasse durch Heereslieferungen, sabotierte, wenn dann der aus dem Ministerium ausgetretene Herr Paltschinski (der natürlich durch einen anderen, ebensolchen Paltschinski ersetzt worden ist) von den Kapitalisten durch ein Pöstchen mit einem Gehalt von 120.000 Rubel jährlich ‘belohnt’ wurde – wie nennt man das dann? Direkte Korruption oder indirekte? Allianz der Regierung mit den Syndikaten oder ‘nur’ freundschaftliche Beziehungen? Welche Rolle spielen die Tschernow und Zereteli, die Awksentjew und Skobelew? Sind sie ‘direkte’ Bundesgenossen der Millionäre, die den Staat bestehlen, oder nur indirekte?

Die Allmacht des ‘Reichtums’ ist in der demokratischen Republik deshalb sicherer, weil sie nicht von einzelnen Mängeln des politischen Mechanismus, von einer schlechten politischen Hülle des Kapitalismus abhängig ist. Die demokratische Republik ist die denkbar beste politische Hülle des Kapitalismus, und daher begründet das Kapital, nachdem es (…) von dieser besten Hülle Besitz ergriffen hat, seine Macht derart zuverlässig, derart sicher, daß kein Wechsel, weder der Personen noch der Institutionen noch der Parteien der bürgerlich-demokratischen Republik, diese Macht erschüttern kann.“ [15]

Diese Methoden der seine „direkte Beamtenkorruption“ und der ‘Allianz von Regierung und Börse’ gehören keineswegs der Vergangenheit an, sondern sind aktueller und ausgeprägter denn je. Dies trifft auf alle kapitalistischen Länder zu – sowohl in den USA (siehe den Enron-Skandal, die enge Allianz der Ölmultis und der Bush-Cheney-Administration usw.) als auch hierzulande (Steuerskandal in Deutschland, Postenschacher, Bestechungen, BAWAG-Skandal in Österreich). [16]

Tatsächlich wird mit der fortwährenden Existenz des Kapitalismus die Verflechtung von Staatsapparat und Kapital immer enger. Engels wies auf diesen Prozeß hin:

Damit aber diese Gegensätze, Klassen mit widerstreitenden ökonomischen Interessen nicht sich und die Gesellschaft in fruchtlosem Kampf verzehren, ist eine scheinbar über der Gesellschaft stehende Macht nötig geworden, die den Konflikt dämpfen, innerhalb der Schranken der ‚Ordnung‘ halten soll; und diese, aus der Gesellschaft hervorgegangne, aber sich über sie stellende, sich ihr mehr und mehr entfremdende Macht ist der Staat.“ [17]

Unter Entfremdung verstehen wir hierbei vor allem die Inbesitznahme des Staates durch die jeweilige herrschende Klasse. Ist der Staat aus den jeweiligen gesellschaftlichen Auseinandersetzungen selbst hervorgegangen, entfremdet er sich immer mehr vom gesellschaftlichen Interesse der unterdrückten Klasse und wird vielmehr zu einem direkten und abgehobenen Instrument zu deren Unterdrückung.

Mit diesem Prozeß der zunehmenden Entfremdung des Staatsapparates geht in der Epoche des Imperialismus auch der Ausbau der Repression einher. Dies beweist nicht nur das 20. Jahrhundert mit seiner Unzahl an Kriegen, faschistischer Herrschaft und Holocaust. Dies zeigt sich auch gegenwärtig am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts mit den Präventivkriegen „gegen den Terror“ – in Wirklichkeit gegen Völker, die sich nicht dem imperialistischen Diktat unterordnen –, dem Ausbau des Überwachungsstaates und den Methoden von Guantanamo und Abu Ghraib sowie der zunehmenden Aufrüstung und Militarisierung.

Insbesondere aber weist der Imperialismus, weist die Epoche des Bankkapitals, die Epoche der gigantischen kapitalistischen Monopole, die Epoche des Hinüberwachsens des monopolistischen Kapitalismus in den staatsmonopolistischen Kapitalismus, eine ungewöhnliche Stärkung der ‘Staatsmaschinerie’ auf, ein unerhörtes Anwachsen ihres Beamten- und Militärapparates in Verbindung mit verstärkten Repressalien gegen das Proletariat sowohl in den monarchistischen als auch in den freiesten, republikanischen Ländern.“ [18]

Während also die Epoche des aufstrebenden Kapitalismus im 19. Jahrhundert eine Tendenz des Voranschreitens der Demokratie sah, zeichnet sich die Epoche des niedergehenden Kapitalismus durch eine Untergrabung der Demokratie aus. Lenin faßte diese Entwicklung folgendermaßen zusammen.

Der politische Überbau über der neuen Ökonomik, über dem monopolistischen Kapitalismus (Imperialismus ist monopolistischer Kapitalismus) ist die Wendung von der Demokratie zur politischen Reaktion. Der freien Konkurrenz entspricht die Demokratie. Dem Monopol entspricht die politische Reaktion.“ [19]

Jedoch ist es durchaus auch in der Epoche des Imperialismus möglich, daß gegenläufige Tendenzen zur politischen Reaktion auftreten. Vor allem in der Periode nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg – dem langen Boom 1950-1970 – konnten durch die massive Zerstörung von Kapital durch den Krieg und der daraus resultierenden höheren Profitrate die oberen Schichten der ArbeiterInnenklasse in das System des Kapitalismus integriert werden. Diese Stufe der Klassenkollaboration – die in ihrer höchsten Stufe den Namen Sozialpartnerschaft bekommen hat – ist jedoch eine Ausnahme zur allgemeinen Tendenz der imperialistischen Epoche. Die heutige politische Reaktion hat ihr Gesicht vor allem im sogenannten Krieg gegen den Terror gefunden und hat mit dem verstärkten Kampf gegen die Halbkolonien und dem massiven Angriff auf die ArbeiterInnenklasse durch die neoliberale Konterrevolution die „normale“ Form des imperialistischen Angriffs wieder angenommen.

 

II.3.        Der kapitalistische Staat und seine relative Autonomie von der kapitalistischen Ökonomie

 

Wir haben also die zentrale, unabdingbare Stellung des Staates in der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft gesehen sowie seinen Charakter als bürokratisch-militärische Maschine der Klassenherrschaft. Nun gilt es, ein weiteres wesentliches Merkmal des bürgerlichen Staatsapparates zu verstehen: nämlich seine aktive, intervenierende Rolle in die kapitalistische Gesamtgesellschaft. Erst durch diese aktive, intervenierende Rolle kann der Staat seine Rolle als ideellen Gesamtkapitalisten spielen. Er muß die kapitalistischen Ausbeutungs- und Unterdrückungsverhältnisse nicht nur aufrechterhalten und verteidigen, sondern auch weiterentwickeln und entsprechend den Bedürfnissen des Kapitals modifizieren.

Wie oben bereits festgestellt vertritt der kapitalistische Staat als Maschine der herrschenden Klasse zuerst und vor allem die Interessen ihrer mächtigsten Fraktion – dem Monopolkapital. Doch dieses Monopolkapital existiert nicht isoliert, sondern kann seine Geschäfte nur im täglichen Warenaustausch mit den anderen Fraktionen des Kapitals tätigen. Hinzu kommen die zeitweise widersprüchlichen Interessen der Zwischenklassen und –schichten, die ja oft wichtige politische Bündnispartner für die Bourgeoisie darstellen. Schließlich und vor allem der Klassengegensatz zwischen Monopolkapital und dem Proletariat und der daraus entspringenden Notwendigkeit, einerseits die Spitzen der Arbeiterbewegung zu integrieren und zu korrumpieren und andererseits auch gewisse Zugeständnisse zu machen, insbesondere an die privilegiertesten Schichten, der Arbeiteraristokratie.

Friedrich Engels wies auf diesen Aspekt des modernen Staates seit seiner Existenz hin:

Da der Staat entstanden ist aus dem Bedürfnis, Klassengegensätze im Zaum zu halten, da er aber gleichzeitig mitten im Konflikt dieser Klassen entstanden ist, so ist er in der Regel Staat der mächtigsten, ökonomisch herrschenden Klasse, die vermittelst seiner auch politisch herrschende Klasse wird und so neue Mittel erwirbt zur Niederhaltung und Ausbeutung der unterdrückten Klasse. So war der antike Staat vor allem Staat der Sklavenbesitzer zur Niederhaltung der Sklaven, wie der Feudalstaat Organ des Adels zur Niederhaltung der leibeignen und hörigen Bauern und der moderne Repräsentativstaat Werkzeug der Ausbeutung der Lohnarbeit durch das Kapital. Ausnahmsweise indes kommen Perioden vor, wo die kämpfenden Klassen einander so nahe das Gleichgewicht halten, daß die Staatsgewalt als scheinbare Vermittlerin momentan eine gewisse Selbständigkeit gegenüber beiden erhält. So die absolute Monarchie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, die Adel und Bürgertum gegeneinander balanciert; so der Bonapartismus des ersten und namentlich des zweiten französischen Kaiserreichs, der das Proletariat gegen die Bourgeoisie und die Bourgeoisie gegen das Proletariat ausspielte. Die neueste Leistung in dieser Art, bei der Herrscher und Beherrschte gleich komisch erscheinen, ist das neue deutsche Reich Bismarckscher Nation: Hier werden Kapitalisten und Arbeiter gegeneinander balanciert und gleichmäßig geprellt zum Besten der verkommnen preußischen Krautjunker. [20]

Der Staat ist also nicht bloß die passive Wiederspiegelung eines ökonomisch erreichten Entwicklungsstandes der Produktivkräfte. Das war er nie und das ist er in der Epoche des Imperialismus noch weniger. Der permanente Zusammenstoß zwischen Produktivkräften und Produktionsverhältnissen, die stetigen Konflikte zwischen den Großmächten, der Konkurrenzdruck am Weltmarkt, der auf den Schulter der Monopolkapitalisten lastet, der Antagonismus, der nicht aufhebbare Grundwiderspruch zwischen der Bourgeoisie und dem Proletariat – all das zwingt die Monopolbourgeoisie dazu, daß ihr imperialistischer Staat eine aktive, eingreifende Rolle einnimmt.

Diese aktive Rolle kann der Staat nur deswegen einnehmen, weil er eine gewisse, relative Autonomie gegenüber der ökonomischen Basis innehat. Natürlich agiert der Staat nicht im luftleeren Raum, sondern kann dies nur auf der Grundlage der gegebenen Produktionsverhältnisse und objektiven Klasseninteressen. Er kann nur solche politische Fragen lösen, die durch die Bedürfnisse der Ökonomie, der Produktivkräfte aufgeworfen werden. Es gibt also eine subjektive Rolle des Staates dort, wo die objektive Notwendigkeit der Ökonomie existiert.

Aber ebenso wäre es plattester ökonomischer Objektivismus, würde man nur von einer einseitigen Determinierung der ökonomischen Basis auf den politischen Überbau ausgehen und die Wirkung des Überbaus auf die Basis leugnen. In der Tat findet hier – wie Engels immer wieder betonte – eine Wechselwirkung statt, wie wohl in letzter Instanz die Ökonomie ausschlaggebend ist.

Die politische, rechtliche, philosophische, religiöse, literarische, künstlerische etc. Entwicklung beruht auf der ökonomischen. Aber sie alle reagieren auch auf einander und auf die ökonomische Basis. Es ist nicht, daß die ökonomische Lage Ursache, allein aktiv ist und alles andere nur passive Wirkung. Sondern es ist Wechselwirkung auf Grundlage der in letzter Instanz stets sich durchsetzenden ökonomischen Notwendigkeit. (…) Es ist also nicht, wie man sich hier und da bequemerweise vorstellen will, eine automatische Wirkung der ökonomischen Lage, sondern die Menschen machen ihre Geschichte selbst, aber in einem gegebenen, sie bedingenden Milieu (...).[21]

Diese dialektische Auffassung des Staates ist entscheidend für das Verständnis der Rolle, die der bürgerliche Staat spielen kann, um der „ökonomischen Notwendigkeit“ tatsächlich zur Durchsetzung zu verhelfen.

Natürlich ist mit der Idee der relativen Autonomie des Staates von Seiten reformistischer Theoretiker (von Kautsky über Otto Bauer bis Poulantzas und Althusser) viel Schindluder betrieben worden. Und zwar in der Hinsicht, daß der grundsätzliche reaktionäre Klassencharakter des bürgerlichen Staates zumindest vorübergehend, zeitweise, aufgehoben werden könnte. Das ist reaktionärer Unsinn.

Aber wir haben in der modernen Geschichte schon oftmals gesehen, daß der Staat unter dem mannigfaltigen Druck der Antagonismen zwischen den verschiedenen Klassen bzw. Klassenfraktionen auf unterschiedliche Weise die Rolle des ideellen Gesamtkapitalisten einnimmt. Diese Rolle als scheinbar über den Klassen stehendender Staat verkörpert natürlich nicht den Durchschnitt des Willens aller Fraktionen des Kapitals. Dies ist eigentlich nie der Fall, weil sich in der Regel die mächtigsten Fraktionen des Kapitals durchsetzen bzw. auf der Grundlage ihrer Interessen ein Kompromiß mit anderen Klassen und Schichten formuliert wird.

Der Staat ist ideeller Gesamtkapitalist im Sinne des vorausschauenden Akteurs im Interesse der objektiven ökonomischen Notwendigkeiten des Kapitals und hier v.a. des Monopolkapitals. Das heißt der Staat ist aktiver Vorantreiber bestimmter ökonomischer Notwendigkeiten des Kapitals ohne zuerst darauf zu warten, daß sich diese Notwendigkeiten bereits spontan innerhalb des kapitalistischen Produktions- und Reproduktionsprozeß vollziehen oder das sie von den einzelnen Kapitalisten bereits als solche subjektiv wahrgenommen werden.

Dafür lassen sich zahlreiche Beispiele anführen. Im späten 19. Jahrhundert zum Beispiel erzwang der Staat in Westeuropa das Verbot von Kinderarbeit. Er sicherte damit dem Kapital bei Verletzung seiner kurzfristigen Profitinteressen die langfristige Erhaltung des Nachschubs an ausbeutbaren Arbeitskräften. Oder nehmen wir die politischen Schritte des preußischen Kanzlers Otto von Bismarck, der sowohl bestimmte Sozialreformen als auch entscheidende Schritte zur Vereinigung Deutschlands unter preußischer Vorherrschaft setzte. Aber auch im 20. Jahrhundert finden wir zahlreiche Beispiele für die aktive Rolle des Staates sowohl auf politischer Ebene als auch bei der Vorantreibung ökonomischer Entwicklungen. So z.B. die Versuche der Importsubstituierenden Industrialisierung in einigen halbkolonialen Staaten (Peron in Argentinien, Nasser in Ägypten, Nehru in Indien usw.), die wirtschaftliche Modernisierung unter dem Faschismus oder auch z.B. unter einem Kreisky im Österreich der 1970er Jahre.

Schließen wir also dieses Kapitel mit einer Zusammenfassung unserer Schlußfolgerungen ab:

i.             Der Staat ist immer der Staat der herrschenden Klasse. Der Staat im Kapitalismus ist also immer der Staat der Kapitalisten.

ii.            Der kapitalistische Staat ist eine „bürokratisch-militärische Maschine“, eine Organisation zur Unterdrückung der Arbeiterklasse, die nach dem Kommandoprinzip von oben nach unten aufgebaut ist.

iii.           Diesen Charakter trägt der kapitalistische Staat immer – unabhängig davon, ober er die Form einer offenen politischen Diktatur oder die der parlamentarischen Demokratie annimmt, wenngleich in diesen unterschiedlichen Formen der bürgerlichen Herrschaft verschiedene Bereiche der staatlichen Herrschaft stärker als andere ausgeprägt sind.

iv.           Der Staat ist jedoch keine passive Wiederspiegelung der ökonomischen Produktionsverhältnisse, sondern beeinflußt auch die die Entwicklung der ökonomischen Basis und besitzt eine gewisse, relative, Autonomie.

v.            Der kapitalistische Staat ist der ideelle Gesamtkapitalist und als solcher kann er auch unter bestimmten Bedingungen eine aktive, den ökonomischen Notwendigkeiten zur Durchsetzung verhelfende Rolle spielen und Entwicklungen hervorbringen, die das Kapital „spontan“, auf wirtschaftlicher Ebene, nicht hätte erreichen können.

 

III.          Schwierigkeiten und Notwendigkeiten für das Monopolkapitals bei der Formierung eines supranationalen EU-Staatsapparates

 

Damit kommen wir auch wieder zur Frage der Herausbildung eines supranationalen Staatsapparates. Beginnen wir mit einer kurzen Darlegung des Hintergrundes vor dem sich diese Frage stellt.

Der historische Hintergrund, vor dem sich die Europäische Union formiert, sind die krisenhaften Entwicklungstendenzen der kapitalistischen Weltwirtschaft. Vor dem Hintergrund einer strukturellen Überakkumulationskrise und dem tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate – vereinfacht gesagt gibt es immer weniger profitable Anlagemöglichkeiten für eine immer größere Menge angehäuften Kapitals – versucht das Monopolkapital seine Profite mittels verschärfter Attacken auf die Arbeiterklasse, der Schaffung neuer Anlagemöglichkeiten durch Privatisierung öffentlichen Eigentums sowie mittels Intensivierung der Ausbeutung der halbkolonialen Welt zu steigern.

Daher kommt es zu einer Verlangsamung der Kapitalakkumulation, d.h. die Unternehmer investieren weniger als zuvor. (siehe dazu Graphik 1 und Tabelle 1, die den Anteil der Investitionen im Verhältnis zum jährlichen Output darstellen)

 

Graphik 1: Globale Spar- und Investitionsquote als Anteil am Brutto-Inlandsprodukt, 1970-2004 [22]

 

Tabelle 1: Kapitalakkumulation in der Welt, 1970-2004 [23]

Investitionen als Anteil am Bruttoinlandsprodukt, weltweit und in den imperialistischen Staaten

 

 

1970-1980

1981-1990

1991-2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Welt

24.0%

22.8%

22.3%

21.4%

20.7%

20.9%

21.5%

Imperialistische

Staaten

24.3%

22.6%

21.6%

20.7%

19.7%

19.8%

20.3%

 

Ein Blick auf die langfristige Entwicklung der Netto-Profitraten in den imperialistischen Kernländern seit dem Beginn des Nachkriegs-Booms Ende der 1940er Jahre zeigt, warum die Bereitschaft der Unternehmer zu investieren sinkt: Es findet ein langfristiger Fall der Profitrate statt, d.h. der Anteil des Profits im Verhältnis zum gesamten eingesetzten Kapital (Löhne, Maschinen, Rohstoffe etc.) sinkt. (siehe Tabelle 2)

 

Tabelle 2: Netto-Profitraten im nicht-finanziellen Unternehmenssektor in den USA, Japan und Deutschland, 1948-2000 [24]

 

 

USA

Japan

Deutschland

1948–1959

14.3%

17.3%

23.4%

1959–1969

15%

25.4%

17.5%

1969–1979

10.3%

20.5%

12.8%

1979–1990

9.0%

16.7%

11.8%

1990–2000

10.1%

10.8%

10.4%

 

Daher die immer intensiveren Bemühungen des Kapitals, die Ausbeutung der Arbeiterklasse zu verschärfen und die Löhne zu drücken, mit dem Resultat, daß die Reallöhne in den imperialistischen Staaten stagnieren oder gar sinken. So schätzt der US-amerikanische Ökonom Doug Henwood, daß der Reallohn des durchschnittlichen Arbeiters in den USA zwischen 1973 und 1996 um 14.1% fiel! [25]

Aus dem gleichen Grund findet auch eine gesteigerte Ausbeutung der halbkolonialen Welt statt. So fand z.B. alleine in den Jahren 1995-2006 einen Netto-Abfluß von 2.877,7 Milliarden US-Dollar statt, die von den halb-kolonialen Ländern in Richtung imperialistische Zentren flossen! [26]

Die Verschärfung der dem Kapitalismus innewohnenden Widersprüche heizt gleichzeitig auch den Konkurrenzkampf zwischen den Großmächten an – vor allem zwischen den beiden mächtigsten Blöcken, den USA und der EU. Vor diesem Hintergrund kommt es einerseits zu einem stellenweisen, gemeinsamen Vorgehen der Großmächte, wenn es z.B. darum geht, halbkoloniale Länder zur Öffnung ihrer Wirtschaft für die Großkonzerne zu öffnen. Andererseits aber kommt es auch immer wieder zu politischen und wirtschaftlichen Konflikte zwischen den beiden Blöcken, wenn ihre Interessen aufeinanderprallen.

 

III.1.      Überblick über die wirtschaftliche Position der EU im Verhältnis zur USA

 

Die für die europäische Monopolbourgeoisie bestehende Dringlichkeit der Schaffung eines supranationalen Staatsapparates wird ersichtlich, wenn man einen Blick auf die wirtschaftliche, politische und militärische Stellung der EU in der Welt wirft.

In unserem Artikel „Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung“ haben wir uns eingehender mit den spezifischen Stärken und Schwächen des EU-Kapitals auseinandergesetzt. Wir wollen an dieser Stelle nur die wichtigsten Ergebnisse zusammenfassen, die für das hier behandelte Thema relevant sind.

1.            Insgesamt konnte sich das europäische Kapital in den letzten Jahrzehnten gegenüber seinen Konkurrenten stärken.

2.            Trotzdem sind die USA nach wie vor die weltweit führende Macht – auf wirtschaftlicher Ebene und noch mehr auf politischer und militärischer Ebene.

3.            Die EU ist die einzige Macht weltweit, die den USA auf absehbare Zeit die globale Vorherrschaft streitig machen kann.

4.            Um tatsächlich den Anspruch als globale Führungsmacht durchzusetzen, muß die EU erstens die Ausbeutung der heimischen Arbeiterklasse erhöhen und zweitens zu einer einheitlichen, schlagkräftigen Macht werden, die ihre Interessen weltweit durchsetzen kann.

5.            Um dies jedoch zu erreichen, muß die EU einen qualitativen Schritt vorwärts machen und einen supranationalen Staatsapparat aufbauen.

Betrachten wir die wirtschaftliche Position der EU insbesondere zu ihren Konkurrenten. Aus der Tabelle 3 können wir ersehen, daß die EU ihre Position im Welthandel ausbauen und insbesondere bei den Warenexporten ihre Stellung gegenüber den USA verbessern konnte.

 

Tabelle 3: Anteile der Staaten und Regionen am Welthandel 1948-2003 [27]

 

Anteil an den Exporten weltweit

 

1948

1953

1963

1973

1983

1993

2005

USA

21.7%

18.8%

14.9%

12.3%

11.2%

12.6%

8.9%

EU

6.8%

11.9%

27.5%

38.6%

30.4%

36.1%

39.4%

Japan

0.4%

1.5%

3.5%

6.4%

8.0%

9.9%

5.9%

China

0.9%

1.2%

1.3%

1.0%

1.2%

2.5%

7.5%

Indien

2.2%

1.3%

1.0%

0.5%

0.5%

0.6%

0.9%

Südamerika

12.3%

10.5%

7.0%

4.7%

4.4%

3.0%

3.5%

Naher Osten

2.0%

2.7%

3.2%

4.1%

6.8%

3.5%

5.3%

Afrika

7.3%

6.5%

5.7%

4.8%

4.5%

2.5%

2.9%

Anteil an den Importen weltweit

 

1948

1953

1963

1973

1983

1993

2005

USA

13.0%

13.9%

11.4%

12.3%

14.3%

16.0%

16.5%

EU

9.6%

12.4%

29.0%

39.2%

31.3%

34.3%

39.3%

Japan

1.1%

1.7%

0.9%

0.9%

6.7%

6.4%

4.9%

China

1.0%

2.9%

4.1%

6.5%

1.1%

2.8%

6.3%

Indien

3.1%

1.4%

1.5%

0.5%

0.7%

0.6%

1.3%

Südamerika

10.6%

9.3%

6.8%

5.1%

3.8%

3.3%

2.8%

Naher Osten

1.7%

2.0%

2.3%

2.8%

6.2%

3.4%

3.1%

Afrika

7.6%

7.0%

5.5%

4.0%

4.6%

2.6%

2.4%

 

In der nächsten Tabelle zeigen wir die Entwicklungen im Bereich des Kapitalexportes. Im Zeitalter des Imperialismus – wo das Kapital außerhalb seines Heimatmarktes immer verzweifelter nach neuen profitablen Anlagemöglichkeiten suchen muß – gewinnt der Kapitalexport an entscheidender Bedeutung und ist ein wichtiger Gradmesser der Stärke der jeweiligen Monopolkapitalgruppen, da es die Ausweitung der finanzielle Herrschaft über andere Länder bzw. Regionen darstellt. In der Tabelle 4 sehen wir die Entwicklung der im Ausland getätigten Direktinvestitionen, das sind v.a. jene Investitionen, die nicht in Form von Krediten oder Finanzmarktspekulationen getätigt werden, sondern in den Unternehmensbereich fließen (dies umfaßt sowohl Investitionen als auch die Kosten für Fusionen und Firmenübernahmen). Auch hier können wir feststellen, daß die EU eine weltweit starke Position besitzt und z.T. ihre Position gegenüber den USA ausbauen konnte.

 

Tabelle 4: Verteilung der weltweiten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen nach Staaten und Regionen  [28]

 

Verteilung der weltweiten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen, Bestände

 

Bestände Inland

Bestände Ausland

 

1980

1990

2000

2005

1980

1990

2000

2005

USA

14.8%

22.1%

21.7%

16.0%

37.7%

24.0%

20.3%

19.2%

Europäische Union

42.5%

42.9%

37.6%

44.4%

37.2%

45.2%

47.1%

51.3%

Japan

0.6%

0.6%

0.9%

1.0%

3.4%

11.2%

4.3%

3.6%

Süd-, Ost- und Südostasien

8.8%

8.5%

17.2%

13.8%

2.5%

3.4%

9.3%

7.8%

Verteilung der weltweiten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen, Ströme

 

Jährliche Ströme Inland

Jährliche Ströme Ausland

 

1980

1990

2000

2005

1980

1990

2000

2005

USA

23.8%

31.5%

24.0%

12.6%

39.7%

13.6%

15.9%

15.7%

Europäische Union

39.1%

40.3%

46.0%

40.7%

44.8%

50.6%

64.4%

54.6%

Japan

0.4%

0.04%

0.8%

0.8%

4.9%

19.7%

2.6%

4.9%

Süd-, Ost- und Südostasien

6.7%

10.0%

10.7%

18.4%

0.6%

5.1%

5.0%

7.7%

 

Vergleichen wir nun die Stärke des europäischen Monopolkapitals im Vergleich mit den anderen größten Konzernen weltweit. Aus der Tabelle 5 aus dem Jahre 2003 können wir erkennen, daß die US-Konzerne nach wie vor eine dominierende Stellung ausüben. Mit 488 der Top 1000 Konzerne hat fast die Hälfte der größten Multis ihr Hauptquartier in den USA. Ebenso vereinigen sie 42% der Gesamtumsatzes dieser Creme de la Creme der Großbourgeoisie. Nimmt man die einzelnen Nationalstaaten her, so liegt Japan mit 129 Konzernen und einem Gesamtumsatzanteil von 15,8% an zweiter Stelle, während danach Britannien (77 Konzerne bzw. 8,7%), Frankreich (48 Konzerne bzw. 8,7%) sowie Deutschland (38 Konzerne bzw. 8,4%) kommen. Rechnet man jedoch die in der EU beheimateten Konzerne zusammen, so stellen diese mit 278 Konzernen und 36,5% des Gesamtumsatzes durchaus eine Herausforderung für den US-amerikanischen Konkurrenten dar.

Diese Schlußfolgerung wird durch eine andere Untersuchung jüngeren Datums bestätigt. In ihrem aktuellen „World Investment Report“ veröffentlicht die UNCTAD eine Liste der 100 multinationalen nicht-finanziellen Konzerne mit den größten Auslandsinvestitionen. [29] Danach haben von diesen Konzernen 23 ihren Stammsitz in den USA, 9 in Japan, aber bereits jeweils 13 in Deutschland, Frankreich und Britannien. Insgesamt stellt die EU 51 dieser größten 100 Multis. Aus einer anderen Statistik des UNCTAD-Berichts, die jene 50 multinationalen Finanzkonzerne mit der größten geographischen Ausdehnung erfaßt, geht hervor, daß von diesen sogar 30 ihren Ursprung in der EU haben (und 9 in den USA sowie 3 in Japan). [30]

 

Tabelle 5: Nationale Zusammensetzung der Top 1000 Konzerne (2003) [31]

Nationale Herkunft                                       Anzahl der                         Umsatz (Anteil am Gesamtumsatz)

der Konzerne                                                   Konzerne

Gesamtumsatz der Top 1000:                                                                          13.258.090 Mil. US-Dollar

Europäische Union                                                            278                        4.840.972 (=36,5%)

                Belgien                                                                9                             69.291

                Britannien                                                          77                           1.153.790 (=8,7%)

                Dänemark                                                          6                             37.708

                Deutschland                                                     38                           1.112.393 (=8,4%)

                Finnland                                                            5                             76.490

                Frankreich                                                         48                           1.147.998 (=8,7%)

                Griechenland                                                    7                             16.341

                Irland                                                                  4                             13.104

                Italien                                                                  24                           345.680

                Niederlande                                                      19                           556.248

Österreich                                                          2                             3.667

Portugal                                                              4                             14.071

Schweden                                                          17                           120.551

Spanien                                                              18                           173.640

Norwegen                                                                          5                             74225

Schweiz                                                                              17                           250661

USA                                                                                     488                        5570810 (=42%)

Kanada                                                                                              41                           226041

Japan                                                                                    129                        2098160 (=15,8%)

Hong Kong                                                                        18

Singapure                                                                          6

Australien                                                                         27                           139402

Neuseeland                                                                       1

 

III.2.      Überblick über die wirtschaftliche Integration der EU

 

Aber diese Vergleichszahlen der EU mit den USA besitzen insofern nur relative Aussagekraft, da die EU eben kein einheitliches Gebilde ist. Schauen wir uns also den Grad der wirtschaftlichen Integration der EU an. Dies hilft uns ein Bild davon zu bekommen, wie weit der Prozeß der wechselseitigen Abhängigkeit und Interessensidentität der nationalen Kapitalien der zahlreichen Mitgliedsstaaten der EU vorangeschritten ist.

Beginnen wir wieder mit dem Warenhandel der EU-15 Staaten. Während sich die Handelstätigkeit in den letzten Jahrzehnten insgesamt intensivierte, stiegen die Exporte von EU-Staaten an andere EU-Staaten rascher als an Staaten außerhalb der EU bzw. blieben dann auf einem hohen Niveau. Insgesamt kann man sagen, daß die EU-Staaten doppelt soviel innerhalb wie außerhalb der EU exportieren. So wuchs der Anteil der innerhalb der EU gehandelten Exporte am jährlichen Brutto-Inlandsprodukt von 9.8% (1970), 13.1% (1980), 14.4% (1990), 19.4% (2000) auf 21.0% (2007). Der Anteil der außerhalb der EU gehandelten Exporte am jährlichen Brutto-Inlandsprodukt stieg von 6.7% (1970), 8.4% (1980), 7.1% (1990), 9.4% (2000) auf 10.5% (2007). [32]

Ein ähnliches Bild sehen wir in der Graphik 2 bei der Entwicklung der Industrieexporte.

 

Graphik 2: Entwicklung der EU-Industrieexporte innerhalb und außerhalb der EU 1995-2005 (als Anteil am BIP) [33]

Nichtsdestotrotz ist die wirtschaftliche Integration noch immer deutlich niedriger als z.B. innerhalb der USA. So weist eine EU-Studie darauf hin, daß die Industrieexporte (gemessen am Anteil am BIP) zwischen den einzelnen US-Bundesstaaten um ein Drittel über dem Niveau liegen, das zwischen den Staaten der Euro-Zone existiert. [34]

Ebenso ist der Kapitalexport innerhalb der EU intensiver geworden, immer mehr Investitionen von EU-Konzernen gehen in andere EU-Staaten. So z.B. stammten 1995 50% aller ausgehenden und 53% aller eingehenden Auslandsdirektinvestitionen in den EU15-Staaten aus anderen EU15-Staaten. Zehn Jahre später ist dieser Anteil bereits auf 66% bzw. 78% angewachsen. Für die EU25-Staaten beträgt der Anteil 70% bzw. 82%. [35]

Nichtsdestotrotz besteht das zentrale Problem, daß das Kapital in Europa nach wie vor nationales und nicht pan-europäisches Kapital ist. Das heißt, Kapital in Europa ist noch immer deutscher, französischer, britischer usw. Herkunft und nicht europäisch. Es gibt fast keine Konzerne, die einen nicht-nationalen Charakter besitzen. (eine Ausnahme ist hier EADS).

 

III.3.      Welche Probleme muß das europäische Monopolkapital überwinden?

 

Die nationale Zerklüftung der europäischen Monopole widerspiegelt die unvollständige Vereinigung der Europäischen Union. Dies hängt nicht nur mit historischen Gründen zusammen, die mit der Geschichte der jeweiligen Nationalstaaten verbunden sind. Ebenso hängt dies mit den z.T. unterschiedlichen Interessen der nationalen Bourgeoisien zusammen. Während das deutsche Kapital z.B. eine starke Orientierung auf Osteuropa hat, ist das französische Kapital mehr auf Afrika orientiert. Das britische Kapital wiederum hat aufgrund seiner starken Position im Finanz- sowie im Erdölsektor und den damit verbundenen globalen Interessen einerseits und seiner schwachen Position im Industriesektor andererseits nicht die gleichen Schwerpunkte wie die deutsch-französische Achse.

Damit soll nicht angedeutet werden, daß diese Interessenskonflikte unüberwindlich sind. Aber sie bedeuten ein permanentes Kompromisse suchen und eine Schwächung der Handlungsfähigkeit als einheitlicher Block. Dies wurde in den vergangenen Jahren besonders deutlich, als Britannien den USA in ihrem Krieg gegen den Terror bedingungslos folgte und Deutschland und Frankreich einen anderen Kurs anstrebten. Ähnlich unterschiedlich ist die Haltung z.B. zu den EU-Agrarsubventionen oder der Frage eines supranationalen EU-Staates selbst (wo Britannien eine sehr ablehnende Haltung einnimmt).

Gerade die Fragen des einheitlichen Auftretens der EU in der Weltpolitik und der militärischen Interventionen rund um den Globus zeigten in den letzten Jahren die Schwächen der EU in der Formierung als Block. Während die USA die Hälfte aller weltweiten Rüstungsausgaben bestreiten, die mit Abstand größte Atommacht ist und weltweit über 700 Militärstützpunkte verfügen, liegen die EU-Großmächte weit abgeschlagen dahinter.

Um all dies zu ändern, ist eine deutliche Erhöhung der Ausgaben für Rüstung und für die Aufstellung einer EU-Armee nötig, ist der Aufbau einer einheitlichen EU-Staatsführung notwendig und schließlich ebenso die Erhöhung der Konkurrenzfähigkeit der europäischen Konzerne am Weltmarkt.

In unserem Artikel im Revolutionären Marxismus Nr. 35 haben wir betont, daß ein entscheidender Vorteil des US-amerikanischen gegenüber dem europäischen Monopolkapital in der weit höheren Ausbeutungsrate besteht. Zusammengefaßt arbeitet der durchschnittliche US-amerikanische Arbeiter mehr Stunden im Jahr für den Kapitalisten und bekommt dafür weniger Lohn. Während die europäischen Arbeiter noch ein gewisses staatliches Sozial- und Gesundheitsnetz erhalten haben und nach wie vor über einen nicht unbeträchtlichen gewerkschaftlichen Organisationsgrad verfügen, sieht dies in den USA ganz anders aus. [36]

Kurz und gut, eine massive Erhöhung der Ausbeutung der Arbeiterklasse ist eine entscheidende Voraussetzung für die Stärkung der europäischen Konzerne gegenüber ihrer Konkurrenz als auch die Schaffung der finanziellen Ressourcen für die notwendige Aufrüstung und Staatsformierung.

Doch sie ist nur eine Vorbedingung und nicht an und für sich ausreichend. Denn um im Konkurrenzkampf gegen die USA bestehen zu können, muß die Europäische Union – die ja an sich ein Zusammenschluß von mittlerweile 27 verschiedenen Nationalstaaten ist – ihren Vereinheitlichung als Block vorantreiben. Daher haben wir betont, daß „die Formierung der Europäischen Union nicht nur als ein wirtschaftlicher Binnenmarkt, sondern auch als ein politischer und militärischer Machtblock die Antwort der herrschenden Klassen Europas – allen voran ihrer Kernstaaten Deutschland und Frankreichs – auf die verschärfte Konkurrenz und die Notwendigkeit, ihre Interessen in einer instabiler werdenden Welt mit allen zu Gebote stehenden Mitteln durchzusetzen (ist).[37]

 

IV.          Der supranationale EU-Staatsapparat. Der Nationalstaat und seine Grenzen im Zeitalter der Globalisierung

 

Die Formierung eines solchen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Machtblocks erfordert notwendigerweise die Bildung eines EU-Staatsapparates, der über den Staatsapparaten der einzelnen kapitalistischen Nationalstaaten steht. Nur ein solcher supranationaler Staatsapparat mit seinen entsprechenden zentralstaatlichen Machtstrukturen bzw. –befugnissen kann das nötige Interventionsinstrument bieten, welches die widerstreitenden Interessen zwischen den herrschenden Klassen der Mitgliedsstaaten überwinden und ihre gemeinsamen Interessen gegen die Arbeiterklasse durchpeitschen kann. Nur ein solcher supranationaler Staatsapparat kann zur Formierung eines nationalstaats-übergreifenden, europäischen imperialistischen Klasseninteresses beitragen. Letztlich ist die Herausbildung eines solchen supranationalen Staatsapparates auch entscheidend dafür, ob eine nationalstaats-übergreifende, europäische imperialistische Bourgeoisie als  mehr oder weniger geeinte Klasse entsteht.

Mehr noch: um einen EU-Staat aufzubauen, bedarf es nicht nur einer europäischen Bourgeoisie. Die Bourgeoisie regiert in der Regel nie alleine – dazu ist die Klasse numerisch zu klein –, sondern in Form eines herrschenden Blocks, also einer Allianz mit anderen Klassen(-fraktionen) und Schichten. Daher auch das Bemühen, eine EU-orientierte Mittelschicht zu formieren (z.B. über Förderung von Auslandsstudien, Sprachenförderung in der Ausbildung, Förderung von Auslandsjobs in der EU und gleiche Rechte für alle EU-Bürger in allen EU-Staaten), ein europäisches „National“bewußtsein zu schaffen (daher die EU-Verfassung, Flagge, Hymne usw.), daher auch die Propagierung europäischer Werte und Traditionen usw.

Nun ist die mangelnde staatliche Vereinigung Europas Ausdruck der mangelnden Existenz eines pan-europäischen Kapitals. Daraus könnte man den Umkehrschluß ziehen, daß es zu keinem supranationalen Staatsapparat kommen könne, solange sich nicht zuerst auf ökonomischer Ebene ein pan-europäisches Monopolkapital herausgebildet hat. Doch warum kann es nicht auch umgekehrt sein?! Und ist die Frage nicht viel mehr, daß es – wenn überhaupt – eigentlich nur umgekehrt sein kann?!

Damit kommen wir wieder auf das oben angeführte Verständnis des Marxismus von der aktiven Rolle des Staates im Kapitalismus. Wir haben festgehalten, daß der Staat ideeller Gesamtkapitalist auch in der Hinsicht ist, daß er als vorausschauender Akteur im Interesse der objektiven ökonomischen Notwendigkeiten des Kapitals und hier v.a. des Monopolkapitals agiert. Das heißt der Staat setzt bestimmte politische und ökonomische Schritte im Interesse des Kapitals ohne zuerst darauf zu warten, daß sich diese Schritte bereits spontan innerhalb des kapitalistischen Produktions- und Reproduktionsprozesses vollziehen.

Wir haben oben bereits verschiedene Beispiele für eine solche intervenierende Rolle des Staates angeführt. Diese Rolle spielte der kapitalistische Staat nicht nur in Bezug auf ökonomische und soziale Reformen, sondern auch in Bezug auf die Herausbildung von Nationalstaaten. Es wäre eine Illusion zu glauben, daß sich im 19. Jahrhundert zuerst ein gesamtdeutsches Kapital formiert hätte – also ohne jegliche besondere Bindung an Preußen oder andere Einzelstaaten – bevor der preußische Kanzler Otto von Bismarck in den 1860er Jahren die entscheidenden Schritte zur Herausbildung eines deutschen Reiches setzte.

Der EU-Reformvertrag – als Wiederaufwärmung der 2005 gescheiterten EU-Verfassung – verkörpert gerade einen solchen Versuch der europäischen Monopolbourgeoisie, einen entscheidenden Schritt in Richtung Herausbildung eines imperialistischen Vereinigten Europas zu setzen.

 

IV.1.      Globalisierung und Nationalstaat

 

Nun leben wir heute in einer anderen Epoche als zur Zeit Bismarcks. Die Epoche des 19. Jahrhunderts war jene des aufstrebenden Kapitalismus. Seit Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts befindet sich der Kapitalismus in seiner Epoche des Niedergangs. Der Kapitalismus hat sein Potential, zum Fortschritt der Produktionsmittel zum Wohle der Menschheit beizutragen, erschöpft und gefährdet vielmehr  zusehends die menschliche Lebensgrundlage.

Doch das bedeutet keineswegs, daß der Kapitalismus in seinem imperialistischen Stadium einfach nur ein lebloser Körper ist, der bloß vor sich hinvegetiert. In Wirklichkeit bleibt der Imperialismus keineswegs unverändert und erstarrt stehen, sondern entwickelt sich notwendigerweise weiter. Für Marxisten, d.h. für Anhänger der materialistisch-dialektischen Entwicklungslehre, ist dies eine alles anderes als überraschende Erkenntnis. Betonte doch Friedrich Engels, daß „die Bewegung die Daseinsweise der Materie (ist). (…) Materie ohne Bewegung ist ebenso undenkbar wie Bewegung ohne Materie. Die Bewegung ist daher ebenso unerschaffbar und unzerstörbar wie die Materie selbst." [38]

Faßt man im Sinne der marxistischen Philosophie die Wirklichkeit als eine unendliche Vielfalt an Einheiten von Gegensätzen auf, in der die Einheit der Gegensätze vergänglich ist, der Kampf der einander ausschließenden Gegensätze jedoch absolut, so liegt es auf der Hand, daß sich die Entwicklung gerade aus dem Kampf der Gegensätze ergibt. [39]

Im Zeitalter des Imperialismus sehen wir daher eine Vorantreibung der grundlegenden Widersprüche des Kapitalismus, also der wachsenden Kluft und dem Antagonismus zwischen den Produktivkräften einerseits und den gegebenen Produktionsverhältnissen (Privateigentum an Produktionsmittel, Nationalstaat) andererseits. Sowohl die Dynamik als auch die Fragilität des kapitalistischen Produktions- und Reproduktionsprozeß haben in der imperialistischen Epoche im Allgemeinen und der gegenwärtigen Periode der Globalisierung im Besonderen an Schärfe gewonnen. So sehen wir Verschärfung der Gegensätze zwischen den verschiedenen Sektoren des kapitalistischen Weltmarktes. Daher erleben wir auf wirtschaftlicher Ebene einen stetigen Konzentrations- und Zentralisationsprozeß des Kapitals, also der Herausbildung großer Monopole.

Ebenso bedeutet dies, daß sich die Gegensätze zwischen den Tendenzen der imperialistischen Ökonomie, der imperialistischen Politik und der imperialistischen Ideologie(n) verstärken und schärfer, explosiver werden. Die Wirtschaft wird immer internationaler vernetzt und daher verstärkt sich die objektive Notwendigkeit eines Weltstaates, der als Überbau den relativ reibungslosen Ablauf des Geschäftsganges gewährleistet. Doch ein solcher Weltstaat kann nicht entstehen, denn es existieren bereits eine Reihe von Großmächten, von denen jede um Ausweitung ihres Einflusses ringt. Die gleiche Rivalität existiert zwischen den großen Monopolkapitalgruppen. Die einerseits existierende Tendenz zur weltweiten Vereinheitlichung des Kapitals und des Staates bringt also andererseits gleichzeitig auch eine verschärfte Rivalität und somit gegenläufige Tendenzen zur Internationalisierung hervor. Ähnliches auf ideologischer Ebene: Einerseits erfordert die Internationalisierung des Kapitalismus eine weitgehende Öffnung der Grenzen, der Mobilität der Arbeitskräfte, die Umwandlung der Kultur in Richtung Weltkultur. Gleichzeitig jedoch provozieren die verschärften Rivalitäten zwischen den Nationalstaaten und den nationalen Kapitalgruppen den Chauvinismus.

Ebenso gehört der Widerspruch zwischen den Produktivkräften und den Nationalstaaten zu einem der grundlegendsten im Kapitalismus – und in der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus (Imperialismus) gilt das in einem noch größeren Ausmaße. Trotzki schrieb dazu:

Als klassische Arena schuf sich der Kapitalismus im Kampf mit dem mittelalterlichen Partikularismus den Nationalstaat. Doch kaum richtig zusammengefügt; begann er sich schon in eine Bremse für die wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Entwicklung zu verwandeln. Aus dem Widerspruch zwischen den Produktivkräften und dem Rahmen des Nationalstaats, in Verbindung mit dem Grundwiderspruch – zwischen den Produktivkräften und dem Privateigentum an den Produktionsmitteln –, erwuchs eben die Krise des Kapitalismus als der Weltgesellschaftsordnung.[40]

Daher strebt der Kapitalismus stetig zur Herausbildung immer größerer, immer umfassenderer Monopole. Und ebenso strebt der Kapitalismus daher stetig zur Überwindung der nationalstaatlichen Grenzen, die wie Fesseln an den Produktivkräften liegen, ohne die Nationalstaaten wirklich überwinden zu können. Gleichzeitig brauchen die einzelnen Monopolkapitalgruppen in einer Epoche der verschärften Konkurrenz immer dringender die Unterstützung existierender staatlicher Strukturen und somit der bestehenden Nationalstaaten gegen den jeweiligen Gegner.

Die beiden folgenden Tabellen zeigen am Beispiel des Kapitalexports (konkret die Auslandsdirektinvestitionen im Verhältnis zu allen Investitionen bzw. im Verhältnis zum jährlichen Output), in welchen Ausmaß die Globalisierung bereits vorangeschritten ist, wie zentral bereits die Auslandsmärkte für das imperialistische Kapital geworden sind. Tabelle 6 zeigt darüberhinaus, daß insbesondere für das europäische Kapital die nationalstaatlichen Grenzen zu eng geworden sind.

 

Tabelle 6: Globalisierung und Kapitalexport der imperialistischen Staaten [41]

 

 

Anteil der jährlichen ADI-Ströme

an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen

ADI-Bestände im

Verhältnis zum BIP

 

 

1981-1985

1993

1998

2006

1980

1990

2000

2006

Welt

 

im Inland

2.3%

4.3%

11.1%

9.4%

4.9%

8.5%

18.3%

22.7%

im Ausland

2.1%

4.4%

11.5%

8.3%

5.4%

8.6%

20.6%

23.9%

Imperialistische

Staaten

im Inland

2.2%

3.5%

10.9%

11.4%

4.7%

8.2%

16.4%

24.2%

im Ausland

2.7%

5.2%

14.8%

14.3%

6.4%

9.7%

21.7%

30.7%

 

Tabelle 7: Kapitalexport der imperialistischen Staaten. Vergleich EU, USA und Japan [42]

 

 

Anteil der jährlichen ADI-Ströme

an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen

ADI-Bestände im

Verhältnis zum BIP

 

 

1981-1985

1993

1998

2006

1980

1990

2000

2006

Europäische

Union

im Inland

2.6%

5.8%

15.3%

18.1%

5.3%

10.5%

26.0%

38.0%

im Ausland

4.3%

7.4%

26.2%

19.5%

6.1%

11.4%

36.4%

44.9%

USA

im Inland

2.9%

4.7%

12.8%

6.8%

3.1%

6.8%

12.8%

13.5%

im Ausland

1.7%

7.8%

10.0%

8.3%

8.1%

7.4%

13.4%

18.0%

Japan

im Inland

0.1%

0.2%

0.3%

-0.6%

0.3%

0.3%

1.1%

2.5%

im Ausland

1.5%

1.1%

2.4%

4.8%

1.9%

6.7%

6.0%

10.3%

                     

 

All dies läßt die ökonomischen und politischen Gegensätze weltweit ansteigen und droht die Weltordnung in eine Weltunordnung zu verwandeln. Daraus ergibt sich für den imperialistischen Kapitalismus die überlebensnotwendige Dringlichkeit eines Hegemons – einer imperialistischen Großmacht und der damit verbundenen Monopolkapitalgruppe, die die zentrifugalen Kräfte des niedergehenden Weltkapitalismus zusammenhält und einen halbwegs „geordneten“ Ablauf des internationalen Produktions-, Reproduktions- und Zirkulationsprozesses ermöglicht. Diese Rolle nimmt seit 1945 die USA ein, die jedoch aufgrund ihrer ökonomischen Schwächung in den letzten Jahren diese Rolle immer weniger erfüllen kann.

Fassen wir also die zentralen Schlußfolgerungen unserer Analyse zusammen. Der Imperialismus ist jenes Stadium des Kapitalismus, in dem er sich in seinem Niedergang befindet, wo sich seine Widersprüche (zwischen dem gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Arbeit – Arbeitsteilung mittlerweile sogar auf globaler Ebene – und dem privaten Charakter ihrer Aneignung durch das Kapital, v.a. dem Monopolkapital) in einem solchen Ausmaße zuspitzen, sodaß sie dazu drängen, in ihr Gegenteil umzuschlagen (Sozialismus), aber dies nicht können (wegen der weiterhin bestehenden kapitalistischen Produktionsverhältnisse und der bürgerlichen Nationalstaaten). Der Imperialismus ist das Stadium, wo daher die Bourgeoisie unter Einsatz aller Mittel – ökonomische, politische und militärische - verzweifelt versucht, ihren Untergang aufzuhalten. Diese Maßnahmen können zu einer temporären Abmilderung der kapitalistischen Widersprüche führen, um sie gleichzeitig jedoch später auf einer höheren Ebene verschärft zum Ausbruch kommen zu lassen. Diese Maßnahmen können die Lage der Bourgeoisie auf politischer Ebene zeitweilig verbessern, jedoch gleichzeitig die ökonomische Krise verschärfen. Oder umgekehrt, sie können zeitweilig die Profitrate erhöhen, aber gleichzeitig die politischen Widersprüche der bürgerlichen Ordnung verschärfen.

Darin bereits enthalten und besonders von Trotzki und Bucharin betont, ist ein weiteres Charakteristikum der marxistischen Imperialismus-Theorie: die Bedeutung des Weltmarktes. Die politischen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse in jedem Nationalstaat können vom marxistischen Standpunkt aus betrachtet nicht bloß und nicht einmal in erster Linie aus den inneren Faktoren abgeleitet werden. Der imperialistische Kapitalismus existiert nicht als eine Aneinanderreihung zahlreicher Nationalstaaten und –ökonomien. [43] Vielmehr sind die Weltwirtschaft und die Weltpolitik – die sich wiederum als Schmelztiegel aller nationalen Faktoren zu einer eigenständigen Totalität über diese erheben – die ausschlaggebenden Triebkräfte. Die ungleichzeitige und kombinierte Entwicklung des Weltkapitalismus trifft mit den jeweils lokalen Besonderheiten eines Landes zusammen und verschmilzt dann zu der jeweils spezifischen nationalen Dynamik der politischen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse eines bestimmten Staates.

Der Marxismus geht von der Weltwirtschaft aus nicht als einer Summe nationaler Teile, sondern als einer gewaltigen, selbständigen Realität, die durch internationale Arbeitsteilung und den Weltmarkt geschaffen wurde und in der gegenwärtigen Epoche über die nationalen Märkte herrscht.[44]

Wir leben also in einer Epoche, in der kapitalistischen Widersprüche zunehmen, in der die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte zum Zusammenschluß immer größerer ökonomischer Einheiten (Monopole) und politischer Einheiten (Bündnisse von Staaten bis hin zu Annexion, sprich Einverleibung, und Verschmelzung) drängen und in der gleichzeitig die Konkurrenz zwischen den Monopolen und Großmächten immer schärfer wird.

Die EU und insbesondere der EU-Vertrag als Schritt in Richtung einer staatlichen Vereinigung Europas ist die verzweifelte Antwort der Bourgeoisie auf diese Herausforderungen. Mit der Herausbildung eines geeinten imperialistischen Europa könnte das Monopolkapital zwei Fliegen mit einem Schlag erledigen. Einerseits würde es so dem über die nationalstaatlichen Grenzen hinauswuchernden Kapital einen größeren Marktrahmen verschaffen. Und andererseits hätte es so einen stärkeren Exekutivarm, das seine Interessen global und schlagkräftig vertreten kann, nicht zuletzt auch gegen die unliebsame Konkurrenz in anderen Teilen der Welt.

 

IV.2.      Die Nationalstaaten in Europa und die Hindernisse für die Schaffung eines supranationalen Staatsapparates

 

Der Prozeß der europäischen Vereinigung kann kein spontaner sein – nicht nur in politischer, sondern auch in wirtschaftlicher Hinsicht. Es gibt kein organisches Erstarken eines pan-europäischen Kapitals. Wir leben nicht in der Periode des aufkommenden Kapitalismus, als Nationalstaaten geformt wurden und das Kapital sich darüber ausbreitete. Wenn ein Kapital nicht das Privileg hat, eines der ersten aufsteigenden kapitalistischen Mächte zu sein, braucht es massive staatliche Intervention, um sich eine entsprechende Position zu erkämpfen.

Heute in der imperialistischen Epoche, unter Bedingungen des globalen Kapitalismus und dem Abschluß der Aufteilung der Welt unter den mächtigsten imperialistischen Nationen, mit seinem enormen Wettbewerb und Rivalität, ist jede organische, sich natürlich ergebende, Formierung transnationalen Kapitals eine Illusion. [45] Wir dürfen nicht vergessen: die am meisten multinationalen, weltweit präsenten, Kapitalien sind jene der führenden Weltmächte – der amerikanischen und der britischen als frühere Weltmacht. Diese konnten die Märkte dank ihrer riesigen ökonomischen, politischen und militärischen Macht öffnen.

Solch ein Prozeß ist innerhalb der EU unmöglich. Keine Macht innerhalb der EU ist stark genug, im Alleingang den anderen ihren Willen aufzuzwingen und sie zu unterwerfen. Nur die bewußte Entscheidung von führenden imperialistischen Gruppen – wir denken hier v.a. an Deutschland und Frankreich –, einerseits auf bestimmte nationale Eigeninteressen zu verzichten, andererseits den anderen Staaten in der EU ihren Willen aufzuzwingen und somit letztlich für das deutsche, französische usw. Monopolkapital mehr Vorteile herausholen zu können, kann einen europäischen Zusammenschluß auf kapitalistischer Grundlage vorantreiben.

Aber diese Tendenz ist nur die eine Seite der Medaille. Die andere Seite sind die enormen verbleibenden Hindernisse. Die Herausbildung eines supranationalen Staatsapparates bedeutet eine Stärkung des Monopolkapitals der größten EU-Staaten und damit verbunden eine Schwächung der kleineren EU-Staaten sowie der Arbeiterklasse, aber auch zahlreicher anderer Schichten im Kleinbürgertum und sogar auch in den Reihen des Bürgertums. Daher auch das erfolgreiche NEIN gegen die EU-Verfassung im Jahre 2005 und daher auch die oft langatmigen Verhandlungen zwischen den Regierungen der EU-Staaten.

Es wäre daher falsch, nur die Alternativen „Zerfall der EU“ oder „kapitalistische Vereinigte Staaten von Europa“ zu sehen. Es ist ebenso durchaus möglich, daß einzelne Nationalstaaten aus der EU ausscheiden und die anderen Staaten einen engeren Verbund bis hin zu einem gemeinsamen Staat eingehen.

Wir haben in der Vergangenheit betont, daß die gescheiterte EU-Verfassung (und jetzt der EU-Reformvertrag) auf die Herausbildung eines imperialistischen EU-Staatsapparates auf der Basis eines bürgerlichen Parlamentarismus mit starken bonapartistischen Elementen in Form der Europäischen Kommission abzielt.[46]

Der Begriff Bonapartismus ist hier so zu verstehen, daß sich der EU-Staatsapparat über das Parlament und die bürgerliche Demokratie in Europa erhebt und zwischen den Interessen der einzelnen Nationalstaaten manövriert. Warum muß ein solcher EU-Staatsapparat bonapartistische Elemente enthalten? Weil er sich im Unterschied zu den meisten imperialistischen Nationalstaaten nicht auf einen etablierten herrschenden Block, also einer Allianz mit anderen Klassen(-fraktionen) und Schichten, stützen kann. Wie oben erwähnt, sind sich die EU-Strategen dieser Schwäche durchaus bewußt und sie versuchen, dem entgegenzusteuern. Das ändert aber nichts daran, daß weit und breit keine relevante Gesamtbourgeoisie oder gar Mittelschicht mit einem europäischen, nicht-nationalstaatlichen Bewußtsein zu sehen ist. Dieser Umstand wird sich auch nicht in absehbarer Zeit ändern. Daher besteht für das EU-Monopolkapital die einzige Möglichkeit, um den Vereinigungsprozeß Europas voranzutreiben, darin, einen supranationalen Staatsapparat mit bonapartistischen Zügen zu schaffen. Das bedeutet, einen EU-Staatsapparat aufzubauen, der nur in eingeschränktem Ausmaß der Kontrolle des Parlaments unterliegt und weitgehend unabhängig von diesem und dafür umso abhängiger von den größten Kapitalgruppen und den mächtigsten Regierungen agiert.

Das wiederum bedeutet, daß ein imperialistischer EU-Staat notwendigerweise noch weniger demokratisch sein würde als es gegenwärtig die imperialistischen Nationalstaaten sind. War also die Perspektive einer sozialen und demokratischen Reformierung des kapitalistischen Nationalstaates schon immer eine reformistische Illusion, so trifft dies für die EU noch mehr zu. Dies bedeutet natürlich keineswegs, daß ein Austritt bzw. nicht Eintritt in die EU – in der jetzigen Phase des europäischen Klassenkampfes – ein Vorantreiben der bürgerlichen Angriffe auf das Proletariat in dem betroffenen Nationalstaat verzögern oder gar verhindern kann. Die Abhängigkeit der Nationalstaaten an den Entwicklungen der Weltwirtschaft, und somit deren Einbindung in den Kapitalismus, kann nicht durch das Fehlen einer formalen Zugehörigkeit zu einem imperialistischen Staatenbündsnis überwunden werden. Eine Konservierung der demokratischen und sozialen Errungenschaften des historischen Klassenkampfes ist auch in einem formal „bündnislosen“ Nationalstaat illusionär. Auch wenn ein Supermarkt nicht Teil einer Supermarktkette ist, verlängert der Besitzer die Öffnungszeit, um mit der Konkurrenz mithalten zu können. Der Arbeiter im „unabhängigen“ Supermarkt hat also dennoch mit denselben Problemen zu kämpfen wie der Arbeiter in der Supermarktkette. Man kann also zukünftige Angriffe der Bourgeoisie im eigenen Land nicht mäßigen, bloß weil dieses nicht formal in einem Bündnis mit anderen Bourgeoisien zusammenarbeitet.

Fassen wir zusammen: Damit das europäische Monopolkapital seine Interessen in einer instabiler werdenden Welt durchsetzen kann und damit es die USA ernsthaft als Welthegemon herausfordern kann, muß es:

* der heimischen Arbeiterklasse schwere Niederlagen beibringen und die Ausbeutungsrate massiv erhöhen,

* global politisch und militärisch intervenieren können, um so Halbkolonien gefügiger zu machen und den Einfluß anderer Großmächte zurückzudrängen,

* die nationalstaatlichen Differenzen innerhalb der EU harmonisieren.

Dies aller erfordert den Aufbau eines supranationalen Staatsapparats. Denn der Prozeß der europäischen Vereinigung und die Schaffung eines pan-europäischen Kapitals kann nur das Ergebnis massiver, bewußter Intervention eines pan-europäischen imperialistischen Staatsapparats sein.

 

V.           Ist eine Vereinigung Europas auf imperialistischer Grundlage unmöglich? Pseudo-marxistische Einwände von zentristischer und linksreformistischer Seite

 

Der marxistische Theoretiker und Führer der russischen Bolschewiki, Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, schrieb im Jahre 1915 eine Artikel über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa, in welchem er diese ablehnte. Verschiedene Theoretiker aus dem zentristischen Lager haben Lenin’s Haltung als Beleg dafür genommen, daß Marxisten die Möglichkeit einer imperialistischen Vereinigung Europas ausschließen müssen. Der Stalinismus hat überhaupt diesen Artikel als Vorwand genommen, um die Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa zu verdammen.

 

V.1.        Alan Woods, die „Internationale Marxistische Tendenz“ und der Funke

 

Schauen wir uns zuerst die Argumente gegen die Möglichkeit einer imperialistischen Vereinigung Europas an. Als erstes zitieren wir die „Internationale Marxistische Tendenz“ (IMT), deren österreichische und deutsche Sektionen sich „Der Funke“ nennen. In den meisten Ländern arbeitet diese Strömung seit vielen Jahrzehnten als linker Flügel innerhalb der Sozialdemokratie und kombiniert eine pseudo-marxistische Rhetorik mit opportunistischer Anpassung an die Bürokratie. Die IMT zeichnet sich dadurch aus, daß sie erstens jeden bisherigen Fortschritt der imperialistischen Einigung Europas leugnet und zweitens Schritte in Richtung supranationaler Staat für unmöglich erklärt.

In zwei Weltkriegen schlugen die Versuche der deutschen Bourgeoisie, ganz Europa unter ihren Herrschaftsbereich zu bekommen, fehl. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg entwickelte die französische Bourgeoisie die Vorstellung, sie könne durch ein Bündnis mit Deutschland Europa beherrschen. Es sollte jedoch gänzlich anders kommen. Deutschland stieg im Endeffekt als die zentrale europäische Macht auf, und Frankreich war gezwungen sich an diese neue Situation anzupassen. Es realisiert dabei, daß es von alleine den US-Imperialismus nicht herausfordern kann und wie Großbritannien zu einer Marionette der USA zu verkommen droht. Dies ist der eigentliche Grund für die zumindest bisweilen anhaltende relative Stabilität des Blocks zwischen dem deutschen und dem französischen Imperialismus. Der deutsch-französische Block ist jedoch nicht viel mehr als ein Kartell zweier rivalisierender imperialistischer Mächte. Einerseits muss Frankreich die ökonomische Vorherrschaft Deutschlands tolerieren, auf der anderen Seite drückt Deutschland angesichts der durch staatliche Interventionen geprägten Wirtschaftspolitik Frankreichs, welche in Wirklichkeit eine Maßnahme zum Schutz der eigenen Wirtschaft vor dem deutschen Kapital darstellt, ein Auge zu. Der strukturellen Kooperation zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich auf militärischem Gebiet wird es aufgrund der unterschiedlichen außenpolitischen Interessen der beiden an Stärke mangeln. Die Pläne für eine Europäische Verfassung sind ein weiterer verzweifelter Versuch seitens des deutschen und des französischen Imperialismus Europa nach den destabilisierenden Auswirkungen des Irakkriegs unter ihrer Herrschaft zu vereinigen. Selbst wenn es den europäischen Mächten gelingt ein Kompromissabkommen zu schließen, dann wird diese Verfassung keine reale Bedeutung haben und auch nicht die eigentlichen internen Konflikte in Europa lösen. Dies ist der Fall, weil aufgrund der nationalen Konflikte zwischen den verschiedenen EU-Mitgliedsstaaten nur eine Verfassung denkbar ist, welche die reale Macht der einzelnen nationalen Bourgeoisien nicht einschränkt. Weiters wird diese Verfassung den Einfluss der USA auf die europäische Politik nicht vermindern.” [47]

2006 bekräftigte die IMT ihre Sichtweise, daß „der Prozess der Vereinigung Europas gestoppt“ wurde und sogar „Maastricht-Kriterien tot (seien)“:

Der Konflikt zwischen Britannien und Frankreich dreht sich im Wesentlichen um zwei Fragen: den Britenrabatt und die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik, die eine großzügige Subvention für Frankreich darstellt. Die Bösartigkeit dieses Streits zeigte die unter der Oberfläche liegenden Widersprüche in der EU auf und ließ den Mythos der „Europäischen Solidarität“ platzen. Weit weg davon, zu einem europäischen „Superstaat“ zu werden, ist der Prozess der Vereinigung Europas gestoppt worden. Er ist dabei sich umzukehren. Natürlich kann die europäische Bourgeoisie den Untergang der EU nicht akzeptieren, und der Euro mag beibehalten bleiben. Aber die ursprünglichen Maastricht-Kriterien sind tot.[48]

Ähnlich argumentierte der Führer der IMT, Alan Woods, im Jahre 1997 und erklärte sogar eine gemeinsame EU-Außenpolitik für unmöglich:

Auf kapitalistischer Basis jedoch ist eine wirkliche Einheit unmöglich. Wie Lenin schon vor mehr als 70 Jahren erklärte, wären kapitalistische Vereinigte Staaten von Europa eine reaktionäre Utopie (sic! Das ist Unsinn, wie wir unten zeigen werden.) – mit anderen Worten, sie sind unmöglich, und falls sie möglich wären, wären sie nicht im Interesse der arbeitenden Bevölkerung [49]

Wenig später bekräftigt Woods noch einmal: „All das bedeutet, daß ein europäischer Bundesstaat auf kapitalistischer Basis ausgeschlossen ist. [50]

Sogar eine Währungsunion – die mittlerweile nun schon seit 9 Jahren (und ihre Vorläuferinnen seit 18 Jahren) existiert – kann es laut Woods nicht geben: „Der Schluß ist klar: Auf einer kapitalistischen Basis kann eine stabile Währungsunion ohne einen geeinten Staat nicht erzielt werden.. [51]

Und später noch einmal bestimmter: „Jedenfalls ist der wirkliche Grund, warum die Währungsunion scheitern wird, daß die europäischen Kapitalisten nicht in der Lage sein werden, so wie in der Vergangenheit Wachstumsraten von jährlich 5-6% zu erreichen. [52]

Und schließlich wird ein Erfolg der EU völlig ausgeschlossen: „Das ist genau das, was wir meinen, wenn wir von der Idee der Europäischen Einheit auf kapitalistischer Basis als reaktionäre Utopie sprechen. Sie ist ganz einfach eine Utopie, weil sie nicht zu Ende geführt werden kann. Die Existenz tiefer Interessenskonflikte zwischen den Kapitalisten der einzelnen Nationalstaaten wird unvermeidlich zu einem Zusammenbruch dieser Versuche führen. (…) Die Idee der europäischen Einheit ist daher nicht nur eine Utopie, sondern auch eine reaktionäre Utopie. [53]

Wir sehen also, die Welt des Herrn Woods und des Funke ist sehr einfach: Die Europäische Union könne keine staatliche Einheit Europas auf kapitalistischer Grundlage zustande bringen,

1.            weil ihre Einheitsprojekte wie die gemeinsame Währung sowieso zum Scheitern verdammt sind (eine Behauptung, die von der Wirklichkeit Lügen gestraft wird) und

2.            weil schon Lenin gesagt hätte, daß dies eine Utopie sei (eine Behauptung, die jeder Leser von Lenin’s Schriften als Märchen erkennen wird).

 

V.2.        Das „Committee for a Workers International“

 

Das „Committee for a Workers International“ (CWI, in Österreich ist dies die SLP, in Deutschland die SAV) ist zwar weniger wortreich in seinen Aussagen, aber im Endeffekt teilt die Gruppe mit der IMT nicht nur die Vergangenheit (bis 1992 waren sie ja in der gleichen Organisation), sondern auch die Einschätzung der Unmöglichkeit der europäischen Einigung auf kapitalistischer Grundlage.

So hielten sie auf ihrem 7. Weltkongreß im Jahre 1998 fest: „Das Projekt der Europäischen Währungsunion wird zusammenbrechen. (…) Der Zusammenbruch des Euro ist keine Frage des ‚ob‘, sondern des ‚wann‘ und ‚wie‘.[54]

In einer anderen Resolution bekräftigen sie diese Sichtweise: „Die Europäischen Einheitsakte, verschiedene EU-Gesetze und einheitliche Vorschriften, Steuerangleichung usw. haben als Mittel der Stimulierung weiterer Integration innerhalb der EU gedient. Dies zusammen mit dem politischen Konsens, der sich in Europa in den 1990er Jahren herausgebildet hat, hat zu der Illusion geführt, daß die EU auf dem Wege hin zu einem ‚Super-Staat‘ ist. Das ist sicherlich nicht der Fall. Die weltweite Krise hat bereits zu einem gewissen Grad den Prozeß der Globalisierung zum Stillstand gebracht. Dies könnte auf Europa übergreifen und den Prozeß der weiteren Integration der EU/EWU vereiteln…[55]

Auch wenn die Aussagen weniger kühn wie die von Woods/Funke sind, laufen sie im Endeffekt auf das gleiche hinaus: Eine Vorantreibung der Europäischen Union bis hin zu einem gemeinsamen Staat wird, ja auch nur das gelingen jedes ernsthaften Projektes in diese Richtung wie die gemeinsame Währung wird für unmöglich erklärt.

 

V.3.        Tibor Zenker und die „Kommunistische Initiative“

 

Als letzten führen wir noch Tibor Zenker an, der führende Theoretiker der „Kommunistischen Initiative“, einer linken Abspaltung von der KPÖ. Zenker hat im Herbst 2006 ein Buch mit dem Titel „Der Imperialismus der EU“ veröffentlicht, in welchem sich das allgemeine Dilemma seiner Schriften und allgemein der Positionen der KI wiederspiegelt: Gewissenhafte Faktenrecherche, geistreiche Formulierungen und richtige Einzelerkenntnisse werden durch einen unsäglich linksreformistische Schematismus eingezwängt, in dem ein dialektisches Begreifen der Wirklichkeit keinen Platz findet. Im besonderen leidet die Zenker’sche/KI-Kritik an der EU daran, daß sie immer mit einem kleinbürgerlich-linken austro-patriotischen Standpunkt und der Hauptforderung „Für den Austritt Österreichs aus der EU“ verbunden wird. [56]

Wir haben uns an anderer Stelle mit der Frage der Haltung zum Austritt aus der EU auseinandergesetzt und wollen hier jene Genossinnen und Genossen in der Linken, die einen EU-Austritt befürworten, auf ihren Widerspruch zur Lenin’schen Haltung aufmerksam machen. [57]

Unsere Haltung zum EU-Beitritt war und ist eine internationalistische. Wir stellten fest, daß die nationalstaatliche Eigenständigkeit Österreichs als ein imperialistischer Staat im Vergleich zur Teilnahme an der EU keinen fortschrittlichen Wert an sich darstellt und ein NEIN die Tür zu austro-patriotischen Abgleitflächen und einem Aufgeben der leninistischen Haltung „Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land“ (sprich der Hauptfeind ist die Bourgeoisie im eigenen Land) bedeutet.

Den Grundfehler, den Tibor Zenker und andere in der Frage der EU-Mitgliedschaft begehen, daß sie explizit oder implizit die Klassenfrage ausklammern. Sie sprechen von einer „nationalen Frage“, als wenn Österreich in der EU als Nation unterdrückt werden würde und ignorieren die schlichte Tatsache, daß Österreich ein – wenn auch kleiner – imperialistischer Staat mit einem imperialistischen Kapital ist. [58] Dies ist umso bemerkenswerter, als Zenker an einer anderen Stelle sehr wohl einen Bruch mit der traditionellen, unsäglichen KPÖ-Haltung vollzieht, die sich ja immer weigerte, Österreich als imperialistisch zu bezeichnen und es eher als eine vom bösen deutschen Kapital bedrohte Halbkolonie sah. [59]

Im Unterschied zu Zenker halten wir es hier mit Lenin, der darlegte, daß die Verteidigung von imperialistischen Nationalstaaten und die Belebung nationaler Bewegung in solchen Ländern reaktionär ist.

Wovon ist die Rede, wenn man sagt, daß die Formen des Nationalstaats zu Fesseln geworden sind usw.? von den fortgeschrittenen kapitalistischen Ländern, vor allem von Frankreich, Deutschland und England, durch deren Teilnahme am gegenwärtigen Krieg dieser Krieg in erster Linie zu einem imperialistischen Krieg geworden ist. In diesen Ländern, die die Menschheit bisher, besonders in der Zeit von 1789 bis 1871, vorwärtsgeführt haben, ist der Prozeß der Bildung von Nationalstaaten beendet, in diesen Ländern gehört die nationale Bewegung unwiederbringlich der Vergangenheit an; sie wiederbeleben zu wollen wäre eine sinnlose, reaktionäre Utopie. Die nationale Bewegung der Franzosen, Engländer und Deutschen ist seit langem zum Abschluß gekommen; auf der Tagesordnung der Geschichte steht hier etwas anderes: Nationen, die einst um ihre Befreiung kämpften, sind zu Unterdrückernationen geworden, zu Nationen des imperialistischen Raubes, die am ‚Vorabend des Untergangs des Kapitalismus‘ stehen.[60]

Auch Österreich hat eine solche Periode der Nationsbildung (im Falle von Österreich eine oftmals künstliche) hinter sich und nimmt heute die Rolle einer imperialistischen und unterdrückerischen Nation ein. Was Zenker ignoriert und was für uns eine zentrale Position des revolutionären Marxismus ist, ist die Tatsache, daß nationale Unabhängigkeitsbewegung nur von unterdrückten Völkern bzw. halbkolonialen Staaten einen fortschrittlichen Charakter haben, nicht jedoch von herrschenden Völkern bzw. imperialistischen Staaten. Eine Bewegung, die daher die nationale Eigenständigkeit für Österreich – also einen imperialistischen Nationalstaat – gegenüber der EU fordert, ist daher in keinster Weise fortschrittlich.

Aber setzen wir uns jetzt mit der Einschätzung von Zenker/KI der Möglichkeit einer imperialistischen Vereinigung Europas auseinander. Zenker/KI meinen ähnlich wie Woods/Funke, daß eine imperialistische Vereinigung Europas unmöglich sei und darüber hinaus mit der Lenin’schen Imperialismus-Theorie unvereinbar wäre:

Somit ist festzuhalten, daß die EU bislang ein imperialistisches Bündnis ist - mehr nicht. Kann sie jedoch mehr sein? Kann die EU, wie Bürgerliche und revisionistische ‘Linke’ behaupten, der Ausgangspunkt für die Überwindung des Nationalstaates unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen sein, kann die EU vom Staatenbündnis zum wirklichen Bundesstaat werden? Die Antwort ist ein klares Nein. Zu einer solchen Ansicht zu kommen, würde bedeuten, die Leninsche Imperialismustheorie zugunsten eines neokautskyanischen Konzepts zu opfern, nämlich im Sinne einer zivilisatorischen Globalisierungsthese. Die Behauptung, wir würden im Postimperialismus leben, ist entschieden zurückzuweisen, und alle diese Ansätze, mögen sie ‘Ultraimperialismus’, ‘organisierter Kapitalismus’ oder heute ‘Empire’ heißen, sind nicht nur falsch, sondern auch in bemerkenswerter Weise unsinnig.[61]

 

V.4.        Aber warum soll eine imperialistische Vereinigung Europas unmöglich sein?

 

Bevor wir uns der falschen Berufung der Zentristen auf Lenin zuwenden, wollen wir einige grundsätzliche Argumente ins Feld führen. Die kühnen, aber von der Realität widerlegten Behauptungen von Funke und CWI/SLP, daß der Euro sowieso scheitere, daß die EU sowieso stagniere usw. sind einfach nur hohle Phrasen, die mit der Wirklichkeit auf Kriegsfuß stehen. Natürlich gab und gibt es immer wieder Rückschläge im Formierungsprozeß der EU. Es ist auch in der Tat möglich, daß die EU scheitert. Aber anstatt die konkreten Bedingungen eines solchen Scheiterns zu benennen, anstatt die realen Tendenzen der voranschreitenden Vereinigung Europas zur Kenntnis zu nehmen, beruhigt man sich mit leeren Proklamationen über das unausweichliche Versagen der herrschenden Klasse.

Unabhängig davon führen unsere Gegner immer wieder an, daß der Kapitalismus und das Kapital an den Nationalstaat gebunden sind und daher die imperialistischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa unmöglich seien. Aber sie sehen nur die eine Tendenz: die Bindung des Kapitals an den Nationalstaat. Sie ignorieren die andere Tendenz: das Hinauswachsen der Produktivkräfte über den Nationalstaat und somit die stetige Tendenz des Kapitals, den Nationalstaat zu überwinden. Statt dialektischen Denkens in Widersprüchen haben wir bei den Zentristen bloß einseitigen Schematismus.

Warum ist es für diese Genossen nur denkbar, daß das Kapital aus Eigeninteresse an seinem Nationalstaat festklebt, aber nicht, daß das Kapital erkennt, das seine Eigeninteressen längerfristig aufgehoben sind, wenn es sich gemeinsam mit anderen Kapitalien und Staaten gegen die größere Gefahr (USA) wehrt?!

Es sind genau diese Faktoren, die auch die Ursachen für die real bestehende Vorantreibung des imperialistischen Projektes EU in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten darstellen. Wäre dies alles nur eine illusionäre Schimäre (Trugbild), warum sind der herrschenden Klasse schon so viele Erfolge bei der Vorantreibung der EU gelungen?!

Öfters wird argumentiert, daß die EU nicht zu einem wirklichen Bundesstaat, nicht auf organische Weise vereinigt werden kann. Das ist aus den oben genannten Gründen auch richtig. Aber was ergibt sich daraus? Daraus ergibt sich nur, daß das Projekt EU mit enormen Widersprüchen versehen ist und daß es daher hier auch viel Widerspruchspotential gibt. Aber jeder, der die Geschichte existierender Nationalstaaten kennt, weiß, daß diese auch oft mit Druck oder sogar Kriegen hervorgebracht wurden, daß es Diesen anfangs auch oft an innerer Homogenität mangelte.

Tibor Zenker bezeichnet die Annahme der Möglichkeit einer imperialistischen Vereinigung Europas als Opferung der „Leninsche Imperialismustheorie zugunsten eines neokautskyanischen Konzepts“ und bringt dann Kautskys Theorie des Ultraimperialismus ins Spiel. Scheinbar hat Zenker weder Lenin noch Kautsky verstanden. Kautskys Revisionismus bestand ja nicht darin, daß er die Möglichkeit eines Zusammenschlusses von zwei oder mehreren Staaten in Erwägung zog. Vielmehr bestand sein Revisionismus darin, daß er die Möglichkeit einer Verschmelzung aller wesentlichen Kapitalien weltweit zu einem einzigen Ultraimperialismus – oder einem „Generalkartell“ wie es Hilferding bezeichnete – behauptete. Genausowenig ist es Revisionismus, wenn man den Zusammenschluß von zwei oder mehreren Konzernen für möglich hält, damit diese besser im Konkurrenzkampf bestehen können. Sehr wohl Revisionismus ist es jedoch, wenn man die friedliche, organische Vereinigung aller Kapitalien weltweit für möglich ist.

Lenin ging von einem dialektischen Verständnis des Imperialismus aus. Imperialismus ist Monopopkapitalismus. Das bedeutet Konzentration und Zentralisation des Kapitals. Und zwar sowohl am inneren Markt als auch am Weltmarkt.

"Ökonomisch ist der Imperialismus monopolistischer Kapitalismus. Damit das Monopol zum vollen Monopol wird, müssen die Konkurrenten nicht nur vom inneren Markt (vom Markt des betreffenden Staates), sondern auch vom äußeren Markt, müssen sie in der ganzen Welt verdrängt werden. Gibt es in der Ära des Finanzkapitals eine ökonomische Möglichkeit, die Konkurrenz auch in einem fremden Staat zu verdrängen? Natürlich: Dieses Mittel ist die finanzielle Abhängigkeit und der Aufkauf aller Rohstoffquellen und dann auch aller Unternehmen des Konkurrenten." [62]

Und was bedeutet dies auf politischer Ebene? Es bedeutet, daß es auch auf politisch-staatlicher Ebene einen Prozeß – natürlich widersprüchlich und „unharmonisch“ – der Verschmelzung von Staaten geben kann. Will jemand ernsthaft behaupten, daß auf der ökonomischen Ebene ein permanenter Prozeß der Verschmelzung von Kapital stattfinden kann, aber auf der politischen Ebene niemals?! Wo bleibt da die dialektische Logik!? Was ist denn der Kolonialismus anderes als indirekte oder direkte „Verschmelzung“ eines stärkeren mit einem schwächeren Staat. Und warum soll eine Verschmelzung ausschließlich zwischen einem imperialistischen und einem unterdrückten Land möglich sein und nicht zwischen zwei oder mehreren imperialistischen Ländern?!

Das hat nichts mit Kautskyianismus und Ultraimperialismus zu tun. Dies wäre dann der Fall, wenn wir die Herausbildung eines Weltmonopols und eines internationalen Generalkartells und dadurch einen friedlichen Weltkapitalismus für möglich halten würden. In Wirklichkeit ist natürlich das Gegenteil der Fall. Es ist Teil des Prozesses der Verschärfung der imperialistischen Gegensätze, daß es sowohl die Verschmelzung von Monopolkapitalien und Staaten gibt (v.a. Kolonialismus, aber auch engere Bündnisse bis hin zur Verschmelzung zwischen imperialistischen Staaten) als auch gleichzeitig die Verschärfung des Konkurrenzkampfes zwischen den Monopolkapitalien und den imperialistischen Staaten.

Zu sagen, daß es niemals – auch nicht in einzelnen Fällen – zum Zusammenschluß von Nationalstaaten bzw. dem Anschluß schwächerer Nationalstaaten an stärkere kommen könne mit dem Argument, daß das Kapital an den Nationalstaat gebunden sei und daher dieser innerhalb des Kapitalismus niemals überwunden werden könne, ist genauso „marxistisch“ (=ökonomistisch) wie jene, die gegen Lenin argumentierten, daß im Imperialismus das nationale Selbstbestimmungsrecht niemals verwirklicht werden könne.

Abschließend sei noch darauf hingewiesen, daß der Ausbreitungs- und Vereinigungsprozeß der EU sowohl mit der Verschärfung der Ausbeutung der Arbeiterklasse Hand in Hand geht, als auch mit der Herausbildung einer verschärften (halb)kolonialen Ausbeutung innerhalb der EU. Denn die Einbeziehung der osteuropäischen Länder und der Staaten des Balkans bedeutet die Umwandlung der EU von einem Bündnis von fast ausschließlich imperialistischen Staaten in ein Bündnis, daß sowohl imperialistische als auch halbkoloniale Länder inkludiert. In diesem Sinne haben wir auch einen Prozeß der Ausbeutung und Unterdrückung der osteuropäischen Länder durch das westeuropäische Kapital. Es ist dies mitunter ein Grund warum ein europäischer Staatsapparat immer wichtiger für das im Zaum halten der Widersprüche innerhalb der EU wird.

 

VI.          Lenin, Trotzki und ihre angebliche und tatsächliche Haltung zur Frage der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa

 

Da von Seiten des Zentrismus und Linksreformismus die Haltung Lenins und Trotzkis zur Frage der europäischen Einigung so oft mißverstanden wurde, wollen wir hier die Entwicklung der marxistischen Position bei den revolutionären Klassikern darlegen und beurteilen.

 

VI.1.      Was sagte Lenin wirklich?

 

In der linksreformistischen und zentristischen Literatur wird oft viel Schindluder betrieben mit Lenin’s Haltung zur Frage der Vereinigung Europas. Tatsächlich sagte gerade Lenin nicht, daß eine Vereinigung Europas unter kapitalistischen Vorzeichen unmöglich sei. Vielmehr meinte er, daß eine solche Vereinigung im Sinne einer für die Arbeiter und Jugendlichen fortschrittlichen Alternative utopisch ist und im Sinne einer imperialistischen Einigung reaktionär ist:

Vom Standpunkt der ökonomischen Bedingungen des Imperialismus, d.h. des Kapitalexports und der Aufteilung der Welt durch die ‘fortgeschrittenen’ und ‘zivilisierten’ Kolonialmächte, sind die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen entweder unmöglich oder reaktionär.“ [63]

Ein staatlicher Zusammenschluß des kapitalistischen Europas ist für Lenin möglich, aber er betont, daß vom Standpunkt des Proletariats aus betrachtet, ein solcher Zusammenschluß reaktionär wäre. Reaktionär, denn er bedeutet real einen Zusammenschluß der imperialistischen Großmächte zwecks Herausbildung eines noch mächtigeren vereinigten europäischen Imperialismus. Ein solcher vereinigter europäischer Imperialismus wäre stärker, um die kolonialen und halb-kolonialen Länder noch mehr auszubeuten und um erfolgreicher mit den imperialistischen Großmächten in Nordamerika und Asien zu wetteifern. Deswegen lehnte Lenin die Losung ab.

Vereinigte Staaten von Europa sind unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen gleichbedeutend mit Übereinkommen über die Teilung der Kolonien. Unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen ist jedoch jede andere Basis, jedes andere Prinzip der Teilung als das der Macht unmöglich.

Natürlich sind zeitweilige Abkommen zwischen den Kapitalisten und zwischen den Mächten möglich. In diesem Sinne sind auch die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa möglich als Abkommen der europäischen Kapitalisten ... worüber? Lediglich darüber, wie man gemeinsam den Sozialismus in Europa unterdrücken, gemeinsam die geraubten Kolonien gegen Japan und Amerika verteidigen könnte, die durch die jetzige Aufteilung der Kolonien im höchsten Grade benachteiligt und die im letzten halben Jahrhundert unvergleichlich rascher erstarkt sind als das rückständige, monarchistische, von Altersfäule befallene Europa. Im Vergleich zu den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika bedeutet Europa im ganzen genommen ökonomischen Stillstand. Auf der heutigen ökonomischen Basis, d.h. unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen, würden die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa die Organisation der Reaktion zur Hemmung der rascheren Entwicklung Amerikas bedeuten.[64]

An anderer Stelle beschreibt Lenin die Gefahr eines imperialistischen Zusammenschlusses Westeuropas und zitiert dabei zustimmend den britischen sozialliberalen Ökonomen Hobson:

Die Perspektive einer Aufteilung Chinas veranlaßte Hobson zu folgender ökonomischer Einschätzung: Der größte Teil Westeuropas könnte dann das Aussehen und den Charakter annehmen, die einige Gegenden in Südengland, an der Reviera sowie in den von Touristen am meisten besuchten und von reichen Leuten bewohnten Teilen Italiens und der Schweiz bereits haben: ein Häuflein reicher Aristokraten, die Dividenden und Pensionen aus dem Fernen Osten beziehen, mit einer etwas größeren Gruppe von Angestellten und Händlern und einer noch größeren Anzahl von Dienstboten und Arbeitern im Transportgewerbe und in den letzten Stadien der Produktion leicht verderblicher Waren; die wichtigsten Industrien wären verschwunden, die Lebensmittel und Industriefabrikate für den Massenkonsum würden als Tribut aus Asien und Afrika kommen.’ ‘Wir haben die Möglichkeit einer noch umfassenderen Vereinigung der westlichen Länder angedeutet, eine europäische Föderation der Großmächte, die, weit entfernt, die Sache der Weltzivilisation voranzubringen, die ungeheure Gefahr eines westlichen Parasitismus heraufbeschwören könnte: eine Gruppe fortgeschrittener Industrienationen, deren obere Klassen aus Asien und Afrika gewaltige Tribute beziehen und mit Hilfe dieser Tribute große Massen gefügigen Personals unterhalten, die nicht mehr in der Produktion von landwirtschaftlichen und industriellen Massenerzeugnissen, sondern mit persönlichen Dienstleistungen oder untergeordneter Industriearbeit unter der Kontrolle einer neuen Finanzaristokratie beschäftigt werden. Mögen diejenigen, die eine solche Theorie’ (es müßte heißen: Perspektive) ‘als nicht der Erwägung wert verächtlich abtun, die heutigen wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Verhältnisse in jenen Bezirken Südenglands untersuchen, die schon jetzt in eine solche Lage versetzt sind, und mögen sie darüber nachdenken, welch gewaltiges Ausmaß ein derartiges System annehmen würde, wenn China der ökonomischen Herrschaft ähnlicher Gruppen von Finanziers, von Investoren’ (Rentiers), ‘von Beamten in Staat und Wirtschaft unterworfen würde, die das größte potentielle Profitreservoir, das die Welt je gekannt hat, ausschöpfen würden, um diesen Profit in Europa zu verzehren. Die Situation ist viel zu kompliziert, das Spiel der Weltkräfte viel zu unberechenbar, als daß diese oder irgendeine andere Zukunftsdeutung als einzige mit Sicherheit zutreffen müßte. Aber die Einflüsse, die den Imperialismus Westeuropas gegenwärtig beherrschen, bewegen sich in dieser Richtung, und wenn sie nicht auf Widerstand stoßen, wenn sie nicht in eine andere Richtung gedrängt werden, dann bewegen sie sich auf dieses Ziel zu.’

Der Sozialliberale Hobson sieht nicht, daß diesen ‘Widerstand’ nur das revolutionäre Proletariat leisten kann, und nur in der Form der sozialen Revolution. Dafür ist er eben ein Sozialliberaler! Aber er erfaßte schon im Jahre 1902 ausgezeichnet die Bedeutung sowohl der Frage der ‘Vereinigten Staaten von Europa’ (dem Kautskyaner Trotzki zur Kenntnis!) als auch alles dessen, was die heuchlerischen Kautskyaner der verschiedenen Ländern vertuschen, nämlich, daß die Opportunisten (Sozialchauvinisten) zusammen mit der imperialistischen Bourgeoisie eben darauf hinarbeiten, ein imperialistisches Europa auf dem Rücken Asiens und Afrikas zu schaffen, daß die Opportunisten objektiv jenen Teil der Kleinbourgeoisie und gewisser Schichten der Arbeiterklasse darstellen, der mittels der imperialistischen Extraprofite bestochen wird und in Kettenhunde des Kapitalismus, in Verderber der Arbeiterbewegung verwandelt worden ist.[65]

In seinem Imperialismus-Buch kommentiert Lenin die gleiche Stelle bei Hobson folgendermaßen:

Der Verfasser hat vollkommen recht. Würden die Kräfte des Imperialismus nicht auf Widerstand stoßen. so würden sie eben dahin führen. Die Bedeutung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa in der heutigen, imperialistischen Situation ist hier richtig bewertet. Man müßte nur hinzufügen, daß auch innerhalb der Arbeiterbewegung die Opportunisten, die heutzutage in den meisten Ländern vorübergehend gesiegt haben, sich systematisch und beharrlich gerade auf dieses Ziel ‘zubewegen’. Der Imperialismus, der die Aufteilung der Welt und die Ausbeutung nicht allein Chinas bedeutet, der monopolistisch hohe Profite für eine Handvoll der reichsten Länder bedeutet, schafft die ökonomische Möglichkeit zur Bestechung der Oberschichten des Proletariats und nährt, formt und festigt dadurch den Opportunismus. Nur darf man die dem Imperialismus im allgemeinen und dem Opportunismus im besonderen entgegenwirkenden Kräfte nicht vergessen, die der Sozialliberale Hobson natürlich nicht sieht.

Der deutsche Opportunist Gerhard Hildebrand, der seinerzeit wegen seiner Verteidigung des Imperialismus aus der Partei ausgeschlossen wurde, heute aber wohl ein Führer der sogenannten ‘sozialdemokratischen’ Partei Deutschlands sein könnte, ergänzt Hobson ausgezeichnet, indem er die ‘Vereinigten Staaten von Westeuropa’ (ohne Rußland) propagiert. und zwar zum ‘Zusammenwirken’ gegen ... die Neger Afrikas, gegen eine ‘islamitische Bewegung großen Stils’, zur ‘Bildung einer Heeres- und Flottenmacht allerersten Ranges’, gegen eine ‘chinesisch-japanische Koalition’ u.a.m.“ [66]

An einer anderen Stelle weist er auf die damalige politische Zersplitterung Europas hin und erwähnt die Möglichkeit der Bildung eines Mitteleuropas um Deutschland herum.

Wir sehen hier drei Gebiete mit hochentwickeltem Kapitalismus (starke Entwicklung sowohl des Verkehrswesens wie des Handels und der Industrie): das mitteleuropäische, britische und amerikanische: darunter drei weltbeherrschende Staaten: Deutschland, England und die Vereinigten Staaten. Die imperialistische Konkurrenz und der Kampf unter ihnen werden dadurch außerordentlich verschärft, daß Deutschland nur über ein ganz kleines Gebiet und wenig Kolonien verfugt; die Bildung ‘Mitteleuropas’ liegt noch in der Zukunft, und seine Geburt geht in einem erbitterten Kampf vor sich. Einstweilen ist das Kennzeichen von ganz Europa politische Zersplitterung.[67]

Wir sehen also, daß Lenin und die Bolschewiki im Unterschied zu IMT/CWI/KI keineswegs eine Vereinigung Europas auf kapitalistischer Grundlage ausschlossen, sondern deren reaktionären, imperialistischen Charakter betonten. Dies geht auch klar aus den Überlegungen eines anderen bolschewistischen Theoretikers hervor, Nikolai Bucharin. Dieser schrieb 1915 in seinem Buch „Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft“, welches Lenin durchsah und für das er ein Vorwort verfaßte, folgendes:

Der konkrete Prozeß der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung geht also über einen verschärften Kampf der staatskapitalistischen Trusts und der rückständigen wirtschaftlichen Formationen. Eine Reihe von Kriegen ist unvermeidlich. Im geschichtlichen Prozeß, der uns in der nächsten Zukunft bevorsteht, wird der Weltkapitalismus sich in der Richtung zum allgemeinen staatskapitalistischen Trust unter Aufsaugung der Schwachen bewegen. Wenn dieser Krieg zu Ende ist, dann werden neue Probleme durch das Schwert gelöst werden müssen. Hier kann es natürlich in dem einen oder anderen Falle auch zu teilweisen Vereinbarungen kommen. (So ist z.B. der Zusammenschluß von Deutschland und Österreich äußerst wahrscheinlich.) Aber jede Vereinbarung oder Konsolidierung wird den blutigen Kampf nur von neuem reproduzieren. Wenn ‘Mitteleuropa’ vereinigt ist und die Pläne der deutschen Imperialisten verwirklicht sind, so wird die Lage ungefähr dieselbe bleiben. Wenn sich aber ganz Europa vereinigt, so wird das keineswegs eine ‘Abrüstung’ bedeuten; es wird nur einen ungeahnten Aufschwung des Militarismus bedeuten, denn dann steht der Riesenkampf gegen Amerika und Asien auf der Tagesordnung. Der Kampf der kleinen (kleinen!) staatskapitalistischen Trusts wird durch den Kampf von noch gewaltigeren Trusts abgelöst werden. Diesen Kampf mit ‘Hausmittelchen’ und Rosenwasser beizulegen, das hieße, mit Erbsen auf Elefanten schießen, denn der Imperialismus ist ein System, das nicht nur auf das innigste mit dem modernen zusammenhängt, sondern auch das wesentlichste Element dieses Kapitalismus darstellt.[68]

 

VI.2.      Warum war Lenin anfangs für die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa?

 

Von den Stalinisten wird die Tatsache oft unter den Tisch gekehrt bzw. mit Schweigen übergangen, daß Lenin ursprünglich die Losung der „republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa“ unterstützte. So schrieb er zu Beginn des 1. Weltkrieges:

als eine der nächsten Losungen Propaganda für die deutsche, die polnische, die russische usw. Republik und zugleich für die Umwandlung aller einzelnen Staaten Europas in republikanische vereinigte Staaten von Europa.[69]

In einem anderen Dokument schreibt er:

Die nächste politische Losung der europäischen Sozialdemokratie muß die Gründung der republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa sein[70]

Warum unterstützten Lenin und Trotzki diese Losung? Weil sie eine Antwort auf die nationale Zerrissenheit und jahrhundertelangen Konflikte zwischen den einzelnen Mächten in Europa im Sinne des Internationalismus, der Überwindung nationaler Gegensätze, gab. Selbst später, als er die Losung wieder zurücknahm, betonte Lenin ihre Legitimität vom politischen Gesichtspunkt aus betrachtet.

Gegen eine solche Fragestellung im Rahmen der politischen Beurteilung dieser Losung zu polemisieren - z.B. von dem Standpunkt aus, daß sie die Losung der sozialistischen Revolution verdunkle oder abschwäche u. dgl. mehr, wäre vollkommen falsch. Politische Umgestaltungen in wahrhaft demokratischer Richtung, erst recht aber politische Revolutionen können keinesfalls und niemals, unter keinen Umständen die Losung der sozialistischen Revolution verdunkeln oder abschwächen. Im Gegenteil, sie bringen sie stets näher, verbreitern ihre Basis, ziehen neue Schichten des Kleinbürgertums und der halbproletarischen Massen in den sozialistischen Kampf hinein. Andererseits aber sind politische Revolutionen unvermeidlich im Verlauf der sozialistischen Revolution, die man nicht als einzelnen Akt betrachten darf, sondern als eine Epoche stürmischer politischer und ökonomischer Erschütterungen, des schärfsten Klassenkampfes, des Bürgerkriegs, der Revolutionen und Konterrevolutionen betrachten muß.“ [71]

Auf Basis der gleichen Methode entwickelten Marxisten damals die Losung der demokratischen Balkanföderation als Antwort auf die nationale Zerrissenheit der Völker am Balkan. Hinzu kommt noch – darauf wies Lenin auch explizit hin – die revolutionär-demokratische Spitze in der Losung, die den Kampf gegen die reaktionären Monarchien vorantreiben könnte:

„…wobei nicht nur von republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa gesprochen, sondern noch speziell betont wird, daß diese Losung sinnlos und verlogen ist, wenn die deutsche, die österreichische und die russische Monarchie nicht auf revolutionärem Wege beseitigt werden." [72]

Im gleichen Sinne verstand auch Trotzki seine Europa-Losung, die er zu Beginn des Kriegs aufstellte:

Das Recht jeder Nation auf Selbstbestimmung! Die vereinigten Staaten Europas – ohne Monarchien, ohne ständige Heere, ohne regierende Feudalkasten, ohne Geheimdiplomaten![73]

Lenin begrüßte diese internationalistische Stoßrichtung der Losung, eine Überlegung, welche die linken EU-Austrittsbefürworter leider nicht anstellen. Vielmehr geht seine Ablehnung darauf zurück, daß in der Epoche des Imperialismus und der Konkurrenz der Großmächte die Losung der „republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa“ als Losung für ein republikanisches imperialistisches Vereinigtes Europa mißverstanden werden konnte.

Die später von Trotzki entwickelte und von uns aufgegriffene Losung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“ – also die Losung einer europaweiten sozialistischen Revolution und dem Aufbau einer europäischen Föderation von Arbeiter- und Bauernstaaten – wurde damals noch von niemanden vorgebracht und stand somit noch gar nicht zur Diskussion. Wie wir gesehen haben, hatte auch Trotzki selbst seine Europa-Losung noch als „republikanische“ verstanden – d.h. als bürgerlich-demokratische Losung.

Der revolutionäre Marxismus befand sich damals in einer Umbruchperiode. Der Ausbruch des 1. Weltkrieges verdeutlichte das Ende der alten und den Beginn einer neuen Epoche – den Übergang des Kapitalismus von seinem Stadium des Aufstiegs, der freien Konkurrenz zu seinem Stadium des Niedergangs, des Monopolkapitalismus, der Epoche des Imperialismus.

Die Theoretiker des revolutionären Marxismus – und hier v.a. der russischen Bolschewiki als der politisch und organisatorisch fortgeschrittenste Teil des internationalen Marxismus – standen also in dieser Periode vor der Herausforderung, das analytische und programmatische Arsenal weiterzuentwickeln und zu schärfen. Daher fallen in diese Periode auch die Arbeiten Lenin’s zur Theorie des Imperialismus, zur Staatstheorie, zur nationalen Frage, zur Kriegstaktik aber auch seine Studien der Hegelschen Dialektik. Dieser theoretische Sprung muß auf dialektisch-materialistische Weise verstanden werden, d.h. die neuen Erkenntnisse waren keine Ideen, die vom Himmel fielen, sondern Analysen und Schlußfolgerungen, die sich prozeßhaft in harter theoretischer Arbeit und kollektiver Diskussion entwickelten. Lenin selber sprach über die Entwicklung seiner Gedanken in der Staatsfrage zwischen 1915 und 1917, was sich in der Wandlung seiner Haltung zur Position von Bucharin niederschlug.

Aus diesem Grund sehen wir auch eine Entwicklung von Lenin’s Haltung in der Frage der republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa von einer anfänglichen Zustimmung hin zur Ablehnung. Lenin und auch Trotzki verstanden damals einen grundsätzlich fortschrittlichen Aspekt der kapitalistischen Entwicklung – nämlich dem Hinauswachsen der Produktivkräfte über die Fesseln des Nationalstaates – und wollten dieser Tendenz eine politische proletarische Losung geben. Ebenso mußte es eine Antwort der Arbeiterbewegung auf die scharfen Konflikte zwischen den imperialistischen Großmächten geben. Aber da der marxistische-internationalistische Flügel der Arbeiterbewegung damals noch nicht die Analyse der Epoche des imperialistischen Kapitalismus ausgearbeitet und alle Konsequenzen verinnerlicht hatte, verblieben ihre Antworten teilweise noch in den alten, revolutionär-demokratischen Konzeptionen der Revolution zurück.

Die Weiterentwicklung der Europa-Losung hin zu ihrer proletarischen Fassung – als Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa – wurde von den Marxisten erst später entwickelt und von der Kommunistischen Internationale 1923 in ihr programmatisches Arsenal aufgenommen. Lenin überarbeitet grundlegend während des 1. Weltkrieges seine Konzeption des Übergangs vom Kapitalismus zum Sozialismus in Rußland und entwickelte erst nach langen Überlegungen und angesichts der Erfahrungen von 1905 und 1917 seine Revolutionstheorie weiter. Er warf sein vor 1917 vertretenes Konzept von der „revolutionär-demokratischen Diktatur des Proletariats und der Bauernschaft“ über Bord – also die Idee einer separaten bürgerlich-demokratischen Etappe, die zuerst alle demokratischen Aufgaben verwirklicht (Konstituierende Versammlung und bürgerlich-demokratische Republik, radikale Agrarreform usw.) und den Kapitalismus weiterentwickelt und erst zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt in die zweite Etappe der sozialistischen Revolution übergeht. Stattdessen definierte er – zum blanken Entsetzen vieler „alter Bolschewiki“ wie Stalin, Rykow oder Kamenjew [74] – in seinen berühmten April-Thesen 1917 die Aufgaben der Revolution neu:

Nicht parlamentarische Republik – eine Rückkehr von den Arbeiterdeputiertenräten zu dieser wäre ein Schritt rückwärts –, sondern eine Republik von Arbeiter-, Landarbeiter- und Bauerndeputiertenräten im ganzen Lande, von unten bis oben.[75]

Wir sehen also anhand dieses Beispiels Lenin’s Fähigkeit der Entwicklung seines Denkens, eine Entwicklung, die sich nur auf dialektische Weise, dem Umschlagen der Quantität in Qualität, der geschmeidigen Anpassung der Begriffe und Losungen an die sich verändernde Wirklichkeit vollziehen konnte. [76]

Es wäre grundfalsch, diesen sich in Sprüngen vollziehenden, mit den Veränderungen der Wirklichkeit einhergehenden, ihnen notwendigerweise nachhinkenden – die Theorie beantwortet immer Fragen, die zuerst die Praxis aufwirft –, Entwicklungsprozeß im theoretischen Denken Lenin’s zu leugnen und sich ihn als eine Art göttliches Genie vorzustellen, das bereits alle Wahrheiten von Anfang an in seinem Kopf besaß und sie dann nur noch schrittweise der Öffentlichkeit offenbarte. Eine solche Sichtweise ist eine Verhöhnung der dialektisch-materialistischen Sichtweise und eine leblose, idealistische Karikatur des Marxismus. Eine solche, für den stalinistischen Lenin-Kult typische, Sichtweise steht im völligen Gegensatz zum Lenin’schen Verständnis der Erkenntnis als eine sich in Widersprüchen ungleichmäßig entwickelnde stetige, „spiralen-förmige“, Annäherung an die absolute Wahrheit (ohne sie jemals vollständig erkennen zu kennen, entwickelt sich diese doch selbst stetig weiter). [77]

Lenin’s Überlegungen zur Formulierung der Europa-Losung entwickelten sich daher von einer anfänglichen Bejahung der Losung der „republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa“, da er nach einer internationalistischen Antwort auf die vom imperialistischen Krieg verursachte Zerrissenheit Europas trachtete. Als auf der Konferenz der Bolschewiki Ende Februar, Anfang März 1915 in Bern einige Teilnehmer – darunter vor allem Bucharin – ihre Ablehnung der Losung der Vereinigten Staaten bekundeten, verteidigte Lenin am ersten Tag der Debatte die Losung und überzeugte alle. Allerdings kamen ihm selber noch am gleichen Abend Zweifel und er traf sich mit Radek, der ihm auch die Einwände von Rosa Luxemburg gegen die Losung mitteilte. Daraufhin vertieften sich seine Zweifel und er schlug am nächsten Tag die Weiterführung der Diskussion vor, insbesondere um den ökonomischen Aspekt – also die Frage des imperialistischen Klassencharakters Europas – einfließen zu lassen. [78] Später, im August 1915, entschloß er sich zur Veröffentlichung einer Stellungnahme, in der er die Ablehnung der Losung erklärte:

Die Diskussion über diese Frage hatte auf unserer Konferenz einseitig politischen Charakter angenommen. Das war zum Teil vielleicht dadurch hervorgerufen, daß diese Losung im Manifest des Zentralkomitees direkt als politische Losung formuliert ist (‘die nächste politische Losung ...’ - heißt es dort), wobei nicht nur von republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa gesprochen, sondern noch speziell betont wird, daß diese Losung sinnlos und verlogen ist, ‘wenn die deutsche, die österreichische und die russische Monarchie nicht auf revolutionärem Wege beseitigt werden.‘" [79]

Entgegen der Behauptung von Woods, Zenker & Co erklärte Lenin eine imperialistische Vereinigung Europas nicht für unmöglich:

Vom Standpunkt der ökonomischen Bedingungen des Imperialismus, d.h. des Kapitalexports und der Aufteilung der Welt durch die ‘fortgeschrittenen’ und ‘zivilisierten’ Kolonialmächte, sind die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen entweder unmöglich oder reaktionär.“

Vereinigte Staaten von Europa sind unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen gleichbedeutend mit Übereinkommen über die Teilung der Kolonien. Unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen ist jedoch jede andere Basis, jedes andere Prinzip der Teilung als das der Macht unmöglich.

Natürlich sind zeitweilige Abkommen zwischen den Kapitalisten und zwischen den Mächten möglich. In diesem Sinne sind auch die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa möglich als Abkommen der europäischen Kapitalisten ... worüber? Lediglich darüber, wie man gemeinsam den Sozialismus in Europa unterdrücken, gemeinsam die geraubten Kolonien gegen Japan und Amerika verteidigen könnte, die durch die jetzige Aufteilung der Kolonien im höchsten Grade benachteiligt und die im letzten halben Jahrhundert unvergleichlich rascher erstarkt sind als das rückständige, monarchistische, von Altersfäule befallene Europa. Im Vergleich zu den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika bedeutet Europa im ganzen genommen ökonomischen Stillstand. Auf der heutigen ökonomischen Basis, d.h. unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen, würden die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa die Organisation der Reaktion zur Hemmung der rascheren Entwicklung Amerikas bedeuten. [80]

Schließlich erklärt Lenin zum Schluß seines Artikels das marxistische Verständnis der internationalen Revolution, das auch heute für uns für die Perspektive der Revolution in Europa wichtig ist: nämlich das es durchaus möglich ist, daß die Arbeiterklasse nicht in mehreren Ländern gleichzeitig siegreich ist, sondern zuerst nur in einem einzigen Land die Macht übernimmt, dabei aber, um auf Dauer als sozialistischer Staat bestehen zu können, alles daran setzen muß, um die Revolution auszubreiten:

Die Ungleichmäßigkeit der ökonomischen und politischen Entwicklung ist ein unbedingtes Gesetz des Kapitalismus. Hieraus folgt, daß der Sieg des Sozialismus zunächst in wenigen kapitalistischen Ländern oder sogar in einem einzeln genommenen Lande möglich ist. Das siegreiche Proletariat dieses Landes würde sich nach Enteignung der Kapitalisten und nach Organisierung der sozialistischen Produktion im eigenen Lande der übrigen, der kapitalistischen Welt entgegenstellen, würde die unterdrückten Klassen der anderen Länder auf seine Seite ziehen, in diesen Ländern den Aufstand gegen die Kapitalisten entfachen und notfalls sogar mit Waffengewalt gegen die Ausbeuterklassen und ihre Staaten vorgehen. [81]

Wir betonen hier, daß sich die Ablehnung Lenin auf das mögliche Mißverständnis als eine Losung für die Unterstützung eines vereinigten europäischen Imperialismus gründete. Die Losung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“ – also eine Losung mit einem eindeutigen proletarischen, antikapitalistischen Charakter – existierte damals noch gar nicht in der Diskussion. Auch Trotzki vertrat während des 1. Weltkrieges noch die Losung des republikanischen Europas, nicht des sozialistischen.

Erst in den frühen 1920er Jahren vollendete Trotzki die Negation der Negation der Europa-Losung: Von den „republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa“ und Lenin’s richtiger, aber rein negativer Ablehnung weiter zur Losung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“. (mehr dazu weiter unten)

Daher entbehrt es jeder historischen Logik, wenn sich Vordenker des stalinistischen Linksreformismus in ihrer Polemik gegen die Losung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“ auf Lenin berufen. Die Diskussion damals drehte sich um die Frage der republikanischen, bürgerlich-demokratischen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa.

 

VI.3.      Trotzki und die Entwicklung seiner Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa

 

Wir haben bereits dargelegt, daß Trotzki ursprünglich die Losung der republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten Europas vertrat. Er erkannte zwar die historische Aktualität der sozialistischen Revolution, verband sie aber noch nicht – ebenso wie Lenin – mit der Europa-Losung.

Für das Proletariat kann es sich bei diesen historischen Bedingungen nicht um die Verteidigung des überlebten nationalen ‘Vaterlandes’ handeln, das zum hauptsächlichsten Hemmnis für die ökonomische Entwicklung geworden ist, sondern um die Schaffung eines weit mächtigeren und widerstandsfähigeren Vaterlandes – der republikanischen Vereinigten Staaten Europas, als Fundament der Vereinigten Staaten der Welt.

Der imperialistischen Ratlosigkeit des Kapitalismus kann das Proletariat als praktisches Tagesprogramm nur die sozialistische Organisation der Weltwirtschaft entgegenstellen.

Das Proletariat ist gezwungen, dem Kriege als Lösungsmethode für die unlösbaren Widersprüche des Kapitalismus auf dem Höhepunkt seiner Entwicklung seine Methode entgegenzustellen – die Methode der sozialen Revolution.“ [82]

Doch mit den Erfahrungen der Revolutionen in Rußland und in Europa nach 1917 und der Vertiefung seiner Theorie der permanenten Revolution entwickelte Trotzki auch die Europa-Losung weiter. In einem 1922 erschienen Nachwort zu einer Neuauflage des Artikels „Das Programm des Friedens“ (1915-16) wirft Trotzki erstmals den Gedanken auf, die Europa-Losung in Form der „Vereinigten Sowjetstaaten von Europa“ aufzustellen. [83]

Diesen Gedanken setzt er wenig später in die Tat um. Als mit der Ruhrbesetzung durch französische Truppen die Gefahr eines neuen Krieges in Europa drohte und in Deutschland eine revolutionäre Krise ausbrach, veröffentlichte Trotzki am 30. Juni 1923 den Artikel Über die Aktualität der Parole ‚Vereinigte Staaten von Europa‘“. In diesem Artikel tritt er aufgrund der durch den Weltkrieg verursachten Zerrüttung in Europa, die Versuche des US-amerikanischen Imperialismus, sich Europa Untertan zu machen sowie die politische, kulturelle und geistige Nähe Europas und auch ihrer Arbeiterklasse für eine Propagandaoffensive der Kommunistischen Internationale ein.

Dabei wies er auf den notwendigen Zusammenhang zwischen der Vereinigung Europas und der Machtergreifung der Arbeiter und Bauern hin: „Ich meine, daß es an der Zeit ist, neben der Parole ‚Arbeiter- und Bauernregierung‘ eine andere aufzustellen: ‚Die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa‘. Nur die Verbindung dieser beiden Parolen wird die brennendsten Fragen der europäischen Entwicklung in einer den Zeitumständen angemessenen Weise beantworten können.

Er betont dabei den Übergangscharakter der Losung, als eine Antwort auf die Unfähigkeit der Bourgeoisie, das zersplitterte und ruinierte Europa zu einen:

Die Unfähigkeit der Bourgeoisie, die Lösung der grundlegenden Fragen des wirtschaftlichen Wiederaufbaus Europas in die Hand zu nehmen, wird den werktätigen Massen immer deutlicher. Die Parole „Arbeiter- und Bauernregierung“ kommt diesem wachsenden Bedürfnis der Werktätigen, selbständig und aus eigener Kraft einen Ausweg zu finden, entgegen. Es ist an der Zeit, auf diesen Ausweg konkret hinzuweisen: er ist – enge wirtschaftliche Kooperation der europäischen Völker, als das einzige Mittel, unseren Kontinent vor der wirtschaftlichen Zersetzung und Unterjochung durch das überstarke amerikanische Kapital zu retten.

Und weiter: „Den Arbeiter und Bauern des zersplitterten und ruinierten Europas muss ein Ausweg gewiesen werden, unabhängig von dem, welches Tempo die Revolution in Amerika, Australien, Asien und Afrika einschlagen wird. Von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus steht die Parole ‘Vereinigte Staaten von Europa’ auf derselben historischen Ebene, wie auch die Parole ‘Arbeiter- und Bauernregierung’; es ist eine Übergangsparole, die Auswege weist, Aussichten auf de Rettung gibt, und eben dadurch die werktätigen Massen auf den revolutionären Weg bringt.

Unter den besonderen Bedingungen der nationalistischen Spaltung Europas und des drohenden Krieges betonte Trotzki besonders den Aspekt der Überwindung der nationalstaatlichen Feindschaft und der Vereinigung Europas. Aber diese Losung war für ihn integrierter Bestandteil der Gesamtstrategie der proletarischen Revolution in ganz Europa. Daher die zusammenfassende Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten:

je schneller die Volksmassen das Vertrauen zu den eigenen Kräften zurückgewinnen, desto enger werden sie sich unter der Parole ‘Union der Arbeiter- und Bauernrepubliken Europas’ zusammenschließen“. [84]

 

VI.4.      Die Kommunistische Internationale und das Schicksal der Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa

 

Nach diesem Vorstoß Trotzkis nahm die Kommunistische Internationale (Komintern) in der zweiten Jahreshälfte 1923 die Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa an. Nach der folgenschweren Niederlage der deutschen Revolution im Oktober/November 1923 und dem einsetzenden bürokratisch-zentristischen Kurs der Komintern geriet die Losung zum Teil in Vergessenheit. Allerdings fand sie Eingang in das Manifest des V. Weltkongresses der Komintern 1924: „Die Staaten Europas werden zusammenfinden in Form einer Sowjetföderation, den Vereinigten Arbeiter- und Bauernstaaten von Europa.[85]

Danach ließ die Propagandaoffensive des Stalinismus mit ihrer illusionären Doktrin vom „Sozialismus in einem Land“ die internationalistische Europa-Losung in den Hintergrund treten. Doch nach dem Jänner 1926 und der Verstärkung der Reihen der Linken Opposition um Trotzki durch die Strömung um Sinowjew und Kamenjew ergriff Trotzki erneut die Initiative. Tatsächlich rief das Exekutivkomitee der Komintern in seinen Thesen für den 1. Mai 1926 zur Bildung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“ auf. In der Person eines ihrer führenden Propagandisten, Pepper, veröffentlichte die Komintern 1926 eine eigene Broschüre mit dem Titel „Vereinigten Staaten des Sozialistischen Europa“. Darin sowie in einer Reihe weiterer Artikel stellte die Komintern diese Losung der zu dieser Zeit populären bürgerlich-pazifistischen Pan-Europa-Bewegung von Coudenhove-Kalergi, die eine Vereinigung Europas auf kapitalistischer Grundlage propagierte, entgegen. [86]

Sogar in seiner ersten Fassung des Entwurfs des Programms der Kommunistischen Internationale für den VI. Komintern-Kongreß 1928 inkludierte Bucharin die Losung der „Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“. [87] Doch die Mehrheit um Stalin setzte im Politbüro der KPdSU durch, daß diese Losung gestrichen wird und wurde somit endgültig aus dem programmatischen Arsenal der Komintern verbannt. Seitdem gilt die Europa-Losung im Reich der stalinistischen Mythenbildung als Zeichen des „konterrevolutionären Trotzkismus“, vor der Lenin angeblich schon immer gewarnt hätte.

 

VI.5.      Trotzki’s Anwendung der Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa

 

Seit den frühen 1920er Jahren gehörte die Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa zum fixen Arsenal Trotzkis. Er kritisierte heftig die Streichung dieser Losung im, auf dem VI. Komintern-Kongreß 1928 angenommenen, Programm. Er widmete dieser Frage ein ganzes Kapitel:

3. Die Parole der Vereinigten Sowjetstaaten von Europa

Die Streichung der von der Komintern nach langem inneren Kampfe 1923 angenommen Losung der Vereinigten Sowjetstaaten von Europa aus dem neuen Programmentwurf ist durch nichts zu rechtfertigen. Oder kann es sein, daß die Autoren gerade in dieser Frage zu Lenins Position aus dem Jahre 1915 ‘zurückkehren” möchten? Dann müßten sie diese Position aber erst einmal richtig verstehen.

Hinsichtlich der Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa hatte Lenin bekanntlich in der ersten Phase des Krieges geschwankt. Zuerst fand diese Losung Eingang in die Thesen des Sozialdemokrat (des damaligen Zentralorgans der Partei), dann hat Lenin sich von ihr losgesagt. Schon das zeigt, daß es bei ihm nicht um eine prinzipielles Nichtakzeptieren der Losung ging, sondern um eine rein taktische Bewertung, um das Abwägen ihrer Vor- und Nachteile unter dem Gesichtspunkt der jeweiligen Etappe. Man muß nicht erst hervorheben, daß Lenin die Möglichkeit der Bildung von Vereinigten Staaten eines kapitalistischen Europas verneinte. Auch ich bin auf diese Frage eingegangen, als ich die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten entwickelte, und zwar ausschließlich im Hinblick auf die zukünftige Staatsform der proletarischen Diktatur in Europa.

‘Eine halbwegs vollständige und konsequente ökonomische Vereinigung Europas von oben her, mittels eines Abkommens der kapitalistischen Regierungen (ist) völlig unerreichbar.’ schrieb ich. ‘Hier kann die Sache nicht weiter als (zu) partielle(n) Kompromisse(n) und halbe(n) Maßnahmen gehen. Dadurch eben wird die ökonomische Vereinigung Europas, die dem Produzenten wie dem Konsumenten und überhaupt der ganzen kulturellen Entwicklung kolossale Vorteil verspricht, zur revolutionären Aufgabe des europäischen Proletariats in seinem Kampfemit dem imperialistischen Protektionismus und dem Militarismus.” Und weiter: ‘Die Vereinigten Staaten Europas stellen also die Form - die einzige denkbare - der Diktatur des europäischen Proletariats dar.” [88]

Die Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa sollte Trotzki auch noch in den nächsten Jahren immer wieder an prominenter Stelle einbringen. So z.B. in den umfassenden Resolution „Krieg und die Vierte Internationale“ (1934):

„Während er die Nation für seine Entwicklung ausnutzt, hat der Kapitalismus nirgends, auf keinem Fleck der Erde, die nationale Frage gänzlich gelöst. Die Grenzen des Versailler Europa sind quer durch das lebendige Fleisch der Nationen gezogen. Reinste Utopie ist der Gedanke, das kapitalistische Europa so umzuschneidern, daß die Grenzen der Staaten mit den Grenzen der Nationen zusammenfallen. Auf friedlichem Wege wird kein einziger Staat auch nur einen Fußbreit Boden abtreten. Ein neuer Krieg aber würde Europa wieder nur umschustern nach Maßgabe der Kriegskarte und nicht der Grenzen der Nationen. Die Aufgabe der völligen nationalen Selbstbestimmung und friedlichen Zusammenarbeit Europas ist nur zu lösen auf Grund des wirtschaftlichen Zusammenschlusses eines von bürgerlichen Staaten gesäuberten Europa. Die Losung der Vereinigten Sowjetstaaten von Europa ist die rettende Losung nicht allein für die Balkan- und Donauländer, sondern auch für die Völker Deutschlands und Frankreichs.[89]

Ebenso im Aktionsprogramm für Frankreich (1934), wo er im Kapitel „Gegen den Krieg, für die Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa“ die Bedeutung des Kampfes gegen die imperialistischen Kriegstreiber in Europa hervorhebt sowie die pazifistischen Scharlatane im Namen der sozialistischen Vereinigung des alten Kontinents verdammt. [90]

Dem aufmerksamen Leser wird wahrscheinlich aufgefallen sein, daß Trotzki an mehreren Stellen von der Unmöglichkeit der Vereinigung Europas auf bürgerlicher Grundlage spricht. Auch in seinem Buch „Die permanente Revolution“ schreibt er explizit von der Utopie der bürgerlichen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa:

Der Abschluß einer sozialistischen Revolution ist im nationalen Rahmen undenkbar. Eine grundlegende Ursache für die Krisis der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft besteht darin, daß die von dieser Gesellschaft geschaffenen Produktivkräfte sich mit dem Rahmen des nationalen Staates nicht vertragen. Daraus ergeben sich einerseits die imperialistischen Kriege, andererseits die Utopie der bürgerlichen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa. Die sozialistische Revolution beginnt auf nationalem Boden, entwickelt sich international und wird vollendet in der Weltarena. Folglich wird die sozialistische Revolution in einem neuen, breiteren Sinne des Wortes zu einer permanenten Revolution: sie findet ihren Abschluß nicht vor dem endgültigen Siege der neuen Gesellschaft auf unserem ganzen Planeten.[91]

Sollte also Zenker wenn schon nicht von Lenin so doch wenigstens von Trotzki Recht bekommen, sozusagen ein Bonmot der Geschichte? Nun, schauen wir uns die Frage genauer an. Trotzki schreibt in der Tat an einer Stelle, daß Lenin die Möglichkeit einer imperialistischen Vereinigung Europas verneint hat. Hier irrt Trotzki schlicht und einfach, wie wir anhand mehrerer Zitate oben gezeigt haben.

Man muß jedoch bei Trotzkis These von der Unmöglichkeit der Einigung Europas auf kapitalistischer Grundlage zwei Dinge unterscheiden. Das eine sind perspektivische-konjunkturelle Einschätzungen, das andere sind prinzipielle-theoretische Positionen. Als eine perspektivisch-konjunkturelle Einschätzung hatte Trotzki in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren absolut recht, die tiefe Zerrissenheit Europas zwischen den imperialistischen Mächten (inklusive den USA) zu betonen und gegen die pazifistische Träumerei eines geeinten Europas zu argumentieren. Als eine prinzipiell-theoretische Position für alle Zeiten wäre dies aber falsch. Deshalb stellte er auch die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa zusammen mit der Losung der Arbeiter- und Bauernregierung als Übergangslosung, da sie unmittelbar mit den Möglichkeiten für die Herrschenden kollidiert und somit über den Rahmen der bürgerlichen Ordnung hinausdeutet.

Schließlich sei noch auf einen Punkt hingewiesen. Es ist eine Grundaufgabe von Marxisten, die historisch-materialistische Methode auch auf den Marxismus selber anzuwenden. Es reicht für Revolutionäre nicht aus, sich damit zufrieden zu geben, daß Trotzki die Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa propagierte. Wir müssen uns auch die konkreten historischen Umstände anschauen. In der damaligen Zeit des 1. Weltkrieges, der Zerrüttung Europas danach und schließlich der herannahenden 2. Weltkrieges besaß der Aspekt der Europäischen Einigung in der Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa einen besonders hohen Stellenwert. Daher betonte Trotzki in seinem Artikel von 1923 auch zu Recht den Übergangscharakter der Losung der Vereinigung Europas, da die Bourgeoisie damals eben absolut unfähig war, die militaristische Zerrissenheit des Kontinents zu überwinden.

Es versteht sich von selbst, daß bei der heutigen Anwendung der Losung der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Staaten von Europa weniger der Aspekt der ‚Vereinigung‘, sondern der des ‚Sozialismus‘ betont werden muß (zusammen mit dem internationalen Klassenkampf und der europäischen Revolution). Denn heute haben wir keinen Kontinent, wo sich waffenstarre Armeen gegenüber stehen und mit Krieg drohen, sondern wo die europäische Bourgeoisie relativ geeint ist beziehungsweise sich auf dem Weg der relativen Einigung befindet, um ihre Konkurrenten in Ost und West im Zaum zu halten.

 

VII.        Zusammenfassung

 

Damit kommen wir auch zum Schluß unserer Arbeit. Wir haben gezeigt, daß der Formierungsprozeß der Europäischen Union von den enormen, sich verschärfenden Gegensätzen der kapitalistischen Weltordnung angetrieben wird. Damit die EU tatsächlich den USA die Rolle als Welthegemon streitig machen kann, muß sie den Einigungsprozeß massiv vorantreiben und einen supra-nationalen Staatsapparat schaffen. Diesem Ziel dient auch der EU-Reformvertrag.

Eine Einigung Europas auf imperialistischer Grundlage ist möglich und all jene Linke, die diese Möglichkeit ausschließen, leben in einer Traumwelt. Als marxistische Revolutionäre kämpfen wir, die LSR, gemeinsam mit unseren Genossen in der Liga für die 5. Internationale gegen die imperialistische EU. Doch unsere Alternative ist nicht das Zurück zum imperialistischen Nationalstaat, sondern das Vorwärts über die sozialistische Revolution zu den Vereinigten Sozialistische Staaten von Europa. Diese Herangehensweise entspricht der marxistischen Tradition von Lenin und Trotzki.

Der Kampf für ein sozialistisches Europa erfordert eine revolutionäre Strategie. Eine solche Strategie muß von den heutigen Bedingungen des Klassenkampfes ausgehen. Diese Bedingungen zeichnen sich durch eine umfassende Offensive der herrschenden Klassen Europas aus. Sie wollen um jeden Preis die sozialen und demokratischen Errungenschaften der ArbeiterInnenklasse zertrümmern und die EU als zweite militärische Supermacht neben den USA etablieren. Sie müssen dies erreichen, sonst gehen sie im gnadenlosen weltweiten Konkurrenzkampf der imperialistischen Großmächte unter. Deswegen müssen wir uns eine umfassende Strategie des Klassenkampfes zur Verteidigung unserer Interessen zu Eigen machen.

Unser Widerstand kann nur dann Erfolg haben, wenn wir uns nicht auf Appelle und Petitionen an die Herrschenden oder die Eroberung von Regierungsposten orientieren, sondern auf die europaweite Organisierung und Kampf der ArbeiterInnenklasse und Jugend. Deswegen treten wir von der LSR gemeinsam mit unseren internationalen Genossinnen und Genossen der Liga für die 5. Internationale (LFI) für Massendemonstrationen und Streiks bis hin zu Generalstreiks gegen den EU-Reformvertrag und andere Angriffe ein. Dies ist sowohl in jeden einzelnen Land notwendig ebenso wie auch europaweit.

Wir brauchen eine Organisierung des Abwehrkampfes von unten auf allen Ebenen. Deswegen treten wir für den Aufbau von Aktionskomitees, Sozialforen und Bündnissen auf allen Ebenen – lokal, regional, landesweit – ein. und wir brauchen eine europaweite Koordinierung dieser Kämpfe. Diese Forderung richtet sich an alle Organisationen der Arbeiterbewegung, Parteien, die gegen Krieg und Neo-Liberalismus zu kämpfen vorgeben usw., alle Gruppierungen der Anti-Globalisierungsbewegung, die Anti-Kriegsbewegung, Immigrantenorganisationen, Jugendorganisationen, Schüler- und Studentenvertretungen.

Ein entschlossener europaweiter Abwehrkampf der Arbeiterklasse, der Jugend und der Migranten wird früher oder später die Machtfrage aufwerfen: wer hat in Europa das Sagen – die Kapitalistenklasse oder die Unterdrückten. Damit Sozialabbau, Rassismus und Krieg ein für alle mal aus der Welt geschaffen werden, müssen wir die Macht der herrschenden Klasse stürzen. Dafür brauchen wir eine europaweite, sozialistische Revolution. Eine solche Revolution wird nicht durch Anträge im Parlament und auch nicht durch friedlichen Druck auf der Straße stattfinden, sondern nur durch den Kampf und den bewaffneten Aufstand der Masse des Proletariats. Erst durch eine solche Revolution können wir UNSER Europa aufbauen!

Eine solche Revolution bedarf einer klaren sozialistischen Perspektive. Doch eine solche Perspektive kann nur dann verwirklicht werden, wenn national und international Kampfparteien für die Revolution existieren. Die Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution macht sich keine Illusionen darüber, daß die Ausbeuterklasse freiwillig und ohne Gewaltanwendung ihre Herrschaft abtreten wird. Nur eine sozialistische Revolution in Österreich und weltweit, nur der bewaffnete Aufstand der Arbeiterklasse kann das Tor zu einer Zukunft der Freiheit und Gerechtigkeit aufstoßen. Ein solcher Aufstand wird nicht spontan zustande kommen, sondern verlangt eine systematische Vorbereitung und Organisierung der Revolution. Dafür bedarf es einer Partei – einer Organisation, in der die bewußtesten Teile der Arbeiterklasse und der Jugend unter dem Banner der Revolution organisiert sind. Die Schaffung einer solchen Partei der sozialistischen Revolution in Österreich und weltweit – der 5. Internationale – ist daher die vordringlichste Aufgabe aller Arbeiter und Jugendlichen, die mit uns für eine sozialistische Zukunft kämpfen wollen. Der Aufbau einer solchen Partei und Internationale duldet keinen Aufschub. Wir können damit nicht warten, bis die Revolution vor der Türe steht. Denn dann ist es zu spät, um ernsthafte politische und organisatorische Vorbereitungen zu treffen!

 

 



[1] Eine ausführlichere Darlegung unserer Haltung zum EU-Vertrag findet sich in der Broschüre von Michael Pröbsting: „EU-Reformvertrag – Hintergründe und revolutionäre Antworten“ (2008) www.sozialistische-revolution.org/stor/broschueren/EU-Reformvertrag_s-w.pdf sowie in den Artikeln von Michael Pröbsting: „Klassenkampf dem EU-Reformvertrag!“ (BEFREIUNG Nr. 156, Zeitung der LSR, Jänner 2008), von Max Kmiecik „Der EU-Reformvertrag kommt! Das Imperium schlägt zurück“ (BEFREIUNG Nr. 157, Zeitung der LSR, März 2008).

[2] Siehe dazu – neben der oben angeführten Broschüre zum EU-Vertrag – folgende Arbeiten: Michael Pröbsting: ‚Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang‘. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung; http://www.arbeitermacht.de/rm/rm35/amerikanisierung.htm sowie Martin Suchanek/Michael Pröbsting: EU in der Krise. Soziales oder sozialistisches Europa?; http://www.arbeitermacht.de/rm/rm35/europa.htm beide in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35 (2005). „Revolutionärer Marxismus“ ist das deutschsprachige theoretische Organ der Liga der 5. Internationale, deren österreichische Sektion die LSR ist.

[3] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Dritter Band; in MEW, Bd. 25, S. 799f.

[4] Leo Trotzki: Zur Philosophie der Bürokratie; in: Trotzki-Schriften 3.3, S 129

[5] Friedrich Engels: Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft; in: MEW 20, S. 261

[6] Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin: Staat und Revolution. Die Lehre des Marxismus vom Staat und die Aufgaben des Proletariats in der Revolution (1917); in: LW 25, S. 415

[7] Unter Warenfetischismus versteht Marx, daß im Kapitalismus die auf Warenproduktion beruhende Wirtschaft für die Menschen fälschlicherweise als ein Verhältnis von Dingen erscheint und nicht als gesellschaftliches Verhältnis zwischen Menschen oder besser gesagt Menschen(gruppen), also Klassen:

Das Geheimnisvolle der Warenform besteht also einfach darin, daß sie den Menschen die gesellschaftlichen Charaktere ihrer eignen Arbeit als gegenständliche Charaktere der Arbeitsprodukte selbst, als gesellschaftliche Natureigenschaften dieser Dinge zurückspiegelt, daher auch das gesellschaftliche Verhältnis der Produzenten zur Gesamtarbeit als ein außer ihnen existierendes gesellschaftliches Verhältnis von Gegenständen. (...) Es ist nur das bestimmte gesellschaftliche Verhältnis der Menschen selbst, welches hier für sie die phantasmagorische Form eines Verhältnisses von Dingen annimmt.“ (Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band 1; in: MEW 23, S. 86)

[8] W. I. Lenin: Die Wahlen zur Konstituierenden Versammlung und die Diktatur des Proletariats (1919), in: LW 30, S. 256

[9] Nikolai Bucharin: Ökonomik der Transformationsperiode (1920), S. 69 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[10] Karl Marx: Brief an Kugelmann, MEW 22, S.385

[11] Nikolai Bucharin: Theorie des historischen Materialismus (1921), S. 168f.

[12] Karl Marx: Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, in: MEW 17, S. 336

[13] Friedrich Engels: Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft; in: MEW 20, S. 260

[14]Friedrich Engels: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats in: MEW Bd.21, S.167f.

[15] Wladimir I. Lenin: Staat und Revolution. Die Lehre des Marxismus vom Staat und die Aufgaben des Proletariats in der Revolution; in: LW 25, S. 404f.

[16] Siehe dazu u.a. auch die Artikel von Roman Birke: „Regierungskrise ist Krise der bürgerlichen Demokratie“ (in: BEFREIUNG Nr. 157 bzw. findet sich eine längere Version des Artikels auf unserer Homepage unter www.sozialistische-revolution.org/phpwcms/index.php?id=25,399,0,0,1,0) sowie von Nina Gunjić: „Skandal um Steuerbetrug“ (in: BEFREIUNG Nr. 157)

[17] Friedrich Engels Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats; in: MEW 21, S. 165 (Hervorhebung von uns)

[18] Wladimir I. Lenin: Staat und Revolution. Die Lehre des Marxismus vom Staat und die Aufgaben des Proletariats in der Revolution; in: LW 25, S. 423

[19] W. I. Lenin: Über eine Karikatur auf den Marxismus. LW 23, S. 34 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[20] Friedrich Engels Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats; in: MEW 21, S. 166ff.

[21] Friedrich Engels: Brief an W. Borgius (1894); in: MEW 39, S. 206

[22] United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2006, S. 15

[23] United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2006, S. 156f.

[24] Robert Brenner : “After Boom, Bubble, and Bust: Where is the US Economy Going?” in Worlds of Capitalism: Institutions, Economic Performance, and Governance in the Era of Globalization (2005), S. 204. Die Zahlenreihe für Japan beginnt 1952, jene für Deutschland 1950. Die Angaben für die USA und Japan beziehen sich auf die nicht-finanziellen Unternehmenssektor, die für Deutschland auf den nicht-landwirtschaftlichen Unternehmenssektor. Bei der Netto-Profitrate wird – im Unterschied zur Brutto-Profitrate – die Profitrate anhand des Netto-Kapitalwerts berechnet, also nach Abzug des jährlichen Verschleißes des fixen Kapitals.

[25] Doug Henwood: After the New Economy, New York 2003, S. 85

[26] Um sich ein Bild vom Ausmaß dieser Plünderung durch das imperialistische Finanzkapital zu machen, wollen wir folgende Berechnung vornehmen: Im Jahr 2005 betrug das kombinierte Brutto-Inlandsprodukts der halbkolonialen Länder 9.454,5 Milliarden US-Dollar. Der Abfluß von 611.8 Milliarden US-Dollar in diesem Jahr entsprach daher knapp 6.5% des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts der halb-kolonialen Welt. Bei dieser Zahl sind nicht jene Teile der Profite des imperialistischen Kapitals berücksichtigt, die entweder von diesem im Land selber konsumiert werden oder in die Kapitalakkumulation zwecks neuer Profitgewinnung fließen, sondern ausschließlich jener Teil, der direkt aus der halb-kolonialen Welt in die Metropolen abgesaugt wird. Näheres dazu siehe Michael Pröbsting: Imperialismus, Globalisierung und die Ausbeutung der Halbkolonien; in: ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt Nr. 154, Oktober 2007 www.sozialistische-revolution.org/phpwcms/index.php?id=18,332,0,0,1,0 (ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt war der Name unserer Organisation und Zeitung, bevor wir uns im Herbst 2007 in Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution bzw. die Zeitung in BEFREIUNG unbenannt haben.)

[27] WTO: International Trade Statistics 2006, S. 28f. Die Angaben für die EU beziehen sich auf die EWG(6) für 1963, die EG(9) für 1973, EG(10) für 1983, EU(12) für 1993 und EU(25) für 2005. Die Angaben für die Jahre 1948 und 1953 setzen sich aus dem addierte Anteil am Welthandel von Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien zusammen.

[28] UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2006, S. 7

[29] UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2007, S. 229ff.

[30] UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2007, S. 235

[31] The Business Week Global 1000; in: Business Week 14.7.2003

[32] European Commission: Statistical Annex of European Economy. Spring 2007, S. 105 bzw. S. 107

[33] Fabienne Ilzkovitz, Adriaan Dierx, Viktoria Kovacs and Nuno Sousa: Steps towards a deeper economic integration: the Internal Market in the 21st century. A contribution to the Single Market Review (2007), S. 30

[34] Fabienne Ilzkovitz, Adriaan Dierx, Viktoria Kovacs and Nuno Sousa: Steps towards a deeper economic integration: the Internal Market in the 21st century. A contribution to the Single Market Review (2007), S. 32

[35] Fabienne Ilzkovitz, Adriaan Dierx, Viktoria Kovacs and Nuno Sousa: Steps towards a deeper economic integration: the Internal Market in the 21st century. A contribution to the Single Market Review (2007), S. 33

[36] Siehe dazu das Kapitel “Höhere Ausbeutungsrate des US-Kapitals“ in: Michael Pröbsting: ‚Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang‘. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 31-33; http://www.arbeitermacht.de/rm/rm35/amerikanisierung.htm

[37] Michael Pröbsting: EU-Reformvertrag – Hintergründe und revolutionäre Antworten, Broschüre der Liga der Sozialistischen Revolution (2008), S. 14

[38] Friedrich Engels: Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft; in: MEW 20, S. 55

[39] Siehe dazu W.I. Lenin, Zur Frage der Dialektik; in: LW 38, S. 339. In diesem Artikel betont Lenin auch die notwendige Entwicklung, Bewegung aus den inneren Gegensätzen der Dinge heraus und des Charakters der Entwicklung als „Selbstbewegung“: Die beiden grundlegenden (oder die beiden möglichen? oder die beiden in der Geschichte zu beobachtenden?) Konzeptionen der Entwicklung (Evolution) sind: Entwicklung als Abnahme und Zunahme, als Wiederholung und Entwicklung als Einheit der Gegensätze (Spaltung des Einheitlichen in einander ausschließende Gegensätze und das Wechselverhältnis zwischen ihnen).

Bei der ersten Konzeption der Bewegung bleibt die Selbstbewegung, ihre treibende Kraft, ihre Quelle, ihr Motiv im Dunkel (oder diese Quelle wird nach außen verlegt – Gott, Subjekt etc.) Bei der zweiten Konzeption richtet sich die Hauptaufmerksamkeit gerade auf die Erkenntnis der Quelle der ‚Selbst’bewegung.

Die erste Konzeption ist tot, farblos, trocken. Die zweite lebendig. Nur die zweite liefert den Schlüssel zu der ‚Selbstbewegung' alles Seienden; nur sie liefert den Schlüssel zu den ‚Sprüngen', zum ‚Abbrechen der Allmählichkeit', zum ‚Umschlagen in das Gegenteil', zum Vergehen des Alten und der Entstehung des Neuen."

[40] Leo Trotzki: Krieg und die Vierte Internationale (1934); in: Trotzki Schriften 3.3. S. 555 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[41] Daten zusammengestellt aus: UNCTAD: World Investment Report 1995, S. 411ff. sowie 421ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2000, S. 306ff. sowie 319ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2007, S. 259ff. Die Angaben zu Japan in der Spalte für das Jahr 1993 beziehen sich auf das Jahr 1992.

Unter Beständen an ausländischen Direktinvestitionen versteht man die – oft über einen längeren Zeitraum angehäuften – Gesamtheit des in einem Land bzw. von einem Land investierten Kapital. Unter Ströme hingegen die jeweils in einem Jahr neu getätigten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen.

Ausländische Direktinvestitionen (ADI) im Inland bezieht sich auf den Anteil von importierten ADI an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen bzw. BIP des Empfängerlandes. ADI im Ausland bezieht sich auf den Anteil von exportierten ADI an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen bzw. BIP des Landes, von dem die ADI ausgehen.

[42] Daten zusammengestellt aus: UNCTAD: World Investment Report 1995, S. 411ff. sowie 421ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2000, S. 306ff. sowie 319ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2007, S. 259ff. Die Angaben zu Japan in der Spalte für das Jahr 1993 beziehen sich auf das Jahr 1992.

Unter Beständen an ausländischen Direktinvestitionen versteht man die – oft über einen längeren Zeitraum angehäuften – Gesamtheit des in einem Land bzw. von einem Land investierten Kapital. Unter Ströme hingegen die jeweils in einem Jahr neu getätigten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen.

ADI im Inland bezieht sich auf den Anteil von importierten ADI an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen bzw. BIP des Empfängerlandes. ADI im Ausland bezieht sich auf den Anteil von exportierten ADI an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen bzw. BIP des Landes, von dem die ADI ausgehen.

[43] Dieses falsche Verständnis zeichnete den Sozialdemokratismus und später den Stalinismus aus, der auf dieser Basis 1924 die Theorie des „Sozialismus in einem Land“ entwickelte.

[44] Leo Trotzki: Die permanente Revolution; in: Leo Trotzki: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Die permanente Revolution, Frankfurt a. M. (1971), S.7

[45] Gerade darin besteht der Kardinalfehler der post-modernistischen linken Theoretiker der Globalisierung von Negri bis Panich.

[46] Michael Pröbsting: ‚Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang‘. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 38; http://www.arbeitermacht.de/rm/rm35/amerikanisierung.htm

[47] IMT: Der Molekularprozeß der Weltrevolution, 5.10. 2004 http://www.derfunke.at/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=605

[48] IMT: Perspektiven der Weltrevolution und die Aufgaben der MarxistInnen, 19. 10. 2006, http://www.derfunke.at/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=946

[49] Alan Woods: A Socialist alternative to the European Union, 4.6.1997. Auf deutsch veröffentlichte der Funke diesen Artikel als Broschüre (ohne Nennung des Autors!) unter dem Titel „Ihr Europa und unseres. Das Europa des Kapitals und die sozialistische Alternative.“ Das hier angeführte Zitat findet sich in der Broschüre auf S. 8

[50]Alan Woods: A Socialist alternative to the European Union, 4.6.1997. Broschüre S. 18

[51] Alan Woods: A Socialist alternative to the European Union, 4.6.1997. Broschüre S. 38

[52] Alan Woods: A Socialist alternative to the European Union, 4.6.1997. Diese Stelle hat der Funke interessanterweise in seiner Broschüre nicht übersetzt. (unsere Übersetzung)

[53] Alan Woods: A Socialist alternative to the European Union, 4.6.1997. Broschüre S. 41

[54] Committee for a Workers International: Resolution on World Relations (1998), S. 26 (unsere Übersetzung)

[55] Committee for a Workers International: Resolution ‘Europe at a turning point’ (1998), S. 107 (unsere Übersetzung)

[56] Nebenbei bemerkt haben auch SLP und Funke für ein NEIN zum EU-Beitritt aufgerufen und Woods/Funke argumentieren in der oben erwähnten Broschüre, daß sie sogar auch für ein NEIN zur Einführung des Euro aufrufen (S. 46). Man sieht, wie sich hinter allgemeinen internationalistischen Phrasen das Abgleiten in den national-bornierten Patriotismus in der Praxis verbirgt.

[57] Siehe dazu u.a. unsere Broschüre „Weder Österreich noch EU sondern ein sozialistisches Europa. Eine marxistische Streitschrift gegen Austropatriotismus und Euroimperialismus.“ (1994) sowie das Kapitel ‚Ist der Austritt aus der EU eine Alternative für die ArbeiterInnenklasse?‘ in unserer oben genannten Broschüre zum EU-Vertrag.

[58] Siehe dazu die Debatte zwischen uns und der KI: Roman Birke: ‚Europa zwischen sozialer Rhetorik und imperialistischer Praxis. Welches Europa?‘ (in: ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt Nr. 141, Jänner 2006); Otto Bruckner (KI): ‚Anmerkungen zum Artikel von Roman Birke in der letzten Ausgabe des ASt. Welcher Weg führt zur Zerschlagung der EU?‘; Roman Birke: ‚Eine Antwort auf die Kritik von Otto Bruckner. Nur europaweiter Klassenkampf kann EU zerschlagen!‘ (beide in ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt Nr. 142, März 2006).

[59] In seinem Buch „Stamokap heute. Vom gegenwärtige Kapitalismus zur sozialistischen Zukunft“ (2005) charakterisiert Zenker Österreich richtigerweise als einen Staat und ein Kapital, daß seit Beginn der Epoche des Monopolkapitals Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts als imperialistisch zu bezeichnen ist. (siehe S. 310-312)

[60] W. I. Lenin: Über eine Karikatur auf den Marxismus und über den ‚imperialistischen Ökonomismus‘ (1916); in: Lenin: Werke, Bd. 23, Berlin 1957, S. 29

[61] Tibor Zenker: Die EU heute und linke Gegenbewegungen. Referat im Rahmen der Buchpräsentation "Der Imperialismus der EU", Wien, 13. 4. 2007, http://www.kommunisten.at/article.php?story=20070415223808772

[62] W. I. Lenin: Über eine Karikatur auf den Marxismus. LW 23, S. 35

[63] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915); in: LW 21, S. 343

[64] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915); in: LW 21, S. 345

[65] W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus und die Spaltung des Sozialismus (1916); in: Lenin: Werke, Bd. 23, Berlin 1957, S. 107

[66] Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß (1917), in: LW 22, S. 285f. (Hervorhebung im Original)

[67] W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß (1917), in: LW 22, S. 277

[68] Nikolai Bucharin: Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft (1915), S. 156 (Hervorhebung von uns). In einem ähnlichen Sinne schreibt ein anderer enger Mitarbeiter Lenins in der Zeit des 1. Weltkrieges, Grigori Sinowjew, vom utopischen Charakter der bürgerlichen Vereinigten Staaten von Europa und zwar so wie die Pazifisten sie stellen! Also als träumerischer Friede, während die Kapitalisten es „realistisch“ als imperialistische Knechtung sehen. Siehe Grigori Sinowjew: Der Krieg und die Krise des Sozialismus (1916), Wien 1924, S. 405f.

[69] W.I. Lenin: Die Aufgaben der revolutionären Sozialdemokratie im europäischen Krieg (1914); in: LW 21, S. 5

[70] W.I. Lenin: Der Krieg und die russische Sozialdemokratie (1914); in: LW 21, S. 19

[71] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915); in: LW 21, S. 342

[72] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915); in: LW 21, S. 342

[73] Leo Trotzki: Der Krieg und die Internationale (1914), in: Leo Trotzki: Europa im Krieg, Essen 1998, S. 453

[74] Näheres zur opportunistischen Linie der in Rußland anwesenden Parteiführung um Stalin und Kamenjew nach der Februar-Revolution 1917 und Lenins Kampf gegen sie findet sich u.a. in Lenins „Briefe aus der Ferne“ (LW 23, S. 309-357) sowie die von Stalin später unterdrückten Protokolle des Parteitags der Bolschewiki im März 1917 (veröffentlicht in Leo Trotzki: The Stalin School of Falsification, 1932, S. 181-237).

[75] W. I. Lenin: Über die Aufgaben des Proletariats in der gegenwärtigen Revolution. Die April-Thesen (1917), in: LW 24, S. 5

[76] Das was Lenin als ein Charakteristikum der materialistisch-dialektischen Denkweise nannte – ihre "allseitige universale Wendigkeit" (Gibkost)

[77] Siehe dazu u.a. W. I. Lenin: Materialismus und Empiriokritizismus, in: LW 14, S. 126ff. sowie Ivan K. Luppol: „Lenin und die Philosophie. Zur Frage des Verhältnisses der Philosophie zur Revolution“ (1928), S. 47ff..

[78] Siehe hierzu den Bericht eines an der Konferenz teilnehmenden Bolschewiki: G. L. Shklovsky: The United States of Europe Debate (1925) in; Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International. Documents 1907-1916. The Prepatory Years, New York 1986, S. 251f.; Siehe ebenso R. Craig Nation: War on War. Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the Origins of Communist Internationalism; Durham 1989, S. 43f.

[79] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915), in: LW 21, S. 342

[80] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915), in: LW 21, S. 343-345 (Hervorhebung von uns)

[81] W.I. Lenin: Über die Losung der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa (1915), in: LW 21, S. 345f. Nebenbei bemerkt ist dieses Zitat das Kernstück des stalinistischen Mythos, daß Lenin die Konzeption der Internationalisierung der Revolution abgelehnt und stattdessen den Aufbau des „Sozialismus in einem Land“ befürwortet hätte. Das ist ein Treppenwitz der Geschichte, geht doch aus dem Text eindeutig hervor, daß Lenin hier vom Sieg des Sozialismus im Sinne der erfolgreichen Machteroberung des Proletariats spricht und nicht von dem utopischen Konzept des Stalinismus vom langfristigen Aufbau einer reichen, klassenlosen, eben sozialistischen Gesellschaft inmitten einer feindlichen, imperialistischen Umgebung.

[82] Leo Trotzki: Der Krieg und die Internationale (1914), in: Leo Trotzki: Europa im Krieg, Essen 1998, S. 380 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[83] Der Artikel von Leo Trotzki: Das Programm des Friedens (1915-16) wurde mitsamt Trotzki‘s Nachwort von unserer britischen Schwestersektion Workers Power in ihrem theoretischen Journal ‚Permanent Revolution‘ Nr. 4 (1984) veröffentlicht. Die dafür verfaßte Einleitung gibt einen sehr guten Überblick über die damalige Diskussion und die Stärken und Schwächen der Argumentation Lenin’s und Trotzki’s.

[84] Leo Trotzki: Über die Aktualität der Parole „Vereinigte Staaten von Europa“ (1923); in: Leo Trotzki, Wohin treibt England/Europa und Amerika, Berlin 1972, S. 92-99. Wir haben den Artikel auch in dieser Ausgabe des FAREV abgedruckt.

[85] Siehe Edward H. Carr: Socialism In One Country. A History of the Soviet Union, London 1972, S. 523

[86] Siehe dazu Edward H. Carr: Socialism In One Country. A History of the Soviet Union, London 1972, S. 524f.

[87] Siehe die Anmerkung der Herausgeber der Trotzki-Schriften in: Trotzki-Schriften 3.2, S 1106

[88] Leo Trotzki: Kritik des Programmentwurfes der Kommunistische Internationale (1928), in: Trotzki-Schriften Band 3.2, S. 1196f. (Hervorhebung im Original)

[89] Leo Trotzki: Krieg und die Vierte Internationale (1934); in: Leo Trotzki: Schriften zum imperialistischen Krieg, S. 80

[90]Leo Trotzki: Ein Aktionsprogramm für Frankreich (1934); in: Leo Trotzki: Der Todeskampf des Kapitalismus und die Aufgaben der IV. Internationale. Schriften zum Programm, S. 51

[91] Leo Trotzki: Die permanente Revolution (1930); in: Leo Trotzki: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Die permanente Revolution, Frankfurt a. M. (1971), S.161

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Vor einem neuen Wirtschaftsaufschwung? (2009)

Thesen zum marxistischen Konzept des Zyklus, dem Verhältnis des gegenwärtigen Zyklus zur Periode der Globalisierung sowie den Aussichten und Widersprüchen der künftigen Entwicklung der Weltwirtschaft (*)

Michael Pröbsting, veröffentlicht in Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 41, Februar 2010, www.thecommunists.net

 

(Die Graphiken in diesem Dokument können in der unten angehängten pdf Version eingesehen werden.)

 

In den bürgerlichen Medien häufen sich Berichte über einen beginnenden Aufschwung der Weltwirtschaft. MarxistInnen müssen diese Frage wissenschaftlich untersuchen. Dabei dürfen sie sich weder von eklektischem Impressionismus, der die bürgerlichen Einschätzungen für bare Münze nimmt, leiten lassen noch von einem dogmatischen Schematismus, nach dem Konjunkturbewegungen - also auch ein zyklischer Aufschwung - der marxistischen Analyse des niedergehenden Kapitalismus widersprechen würden.

Notwendig ist vielmehr die streng wissenschaftliche Untersuchung der kurz- und langfristigen Tendenzen der kapitalistischen Weltwirtschaft vom Standpunkt der Arbeiterklasse aus; d.h. davon, was der Konjunkturverlauf über die inneren Zusammenbruchstendenzen des Kapitalismus verrät und welche Auswirkungen dieser auf den proletarischen Klassenkampf hat. Im Folgenden konzentrieren wir unsere Untersuchung auf die imperialistischen Metropolen, die das Herz der Weltwirtschaft darstellen. Obwohl diese imperialistischen Zentren die Weltwirtschaft dominieren, ist diese natürlich weit umfangreicher. Insbesondere Länder wie China spielen eine wachsende Rolle in der Weltwirtschaft.

 

Skizze der Theorie des kapitalistischen Zyklus bei Marx

 

Beginnen wir mit einer kurzen Rekapitulation der marxistischen Theorie des kapitalistischen Wirtschaftszyklus. Ausgangspunkt ist die Erkenntnis, dass der „Grundwiderspruch, aus dem alle Widersprüche entspringen, in denen die heutige Gesellschaft sich bewegt“ in folgendem besteht: „Die Produktion ist ein gesellschaftlicher Akt geworden; der Austausch und mit ihm die Aneignung bleiben individuelle Akte, Akte des einzelnen: Das gesellschaftliche Produkt wird angeeignet vom Einzelkapitalisten“. (1)

Dieser Widerspruch zwischen dem gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Produktivkräfte und der Produktion einerseits und dem privaten, kapitalistischen Charakters des Eigentums an Produktionsmitteln und der Aneignung der Produktionsergebnisse andererseits bildet die Grundlage, auf der sich die Entwicklungsgesetze des Kapitalismus und seine inneren Gegensätze entfalten. Produktion um des Profites willens, führt zu steter Akkumulation von Kapital, einer fortschreitenden Ersetzung lebendiger Arbeit durch tote Arbeit, von menschlichen Arbeitskräften durch Maschinen. Da jedoch nur die gesellschaftliche Arbeit des Lohnarbeiters Wert (und damit auch den Mehrwert für den Unternehmer) schafft, kommt es zu einer stetigen Verminderung des Anteils des variablen Kapitals sowie der Steigerung des Anteils des konstanten Kapitals (steigende organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals) und somit längerfristig zum tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate. Der Widerspruch zwischen dem gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Produktion und dem kapitalistischen Charakter der Eigentumsverhältnisse führt auch zu regelmäßigen Krisen der Überakkumulation von Kapital und den daraus folgenden Überproduktionskrisen. Die Unvermeidlichkeit der zyklischen Krisen hat daher ihre Ursache im widersprüchlichen, krisenhaften Wesen des kapitalistischen Wirtschaftssystems selbst.

Nach Marx unterteilt sich der Zyklus in mehrere Phasen: der Phase des Belebung, der Prosperität, der Überhitzung der Konjunktur auf ihrem Höhepunkt, der Krise und schließlich der Stagnation oder Depression am Tiefpunkt des Zyklus: „Zustand der Ruhe, wachsende Belebung, Prosperität, Überproduktion, Krach, Stagnation, Zustand der Ruhe etc.“ (2)

Die Krise bildet den Ausgangspunkt des Zyklus. Ihr liegt die Überakkumulation von Kapital zugrunde, es existiert also ein Überschuß an Kapital, welches nicht mehr profitabel angelegt werden kann. Es kommt zu einem Rückgang der Profitrate. Resultat ist eine Überproduktionskrise, also eines enormen Überschusses an Waren, welche die Konsumtionskraft der Gesellschaft (also die Löhne der ArbeiterInnen und jener Teil des Mehrwerts der Kapitalisten, der nicht akkumuliert wird) übersteigt und nicht verkauft werden kann. Parallel dazu Preissturz, Stocken der Kreditzirkulation, Krise an den Börsen, Einbruch des Handels. Der Verwertungsprozeß des Kapitals stockt, geringere Auslastung der industriellen Kapazitäten ist die Folge. Daher Lohnkürzungen, viele Betriebe gehen zugrunde, massiver Anstieg der Arbeitslosigkeit. „Es ist kein Widerspruch, dass diese Überproduktion von Kapital begleitet ist von einer mehr oder minder großen relativen Überbevölkerung. (…) eine Überbevölkerung von Arbeitern, die vom überschüssigen Kapital nicht angewandt wird ….“ (3) Kurz: die Krise führt zu einer enormen Vernichtung von Produktivkräften. Durch eine solche Vernichtung von Kapital werden kurzzeitig die Widersprüche vermindert und ein neuer Abschnitt der Kapitalakkumulation kann beginnen. „Die Krisen sind immer nur momentane gewaltsame Lösungen der vorhandnen Widersprüche, gewaltsame Eruptionen, die das gestörte Gleichgewicht für den Augenblick wiederherstellen.“ (4)

In der Phase der Depression stagniert die industrielle Produktion, die Preise bleiben auf einem niedrigen Stand, der Handel entwickelt sich schwach. Die Zinsen für Kredite bleiben auf einem relativ niedrigen Niveau, die Unternehmen sind vorsichtig bei Kreditaufnahme, Massenarbeitslosigkeit existiert. In dieser Phase der Depression werden jedoch gleichzeitig auch die Voraussetzungen für die darauf folgende Belebung geschaffen. Die Kapitalisten versuchen durch Herabsetzung der Produktionskosten, die Profite zu steigern. Dazu steigern sie einerseits die Ausbeutung der ArbeiterInnen (Verringerung des Lohnes, Steigerung der Arbeitsintensität). Andererseits jedoch kommt es jetzt auch - zuerst bei den stärksten, größten Monopolunternehmen - zu neuen Investitionen, also einer Erneuerung des fixen Kapitals und zu technischen Verbesserungen. Dadurch soll eine profitable Produktion trotz der gefallenen Preise und der verminderten Konsumtionskraft der Gesellschaft ermöglicht werden. Durch die Erneuerung des fixen Kapitals wird die Produktion von Produktionsmitteln belebt, somit auch der Bedarf an Rohstoffen und Material aller Art, somit auch der Bedarf an Arbeitskräften, somit auch die Nachfrage an Konsumgütern usw. Allmählich geht die Depression in die Phase der konjunkturellen Belebung über.

In der Phase der Belebung steigt die Produktion wieder und mit ihr die Preise, die Akkumulation des Kapitals beschleunigt sich, die Profitrate steigt. Somit steigen auch die Nachfrage nach Krediten und das Vertrauen in profitable Anlagemöglichkeiten für das Kapital, der Handel wird intensiviert, ebenso die Spekulation an der Börse. Die Reproduktion des Kapitals auf erweiterter Grundlage setzt ein. Die Belebung geht in den Aufschwung über.

In der Phase des Aufschwungs kommt es zu einem deutlichen Wachstum der Werteproduktion, der Stand der Produktion vor der Krise im vorangegangenen Zyklus wird überschritten. Die Kapitalakkumulation beschleunigt sich enorm, die Kapitalisten tätigen massive Erweiterungsinvestitionen und steigern die Kapazitätsauslastung. Allgemeiner Optimismus macht sich breit, neue Unternehmen werden gegründet. Allgemeine, sich beschleunigende Steigerung des Umsatzes, der Preise, der Kreditvergabe, der Börsenspekulationen. Die Löhne steigen wieder, die Arbeitslosigkeit sinkt.

Nun kommt es zur Phase der Überhitzung der Konjunktur, der Überproduktion. Die zuvor getätigten Investitionen müssen nun entsprechende Profite einbringen, um die laufenden Kredite zu bedienen, weitere Investitionen zu tätigen usw. Das akkumulierte Kapital will profitabel verwertet werden. Das wollen logischerweise alle Kapitalisten; das Resultat ist eine Produktion von Waren, die bei weitem die Konsumtionskraft der Gesellschaft übersteigt. Es kommt zu einer Überproduktion von Waren, die aber noch nicht zu einer offenen Krise führt. Denn noch scheinen die Absatzmöglichkeiten zu wachsen, durch Spekulation werden die Preise hoch getrieben und somit weitere profitable Investitionsmöglichkeiten in Aussicht gestellt. Durch die grenzenlose Vergabe von Krediten durch die Banken und andere Finanzinstitutionen - die wiederum das sich sammelnde, nicht produktiv angelegte Geldkapital profitabel verwerten wollen - an das Industriekapital wird die Überproduktion überdeckt und eine künstliche Erweiterung der Produktion ermöglicht. Ab einem bestimmten Punkt verschaffen sich jedoch die angestauten Widersprüche gewaltsam Ausdruck und die Überakkumulation des Kapitals lässt die Krise ausbrechen. Der kapitalistische Zyklus mündet wieder in seine Krisenphase.

Die materielle Grundlage dieser zyklischen Bewegung ist die Bewegung der Akkumulation des produktiven Kapitals. Kapitalistische Akkumulation ist Akkumulation von Kapital zwecks Schaffung von Mehrwert respektive Profit. Akkumulation findet nicht im luftleeren Raum statt, sondern unter den Bedingungen der Konkurrenz zwischen den Kapitalisten. Daher sind die Kapitalisten gezwungen, beständig die Produktivität der Arbeit zu erhöhen, um so durch kostengünstigere Produktion einen Wettbewerbsvorteil gegenüber ihren Konkurrenten zu erhalten. Neben dem Drücken des Lohnes und der Verlängerung der Arbeitszeit (Erhöhung des absoluten Mehrwerts) dient hierzu v.a. die Vergrößerung und Verbesserung der von einem Arbeiter in Bewegung gesetzten Maschinerie (Erhöhung des relativen Mehrwerts). Der Verwertungsprozess des Kapitals beinhaltet daher stets auch den Prozess der Erneuerung des Maschinenparks, des fixen Bestandteils des konstanten Kapitals. Die Reproduktion des gesellschaftlichen Kapitals findet daher in der Regel stets auf erweiterter Grundlage statt. Da Akkumulation von Kapital stets zum Zweck der Schaffung von Mehrwert stattfindet, vollzieht sich der Prozess der Erneuerung des fixen Kapitals nicht schrittweise, sondern stoßweise. In der Zeit der Prosperität und der Überhitzung der Konjunktur hoffen die Unternehmer, durch möglichst hohe Auslastung des eingesetzten fixen Kapitals eine möglichst hohe Profitrate zu erzielen. Erst die Krise und die damit verbundene Entwertung bzw. Zerstörung von fixem Kapital schaffen die Voraussetzungen für eine neue Runde von Investitionen. Darauf wies schon Marx im zweiten Band des Kapitals hin:

„Durch diesen eine Reihe von Jahren umfassenden Zyklus von zusammenhängenden Umschlägen, in welchen das Kapital durch seinen fixen Bestandteil gebannt ist, ergibt sich eine materielle Grundlage der periodischen Krisen, worin das Geschäft aufeinanderfolgende Perioden der Abspannung, mittleren Lebendigkeit, Überstürzung, Krise durchmacht. Es sind zwar die Perioden, worin Kapital angelegt wird, sehr verschiedne und auseinanderfallende. Indessen bildet die Krise immer den Ausgangspunkt einer großen Neuanlage. Also auch - die ganze Gesellschaft betrachtet - mehr oder minder eine neue materielle Grundlage für den nächsten Umschlagszyklus.“ (5)

 

Die Verschärfung der Widersprüche in der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus

 

Die zyklischen Krisen des Kapitalismus stellen jedoch keine Wiederholung des Verwertungsprozesses des Kapitals auf gleicher Grundlage dar. Eben weil die Reproduktion des gesellschaftlichen Kapitals stets auf erweiterter Grundlage stattfinden, weil der Verwertungsprozess des Kapitals zu einer stets voranschreitenden Akkumulation führt und damit verbunden dem Wachsen des konstanten Kapitals (v.a. des fixen Bestandteils) und dem Sinken des variablen Kapitals, eben weil sich dadurch die organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals verändert und die Profitrate die Tendenz zum Sinken hat, weil die Kluft zwischen der akkumulierten Masse an Kapital und der - relativ dazu - stets verarmenden Masse der Bevölkerung zunimmt, eben deswegen haben kapitalistische Zyklen eine Tendenz zur Verschärfung der Krisen und schließlich zu ihrem Zusammenbruch. In diesem Sinne beendet Marx den ersten Band des Kapitals mit dem Kapitel „Geschichtliche Tendenz der kapitalistischen Akkumulation“ und schreibt:

„Diese Expropriation vollzieht sich durch das Spiel der immanenten Gesetze der kapitalistischen Produktion selbst, durch die Zentralisation der Kapitale. Je ein Kapitalist schlägt viele tot. Hand in Hand mit dieser Zentralisation oder der Expropriation vieler Kapitalisten durch wenige entwickelt sich die kooperative Form des Arbeitsprozesses auf stets wachsender Stufenleiter, die bewußte technische Anwendung der Wissenschaft, die planmäßige Ausbeutung der Erde, die Verwandlung der Arbeitsmittel in nur gemeinsam verwendbare Arbeitsmittel, die Ökonomisierung aller Produktionsmittel durch ihren Gebrauch als Produktionsmittel kombinierter, gesellschaftlicher Arbeit, die Verschlingung aller Völker in das Netz des Weltmarkts und damit der internationale Charakter des kapitalistischen Regimes. Mit der beständig abnehmenden Zahl der Kapitalmagnaten, welche alle Vorteile dieses Umwandlungsprozesses usurpieren und monopolisieren, wächst die Masse des Elends, des Drucks, der Knechtschaft, der Entartung, der Ausbeutung, aber auch die Empörung der stets anschwellenden und durch den Mechanismus des kapitalistischen Produktionsprozesses selbst geschulten, vereinten und organisierten Arbeiterklasse. Das Kapitalmonopol wird zur Fessel der Produktionsweise, die mit und unter ihm aufgeblüht ist. Die Zentralisation der Produktionsmittel und die Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit erreichen einen Punkt, wo sie unverträglich werden mit ihrer kapitalistischen Hülle. Sie wird gesprengt. Die Stunde des kapitalistischen Privateigentums schlägt. Die Expropriateurs werden expropriiert.“ (6)

In diesem berühmten Zitat hat Marx bereits die Epoche des Imperialismus als geschichtlich höchsten und letzten Abschnitt des Kapitalismus - der Epoche seines Niedergangs und des Übergangs zum Sozialismus - vorweggenommen. Den Charakter des Imperialismus als letztes Stadium des Kapitalismus hat später Lenin herausgearbeitet und in folgenden Worten zusammengefasst: „Wir müssen mit einer möglichst genauen und vollständigen Definition des Imperialismus beginnen. Der Imperialismus ist ein besonderes historisches Stadium des Kapitalismus. Diese Besonderheit ist eine dreifache: der Imperialismus ist 1. monopolistischer Kapitalismus; 2. parasitärer oder faulender Kapitalismus; 3. sterbender Kapitalismus. Die Ablösung der freien Konkurrenz durch das Monopol ist der ökonomische Grundzug, das Wesen des Imperialismus.“ (7) Der historische Übergangscharakter der imperialistischen Epoche liegt daher darin, dass der Kapitalismus die Produktivkräfte und die Vergesellschaftung der Produktion so weit vorangetrieben hat, dass dies solch scharfe Zusammenstöße mit den bürgerlichen Produktionsverhältnissen hervorruft, dass diese den Zusammenbruch der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise immer wieder (natürlich nicht permanent) auf die Tagesordnung stellen, so dass die Menschheit immer mehr, immer drängender vor die Alternative Sozialismus oder Barbarei gestellt wird. Die gegenwärtige dramatische Wirtschaftskrise gepaart mit der wachsenden Rivalität zwischen den Großmächten und dem ökologischen Desaster bestätigt die Leninsche Imperialismus-Theorie eindrucksvoll.

Der Entwicklung des Grundwiderspruchs zwischen dem gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Produktivkräfte und dem privaten, kapitalistischen Charakters des Eigentums der Produktionsmitteln hat in der Geschichte des Kapitalismus zu einer solchen Konzentration und Zentralisation des Kapitals geführt, dass die freie Konkurrenz zwischen den Unternehmern - die den Kapitalismus bis Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts auszeichnete - durch die Vorherrschaft des Monopolkapitals und der Herrschaft einiger weniger imperialistischer Mächte abgelöst wurde. Durch das Monopolkapital kann die spontane Durchsetzung des Wertgesetzes zeitweise modifiziert und eingeschränkt werden bzw. das Monopolkapital kann aufgrund seiner Vormachtstellung, seiner Organisiertheit sowie seiner Verschmelzung mit dem bürgerlichen Staatsapparat die Folgen der kapitalistischen Krisen leichter auf die Arbeiterklasse, das Kleinbürgertum, die Mittelschichten und die schwächeren Teile des Kapitals abwälzen. Doch all diese Modifikationen können den konkreten Entwicklungsgang des Wertgesetzes zwar beeinflussen, aber gleichzeitig verschärfen sie auch die kapitalistischen Widersprüche und führen letztlich zu einer Tendenz der Vertiefung der kapitalistischen Krisen. (Die Durchsetzung des Wertgesetzes wird durch das Monopol modifiziert. Es wird nicht eigentlich eingeschränkt, weil überhaupt das Wertgesetz nur realisiert wird durch seine partielle Negation. So z.B. Wert-Preis-Transformation. Ähnlich der Monopolpreis. Insofern ist der Monopolpreis dem Wertgesetz nichts „Äußeres“, sondern ab einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe des Kapitalismus eine notwendige Form, in der das Wertgesetz realisiert werden muss).

Zyklen gibt es also immer in der Geschichte des Kapitalismus. Konkrete ökonomische und politische Faktoren, das Kräfteverhältnis zwischen den Klassen usw. können eine wichtige Rolle im konkreten Entwicklungsgang des Zyklus spielen. Aber der wichtigste, grundlegendste Faktor, der die Dynamik des Zyklus bestimmt, hängt nicht von konjunkturellen Fragen ab, sondern von der historischen Epoche bzw. Periode, in der sich der Kapitalismus befindet. Trotzki legte in seiner Schrift über die kapitalistische Kurve der Entwicklung dar, dass Zyklen sich sehr unterschiedlich entwickeln - je nachdem, ob sie in einer historischen Periode (Kurve) des kapitalistischen Aufschwungs, der Stagnation oder des Niedergangs stattfinden. So schreibt Trotzki: „Aber der Kapitalismus ist nicht alleine durch die periodische Wiederkehr der Zyklen charakterisiert - was sonst geschehen würde, wäre eine vollständige Wiederholung, aber keine dynamische Entwicklung. Industrielle Zyklen haben in unterschiedlichen Perioden einen unterschiedlichen Charakter.“ (8) Aus diesem Grund hat die Kommunistische Internationale darauf insistiert, die jeweiligen Zyklen immer im Zusammenhang mit der historischen Epoche bzw. Periode zu analysieren. „Wenn aber das Entwicklungstempo sich verlangsamen sollte und wenn der gegenwärtigen Wirtschaftskrise in einer größeren oder kleineren Zahl von Ländern eine Periode des Aufschwunges folgen würde, so würde diese Tatsache keinesfalls den Beginn der ‚organischen' Epoche bedeuten. Solange der Kapitalismus existiert, sind zyklische Schwankungen unvermeidlich. Sie werden ihn auch in der Agonie begleiten, wie sie ihn in der Jugend und in der Reifezeit begleiteten.“ (9)

Der gegenwärtige Zyklus ist ein klarer Beweis dafür. Obwohl die Arbeiterklasse bisher der Offensive der Bourgeoisie nur sehr wenig Widerstand entgegensetzen konnte und diese daher die Kosten der Krise weitgehend auf die Arbeiterklasse abwälzen konnte, und obwohl die Bourgeoisie riesige Geldkapitalsummen für Rettungs- und Konjunkturpakete mobilisierte, waren diese Maßnahmen in keinster Weise ausreichend, um eine robuste Wiederbelebung des Konjunkturzyklus zu ermöglichen. Viel zu groß sind die strukturellen Probleme der Überakkumulation des Kapitals, als dass sie durch zyklische Maßnahmen bereinigt werden könnten.

Die von uns schon mehrfach besprochenen Besonderheiten der Periode der Globalisierung konnten nicht das Wesensmerkmal unserer Epoche - des imperialistischen, höchsten und letzten Stadium des Kapitalismus - aus der Welt schaffen: der Grundwiderspruch des Kapitalismus - der wachsende Gegensatz zwischen dem gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Produktivkräfte und dem privaten Charakter ihrer Aneignung - führt insbesondere in der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus dazu, dass die stetige Ausdehnung der Warenproduktion und damit die Verwertung des Kapitals auf immer höherer Stufenleiter in immer krasseren, schärferen Gegensatz zu den Fesseln der kapitalistischen Aneignung des Profits gerät. Die Kapitalisten versuchen, die Produktivität der Arbeit und dadurch ihren Profit zu steigern, indem sie günstiger produzieren als zu den branchenüblichen durchschnittlichen Produktionskosten, die bestimmend sind für die Durchschnittsprofitrate. So hoffen sie auf einen Wettbewerbsvorteil gegenüber den Konkurrenten. Dadurch arbeiten immer weniger Arbeiter mit immer mehr Maschinerie: der Anteil der wertschaffenden menschlichen Arbeitskraft - das variable Kapital - am Gesamtkapital sinkt und der Anteil der nur anteilig wertübertragenden (aber nicht wertproduzierenden) Maschinen, Rohstoffe, Immobilien - das konstante Kapital - steigt. Diese steigende organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals bedingt eine langfristige Tendenz zum Fall der Profitrate. Der marxistische Ökonom Evgenij Preobrazenskij, der in den 1920er Jahren der führende ökonomische Theoretiker der Linken Opposition von Leo Trotzki war, formulierte den Widerspruch zwischen Produktivkraftentwicklung und Monopolkapitalismus so: „Die Produktivkräfte des Kapitalismus haben ein derartiges Stadium der Entwicklung erreicht und die Konzentration der Produktion ist so weit vorangeschritten, dass jede weitere Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte auf die unüberwindlichen Barrieren der monopolistischen Strukturen stößt.“ (10)

Gerade auch in der zunehmenden Vergesellschaftung und Internationalisierung zeigt sich die historische Überholtheit des Kapitalismus, dessen Fesseln des Privateigentums eine reichhaltige und nachhaltige Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte verhindern. In der Epoche des Imperialismus tendieren die Produktivkräfte zur Stagnation - ein Gesetz, das in für diese Epoche untypischen Phasen wie dem langen Nachkriegsboom im geringeren Maß gültig war. Doch in den für diese Epoche typischen Perioden besitzt dieses Gesetz seine volle Gültigkeit und in jenen historischen Perioden, in denen die Widersprüche des Kapitalismus sich in aller Schärfe entladen wie 1914-1948 oder auch in der 2007 begonnenen Periode sich in einen Niedergang der Produktkräfte äußert (11). In diesem Sinne stellte Lenin fest: „Es ist begreiflich, warum der Imperialismus sterbender Kapitalismus ist, den Übergang zum Sozialismus bildet: das aus dem Kapitalismus hervorwachsende Monopol ist bereits das Sterben des Kapitalismus, der Beginn seines Übergangs in den Sozialismus. Die gewaltige Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit durch den Imperialismus (das, was seine Apologeten, die bürgerlichen Ökonomen, ‘Verflechtung’ nennen) hat dieselbe Bedeutung.“ (12) Und an anderer Stelle: „Die Epoche des kapitalistischen Imperialismus ist die des reifen und überreifen Kapitalismus, der vor dem Zusammenbruch steht, der reif ist, dem Sozialismus Platz zu machen.“ (13)

Die sich daraus ergebenden Schwierigkeiten der profitablen Anlegung von Kapital - der tendenzielle Fall der Profitrate - führen dazu, dass die Kapitalisten zunehmend weniger ihren Mehrwert in die Erweiterung des produktiven Kapitals investieren - also die Erweiterung des Kapitalstocks - und ihn mehr in Spekulation, unproduktive Sektoren usw. anlegen. Die Kapitalisten müssen einen immer größeren Teil des Gewinns dafür aufwenden, um Dividenden oder Schulden zurückzuzahlen, um die eigenen Aktien zurückzukaufen (und dadurch das Spekulationskasino aufrecht zu erhalten usw.).

 

Einige Besonderheiten des Konjunkturzyklus in der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus

 

Wir haben schon oben kurz darauf hingewiesen, dass die Vorherrschaft der Monopole zu einer Verzerrung des Wertgesetzes führt. Welche Auswirkungen hat die Durchsetzung des „Monopolismus“ - im Sinne, wie Lenin diesen Begriff zur Beschreibung der ökonomischen Struktur des Imperialismus verwendet (14) - auf die kapitalistischen Konjunkturzyklen?

Das ökonomische Monopol hat zur Grundlage die - der Entwicklung des Kapitalismus eigenen - Konzentration und Zentralisation des Kapitals und damit einhergehend die wachsende organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals, also des im Verhältnis zum variablen Anteil des Kapitals (Löhne) immer größer werdenden konstanten Anteil des Kapitals (v.a. seines fixen Bestandteils wie Gebäude und Maschinen). Dies bedeutet, dass immer größere Mengen an Kapital notwendig sind, um eine erweiterte Reproduktion des Kapitals gewährleisten zu können. Preobrazenskij wies in einer Studie über den Kapitalismus in seiner Niedergangsepoche auf folgende Gesetzmäßigkeit des Monopolkapitalismus hin: Die Vormachtstellung der Monopole mit ihrer enorm hohen organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals führt dazu, dass diese dazu übergehen können und übergehen, ihre Position nicht bloß durch einen Ausbau des Produktionsapparates zu behaupten und auszubauen, sondern auch durch die Gestaltung der Preise, durch die Beeinflussung von Zoll und nicht-tarifären Handelshemmnissen (z.B. Umweltstandards), durch Marketing usw. Die Monopole müssen also einen riesigen Produktionsapparat aufbauen, um am Markt bestehen und flexibel reagieren zu können usw. Da aber alle Monopole dies tun, führt das dazu, dass das Monopolkapital immer größere Reserven an fixem Kapital aufbaut und daher einen geringer werdenden Teil seines fixen Kapital auslastet, also in den Zirkulationsprozess des Kapitals einfließen lässt. Preobrazenskij spricht daher von der zunehmenden „Immobilisierung“, man kann auch sagen zur „Brachlegung“ fixen Kapitals. Es liegt auf der Hand, dass diese Tatsache sich als letztlich verstärkend auf den tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate auswirkt. Die unten dargelegte Statistik über die langfristig sinkende Auslastung des industriellen Produktionsapparates bestätigt diese These eindrucksvoll.

Damit einher geht auch die zunehmende Ausscheidung von Teilen der Arbeiterklasse aus dem Produktionsprozess, also ihre Abstoßung in die industrielle Reservearmee. Der Monopolkapitalismus (sieht man einmal von der Ausnahmeperiode des langen Booms 1950-1973 in den imperialistischen Ländern ab) zeichnet sich durch die Existenz einer strukturellen Arbeitslosigkeit, einer „relativen Arbeiter-Übervölkerung“, aus. Marx beschreibt diese im Ersten Band des Kapital folgendermaßen: „Die Armutsbevölkerung bildet das Invalidenhaus der aktiven Arbeiterarmee und das tote Gewicht der industriellen Reservearmee. ... Sie gehört zu den toten Kosten der kapitalistischen Produktion, die das Kapital jedoch großenteils von sich selbst ab auf die Schultern der Arbeiterklasse und der kleinen Mittelklasse zu wälzen weiß.“ (15) Preobrazenskij identifiziert daher als ein zweites Merkmal des Monopolkapitalismus den zunehmenden Ausschluss oder „Immobilisierung“ von Teilen der gesellschaftlichen Arbeitskräfte. (In der Tat sahen wir nicht nur in der Zwischenkriegszeit eine enorm hohe strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit; auch seit Mitte der 1970er können wir ein weltweit wachsendes Arbeitslosenheer beobachten.) Er spricht daher von der Verschlechterung des Kräfteverhältnisses zwischen Kapital und Arbeiterklasse zuungunsten letzterer, ein Faktor, der aber gleichzeitig einerseits mit der Verringerung des relativen Lohnniveaus die Konsumkraft der Arbeiterklasse schwächt und andererseits die Widersprüche und somit das Potential für revolutionäre Entwicklungen steigert.

Für die spezifische Entwicklungsform des Konjunkturzyklus ergibt sich daraus, dass -  während in der Epoche des klassischen Kapitalismus die Erneuerung und Ersetzung des fixen Kapitals eine wesentliche Rolle für den Austritt des Zyklus von der Rezession hin zum Aufschwung spielte -, sich dies nun anders gestaltet. Da das Monopolkapital über enorme Reserven an fixem Kapital verfügt, ist es weniger gezwungen, am Ende der Rezession seinen Produktionsapparat zu erneuern, sondern verwendet einfach nur einen größeren Teil seines bereits bestehenden fixen Kapitals. Daher ist das Monopolkapital auch ein Hemmschuh für die technologische Entwicklung und v.a. für die Anwendung neuer Forschungsergebnisse. Stattdessen erfolgt eine Erneuerung des fixen Kapitals insgesamt in einem geringeren Maße (siehe dazu auch die Statistik über den langfristig sinkenden Anteil der Netto-Investitionen) und oft schon vor dem Beginn der Krise. Daraus folgt wiederum, so Preobrazenskij, dass sich die Zyklen der erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals in einem gehemmteren Entwicklungsgang vollziehen, dass also die Aufschwungphasen weniger dynamisch und energisch verlaufen als dies in der Epoche des aufstrebenden Kapitalismus der Fall war. Die Krisen hingegen „dauern unausweichlich länger und nehmen einen quälenden Charakter an“. (16) In diesem Sinne spricht Preobrazenskij davon, dass die Kapitalakkumulation im Monopolkapitalismus dazu tendiert, sich von der erweiterten Reproduktion hin zur einfachen Reproduktion zu bewegen. Wir betonen, dass dies natürlich nur als eine Tendenz und nicht als ein Ist-Zustand verstanden werden darf.

Hinzu kommt die enorm gewachsene Bedeutung des Finanz- oder Geldkapitalsektors im Monopolkapitalismus. Die enorme Konzentration des Kapitals macht die Verfügbarkeit einer immer größeren Masse an Geldkapital (Banken, Leihkapital, Aktienmarkt etc.) nötig. Daher die Fusion von Industrie- und Bankkapital zum Finanz- oder Monopolkapital. Die wachsende Bedeutung des Finanzkapitalsektors wird noch dadurch verstärkt, dass das Monopolkapital aufgrund der erschwerten Bedingungen zur profitablen Anlage des Mehrwerts im Produktionssektor einen bedeutenden Anteil des Mehrwerts in den Finanzmarkt investiert. Der enorm angewachsene Anteil an Dividenden-Ausschüttungen und Aktien-Rückkäufen am Profit des US-Großkapitals (siehe Tabelle 1) unterstreicht das. All dies führt nicht nur zu einer verstärkten Bedeutung des Finanz- oder Geldkapitalsektors, sondern auch dazu, dass dieser eine relative Eigenständigkeit gegenüber der produktiven Kapitalakkumulation erhält. Relative Eigenständigkeit ist hier so zu verstehen, dass sich die Bewegungsform der realen produktiven Kapitalakkumulation nicht direkt und im gleichen Ausmaß in der Bewegungsform des Finanzkapitals widerspiegelt. Diese eigenständige Entwicklung des Finanzkapitals - das ja keine Werte schafft, sondern vielmehr von den durch die produktive Kapitalakkumulation geschaffenen Werten schmarotzt - erreicht natürlich dann ihre Grenzen, wenn deren fiktive „Werte“ in einen zu großen Gegensatz zur Wertproduktion gerät. Nichtsdestotrotz bildet sich ein Finanzmarktzyklus heraus, der gewissen Eigengesetzen unterliegt und die Entwicklung des Zyklus der Realakkumulation beeinflusst (17).

Schließlich muss noch erwähnt werden, dass mit der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus sich erstmals ein Weltmarkt als eine ökonomische Einheit herausbildet, die auf die Entwicklung der nationalen Ökonomien einen dominierenden Einfluss hat. Diese Entwicklung geht natürlich nicht harmonisch, im Gleichschritt vor sich, sondern ist von jenem Gesetz geprägt, dass Lenin als eines der wichtigsten des Kapitalismus überhaupt bezeichnete: dem Gesetz der ungleichzeitigen Entwicklung. Diese ungleichzeitige Entwicklung führt nicht nur zu einer Verschärfung der Gegensätze zwischen den imperialistischen Metropolen und der halbkolonialen Welt, sondern kann auch - und dieser Punkt ist hier relevant - dazu führen, dass bestimmte Teile der Weltökonomie von einer dynamischeren Entwicklungsform der Reproduktion des Kapitals gekennzeichnet sind als andere. Diese Ungleichzeitigkeit konnten wir gerade auch in den letzten Jahren beobachten, als einzelne kapitalistische Länder wie China oder Indien eine dynamische Wachstumsperiode durchliefen, während der Großteil der Welt von Stagnation und schließlich einer scharfen Krise gekennzeichnet war. Diese Ungleichzeitigkeit kann in einem gewissen Rahmen dadurch gemindert werden, wenn eine imperialistische Führungsmacht oder eine Art weltpolitische Ordnung (wie die Jalta-Ordnung der Nachkriegszeit) der Weltökonomie einen gewissen Stempel aufdrückt und einen relativ stabilen Rahmen für die Kapitalakkumulation schafft. Je weniger jedoch eine solche Ordnung existiert, je weniger eine imperialistische Führungsmacht und deren Monopolkapitalisten die Weltpolitik und -ökonomie beherrschen, desto stärker werden die Tendenzen der Instabilität und Ungleichzeitigkeit. Daher ist auch der Niedergang des US-Imperialismus und seiner hegemonialen Stellung eine wichtige Ursache für den Beginn der historischen Krisenperiode.

Die größer werdenden Reserven des fixen Kapitals und die geringer werdende Bedeutung der Erneuerung des fixen Kapitals sowie die wachsende Bedeutung und relative Eigenständigkeit des Finanzkapitals führen dazu, dass der kapitalistische Konjunkturzyklus nicht nur dazu tendiert, flacher zu werden, sondern auch dazu, dass er unsteter wird. Eben weil jene Elemente, die dem Zyklus in der Epoche des klassischen Kapitalismus seine typische Periodizität, seine Regelmäßigkeit verlieh, in der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus an Kraft verlieren, vermindert sich die periodische Dynamik des Zyklus. Ausgehend von dem bereits oben festgestellten gehemmten, verlangsamten Charakter der Zyklen der erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals in der imperialistischen Epoche haben wir nun also auch noch die Tatsache, das bestimmte ökonomische, politische oder ökologische Entwicklungen mehr als zuvor den Entwicklungsgang des Zyklus stören, unterbrechen, umkehren können. Wir haben diese Entwicklung besonders ausgeprägt in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts gesehen (Unterbrechung einer sich anbahnenden schweren Depression durch den Ausbruch des 1. Weltkriegs 1914, Nachkriegsdepression 1920-21, kurze Rezession 1924, schwere und lang gezogene Depression 1929-33, neue Depression 1937/38, „Ausweg“ daraus durch den Beginn des 2. Weltkriegs 1939). Wir sprechen daher also von einer Tendenz zur unsteten Dynamik des kapitalistischen Konjunkturzyklus.

Wir denken, dass die hier zusammengefassten Besonderheiten der erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals und der Konjunkturzyklen in der Epoche des Imperialismus gerade in historischen Krisenperioden des Kapitalismus an Schärfe gewinnen. Eine solche historische Krisenperiode des Kapitalismus hatten wir 1914-1948, und in eine solche historische Krisenperiode sind wir 2007 eingetreten. So gehen wir davon aus, dass die Entwicklung der erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals in den kommenden Jahren sowohl gehemmt und verlangsamt verlaufen wird, als auch leicht durch verschiedene Faktoren unterbrochen werden kann und früher, als es der eigentliche Zyklus erwarten lassen würde, in eine neuerliche scharfe Rezession mündet (z.B. durch eine scharfe Krise der Finanzmärkte wegen der extrem gewachsenen Staatsschulden, neuer Spekulationsblasen, Kriegen, ökologischen Katastrophen etc.)

 

Die gegenwärtige historische Krise als Ergebnis der vorangegangenen Periode

 

Die schwere Rezession 2007-09 kann nur verstanden werden als Resultat der akkumulierten Widersprüche der vorangegangenen kapitalistischen Periode. Der gegenwärtige Zyklus findet in der Epoche des niedergehenden Kapitalismus, des Kapitalismus in seinem Greisenalter, statt. Wie von uns wiederholt dargestellt, zeichnete sich die Periode der Globalisierung durch eine umfassende Offensive der Bourgeoisie aus: massive Angriffe auf die Arbeiterklasse, Zerstörung fast aller degenerierten Arbeiterstaaten, verstärkte Unterwerfung und Ausbeutung der halbkolonialen Welt. Durch diese Angriffe konnte die Bourgeoisie sowohl die Mehrwertrate (v.a. durch die Steigerung des absoluten Mehrwerts) als auch die imperialistischen Extraprofite aus den Halbkolonien steigern. Doch die historische Niedergangstendenz des Kapitalismus hat auf ökonomischer Ebene zur Grundlage, dass die organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals (also das Verhältnis des bloß wertübertragenden konstanten Kapital zum wertschaffenden variablen Kapital) dermaßen anwächst, dass es für das Kapital immer schwieriger wird, den Fall der Profitrate durch entgegenwirkende Faktoren aufzuhalten. Aus diesem Grund hat die gesteigerte Profitmasse nur zu einem relativ geringen Teil - und v.a. einem immer geringer werdenden Teil - Eingang in die Akkumulation des Kapitals gefunden. Zu einem größeren - und immer größer werdenden - Anteil sind die Profite in die Sphäre der Spekulation bzw. der Schuldenrückzahlung gewandert. Das Ergebnis der Periode der Globalisierung war, dass die Bourgeoisie nicht nur darin scheiterte, die kapitalistische Akkumulation wiederzubeleben, sondern dass sie einen massiven Niedergang der Weltwirtschaft nur dadurch verhinderte, dass sie immer gieriger und kurzsichtiger von ihren künftigen Reserven zehrte. Kurz: sie brachte eine gewisse Stabilität in die Weltwirtschaft, indem sie massive Schulden anhäufte und durch eine enorme Aufblähung des Spekulationssektors künstliche Profite und „Wohlstand“ schuf. Die Widersprüche der Gegenwart wurden eine gewisse Zeitlang übertüncht durch die Aufblähung der Widersprüche der Zukunft (18).

Die enormen Massen an Geldkapital, welche in die höchst spekulative Welt der Devisenmärkte und der Hedgefonds wandern, sind oft erwähnt worden. Folgende Tabelle für die USA im Zeitraum 1947-2007 zeigt auch den enorm wachsenden Anteil an Dividenden-Ausschüttungen und Aktien-Rückkäufen am Profit vor Steuern.

 

Tabelle 1: Anteil an Dividenden-Ausschüttungen und Aktien-Rückkäufen am Profit vor Steuern in den USA, jeweiliger Durchschnitt in den Wirtschaftszyklen 1949-2007 (19)

Beginn des Wirtschaftszyklus         Anteil an Dividenden-Ausschüttungen und Aktien-

                                                      Rückkäufen am Profit vor Steuern

Q II 1949                                       16.7%

Q III 1953                                      19,9%

Q IV 1957                                      23.5%

Q III 1960                                      13.9%

Q I 1970                                        16.7%

Q I 1974                                        35.7%

Q I 1980                                        66.5%

Q I 1990                                        62.3%

Q II 2001                                       89.1%

 

Die Überakkumulation des Kapitals, die fallende Profitrate, die Tendenz zur Verschärfung der Krisen - all dies prägt die Weltwirtschaft seit Jahrzehnten. Der lange Boom erweckt bei bürgerlichen und vielen linken Theoretikern die Illusion, als habe der Kapitalismus ein Mittel gefunden, seiner Tendenz zum Zusammenbruch zu entgehen. Tatsächlich ging der lange Boom auf außergewöhnliche Umstände zurück, nämlich die massenhafte Vernichtung von Kapital durch zwei Weltkriege und die schwere Depression nach 1929 sowie die Durchsetzung einer weltpolitischen Ordnung unter Führung einer imperialistischen Großmacht bzw. eines (zeitweiligen) stabilisierenden Ausgleichs mit der stalinistischen Bürokratie in der UdSSR. Seit den frühen 1970ern ist die Weltwirtschaft von der Überakkumulation des Kapitals und der damit einhergehenden Tendenz zur Stagnation gekennzeichnet. Diese Tendenz zur Stagnation konnte auch nicht durch die kapitalistische Offensive in der Periode der Globalisierung umgekehrt werden, sondern verstärkte sich sogar. (siehe Tabelle 2) Allerdings war diese Tendenz zur Stagnation sehr uneinheitlich, da es gleichzeitig auch wichtige Teile der Welt gab, in denen eine beschleunigte Kapitalakkumulation stattfand. (China, Indien)

 

Tabelle 2: Wachstumsrate des Welt-Brutto-Inlandsproduktes 1971-2009 (in % pro Jahr) (20)

1971-1980            +3.8%

1981-1990            +3.2%

1991-2000            +2.6%

2001-2009            +2.36%

 

 

Graphik 1: Wachstumsraten des Welt-Brutto-Inlandsproduktes und des Warenexportes 1951-2008 (in % pro Jahr) (21)

 

Diese in der Periode der Globalisierung sich verschärfende Tendenz der Überakkumulation des Kapitals drückte sich darin aus, dass in den USA, der größten Nationalökonomie der Welt, die Kapitalisten aufgrund der mangelnden Profiterwartungen immer weniger ihren Mehrwert in die Erweiterung des Kapitalstocks investieren. Diese Stockung des Kapitalakkumulationsprozesses drückt sich in sinkenden Netto-Investitionen (also der Erweiterungsinvestitionen im Gegensatz zu jenen Investitionen, die nur das physisch oder moralisch verschlissene Kapital ersetzen) aus. Die Tabellen 3 und 4 zeigen klar, dass die von den Verwertungsschwierigkeiten des Kapitals herrührenden Stockungen im Kapitalakkumulationsprozess in der Periode der Globalisierung nicht geringer, sondern schärfer wurden. Das gleiche Bild ergibt sich für die europäischen imperialistischen Mächte. So reduzierte sich in den EU-15 Staaten die Wachstumsgeschwindigkeit des Netto-Kapitalstocks sukzessive: von einem Jahresdurchschnitt von 4.2% (1961-73), 2.7% (1974-85), 2.4% (1986-1990), 2.1% (1991-1995), 2.2% (1996-2000) und schließlich 2.1% (2001-2005) und 1.9% (2006-2010). (22)

 

Tabelle 3: Netto-Investitionen als Anteil an den Brutto-Investitionen in den USA, jeweiliger Durchschnitt in den Wirtschaftszyklen 1949-2007 (23)

Beginn des Wirtschaftszyklus            Netto-Investitionen als Anteil an Brutto-Investitionen

Q II 1949                                               37.4%

Q III 1953                                              37,7%

Q IV 1957                                              31.8%

Q III 1960                                              40.5%

Q I 1970                                                40.4%

Q I 1974                                                35.7%

Q I 1980                                                31.8%

Q I 1990                                                26.9%

Q II 2001                                               18.9%

 

Tabelle 4: Wachstumsraten der Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen in den imperialistischen Zentren 1961-2010 (in % pro Jahr) (24)

USA                        Japan                      EU-15

1961-1970      +4.7%                      +15.7%                    +5.9%

1971-1980      +3.9%                        +3.5%                    +1.8%

1981-1990      +3.0%                        +5.7%                    +2.7%

1991-2000      +6.4%                          -0.6%                   +2.2%

2001-2010       -0.5%                          -1.9%                   +0.3%

 

Die zunehmenden Verwertungsschwierigkeiten des Kapitals drücken sich in einem wachsenden Anteil überschüssigen, brachliegenden Kapitals aus. Ein klarer Indikator dafür ist die sinkende Kapazitätsauslastung in der Industrie. Der Höhepunkt der Kapazitätsauslastung in der US-Industrie betrug im Wirtschaftszyklus in den 1980ern 85.1%, in jenem der 1990er Jahre 84.9 und seit 2000 überschritt er nie die 81%-Marke. Die Tiefpunkte in diesen drei Zyklen waren 78.7%, 73.5%, im Juni 2009 lag die Kapazitätsauslastung am historischen Tief von 68.3%. (25) Mitte 2009 wurde also knapp 1/3 des produktiven Kapitals in den USA nicht für den Verwertungsprozess genutzt! Wir sehen also, dass die Periode der Globalisierung die Widersprüche des Kapitalismus nicht lösen konnte, sondern diese sich sogar verschärft haben! Graphik 2 gibt ein klares Bild der niedergehenden Tendenz der Kapitalakkumulation in den USA von 1967 bis heute.

 

 

Graphik 2: Kapazitätsauslastung in der US-Industrie 1967-2009 (26)

Aus diesem stockenden, krisenhaften Kapitalakkumulationsprozess ergab sich eine zunehmende Abwanderung des Mehrwerts einerseits in den Spekulationssektor (2007 stammten 41% aller US-Profite aus dem Finanzsektor!), andererseits mittels Kapitalexport ins Ausland. Das Resultat ist eine rückläufige Dynamik der erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals, die sich in sinkenden Wachstumsraten der Warenproduktion in der Periode der Globalisierung niederschlägt. Während in den 1960er Jahren die Industrieproduktion in den imperialistischen Zentren um durchschnittlich zwischen 5 und 13% pro Jahr anwuchs, verlangsamte sich diese Tendenz in den 1980er Jahren auf 1,7 bis 4% und betrug in den 2000ern durchschnittlich überhaupt nur zwischen 0.5 und 1%.

 

Steht die Weltwirtschaft vor einem neuen Aufschwung?

 

Gegenwärtig lässt sich feststellen, dass die Weltwirtschaft den vorläufigen Tiefpunkt der Rezession, welche Ende 2007 in den USA einsetzte, im ersten Quartal 2009 durchschritten hat. Seitdem hat sich die Rezession abgeschwächt bzw. mündete in einzelnen Ländern in einen leichten Aufschwung. Insgesamt rechnen wir aber nicht mit einem starken Aufschwung. Ob es zu einem schwachen Aufschwung kommt oder ob eine zweite Rezession - ähnlich wie das 1980-82 der Fall war - bevorsteht, hängt von verschiedenen Faktoren ab. Auf jeden Fall konnte die jetzige Rezession trotz ihres historisch schweren Charakters kein einziges der grundlegenden Probleme der kapitalistischen Ordnung verringern oder gar lösen. Dies gilt für die ökonomischen Widersprüche (Überakkumulation von Kapital und die Krise der Profirate) wie auch für die politischen Gegensätze (wachsende Rivalität zwischen den imperialistischen Mächten).

 

Tabelle 5: Wachstumsraten der Industrieproduktion in den imperialistischen Zentren 1961-2008 (in % pro Jahr) (27)

                 USA                        Japan                        EU-15

1961-1970      +4.9%                      +13.5%                       +5.2%

1971-1980      +3.0%                        +4.1%                        +2.3%

1981-1990      +2.2%                        +4.0%                        +1.7%

1991-2000      +4.1%                        +0.2%                        +1.6%

2001-2008      +0.6%                        +0.7%                        +0.8%

 

Die konjunkturelle Bewegung der Weltwirtschaft lässt sich anhand verschiedener Indikatoren ablesen, die in der einen oder anderen Form die Entwicklung der Wertproduktion widerspiegeln. Die folgenden Indikatoren zeigen, dass die kapitalistische Weltwirtschaft sich nach wie vor in der Phase der Stagnation oder am Anfang der Phase der zyklischen Belebung befindet. Die vorliegenden Daten verweisen auf ein Wachstum des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts in Japan, Deutschland und Frankreich im 2. Quartal bzw. prognostizieren ein solches für das 3. Quartal 2009.

Aussagekräftiger als das BIP sind jedoch die Angaben für die Industrieproduktion, die stärker mit der Werteproduktion korreliert. Auch hier sehen wir (allerdings schwächer als beim BIP) in den imperialistischen Zentren eine gewisse Belebung der Industrieproduktion zuerst in Japan, später dann auch in den USA und der EU. Hier sehen wir einen scharfen Einbruch der Industrieproduktion 2008 bis in das 1./2. Quartal 2009. In den letzten Monaten jedoch kommt es zu einer leichten Belebung der Industrieproduktion. In Japan hat diese Belebung bereits im März begonnen, in den USA erst im Juli.

Diese leichte Belebung der Industrieproduktion vollzieht sich jedoch auf äußerst niedrigem Niveau. In allen imperialistischen Ländern hat der tiefste Einbruch der Industrieproduktion und der Investitionen seit der Depression 1929 stattgefunden. In den USA lag am Ende des 1. Quartals 2009 das Niveau der Brutto-Inlandsinvestitionen um 26.8% unter dem Stand des 3. Quartals 2007, als die Rezession begann. (30) Hält man sich vor Augen, in welch dramatischen Ausmaß die Industrieprodukten eingebrochen ist, so wäre eigentlich ein scharfer Aufschwung zu erwarten. Tatsächlich jedoch sehen wir bloß eine leichte Belebung in den letzten Monaten. Der Grund dafür liegt darin, dass es zu keiner wirklichen Belebung der Kapitalakkumulation kommt. Die Bourgeoisie hat den Zusammenbruch des Kapitalismus dadurch verhindert, indem sie in allen wichtigen Ländern gewaltige Konjunktur- und Bankenhilfspakete anschob. Diese staatskapitalistischen Maßnahmen ermöglichten das Auffangen bzw. die Konsolidierung des Geldkapitalsektors und schufen gewisse Anreize zur Stimulierung der Nachfrage für Konsumgüter wie z.B. Autos (Verschrottungsprämie). Aber diese Maßnahmen sind z.T. zeitlich begrenzt und konnten viele Firmenzusammenbrüche nicht verhindern. Die Kapitalisten haben daher keine optimistischen Erwartungen für die Steigerung der Profitrate. Noch immer ist die Wirtschaft von enormer Überakkumulation geprägt. Die entsprechend den kapitalistischen Bewegungsgesetzen stetig steigende organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals erfordert immer umfangreichere, zerstörerische Vernichtungen fixen Kapitals, um einen neuen Zyklus der Kapitalakkumulation auszulösen. Ganz offenkundig hat trotz der enormen Vernichtung von Werten - bis zu 45% des „globalen Wohlstandes“ sollen durch die Krise innerhalb von eineinhalb Jahren vernichtet worden sein (31), andere sprechen sogar von noch höheren Werten (32) - keine ausreichende Vernichtung von Kapital stattgefunden, um eine kräftige Konjunkturbelebung zu ermöglichen.

 

Tabelle 6: Wachstumsraten des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts in den imperialistischen Zentren 2008/09 (in %) (28)

 

Tabelle 7: Wachstumsraten der Industrieproduktion in den imperialistischen Zentren 2006-09 (in %) (29)

                                    USA                      Japan                   EU-16

2006                           +1.8%                    +4.5%                   +4.1%

2007                           +1.8%                    +2.8%                   +3.2%

2008                           - 6.7%                    - 3.4%                   - 2.2%

* * *                                * * *                      * * *                       * * *

2008 Q2                        -                           -1.3%           

2008 Q3                        -                           -3.2%                    - 2.2%

2008 Q4                      -13.0 %                -11.3%                     -8.9%

2009 Q1                      -19.0%                 -22.1%                    -17,0%

2009 Q2                      -10.4%                  +8.3%                    -16.7%

2009 Q3                       +6.1%                   +7.4%                   -13.8%

* * *                                * * *                        * * *                       * * *

2009 Januar                        -                     -10.1%                  -1.6%

2009 Februar                 -0.8%                     -9.4%                  -2.3%

2009 März                      -1.6%                    +1,6%                  -0.9%

2009 April                       -0.6%                    +5,9%                  -1.2%

2009 Mai                        -1.1%                    +5,7%                  +0.5%

2009 Juni                       -0.5%                     +2,3%                 +0.7%

2009 Juli                        +1.1%                    +2,1%                  -0.2%

2009 August                  +1.3%                    +1,6%                  +0.6%

2009 September            +0.6%                     +2,1%                 +0.5%

2009 Oktober                 +0.0%                    +0,5%                  -0.6%

2009 November             +0.8%                     +2,2%           

 

Diese stockende Kapitalakkumulation lässt sich an verschiedenen Indikatoren ablesen. Die Überakkumulation von Kapital hat solch enorme Ausmaße erreicht, dass in den USA und in der Euro-Zone die Auslastung der industriellen Kapazitäten sich noch immer auf einem historischen Tiefststand befindet und ca. 30% der Kapazitäten brachliegen. In Japan, wo im 1. Quartal 2009 ein unglaublicher Tiefststand von gar nur 50.4% erreicht wurde (33), setzte die Erholung früher ein. Auch die diesbezüglichen Zahlen weisen darauf hin, dass sich die kapitalistische Weltwirtschaft noch in der Phase der Stagnation bzw. ganz am Anfang einer leichten Belebung befindet.

Dies wird auch deutlich, wenn wir uns die Entwicklung der Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen ansehen, welche die Dynamik der Kapitalakkumulation widerspiegeln. In allen imperialistischen Staaten hat auch noch im 2. Quartal 2009 ein Rückgang der Investitionen stattgefunden, auch wenn er sich im Vergleich zu den Quartalen zuvor verlangsamt hat. Selbst noch im 3. Quartal 2009 findet keine Belebung der Kapitalakkumulation statt, in Japan und der EU gehen die Investitionen weiter zurück, in den USA herrscht Stagnation vor.

 

Tabelle 8: Industrielle Kapazitätsauslastung in den imperialistischen Zentren (in %) (34)

                        USA                     Japan (2005 = 100)            EU-16

2006                                                                                      83.1%

2007                                                       104.1                       84.1%

2008                                                         88.6                       81.8%

* * *                      * * *                                * * *                            * * *

2008 Q2                                                                                  83.3%

2008 Q3                                                  100.4                       82.2%

2008 Q4            74.2%                              87.1                       78.1%

2009 Q1            70.4%                              63.4                       72.5%

2009 Q2            68.7%                              71.4                       70.0%

2009 Q3            69.9%                              78.8                       70.1%

* * *                         * * *                             * * *                        * * *

2009 Februar     70.6%                       

2009 März          69.5%                              61.0           

2009 April           69.2%                              67.2                      70.3%

2009 Mai            68.5%                              72.6           

2009 Juni           68.3%                              74.3           

2009 Juli             69.1%                              77.2                      69.6%

2009 August       70.1%                              79.0           

2009 September 70.6%                              80.3           

2009 Oktober      70.6%                                                           70.7

2009 November   71.3%

 

Was ist die Ursache für die Zurückhaltung der Kapitalisten, stärker zu investieren und so einen neuen Zyklus der Reproduktion des Kapitals auf erweiterter Stufenleiter einzuleiten? Sie liegt letztlich darin, dass die Profitrate gefallen ist und die Aussichten auf eine substantielle Steigung derselben gering sind. Das soll nicht über die Veränderungen der letzten Monate hinwegtäuschen. Tatsächlich hat hier eine wichtige Trendumkehr stattgefunden. Der Fall der Profitmasse wurde aufgehalten und ein Wachstum der Profite hat eingesetzt. Aber dieses Wachstum ist gebremst und angesichts der enormen Verschuldung, der riesigen Überkapazitäten usw. werden die Kapitalisten diese Profite nur eingeschränkt für neue Investitionen verwenden.

 

Tabelle 9: Wachstumsraten der Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen in den imperialistischen Zentren 2006-09 (in %) (35)

                                 USA                        Japan                      EU 16

2006                        +2.0%                     +0.5%                      +5.5%

2007                         -2.0%                     +1.1%                      +4.3%

2008                         -3.5%                      -4.6%                      +0.7%

* * *                             * * *                        * * *                        * * *

2008 Q3                    -1.7%                      -2.7%                      -1.4%

2008 Q4                    -4.7%                      -4.0%                      -3.8%

2009 Q1                    -9.9%                      -6.0%                      -5.4%

2009 Q2                     -1.7%                      -3.2%                     -1.6%

2009 Q3                    +0.1%                     -3.2%                      -0.8%

 

Tabelle 10: Entwicklung der Unternehmensprofite 2007-09 (in %) (36)

                                    USA (Q-Q)            Japan (J-J)

2007                              -4.1%                        -40.9

2008                            -11.8%                        -19.2%

2008 Q3                        +3.6%           

2008 Q4                        -22.8%                       -64.6%

2009 Q1                        +5.3%                        -70.1%

2009 Q2                        +3.7%                        -62.7%

2009 Q3                        +10.8%           

 

Graphik 3: Brutto-Profite in der Euro-Zone 2000-09 (37)

 

Besonders deutlich zeigt sich die Tiefe der Rezession auch bei der Entwicklung des Welthandels. Bürgerliche Ökonomen sprechen mittlerweile vom „Großen Handelszusammenbruch“. Während der Welthandel von 2001-08 um jährlich 6.5% wuchs, brach er zwischen April 2008 und Juni 2009 um 19% ein. (38) Damit sank der Welthandel stärker als in den bisherigen Rezessionen nach dem 2. Weltkrieg und sogar schneller als im vergleichbaren Zeitraum nach Beginn der großen Depression 1929. (siehe Graphik 4)

 

Graphik 4: Entwicklung der Welt-Exporte während der Depression 1929 und der Depression ab 2008 (Anzahl der Monate nach Beginn der Depression) (39)

 

Was hat diesen massiven Rückgang des Welthandels verursacht? Im wesentlichen ist er ein Resultat der Globalisierung. Wie wir schon in früheren Analysen zeigten, hat die Globalisierung zu einer enormen Internationalisierung der Produktion geführt. In Tabelle 11 sehen wir, dass sich in der Periode der Globalisierung die Kluft zwischen dem Wachstum der Industrieproduktion und dem Wachstum des Handels mit industriellen Waren zunehmend vergrößerte. Wuchs der Welthandel in den 1970ern noch „nur“ um knapp 2/3 schneller als die Industrieproduktion, so war dieses Tempo des Welthandels in den 1980er Jahren fast doppelt so hoch und in den 1990er und 2000er Jahren sogar mehr als doppelt so hoch. Heute kontrollieren die multinationalen Konzerne (und ihre Tochterunternehmen) 2/3 des Welthandels. Ein schwerer Einbruch in der Produktion dieser Konzerne, das Zudrehen des Kredithahns durch die Banken führte daher zu einem umfassenden Einbruch des Welthandels. Mit dem leichten Aufschwung, der nun einsetzt, wird es auch zu einer gewissen Wiederbelebung des Welthandels kommen.

 

Tabelle 11: Entwicklung des Welthandels und der Weltproduktion 1970-2008 (in %) (40)

                     Produktion in der               Welthandel mit Waren

                     verarbeitenden Industrie    der verarbeitenden Industrie

1970-1979            +4,81%                                    +7,53%

1980-1989            +2,98%                                    +5,62%

1990-1999            +2,29%                                    +6,42%

2000-2008            +2,84                                       +6,86%

 

Da die Profiterwartungen niedrig und die Überakkumulation des Kapitals drückend ist (Überkapazitäten, Verschuldung etc.), vollzieht sich die Reproduktion des gesellschaftlichen Kapitals auf erweiterter Stufenleiter nur stockend. Trotz einer gewissen Belebung der Produktion werden daher keine neuen Arbeitsplätze geschaffen; im Gegenteil: die Arbeitslosigkeit steigt und die Löhne sinken. Wir sehen daher auch in den letzten Monaten weltweit ein Ansteigen der Arbeitslosigkeit. Insgesamt wird ein Anstieg der Arbeitslosigkeit allein in den imperialistischen Ländern (OECD-Staaten) zwischen dem Höhepunkt des letzten Wirtschaftszyklus und den Prognosen für nächstes Jahr um mehr als 25,5 Millionen Menschen angenommen. In den USA ist die Arbeitslosigkeit 2009 bereits auf 9.3% hochgeschnellt, 2010 soll sie sogar auf 10.2% wachsen. (41)

 

Tabelle 12: Anstieg der Arbeitslosigkeit in den imperialistischen Staaten zwischen 2007-10 (42)

Anstieg der Arbeitslosigkeit vom Höhepunkt des Wirtschaftszyklus´ bis zum 4. Quartal 2010 (in Tausend)

Kann      Frankr.   BRD       Irl           Ita.          Japan      Spa         UK         USA

733         1.019     1.833     232         1.124     1.239     2.706     1.388     8.698

Arbeitslosenrate (Angaben in %)

Am Höhepunkt des Wirtschaftszyklus´ 2007/2008

6.1       7.9        7.5     4.5      6.2       3.8       8.0      5.3          4.7

Schätzungen für das 4. Quartal 2010

9.8      11.3      11.8   15.1    10.5      5.8      19.8      9.8         10.1

 

Es ist daher auch nicht verwunderlich, dass der aktuellste OECD-Zwischenbericht zum Stand der Weltwirtschaft zum dem Schluss kommt, dass die Weltwirtschaft wohl nur langsam wachsen wird. So meint der Autor der Studie, dass die Krise den wichtigsten Industriestaaten zu sehr zugesetzt habe: „Überkapazitäten, eine geringe Profitabilität, hohe und steigende Arbeitslosigkeit, kaum wachsende Arbeitseinkommen und die Krisen auf dem Immobilienmarkt in einigen Ländern dürften den privaten Verbrauch belasten. Zudem müssen Verbraucher, Unternehmen, Banken und Regierungen ihre Schulden abbauen, die sie im Zuge der Krise angehäuft hatten.“ (44) Daher, so der Autor: "Das heißt, dass kurzfristig eine starke politische Unterstützung der Wirtschaft nötig ist".

 

Graphik 5: Zunahme der Arbeitslosigkeit zwischen Anfang 2008 und dem 2. Quartal 2009 (43)

 

Staatskapitalismus und öffentliche Verschuldung

 

Damit kommen wir zu einem entscheidenden Punkt: Warum ist die kapitalistische Weltwirtschaft in ihrer historisch schwersten Krise seit 1929 nicht zusammengebrochen? Der Hauptgrund dafür war die entschlossene Intervention des kapitalistischen Staates, welcher der Kapitalistenklasse durch enorme öffentliche Schuldenaufnahme zu Hilfe gekommen war. Allein die Konjunkturprogramme der Regierungen weltweit sollen nach Angaben des Kieler Instituts für Weltwirtschaft einen Umfang von 3.000 Milliarden US-Dollar, das entspricht 4,7 % des weltweiten Bruttoinlandsprodukts, betragen. Hinzu kommen die Rettungspakete für die Banken und andere Teile des Kapitals. Allein in den USA haben diese ein Volumen von 23.700 Mrd. Dollar. Auch die deutsche Regierung hat 480 Mrd. Euro in Form staatlicher Bürgschaften für den heimischen Finanzsektor zur Verfügung gestellt.

Die zentrale Rolle der staatskapitalistischen Intervention für die Vermeidung des ökonomischen Zusammenruchs wird offensichtlich, wenn man sich die aktuellen Wirtschaftszahlen in den diversen Staaten ansieht. In den USA z.B. war es ausschließlich die Sparte „Regierungsausgaben“, die im 2. Quartal 2009 um +6.4% (im Jahresvergleich) zunahm, während alle anderen Sparten der BIP-Statistik (Privater Konsum, Private Investitionen, Exporte und Importe) einen Rückgang aufwiesen. (45) Ähnliches gilt für die Europäische Union. Auch in Japan spielte der Staat eine wichtige Rolle, allerdings sind hier die Exporte im letzten Quartal stärker angezogen.

Resultat dieser verstärkten staatskapitalistischen Intervention ist ein dramatischer Anstieg der öffentlichen Verschuldung. Innerhalb weniger Jahre (von 2007-11) wird sich die Verschuldung der imperialistischen Staaten im Verhältnis zur wirtschaftlichen Leistung im Falle der EU um über 1/3, der USA um 2/3 und in Japan um zumindest knapp 1/9 (ausgehend von einem bereits extrem hohen Niveau) erhöhen.

 

Tabelle 13: Verschuldung der imperialistischen Staaten 2007-11 (in % des BIP) (46)

                     USA                      Japan                        EU 15

2007                62.2%                   187.7%                      60.4%

2011              105.8%                   206.0%                      83.7%

 

Dies hat enorme Auswirkungen auf die staatliche Wirtschaftspolitik. In den USA wird z.B. das Budgetdefizit 2009 1.59 Billionen Dollar oder 11,2% des jährlichen BIP erreichen. Dies ist der höchste Stand seit 1945. (47)

Insgesamt sehen wir jetzt das höchste Niveau der staatskapitalistischen Intervention in das Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsgefüge seit 1945. Dieser Etatismus findet jedoch weniger in der direkten Form der Verstaatlichung statt, sondern in der indirekten Form von Steuern, staatlichen Aufträgen für das Militär usw. Dies hat folgenden zentralen Grund. Die breite Verstaatlichung in der Vergangenheit fand in der Regel vor dem Hintergrund von Kriegen bzw. den durch Kriegen verursachten massenhaften Vernichtungen von Kapital statt. Die beiden Weltkriege erforderten ein Höchstmaß an staatsmonopolkapitalistischer Zentralisierung. Nach dem 2. Weltkrieg war die Bourgeoisie enorm geschwächt und diskreditiert bzw. waren die Wiederaufbauprojekte angesichts der kriegsbedingten Zerstörung so groß, dass das private Kapital die notwendigen Investitionen nicht tätigen konnte bzw. wollte (angesichts unsicherer Profiterwartungen, hoher Kampfbereitschaft der Arbeiterklasse etc.). Heute ist dies anders. Solange das Monopolkapital direkt und unmittelbar in den Abgrund seiner Vernichtung blickt - dies konnte kurzfristig durch die staatskapitalistischen Interventionen in den letzten 2 Jahren verhindert werden - solange wird der Staat sich auf indirekte Interventionen konzentrieren.

Die Ausweitung der Staatsverschuldung ist auch ein riesiges Programm zur Sicherung der Profite der Großbanken (diese handeln/vermitteln diese Schuldscheine). Damit profitieren sie von der Staatsintervention doppelt: zuerst werden sie gegen den Zusammenbruch geschützt, dann organisieren sie die Rückzahlung der Schuldendienste und streichen Vermittlungsdividenden ein. Das hat für die Banken außerdem den Effekt, dass sie nicht auf Ausweitung der Kredite für Unternehmen und Privatkunden setzen müssen, sondern auf spekulative Geschäfte mit Obligationen. Insgesamt hat das aber zusätzlich den Effekt, die Belebung im industriellen Sektor und des Massenkonsums weiter zu bremsen. Das verstärkt also die stagnativen Tendenzen, flacht den Aufschwung weiter ab, es kann auch zur Quelle einer zweiten Spekulationsblase und deren kurzfristigen Platzens werden.

Diese parasitäre Entwicklung wird besonders deutlich, wenn man sich anschaut, in welchen Sektoren die Profite am stärksten wachsen. Wie wir in Tabelle 7 gezeigt haben, hat in den imperialistischen Staaten im Jahre 2009 kaum eine Belebung der Wertproduktion stattgefunden; es wurde somit kaum ein Mehrwert geschaffen, der in Form von Investitionen zu einer Beschleunigung der Kapitalakkumulation hätte führen können. (Tabelle 9) Daher findet die Steigerung der Profite weniger im produktiven Sektor, sondern in erster Linie im spekulativen, parasitären Geldkapitalsektor statt. Dies wird klar, wenn man die Entwicklung der Profite in den USA in den verschiedenen Sektoren vergleicht. Während der Finanzsektor 2008 noch schwere Einbußen erlebte, gelang des dem Geldkapital früher als den anderen Teilen des Kapitals, die Lasten der Krise anderen aufzuhalsen. Dies gelang den Finanzkapitalisten einerseits durch die gewaltigen Summen an staatskapitalistischer Hilfe, die die Banken und Finanzinstitute jedoch in nur geringem Ausmaß weitergaben und stattdessen wieder spekulierten. Das Resultat ist, wie in Tabelle 14 zu sehen, dass der Finanzsektor im 3. Quartal seine Profite um 31% steigern konnte, während die Gewinne im Nicht-Finanzsektor um „nur“ 4.2% und jene aus dem Ausland ebenfalls um „nur“ 7.3% anstiegen. Dies unterstreicht einmal mehr die vorherrschende Stellung des Geldkapitalsektors innerhalb des Gesamtkapitals. (48)

 

Tabelle 14: Entwicklung der Profite in den USA Q4 2008 - Q3 2009 (49)

Steigerung bzw. Rückgang der Profite nach Sektoren (in % des BIP)

                                   2008 Q4     2009 Q1    2009 Q2      2009 Q3

Gesamter Sektor           - 22.8%     +5.3%         +3.7%        +10.8%

    heimische Wirtschaft - 25.2%      +9.6%         +6.7%        +11.9%

        Finanzsektor         - 57.9%     +95.0%      +12.0%        +31.1%

        Nicht-Finanzsektor -12.8%       -6.0%         +4.7%          +4.2%

    Profite aus Ausland  - 16.3%       -5.0%         --4.6%          +7.3%

 

Die Folgen der historisch hohen Staatsverschuldung sind vielfältig. Schwächere kapitalistische Staaten (v.a. halbkoloniale Länder im Süden aber auch in Osteuropa) könnten sich als unfähig erweisen, ihre Staatsschulden zu bedienen und offiziell Bankrott anmelden. Die Großmächte haben die Möglichkeit, Geld nachzudrucken. In jedem Fall jedoch werden die öffentlichen Haushalte aller kapitalistischen Staaten massiv von der Notwendigkeit geprägt sein, Zinsen zu zahlen. Dies wiederum hat enorme politische und ökonomische Konsequenzen: der kapitalistische Staat ist weitaus weniger als bisher in der Lage, mittels Subventionen und Steuererleichterungen den Kapitalisten unter die Arme zu greifen. Gleichzeitig wird der Staat unweigerlich die Massensteuern für die Arbeiterklasse zu erhöhen. Dies wiederum drückt auf die Möglichkeiten des privaten Konsums und schränkt somit die Konsumtionskraft der Gesellschaft ein. Andererseits wird dies den Staat stärker als bisher als Feind der Arbeiterklasse sichtbar machen und zu einer Politisierung des Klassenkampfes führen.

Im Unterschied zu vergangenen Konjunkturzyklen existiert heute keine imperialistische Führungsmacht, die ökonomisch stark genug wäre, die Rolle einer Lokomotive der Weltwirtschaft zu spielen, wie früher die USA. Doch die USA sind heute ökonomisch schwächer als je zuvor seit den 1930er Jahren. In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten haben sich die USA eine enorme Verschuldung aufgebürdet - der Staat, die Bundesstaaten und Kommunen, die privaten Haushalte und die Unternehmen. Diese Verschuldung hat sich durch die astronomischen Konjunktur- und Bankenhilfspakete noch einmal dramatisch um 9 Billionen Dollar erhöht. Damit verbunden ist das nach wie vor vorhandene Zahlungsbilanzdefizit, welches in den letzten Monaten nur deswegen geringer wurde, weil die USA die Importe noch stärker drosselten als die Exporte. Sicher ist der Dollar nach wie vor die wichtigste Währung weltweit.

Doch seine Dominanz wird von den konkurrierenden Mächten immer mehr in Frage gestellt. Dies unterstreichen auch die jüngsten Berichte über die Pläne zur Ablösung des US-Dollars als Zahlungsmittel im Rohölhandel. So hätten die Golfstaaten bereits geheime Gespräche mit Russland, China, Japan und Frankreich geführt. (50) Schon der marxistische Ökonom Evgenij Preobrazenskij wies darauf hin, dass die Stellung am Währungsmarkt Hand in Hand geht mit der ökonomischen Stellung in der Weltwirtschaft. So schrieb er 1926 angesichts der wachsenden Stärke des US-Imperialismus: „Die Diktatur am Valutamarkt ist nur die Spiegelung der allgemeinen wirtschaftlichen Herrschaft Amerikas über die anderen Länder.“ (51) In diesem Sinn ist es unausweichlich, dass der ökonomische Niedergang des US-Monopolkapitalismus sich früher oder später auch in einem Niedergang der Vorherrschaft des Dollars ausdrücken muss. Insgesamt ist es daher unwahrscheinlich, dass die USA ähnlich wie in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren die Rolle einer Lokomotive der Weltwirtschaft spielen und einen längeren globalen Aufschwung anführen.

Fassen wir zusammen: Der Tiefpunkt der schärfsten Rezession seit 1929 scheint überschritten zu sein und die imperialistischen Ökonomien befinden sich in der Phase der Stagnation bzw. des leichten Aufschwungs. Der Zusammenbruch der Weltwirtschaft wurde durch massive staatskapitalistische Interventionen verhindert. Doch die herrschende Klasse konnte kein einziges der grundlegenden Probleme der kapitalistischen Ordnung verringern geschweige denn lösen. Dies gilt sowohl für die ökonomischen Widersprüche (Überakkumulation des Kapitals und die Krise der Profirate) als auch für die politischen Gegensätze (wachsende Rivalität zwischen den imperialistischen Mächten). Der Aufschwung der Weltwirtschaft wird daher schwach sein und könnte sogar aufgrund der niedrigen Investitionstätigkeit sowie der neuerlichen Spekulation in eine zweite Rezession 2010/11 münden.

In jedem Fall wird die Bourgeoisie alles daran setzen, die Kosten der Krise in den kommenden Jahren der Arbeiterklasse aufzubürden. Dies kann nur verhindert werden, wenn das Proletariat gemeinsam und entschlossen kämpft und letztlich den Kapitalismus durch die internationale sozialistische Revolution beseitigt. Dazu ist die Überwindung der Führungskrise und der Aufbau einer Weltpartei der sozialistischen Revolution, der Fünften Internationale, notwendig.

 

Fußnoten

(1) Friedrich Engels: Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft; in: MEW 19, S. 227

(2) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 372. Im 1. Band des Kapitals beschreibt Marx den Verlauf des Zyklus folgendermaßen: „Perioden mittlerer Lebendigkeit, Produktion unter Hochdruck, Krise und Stagnation“ (Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band I, MEW 23, S. 661).

(3) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 266

(4) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 259

(5) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band II, MEW 24, S. 185f.

(6) Karl Marx: Kapital Band I, MEW 23, S. 790f. K. Marx, Kapital I, MEW 23, 673.

(7) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus und die Spaltung des Sozialismus (1916); in: LW 23, S. 102 (Hervorhebung im Original).

(8) Leo Trotzki: Die Kurve der kapitalistischen Entwicklung (1923); in: Die langen Wellen der Konjunktur. Beiträge zur Marxistischen Konjunktur- und Krisentheorie, Berlin 1972, S. 126

(9) Thesen zur Weltlage und die Aufgaben der Kommunistischen Internationale. Resolution des III. Weltkongreß der Kommunistischen Internationale, in: Die Kommunistische Internationale, Manifeste, Thesen und Resolutionen, Band II, Köln 1984, S.29

(10) Evgenij Preobrazenskij: The Decline of Capitalism (1931); Übersetzung von Richard Day (1983), S. 172 (eigene Übersetzung aus dem Englischen)

(11) Siehe dazu auch Michael Pröbsting: Die widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte im Kapitalismus; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 37 (2007)

(12) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus und die Spaltung des Sozialismus (1916); in: LW 23, S. 104

(13) W. I. Lenin: Der Opportunismus und der Zusammenbruch der II. Internationale; in: LW 22, S. 108

(14) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus und die Spaltung des Sozialismus (1916); in: LW 23, S. 102

(15) Karl Marx: Kapital Band I, MEW 23, S. 673 (Hervorhebung im Original)

(16) Evgenij Preobrazenskij: The Decline of Capitalism (1931); Übersetzung von Richard Day (1983), S. 75 (eigene Übersetzung aus dem Englischen)

(17) Eine ausführliche Analyse des Finanzkapitals findet sich in den Artikeln von Markus Lehner: Finanzmarktkrise und fallende Profitraten; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 39 (2008) sowie „Finanzmarktkrise - Rückblick und Ausblick“ in dieser Ausgabe des RM.

(18) Eine Analyse der Globalisierung findet sich u.a. in Michael Pröbsting: Imperialismus, Globalisierung und der Niedergang des Kapitalismus; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 39 (2008)

(19) Christian E. Weller and Amanda Logan: Investing for Widespread, Productive Growth, Center for American Progress, December 2008, S. 18

(20) Für 1971-2000 siehe World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2002, S. 234; für 2001-2009 siehe United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2008, S. 1f. bzw. World Economic Situation and Prospects 2010, S. 4. Die Zahlenreihe zwischen 1971-2000 beruht auf Weltbank-Berechnungen des GDP zu konstanten Preisen und Wechselkursen von 1995. Die Zahlenreihe zwischen 2001-2009 beruht auf UN-Berechnungen des GDP zu konstanten Preisen und Wechselkursen von 2000. Die 2.36% ergeben sich aus dem arithmetischen Mittel der Angaben für die Jahre 2001-2009 (1.6%, 1.9%, 2.7%, 4.0%, 3.5%, 4.0%, 3.9%, 1.9% sowie -2.2%).

(21) Federal Reserve Bank St. Louis: International Economic Trends, August 2009, S. 1

(22) EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Statistical Annex of European Economy, Autumn 2009, S. 212; Die Angaben der EU für das Jahr 2010 ist natürlich nur eine Prognose.

(23) Christian E. Weller and Amanda Logan: Investing for Widespread, Productive Growth, Center for American Progress, December 2008, S. 11

(24) EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Statistical Annex of European Economy, Autumn 2009, S. 69.

(25) FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 15. Dezember 2009, S. 1

(26) FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 15. Dezember 2009, S. 5

(27) EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Statistical Annex of European Economy, Autumn 2009, S. 53. Da in der angeführten EU-Statistik keine Angaben für die EU-15 für die Jahresreihe 1961-70 und 1971-80 haben wir in diesen Fällen das arithmetische Mittel von Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien und Italien verwendet.

(28) Jorgen Elmeskov (OECD): What is the economic outlook for OECD countries? An interim assessment, 3rd September 2009, S. 3

(29) Angaben für die USA aus: FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 15. Dezember 2009, S. 8; Angaben für die Euro-Zone aus: EZB Monthly Bulletin, September 2009, S. 149 sowie EZB Monthly Bulletin, Jänner 2010, S. 155; Angaben für Japan: Research and Statistics Department, Economic and Industrial Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry: Indices of Industrial Production (Revised Report, 18.1.2010), November 2009, S. 6. Alle Angaben beziehen sich bei den Jahren und Quartalen auf die Vergleichsdaten im Vorjahr; bei den Monatsangaben im Vergleich zum Vormonat.

(30) Ted H. Chu (Lead Economist and Director of Global Industry Analysis, General Motors): Economic and Auto Industry Outlook, June 5, 2009, S. 8

(31) Siehe Megan Davies and Walden Siew: “Stephen Schwarzman says 45 per cent of global wealth written off by financial crisis”, Reuters, March 11, 2009,

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25170415-12377,00.html.

(32) Laut dem früheren US-Finanzminister Larry Summers wurde innerhalb von 18 Monaten sogar globaler Wohlstand in der Höhe von 50 Billionen US-Dollar vernichtet ($50 trillion in wealth destroyed - Summers' remarks on the economy, North Denver News, 13 March 2009, http://northdenvernews.com/content/view/1969/2/)

(33) Siehe Taro Saito: The Worst May be Over for Japan's Economy- Short-term Economic Forecast (Fiscal 2009-2010), Economic Research Group of the Nippon Life Insurance Company, Juli 2009, S. 4

(34) Angaben für die USA aus: FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 16. September, 2009, S. 11. sowie 15. Dezember 2009, S. 12; Angaben für die Euro-Zone aus: EZB Monthly Bulletin, September 2009, S. 150 sowie Jänner 2010, S. 156; Angaben für Japan: Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi: The Outlook for the Japanese Economy, August 2009, S. 20 sowie November 2009, S. 23 (Die Angaben für Japan beziehen sich auf einen Index, bei dem das Jahr 2000 den Index 100 darstellt)

(35) Angaben für die Jahre 2006-2008 für alle Länder: IMF: World Economic Outlook, April 2009, S. 191; Angaben für die Quartale für alle Länder: Eurostat newsrelease euroindicators, 2 9. 2009, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-02092009-BP/EN/2-02092009-BP-EN.PDF sowie 8. Jänner 2010, http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/01/08/eu%20gdp.pdf. Alle Angaben beziehen sich bei den Jahren auf das Vorjahr und bei den Quartalen auf die Vergleichsdaten im Quartal davor.

(36) Angaben für die USA aus: BEA: Gross Domestic Product: Second Quarter 2009 (Second Estimate), Corporate Profits: Second Quarter 2009 (Preliminary Estimate), 27. August, 2009, S. 12 sowie BEA: GDP and the Economy. Third Estimates for the Third Quarter of 2009 (January 2010), S. 4; Veränderung im Vergleich zur vorhergehenden Periode. Angaben für Japan: Taro Saito: The Worst May be Over for Japan's Economy- Short-term Economic Forecast (Fiscal 2009-2010), Economic Research Group of the Nippon Life Insurance Company, Juli 2009, S. 8. Die Angaben zwischen den Ländern sind nicht vergleichbar. Im Falle der USA handelt es sich um die Angaben für Corporate Profits. Die Jahresangaben beziehen sich auf das Jahr davor, die Quartalsangaben auf die Quartale davor. Bei den Statistiken für Japan wird die Kategorie „Ordinary Profits“ verwendet und die Quartalsangaben beziehen sich auf das jeweilige Quartal im Vorjahr.

(37) UniCredit - What is the eurozone growth potential, Juli 2009, S. 21

(38) Siehe The slump in world trade and its impact on the euro area; in: European Commission: Quarterly Report on the Euro Area III/2009, S. 29

(39) Richard Baldwin: The great trade collapse: What caused it and what does it mean?; in: The Great Trade Collapse: Causes, Consequences and Prospects; Centre for Economic Policy Research, November 2009, S. 2

(40) Eigene Berechnung des arithmetischen Mittels anhand der Jahresangaben in: WTO - International Trade Statistics 2009, S. 174. Man beachte, daß die Angaben für das 2000er Jahrzehnt noch nicht die Werte des Jahres 2009, dem Jahr der Depression, berücksichtigen.

(41) Siehe Congress Of The United States, Congressional Budget Office: The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2009, S. 28

(42) OECD Employment Outlook 2009: Tackling the Jobs Crisis (Summary in English), S. 2

(43) Jorgen Elmeskov (OECD): What is the economic outlook for OECD countries? An interim assessment, 3rd September 2009, S. 19

(44) Jorgen Elmeskov (OECD): What is the economic outlook for OECD countries? An interim assessment, 3rd September 2009, S. 2

(45) Siehe BEA: Gross Domestic Product: Second Quarter 2009 (Second Estimate), Corporate Profits: Second Quarter 2009 (Preliminary Estimate), 27. August, 2009, S. 5

(46) EUROPEAN COMMISSION: Statistical Annex of European Economy, Autumn 2009, S. 181; Andere Angaben sprechen im Falle Japans von einer Verschuldung Japans im Jahr 2010 auf 227% des BIP. (Tomasz Konicz: Griechenland ist überall, Junge Welt, 15.01.2010)

(47) Siehe Congress Of The United States, Congressional Budget Office: The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2009, S. 2

(48) Für unsere Analyse des Finanzkapitals siehe u.a. den Artikel von Markus Lehner: Finanzkapital, Imperialismus und die langfristigen Tendenzen der Kapitalakkumulation; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 39 (2008)

(49) BEA: GDP and the Economy. Third Estimates for the Third Quarter of 2009 (January 2010), S. 4. Die Angaben der prozentuellen Veränderungen in den Quartalen beziehen sich auf das jeweils vorhergehende Quartal.

(50) Siehe dazu den Bericht von Robert Fisk „The demise of the dollar“ in der britischen Tageszeitung The Independent vom 6 October 2009,

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html

(51) Evgenij Preobrazenskij: Die Neue Ökonomik (1926); Berlin 1971, S. 199

 

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Imperialism, Globalization and the Decline of Capitalism (2008)

By Michael Pröbsting

Originally published in the Book Richard Brenner, Michael Pröbsting, Keith Spencer: The Credit Crunch - A Marxist Analysis (2008), www.thecommunists.net

 


The tables and graphs can be viewed in the pdf version of this document which is attached below.

 

 

If Marx’s model of the capitalist cycle is still sufficient to explain modern day crises, what is the significance of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism in the age of globalisation? This article examines the contemporary applicability of imperialism theory and argues that it remains essential for an understanding of capitalism’s past development and future prospects, by Michael Pröbsting [Editors note - this article does not include the graphs and tables from the printed version]

Writing some 50 years after the first publication of volume one of Capital, Vladimir Lenin was in a position to study capitalism after numerous repetitions of the capitalist cycle. His principal conclusion was that the cumulative effect of these repetitions had been to bring about a qualitative change in capitalism. From being a mode of production in which competition between capitals, despite the barbarism and exploitation that this involved, was a driving force which ensured an overall increase both in productivity and in society’s total product, it had become one in which the dominance of monopolies produced a tendency to restrict further development. As we shall see, this did not mean for Lenin that all development had stopped but that, by comparison with the age of the “free market”, capitalism had now entered into its historical decline.

There is no reason to doubt, given the circumstances in which Lenin wrote during the First World War and its revolutionary aftermath, that he expected this “age of decline“ would, or at least could, be brought to an end relatively swiftly by socialist revolution around the world. Now, almost 100 years later, it is legitimate to ask whether capitalism’s subsequent history has falsified both his analysis and his conclusion. This article examines key elements of Lenin’s theory and concludes that, while the defeat of the revolutionary movement in the 1920s certainly allowed the survival of imperialism, and the scale of destruction in the Second World War allowed the system a new lease of life, more recent developments prove that it has been unable to overcome its historical limitations.

Moreover, “decline” of an entire mode of production has to be understood as entailing the development and maturation within it of the forces that will form the basis of the next mode of production. Imperialism’s extended lifespan has reproduced not only inequality, poverty and environmental damage, but also a more highly integrated global economy, and a still greater contradiction between the highly socialised system of production and ever more narrowly concentrated private ownership.

 

Lenin’s definition of imperialism

 

Although the most immediately obvious feature of imperialism is the subordination of the majority of the world’s countries and peoples to a handful of the most powerful states, this was not, for Lenin, its most fundamental and defining character. Rather, he argued that it was the development of capitalist monopolies to the point where they dominated production that was fundamental, “The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.”1 Monopolies themselves grew directly out of the preceding “free trade” stage of capitalism:

“It is highly important to have in mind that this change was caused by nothing but the direct development, growth, continuation of the deep-seated and fundamental tendencies of capitalism and production of commodities in general.”2#

Indeed, this idea originates in Marx. Referring to the formation of joint-stock companies, the earliest examples of the share-issuing public limited companies of today, Marx observed that they represented,

“Abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financiaxl aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.”3

Marx also described how joint stock companies and credit act as a transitional phase from capitalism to a system based on socialised property:

“The stock company is a transition toward the conversion of all functions in the reproduction process which still remain linked with capitalist property, into mere functions of associated producers, into social functions.”4

Monopolies represented the most advanced form of capitalist organisation and could only arise in highly developed capitalist economies where their strength in the “home market” immediately allowed them to take control of the most important sources of raw materials. Equally, the development of monopolies was a precondition for the fusion of banking and industrial capital to form finance capital, which was the material base for the banking oligarchy that came to dominate each advanced capitalist country. Together, these aspects of “monopolisation” ensured the transformation of the old “colonial policy”, the “free grabbing of territories”, as Lenin called it, into the monopoly possession of territory and resulting struggles to divide and redivide the world.

If, as Lenin insisted, monopoly is the “economic essence” of imperialism, then a clear understanding of his analysis of monopoly is similarly essential to an understanding of his analysis of the epoch. While clearly recognising and delineating the immense power of a monopoly, he also emphasised that “it inevitably engenders a tendency to stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress.”5 Thus, just as free trade created its own negation in the form of the monopoly, so monopoly not only represented the most advanced elements within capitalism but also tended to negate the driving force, competition with other capitals, which promoted capitalism’s economic progress. As soon as a powerful firm can corner the market in raw materials and safeguard its profits by monopoly pricing, it is no longer under the same pressure to find more efficient methods of production.

At the same time, it is necessary to note that Lenin is here talking about a tendency, not an absolute barrier to further progress. Particularly on a world scale, “monopoly” should not be taken absolutely literally to mean a single producer in any particular economic sector. Rather, Lenin was referring to a handful of giant corporations in each of the most advanced capitalist countries that could, and did, fix prices between themselves, but he did not think even these cosy arrangements could eliminate competition completely, particularly on the world market. Expanding on the relationship between monopoly and economic progress he said:

“... certainly the possibility of reducing costs of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand.”6

In Lenin’s conception of capitalism in the epoch of imperialism, then, there is a constant tension between the dynamics of economic growth, the development of the productive forces, and the tendency to decline but this should not be understood as an equilibrium in which one force, at least over time, balances out the other. On the contrary, the defining features of imperialism, according to Lenin, “compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.”7 Nonetheless,

“it would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which are richest in capital”.8

When he was writing, Lenin explicitly referred to Britain as an example of this but, as we shall see, the same can now be said of the USA.

This fundamental relationship between capitalism’s capacity to expand production and advance the productive forces and its inevitable creation of monopolies which stifle that capacity forms the conceptual framework within which to understand Lenin’s famous summatory definition of imperialism as:

“(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.” 7

For Lenin, this analysis yielded clear conclusions regarding the historical classification of imperialism, namely that he sees it as the highest and final stage of capitalism:

“It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism, the beginning of its transition to socialism. The tremendous socialisation of labour by imperialism (what its apologists, the bourgeois economists, call “interlocking”) produces the same result.”10 #

This last point is also of the greatest importance; in its highest and most developed stage, capitalism not only restricts further development of the productive forces but it also raises the socialisation of production to the highest degree, raising to an unendurable pitch the tension between the social power of the monopolist bourgeoisie to hamper economic development to safeguard their own profits and the need of a globally integrated working class to take control of production in order to ensure its own physical survival. In another article, Lenin expresses this point absolutely unambiguously: “The epoch of capitalist imperialism is one of ripe and overripe capitalism that faces collapse and is ripe to make way for socialism.”11 #

This identification of imperialism as the stage of capitalism in which its own development had not only begun to hamper economic advance but also generated the social forces that would overthrow it, had already been established by Bukharin, with whom Lenin collaborated while in exile.

“Present-day society, while developing productive forces to a gigantic degree, while powerfully conquering ever new realms, while subjugating nature to man’s domination on an unprecedented scale, begins to choke in the capitalist grip. Contradictions inherent in the very essence of capitalism, and appearing in an embryonic state at the beginning of its development, have grown, have widened their scope with every stage of capitalism; in the period of imperialism they have reached monstrous proportions. Productive forces in their present volume insistently demand new production relations. The capitalist shell must inevitably burst.”12

Similarly, when reviewing the contributions of Marx and Lenin on the subject of capitalism’s overthrow, Evgeny Preobrazhensky also drew attention to both the economic and social ramifications of the decline that is characteristic of the imperialist epoch:

“Lenin had to analyse the capitalist world economy not only at the beginning of its fall and disintegration, but to investigate capitalist society as a whole in the epoch of its decline…Lenin conducted an analysis of the state and with that the analysis of the capitalist state in the period when the disintegration of the whole capitalist system began…Conversely, Lenin lived in the period of capitalism’s disintegration, in the epoch when the proletarian revolution began…” #13

Implicit in this is another characteristic of the analysis of imperialism that was adopted by the Communist International and was particularly stressed by Trotsky and Bukharin – the importance of the world market. In order correctly to understand imperialism and the direction of its development, it is indispensable to understand it as a political and economic world system because the political and economic relations in each country can never, from a Marxist point of view, be derived simply from internal factors. Imperialism does not constitute a collection of autonomous national states and economies.14 Rather, it is the world economy and world politics, which act as a melting pot for national factors and form an independent totality, raised above and imposed upon the national states, that are the decisive driving forces. The combined and uneven development of world capitalism encounters the given local peculiarities of a country and fuses with the specific national dynamic of the political and economic relations of that state. As Trotsky explained it:

“Marxism takes its point of departure from world economy, not as a sum of national parts but as a mighty and independent reality which has been created by the international division of labour and the world market, and which in our epoch imperiously dominates the national markets.” 15

The capitalist mode of production, the process of production and reproduction of capital on higher levels, embodies a dynamic yet crisis-ridden and fragile equilibrium marked by explosive inner contradictions. This equilibrium must be understood in the dialectical sense as a temporary unity of opposites whose development must cause them to blow apart and resolve themselves at a higher level. Friedrich Engels regarded this as a general truth: “All equilibrium (is) only relative and temporary.” 16

This means that as capitalism expands, so do the internal antagonisms that drive it into crisis. Bukharin’s striking phrase seems especially relevant in 2008, as globalisation’s debt-fuelled boom and uneven global expansion was pitched into crisis:

“From this point of view then, the process of capitalist reproduction is not simply a process of expanded reproduction of capitalist production relations: it is at the same time a process of expanded reproduction of the contradictions of capitalism.” #17

To speak of imperialism as the epoch of capitalism in decline does not mean that it has become incapable of improving and developing technology or the productivity of labour. But the system has an inherent inability to transform technological innovations and economic growth into generalised social progress for humanity. Monopolisation ensures that, notwithstanding growth and innovation in some sectors at some times, overall there is a decline in dynamism that expresses itself in falling rates of growth, instability and systemic vulnerability to crises in both the economic and political spheres.

Imperialism is an epoch of fierce clashes of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. At a certain point, such clashes necessarily and inescapably lead to open explosions like wars and revolutions. Clearly the theory of imperialism was developed and elaborated in just such a period and, therefore, the epochal features of imperialism coincided with its immediate appearance. However, what later generations of Marxists have had to deal with is the analysis of imperialism when the immediately explosive conjuncture has been resolved not by proletarian revolution but by capitalist counter-revolution, the resolution of the contradictions of imperialism to the advantage of the capitalists.

For such a counter-revolution to give imperialism a new lease of life in which its tendency to stagnation is overcome for a long period, three things are necessary:

• An historic defeat of the working class that lowers the price of the commodity labour power on a qualitative scale.

• The destruction of superfluous capital on a similarly vast scale.

• The establishment of a new world order under the undisputed hegemony of an imperialist power (in the 19th century this was Britain, after 1945 it was the USA).

After the First World War it took two decades and ultimately a Second World War to create such conditions but the post-war boom of 1948 – 73 was such a period. During this time, the productive forces by no means stagnated; rather there was a tremendous upswing. Technological innovations led to overall social progress and the living standards of the majority of the working class were raised.

The post-war boom of 1948-73 was such a period. The massive destruction of capital in the war enabled new technologies to be introduced and new products produced while a mass of available cheap labour was applied in new enterprises. During the long boom, the stagnation of the productive forces was temporarily overcome; there was a tremendous global upswing. Profit rates were higher than average, crises and recessions tended to be shorter and shallower while the upswing of the cycle tended to be stronger. The overall period had an expansionary dynamic. Technological innovations led to overall social progress and the living standards of the majority of the working class rose.

But capitalism re-entered a period of crisis at the end of the 1960s, when the contradictions intensified and the tendency to stagnation reasserted itself, apparently vindicating both Marx’s crisis theory and Lenin’s theory of imperialism. The period 1973-91 saw the overaccumulation of capital constrain development of the productive forces: a strong stagnatory trend emerged in all the advanced economies. Crises and recessions tended to be deep and longer-lasting; cyclical upswings were weak and anaemic. This period lasted until 1992 when the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the restoration of capitalism in China, allied to the effects of Reagan and Thatcher’s neoliberal attacks on working class living standards and liberalisation of finance and trade, gave rise to the new period we know as globalisation.

We will argue that these victories have not returned the world economy to a period such as the post Second World War boom. We will examine later the specific characteristics of globalisation as the latest phase of the imperialist stage of capitalism, how under globalisation the frantic development of new ‘emerging economies’ took place alongside continued powerful trends to stagnation and parasitism in the advanced imperialist powers, and how these contradictions will usher in a new phase of crisis.

 

Imperialism today

 

In the following section we will examine various aspects of the continuing tendency of capitalism to decline: declining growth; a tendency towards monopolisation and stagnation of productive forces; and the growth in speculation and debt. Of particular importance in this is to trace the meta-cyclical impact of the contradictory forces we have identified within imperialism, i.e. their cumulative effects over a period of time covering several industrial cycles. Although each cycle ends with a downturn in which “surplus” capital is destroyed, if that destruction is not sufficiently thoroughgoing then the following cycle will tend to have a generally higher organic composition of capital than its predecessor and, if that is repeated over several cycles, this will create a structural over-accumulation of capital which means that capitalists confront increasing difficulties in effecting sufficient valorisation in production. As we will now show, this is the most important feature of the period of globalisation, which is not capitalism resurgent but a period of imperialism characterised by the same processes that led Lenin and others to argue that it was moribund, or capitalism in transition.

One of the most common techniques of capitalism’s apologists and propagandists is to focus on isolated countries or particular short periods of time in order to “prove” that capitalist globalisation has been a boon for humanity. They will often cite for example the recent growth of China or specific conjunctures in the US economy. However a Marxist analysis of the position of international capitalism cannot just focus on a particular temporal or spatial conjuncture, one country or a short period of time. As Lenin emphasised we have to comprehend all the most fundamental worldwide factors. This means to aim to grasp the totality of global development:

“In order to depict this objective position one must not take examples or isolated data (in view of the extreme complexity of the phenomena of social life it is always possible to select any number of examples or separate data to prove any proposition), but all the data on the basis of economic life in all the belligerent countries and the whole world.”18

The statistical data available have to be treated with a degree of caution. Some of the most influential statistical series are those produced by major institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the central banks of different countries. Precisely because their statements and projections concerning national or international economic developments can themselves become factors in economic activity, such institutions have an interest, at the very least, in not contributing to any “loss of confidence” and, therefore, a tendency to play down any negative trends in their figures.

Quite apart from any such potential bias, however, the categories and concepts used in economic analysis by even the most conscientious economists embody the ideological weaknesses of bourgeois economic science. Profits, for example, can be measured in several ways: pre-tax, post-tax, after depreciation, with capital consumption, retained and so on, all of which obscure the inconvenient fact that they are derived from unpaid labour. In addition, substantial changes can occur in the reporting of profits as a result of technical, legal, regulatory and accounting changes relating to taxation, valuation or the calculation of depreciation.

At a more general level, the most widely used measure of national economies and their growth, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), illustrates the fetishised character of bourgeois economic categories. Whereas Marxism views an economy as a system which produces goods and services whose values are ultimately determined by the amount of necessary labour time required to produce them, bourgeois economics sees it as a system for the exchange of goods and services, regulated by price. As a result “GDP” is calculated either on the basis of the total cost of purchasing all the goods and services or, alternatively, on the basis of the income generated by providing the total volume of goods and services. Moreover, the volume of goods and services, and their costs, are measured by methods of sampling and surveying, allocating different “weightings” to the various sectors of the economy. This means that figures for GDP cannot be directly correlated with Marxist categories. They cannot establish, for example, whether all the value produced has been realised or changes in the value content of commodities as a result of changes in production techniques.

Nonetheless, since approximately the same methodology is used to produce series of statistics over a variety of timescales, variations in GDP and similar indices can be taken to indicate real variations in economic activity which, taken together with other available statistics, provide a basis for charting the relative growth and dynamism of any given economy.

 

Falling Growth of Outputs

 

Now let us turn to our concrete examination of the world economy. We begin with empirical evidence that the rate of growth of production has been falling. First, we take the growth rate of world GDP, which includes annual output from industry, the service sector and agriculture. Tables 1 and 2 present the information first decennially and then as a comparison of twenty year periods. The overall picture is then presented graphically for the period 1970-2006.

Table 1: Growth rate of world gross domestic product (in percent per annum) 19

Table 2: Growth rate of world gross domestic product – comparing 1960-1980 and 1980-2000 (in percentages per annum)20

Graph 1: Growth rate of world gross domestic product 1970-2006# 21

The picture of declining growth rates is even clearer when we view GDP in relation to population. The International Labour Organisation has calculated that GDP per capita in the 1960s rose by 3.7 per cent but that the rate of growth has fallen steadily ever since. In the 1970s it fell to 2.1 per cent , the following decade to 1.3 per cent and in the 1990s, the first decade of globalisation, to 1.1 per cent. In the first three years of this century it averaged 1.0 per cent.22

If we now examine world capitalism by dividing it into its two essential sectors, the imperialist metropoles and the semi-colonial countries, we see that, notwithstanding all the differences, the general long term trend is the same. Using weighted averages, the UN World Economic and Social Survey in 2006 found that per capita GDP growth was at its highest in the late 1960s at 3.5 per cent , declined to some 2.7 per cent in the 1970s, 2.0 per cent in the 1980s and 1.7 per cent in the 1990’s. The corresponding figures for “developing countries” did not follow precisely the same course but the trend is the same; 3.7 per cent in the late 1960s, 1.8 per cent in the 1970s, 2.0 per cent in the 1980s and 1.7 per cent in the 1990s.# 23

The same trend can be found in the heart of surplus value creation: industrial production. World Bank figures show the same steady decline in worldwide industrial production growth rates from 3.0 per cent in the 1980s to 2.4 per cent in the 1990s and an average of 1.4 per cent up to 2004.24

Let us now look more closely at the imperialist states, where the great mass of world capital is based. Table 3a deals with GDP as a whole for the major imperialist powers while 3b focuses on the key index of the rate of growth of industrial production.

Table 3a: Growth rate of GDP in the imperialist states (in percentages per annum)25

Table 3b: Growth rate of industrial production in the imperialist centres (percent per annum)26

We therefore see, overall, a declining growth rate in the imperialist economies, although this is clearly a less dramatic trend in the USA, particularly since 1990, than in the other imperialist states (the reasons for which we will examine further below). The longer term effect of this can be seen in Table 4 that demonstrates a slowing in the rate of growth of capital accumulation. This is the inevitable consequence of the fact that successive downturns have not destroyed sufficient capital to revitalise the system as a whole and is a worked example of how measures taken to stabilise capitalism when it is threatened by the social and political consequences of the cycle only serve, in the longer run, to accentuate its fundamental problems.

Table 4: growth rate of world wide capital accumulation (in percent per annum)27

This trend is also very clearly seen in the figures for savings and investment rates presented in Graph 2.

Graph 2: Global savings and investment rates as a proportion of GDP, 1970-2004# 28

Finally, we will examine capital accumulation in specific countries and the bourgeois statistics that come closest to the Marxist category of fixed constant capital: investment in plant and machinery.

Table 5: Proportion of total gross asset investments and of investments in plant and machinery to GDP, 1970-2004# 29

The same picture can be seen when we look at the falling rate of investment in expansion – net investment. By net investment is meant the total investment minus that part that only serves to replace existing capital. In other words, net investment reveals the extent to which the capital base is being expanded. The particular significance of the growth rate of net investment is that it expresses the actual rate of the expanded reproduction of capital. In this context, Graph 3 shows particularly clearly how Japan was hit by the measures taken to resolve the recession of the early 1990s that opened the period of globalisation.

Graph 3: Net investment as a proportion of net domestic product in the imperialist economies, 1980-2006 30

 

Growing organic composition of capital

 

Despite the slowing growth of capital stocks in the imperialist metropoles, investment per worker is growing and this can be seen from the following graph. Although this is not directly analogous to the organic composition of capital, the trend is unmistakeable.

Graph 4: Ratio of constant capital to labour (in dollars per working hour), 1946-200131

The declining rates of growth in production and in investment are the consequences of this rise in the organic composition of capital that leads, ultimately, to a decline in the rate of profit. We emphasise that we are dealing here with a long term tendency, not a continuous, year by year fall. In part, the capitalists can succeed in offsetting the tendency, as we shall see below but, nevertheless, the tendency is clear.

First let us look at the development of the net profit rate in the core imperialist states since the beginning of the post war boom in the late 1940s.33

Table 6: net profit rates in non-financial sector in USA, Germany & Japan, 1948-2000 34

Now let us consider the development of the profit rate in the USA, the greatest imperialist power, since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the boom period. Since the late 1980s there has been a debate between Marxist analysts about the decline of the US economy in general and the question of profit rates in particular. Although contributors such as Robert Brenner, Fred Moseley, Tom Weisskopf, Doug Henwood, Levy and Dumenil and others have used different approaches and methods, there is a consensus that the 1950s and 1960s saw profit rates at an all time high and that, thereafter, there was a steep decline to the recession of 1973-75. The next high point came in 1993-96 but this did not reach the heights of the 1950s in anybody’s calculations. Tables 7 presents figures from Fred Moseley and Doug Henwood that illustrate the overall trend.

Table 7: Development of the profit rate in the US economy 1947-2004 35

Graph 5: Development of the profit rate in the non-financial sector, USA 1952-2002 36

We see that imperialist capital in the post war period is affected by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. US capital succeeded in offsetting this trend somewhat, albeit at a price and by methods that cannot be generalised and that are not of a lasting nature, of which more below.

 

Countervailing measures

 

At the beginning of the 1980s, the imperialist bourgeoisie began a rollback, a concerted offensive against the social and political gains of the working class and the oppressed peoples that had been made during the years of the “long boom”. Their goal was to increase exploitation and, thereby, profits, and their policy, “neoliberalism”, included the following main points:

• Privatisation of state property.

• Dismantling of education and social services.

• Flexibilisation and precarious working conditions in order to lower the cost of labour power.

• Racism against, and exploitation of, immigrants.

• Limitation of democratic rights.

• Massive export of capital.

• The militarisation of foreign policy.

These were the measures that opened the road to “globalisation”.

One of the most visible successes of imperialism in this period was the defeat of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the post-capitalist property relations in the former Eastern Bloc states as well as in China and Vietnam. There, since the beginning of the 1950s, planned economies, despite the deadening effects of rule by a Stalinist bureaucracy, had not only brought real social progress for their populations but also greatly restricted capital’s scope of operations globally. With the reintroduction of capitalism, the bourgeoisie succeeded in an enormous geographical expansion after it had been excluded from these regions for decades and strengthened itself internationally in relation to the working class and oppressed peoples.

 

The attack on the working class at the economic level

 

Capital attempts by all available means to reduce wage costs, including the social wage, to increase the amount of surplus labour and surplus value. This is a happening today in all capitalist countries. It can be seen very clearly in the two following graphs that show that wages are a diminishing proportion of total income both in the USA and in the European Union and this is the counterpart of an increasing proportion of the value created going to profits.

Graph 6. Development of the unadjusted wage share in the EU and USA, 1991-2005 37

In the USA, one can see the redistribution from wages to profits particularly clearly. Whereas in the period 1947-79 the family income in all layers of the population grew relatively similarly (between 94 per cent and 120 per cent ) in the period 1977-94, and even more in the late 1990s, family income fell for the majority of the population. The US economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the real wage of the average worker in the USA, between 1973 and 1996, fell by some 14.1 per cent. At the same time, the richest 1 per cent of the population was able to record a dramatic increase of 72 per cent. Today, this richest 1 per cent of the population owns 40 per cent of the entire social wealth, a proportion that has only been achieved once before since the First World War, in 1929, the year of the stock exchange crash. At the same time, as the following graph shows, American workers also have to work ever longer hours to earn the average family income.

Graph 7: hours of work necessary to achieve average family income 1947-2001

The capitalist offensive was not of course limited to the USA. Globally there has been a massive redistribution of wealth to the bourgeoisie and an increase in inequality. Graph 8 demonstrates that in recent decades inequality in incomes was reduced in only a tiny minority of countries, in which only 5 per cent of the world population live, while in the great majority inequality increased.

Graph 8: Number of people whose income was reduced between 1980 and 2000, and countries with a sinking GDP per head.

More evidence of growing inequality can be obtained from the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality on a scale between zero and one, the higher the figure the greater the inequality. Phillip O’Hara in his Growth and Development of Global Political Economy estimates Gini coefficients as follows:38#

Clearly this shows that in the imperialist heartlands neo-liberalism has created greater inequality while in developing countries, Brazil and China being two of the world’s most lauded for their development, society is becoming more divided as growing wealth is concentrated into fewer hands. Over the past decade, globalisation has not delivered benefits to the masses of the world; rather they have been subjected to greater exploitation and greater impoverishment.

A further consequence of the overaccumulation of capital and the attempt by employers to raise labour productivity through rationalisation is the worldwide increase in unemployment. Even while global employment rises, so does unemployment and in percentage terms the employment rate has remained constant at around 62 per cent in the current period. This has prompted many economists to talk about “a jobless boom” or the “low impact of growth on job creation” where the boom up to last year actually did not create jobs on a world scale.39# Of the people in work, it is estimated that, even after the boom of 2004-05, 43.5 per cent were on poverty rates of below $2 a day, down from 50 per cent in 2002. Yet the International Labour Organisation says: “There are still 486.7 million workers in the world who do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US$1 a day poverty line and 1.3 billion workers do not earn enough to lift themselves and their family above the US$2 a day line. In other words, despite working, more than four out of ten workers are poor.”40

Graph 9: mass unemployment is rising in most regions of the world from 1990 - 2002

And this figure does not include the hundreds of millions in the informal economy and unemployed. The ILO goes on to argue that for global poverty to be reduced, it would be “essential that periods of high growth are better used to generate more decent and productive jobs.” However, as we have already shown, in capitalism the profits and fruits of growth go to the speculators and the rich. Capitalism therefore cannot raise the standard of living of the mass of people; it is failing to develop the most important of the productive forces: labour.

 

Monopolisation of capital and globalization

 

As we have seen, Lenin saw the growth of monopolies as the most fundamental defining feature of imperialism. This process of monopolisation advanced dramatically in the period of capitalist globalisation. Thus, in the last 25 years, there has been a massive increase in mergers and acquisitions in the banking and industrial sectors.

Even more remarkable, however, has been the increased importance of multinational corporations, that is, globally active monopolies. Today, these firms, together with their affiliates, control two thirds of world trade. The 300 biggest companies own one quarter of all productive assets worldwide and control more than half of the world market in consumer durables, steel, airlines, electronics, oil, computers, media, aerospace and cars.

One of the most important characteristics of the present period is the rapidly advancing monopolisation process at a global level. The immanent process within capitalism of the concentration and centralisation of capital and the formation of monopolies does not take place only at the national level but also, and especially, on the world market. It is against this background that we should understand the increases in world trade and even more in capital export which have been far above the rate of growth of production in recent decades. Taking 1975 figures as an index of 100 for world GDP, the volume of world trade and the flow of capital, figures from the IMF and the German Bundesbank show that, by the turn of the century, GDP had increased to an index of some 230, trade to 400 – and capital flows to more than 3,000. 41

The monopolies are driven to greater internationalisation by falling profit rates in their home markets, and such a high mass of capital accumulation that national markets alone are too small for them. This is because the huge investments in the ever bigger production facilities required by competition themselves require an ever bigger market in which to realise profits. This also drives them to the outsourcing of parts of production to the export markets and the cheapest labour on the planet. Modern technology and cheap transport costs help in this process. The forcing open of markets across the world goes hand in hand with this. The result of this development is that, in the last 25 years, the export of capital has become massively more important both in the imperialist states and in the semi-colonial world. Table 10 shows this increasing importance of foreign capital, foreign direct investment (FDI) both on a global scale and within the “developed world” that is, the imperialist states, the “developing countries” or semi-colonies, and the countries of the former Soviet bloc (CIS).

Table 10: Globalisation and capital export. The increased importance of FDI.42

It should be noted that we are dealing here only with those aspects of capital export related in one form or another to the production and circulation process of capital (that is with foreign direct investment). However, later we will see that the greater part of the worldwide export of capital consists of credit and speculative business.

Capital export takes place both from the imperialist states into the semi-colonies and, on a much bigger scale, between the imperialist states. The increased capital export to the semi-colonies is the result of the declining profit rates in the imperialist centres and the attempt by capital to counter this through investment and trade with less developed capitalist economies. This accounts for the scale of investment in the “emerging economies” such as South-east Asia in the nineties or China and India today.

Capital export between the imperialist states serves above all the advance of monopolisation. This takes the form of the accelerated centralisation of capital through the increased collaboration between, or the taking over, of monopolies by monopolies. Therefore, an important part of FDI between the imperialist states is not new investment or expansion but serves only to finance the takeover of other corporations.

Let us look then at the development of the distribution of capital exports between the imperialists and the semi-colonial states in the last 25 years.

Table 11 Distribution of world foreign direct investment by state and region# 43

From this table we can draw two particular conclusions: first that the greater part of FDI flows between the imperialist metropoles, even if partially as means of payment for the takeover of monopoly capital by competing monopoly capital. Secondly, particularly since 1990, the beginning of the new phase of globalisation, an increasing proportion flows from the imperialist centres into the semi-colonial countries. Thus, capital attempts to counter the tendency of the falling profit rate through increased monopolisation and capital export.

 

Parasitism, speculation and debts

 

Nonetheless, the success of the bourgeoisie in raising the rate of exploitation has not overcome the problem of declining growth rates or rates of profit in the productive core of the economy. On the contrary, the tendency towards speculation and the flight to unproductive financial investments has increased in the period of globalisation. This process is strengthened through the worldwide opening of markets, including financial markets, to imperialist capital. Just on the global currency markets alone, a value of $1900 billion is handled daily, a trebling in comparison to 1989. Between 1980 and the beginning of this century, the value of foreign holdings trebled, in many countries, from an average of 36 per cent of GDP to 100 per cent.

The flight into speculation has in the meantime achieved such astronomical values that the term “casino capitalism” has come into common use. Henwood has calculated that in the USA the relationship of the total financial holdings in relation to GDP between 1952 and 2003 grew from approximately 400 per cent to almost 850 per cent , having reached its highest point in 2000 at over 925 per cent. While the GDP for the USA amounted to $12 trillion, the market for derivatives reached $128 trillion, more than 10 times as much. This shows not only the far-reaching separation of the speculative market from production but also the enormously destabilising potential of casino capitalism. As in 1929, a collapse in the financial markets could lead to a crash in the entire economy.

Correspondingly, the importance of speculative money capital within capital as a whole has grown. Between 1994 and 2000, the speculative financial sector was responsible for three quarters of the entire increase in profits. In general, that part of profits generated not in real production but in the speculative financial sector has grown dramatically and this can be seen in Graph 9.

Graph 9 Development of the share of the three components in total profit, 1948 2001: Manufacturing, financial, foreign-earned

The growing role of speculation is also seen, as mentioned above, in the international movements of capital. Here too, money capital appears to have emancipated itself more and more from the immediate production process. The following graph, 10, shows that today only a seventh of all international capital flows are direct investment. The other six sevenths are related to banking or speculation.

Indebtedness has also grown massively in recent decades. Capital tries to maintain the accumulation process by increased advances of money capital and the reduction of circulation costs through credit. In this, the objective role of credit is two-sided. On one hand, it accelerates the circulation of capital but on the other, in times of crisis, it accelerates bankruptcy. Marx made precisely this point when he wrote, “the credit system hence accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the creation of the world market, which it is the historical task of the capitalist mode of production to bring to a certain level of development, as the material foundations for the new form of production. At the same time, credit accelerates the violent outbreak of this contradiction, crises, and with these the elements of the dissolution of the old mode of production.”44

Graph 10: composition of international capital flows 1980-200545

Increasing indebtedness is found at every level, from private households, through firms of all sizes to the state itself, as can be seen from the following tables.

Table 12: Mortgage debts of households as a percentage of disposable income 1993-2003

The following graph shows the long-term increasing indebtedness of private households in the USA. However, it is not only private households that are increasingly indebted but also firms, as can be seen from Graph 12.

Graph 11 Indebtedness of private households in the USA and Western Europe.

Graph 12: Corporate debt in relation to profits in the USA

In summary, we can say that in the years leading up to the credit crunch of 2007, indebtedness achieved a historically high level and capitalism was increasingly living from credit. The rising credit intensity was itself ultimately a product of capital’s inability to overcome the long term decline in productive labour.

 

Increased plundering of the semi-colonial world

 

The capitalists of the imperialist countries have also greatly increased their subordination of the so-called Third World, the formally independent but economically and politically dependent states that Marxists call semi-colonies.

Globalisation has witnessed a massive penetration of the semi-colonial countries by the monopolies and a process of imperialist plundering. This often took place under the guise of Structural Adjustment Programmes through which the World Bank and International Monetary Fund pressured developing countries into neo-liberal reforms such as cutting welfare services, privatising health and education and opening up their markets to powerful multinational corporations. Through massive capital export in the form of credits, direct investment, speculative investment and so on, the bourgeoisie created the preconditions for massive gains in their corporate profits, interest rates and the returns on bonds.

The outcome is an enormous net transfer of capital from the semi-colonial countries to the bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries and the scale of this over a 10 year timespan is shown in Table 13.

Table 13: Net transfer of financial resources in development countries and former Stalinist states.46

Added together, just for the period 1995 to 2006, this shows a net transfer of $2,895.7 billion from the semi-colonial countries to the imperialist centres. In order to give a picture of the scale of this financial leeching by the imperialist finance capitalists, let us look at the following calculation: in 2005, the combined GDP of these regions was $9,454.5 billion. The drain of $578.9 billion in that year therefore accounted for some 6.5 per cent of the GDP of the semi-colonial world. It should be noted that this figure does not represent all of the profit of imperialist capital, a good part of which was either consumed in the country itself or went into capital accumulation to secure more profits, the figure deals exclusively with the sum that was directly plundered from the semi-colonial world.

The following figures show how much the developing economies gave to the rich in 2005-6 in debt, more than a quarter of their GDP, while the high income countries registered no external debt.47

Table 14

These figures are appalling enough, but they hide the true human misery. The various structural adjustment programmes, world trade rounds and other agreements have destroyed the cohesion of many societies, leading to civil wars, famine, rebellions, and revolutions. The 2000s have witnessed the meltdown of advanced capitalist countries such as Argentina, which erupted in 2002 when its economy was destroyed by IMF diktat. Since then we have seen rebellions against neo-liberalism in Paraguay, Bolivia, Nigeria, Thailand, Venezuela and many more countries. The recent crisis in Kenya can be attributed in part to the worsening economic situation for many people in the country during a period of neo-liberal boom. Imperialism’s tendency towards the plundering of the semi-colonies leads to increasing instability and collapse in the greater part of the semi-colonial world, Africa being in the front ranks of this devastating development.

The result of this is the necessity for imperialist powers, above all the USA, to intervene more directly into the semi-colonial world. If the local ruling classes are no longer in a position to maintain the exploitative relations to the advantage of imperialist interests, then imperialism has to take matters into its own hands. The result is an increased reliance of the semi-colonial states on the rich metropoles, whether that is via the direct linkage of the currency (“dollarisation” in Latin America, the Currency Board) or through the worldwide increase in the stationing of imperialist troops in semi-colonial countries (the Balkans, Central Asia, the Philippines, Colombia, Chad), through proxy wars (Somalia) or through the establishment of open protectorates, for example in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

These measures may boost profits, but at the same time they exacerbate social crisis anmd class struggle. The continuous attacks on wages and social services, now allied to resurgent global inflation, reduce the purchasing power of the working class and lower middle class and provoke class struggle from below. The increasing squeeze on the semi-colonial world undoubtedly produces great material advantages for imperialist capital, but it just as certainly provokes resistance.

 

The erosion of US hegemony

 

We now turn to considering perspectives for the current world order, with a look at how economic and political factors interact and lead to conflict between the major imperialist states.

Engels described the relationship between the economic base and political superstructure as follows: “We regard economic conditions as the factor which ultimately determines historical development… Here, however, two points must not be overlooked: a) Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself.” 48#

Thus capital can only develop if the exchange of commodities and the valorisation process of capital is socially governed and organised – legal relations and state power derive from this necessity. Further, capital can only expand if the value-creating commodity labour power is constantly produced and reproduced and new labour power created. This takes place outside of the formal workplace: through the bearing and rearing of children in the home, through the unpaid labour of women.

Therefore capitalism presupposes not only the production and reproduction of commodities and capital, but also – and of necessity connected with it – the production and reproduction of the general social conditions that make this possible in the first place: “The process of reproduction is not only a process of the reproduction of the material elements of production, but also a process of the reproduction of the production relation itself.” 49

The maintenance of a contradictory equilibrium of a society torn apart by antagonistic classes would be unthinkable without a finely-woven ideological web that binds the oppressed classes and layers to the ruling bourgeoisie and convinces them to put up with an acceptable level of exploitation and oppression.

Both the dynamic and the fragility of the capitalist production and reproduction process have sharpened in the imperialist epoch in general and in the present period of globalisation in particular. That means that the antagonism between the tendencies of the imperialist economy, imperialist policy and imperialist ideology become stronger, sharper and more explosive. The same is true for the antagonism between the different sectors of the capitalist world market.

The contradiction between the productive forces and the nation state is one of the most fundamental contradictions of capitalism – and in the epoch of monopoly capitalism (imperialism) that is true to a still greater degree.

Trotsky wrote:

“The national state created by capitalism in the struggle with the sectionalism of the Middle Ages became the classical arena of capitalism. But no sooner did it take shape than it became a brake upon economic and cultural development. The contradiction between the productive forces and the framework of the national state, in conjunction with the principal contradiction – between the productive forces and the private ownership of the means of production – make the crisis of capitalism that of the world social system.”# 50

From this contradiction flows the life-or-death necessity for imperialism of a hegemon, a dominant imperial great power with an associated group of monopolists, who constrain the centrifugal forces of declining world capitalism and try to hold the international flow of production, reproduction and circulation in some semblance of order.

In the period between the two world wars (1914-1945) such a hegemon was absent and this was one reason, along with the historically high level of organisation of the revolutionary workers, for the severe convulsions of capitalism at that time.

Since the Second World War, US imperialism has played the role of the world policeman of the capitalist order. However, beneath the apparent dominance of the USA there are important processes at work that are weakening it globally and in relation to other imperialist powers. Although, during the 1990s, the USA succeeded to a greater degree than its imperialist rivals in stemming the pace of its economic decline and in resisting, to a certain degree, the falling rate of profit, the hegemonic role of US capital has still come under fire in many areas.

First let’s look at some core economic data about the USA. As the following table shows, the USA is, now as ever, far and away the strongest economic power in the world.

Table 15: A comparison between states: Gross Domestic Product, and GDP per head51

So while US capitalism was affected by the general tendency to stagnation of productive forces, the statistics show that US capital in the 1990s succeeded to a greater degree than its rivals in stemming the pace of its economic decline and in turning around, to a certain degree, the falling rate of profit. For this reason, over the last 10-15 years, US capitalism succeeded in checking the efforts of its main competitors, the EU and Japan, to catch up.

Table 16: The development of the economic strength of the EU and Japan in relation to the USA, 1980-2005 52

US capital has been more successful than its European competitors in forcing its working class to work more hours per year and more years in their lives for lower wages, and in forcing a greater part of its population into the labour-process. “In Marxist terminology we can see that the advantage US capital has over EU capital is that in the period of globalisation it has had more success in weakening the working class and correspondingly raising the rate of exploitation.” 53

Nevertheless the hegemonic role of US capital has come under fire in many areas. We have already drawn attention to a clear strengthening of the EU at the expense of the USA with regard to flows of FDI. (See above, Table 16)

A similar picture can be seen when we examine world trade or, more correctly expressed, worldwide exports. While the USA remains an important importer of commodities, as Table 17 shows, its share of world exports is, at 8.9 per cent , lower than ever before since the Second World War, and this is despite the favourable exchange rate of the dollar for export purposes.

At the same time, the USA, as dominant world power, is falling into ever greater dependence on the world economy and world politics. In order to secure supplies of cheap raw materials and semi-manufactured goods for its own industries, profitable investments for its own capital abroad, and to guarantee interest payments, the USA and the other imperialist powers have to strengthen their grip on the semi-colonial world. For the same reasons they have to force the semi-colonies to open their banks and industries to imperialist capital or to open their markets still further.

The following figures demonstrate the growing dependence of the USA on the world economy and, therefore, also on world politics. The USA is increasingly dependent on a regular inflow of foreign money capital. This is a result of a balance of payments deficit that has grown over many years. By the end of 2006 this deficit had reached a record high of $800 billion, some 6.8 per cent of GDP and roughly equivalent to the total value of net investment in the USA that year. In other words, every day the USA had to import more than $2 billion in foreign capital, just to cover its consumption and its investments. The greater part of this money comes from the oil-exporting countries, that is, the Middle East, and from East Asia, principally Japan, China and South East Asia.54 This, of course, throws a very clear light on the motives behind US foreign policy; US imperialism must throw everything into protecting its dominance of the Middle East and East Asia in order to keep the local regimes financing its debts.

Table 17: Share of world trade of states and regions, 1948-2003

And while US holdings of foreign capital are growing, foreign holdings of US capital are growing still faster. This became particularly evident in the course of the credit crunch of 2007 when “sovereign wealth funds” based in Saudi, Dubai, China and other key exporters, mobilised huge volumes of capital to bail out ailing US financial corporations.

Graph 13: US foreign investment, and foreign investment in the USA in relation to US net domestic product, 1953-2003 ( per cent )55

The dramatic turnaround in the global position of US imperialism becomes even clearer when we consider the development of its role as creditor and debtor in relation to the rest of the world. Until 1985, the USA was a creditor, but since then the situation has changed radically; today, the USA is the world’s greatest debtor. If we balance the USA’s liabilities and assets against one another, we obtain a net debt of 25 per cent of GDP!56 The greater dependency of the USA on the world market is also shown by the fact that the USA draws a growing proportion of its total profits from its foreign investments. Whereas US capital made just 10 per cent of its profits abroad in 1978, by 2001 this share had risen to 25.7 per cent.57

This short overview makes it clear that US capital is increasingly dependent on its worldwide investments, and on the inflow of capital to finance its investments in its own country. The relative economic success of the USA in the 15 years prior to the credit crunch was based not only on an increased exploitation of the working class at home, but also at least as much on its growing plunder of the world. It is quite obvious that these methods can in no way serve as a model for other capitalist states – if every state conducted such a “successful” plunder, there would be precious little loot left to share. Besides, these are methods that cannot be continued and expanded indefinitely. At a certain point the economic losses will become too great for the other capitalist powers and they will seek to rein in their financing of the USA.

Already a growing pressure is noticeable in many countries not to trade their goods in the US dollar any more, but to switch over to the euro. No wonder, when we observe that in the last four years the value of the euro against the US dollar has risen by more than a half, from 0.87 to 1.34. Should other countries liquidate their dollar denominated currency reserves, and thus no longer export so much capital to the USA, the US economy would suffer a severe blow.

This growing dependence on the world market and world politics also means that US capitalism is ever more vulnerable to worldwide disturbances, instability and of course resistance. Precisely for this reason, US imperialism has to adopt an ever more aggressive, militarist foreign policy, to hold down its competitors and opponents. In the words of the former US Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski the leitmotif for US foreign policy is:

“To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”#58

Which imperialist power could replace the USA as world hegemon. The only power with sufficient economic strength even to come into question in this respect is the European Union. All other imperialist states are far too weak to put their stamp on the world.

Nevertheless, it is unrealistic to expect that the EU could become such a leading power in the foreseeable future. First we have to note that, unlike the USA, the EU is not a unified state but a grouping of states in which there is permanent rivalry between states like Germany, France and Great Britain. In the EU itself, there is no clear leading power. There are disagreements between the national rulers over the attempt to form the EU into a more unified and combative block through the adoption of a constitution and the formation of a European army.

If the EU is far from being able to dominate the world market economically, it is even less prepared on the political and military level. Naturally the Franco-German ruling classes want to try to catch up with America but this process will take time and, far more important, the more the EU catches up with the USA, the sharper will competition between them become at the economic, political and, at a certain point therefore, military level.

Conclusion

The last hundred years has witnessed a long run tendency to stagnation driven by rising organic composition of capital and growing monopolisation. We see mounting contradictions within and between the imperialist powers, the undermining of US hegemony and the deepening of global economic and political instability.

Plainly these outcomes fully accord with Lenin’s composite model of imperialism. The monopolist bourgeoisie dominates the units and branches of production with the most advanced technology, the highest organic composition of capital and thus the strongest tendency to decline of profit rate; this overaccumulation drives export of capital, parasitism, and speculation in shares, real estate and financial “derivatives”. Crises of devaluation aggravate inter-imperialist rivalries and the competitive struggle of the imperialist bourgeoisie for the division and re-division of the world, as nation-states jostle to avoid bearing the brunt of devaluation and to pass it on to their rivals and their clients.

If anything, the current period of globalisation has been a further vindication of this model. The most powerful imperialist state was able to take advantage of both its own victories over the working class and the final collapse of the Soviet bloc to reorder the world in its own interests. It was able to mobilise all the “countervailing measures” to try to maintain profit rates and to counter imperialism’s characteristic tendency to stagnation but, as the credit crunch of 2007 and its aftermath are currently demonstrating, it could do no more than temporarily restore its dynamism. Today, the world order looks more like Lenin’s model than it has done for perhaps 50 years. The prospect, then, is certainly one of increased instability, and of a continuation of the “epoch of wars and revolutions” but Lenin’s conclusion should also not be forgotten: “Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat“.59

 

Box: What are productive forces?

 

How can there be a tendency to stagnation of humanity’s productive forces at the same time as economic growth? This question – which bourgeois economists regard as a crushing refutation of Marxism - is based on a simple but important misunderstanding. Bourgeois economic theory equates the very concept of productive forces with production of commodities or accumulation of fixed capital. So when GDP rises by say 2 per cent, or capital stock by 1.5 per cent, these theorists are unable to discern any tendency to stagnation of the productive forces.

In the Marxist theory, however, productive forces include labour and materials, both the material means and results of production. Productive forces are both means of production (such as machines), etc, goods and raw materials, and workers who operate the means of production and enter the social division of labour.

It is self-evident that the means of production and the worker are mutually dependent and, from the capitalist viewpoint, the purpose of applying the worker to the means of production lies in producing commodities which contain surplus value. Productive forces are not, then, simply a collection of material objects, but include also and above all people, their living conditions and nature, which is the object of labour.

Marx argues that social change comes about when the forces of production outstrip the relations of production (how society is organised for the production of surplus). Both he and Engels looked at how pre-capitalist modes of production had grown up and ultimately and been overthrown by capitalism, and because of this they understood that the forces of production should not be equated solely with the specific forms they take under capitalism, such as fixed or variable capital. Labour and nature are key components of the forces of production, not just buildings, technology and outputs as expressed in their growth in GDP figures.

Capital is a social relation, that is a relationship between groups of people (classes). Marx wrote:

“Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour, and raw materials, not only as material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All products of which it consists are commodities. Capital, consequently, is not only a sum of material products, it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes.”

In other words: capital and commodities are a relation of exchange values, which manifests itself in the form of use values. It is a dialectical relation between form and content, appearance and essence. Friedrich Engels summarised these ideas as follows:

“Economics is not concerned with things but with relations between persons, and in the final analysis between classes; these relations however are always bound to things and appear as things.”

In another passage, Engels points out the contradictory unity of the concept productive forces, comprehensively defined, as well as its broad and full meaning:

“On the one hand, perfecting of machinery... complemented by a constantly growing displacement of labourers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production…for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production here of means of production and products — excess there, of labourers, without employment and without means of existence. But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents. The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange. [The bourgeoisie is shown to be incapable of further developing its own social productive forces.]”

Marx also stressed the central position of the proletariat in the productive forces:

“Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organisation of the revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society.”

Bukharin (and Lenin with him) also emphasised the importance of human labour power for an understanding of the productive forces in their totality:

“The total labour power of society, in a pure capitalist society the proletariat, is on the one hand one of the two components of the concept productive forces (since the productive forces are nothing other than the sum total of the available means of production and the labour power); at the same time labour power is (…) the most important productive force.”

Trotsky too called the labour movement “the most important productive force in modern society”.

In the revolutionary Marxist tradition, therefore, capitalism’s development is not assessed exclusively in terms of the ups and downs of material output. For sure, this is a meaningful indicator, because the law of value and its evolution expresses itself in the long-term in the production dynamic of exchange values manifested as use values.But the development of the productive forces also expresses itself in the development of the commodity labour power and its conditions of reproduction — in other words, in the social living conditions of the working class. This is not just productivity of variable capital as the vulgar economists would have us believe but concerns the actual wellbeing of human beings: their existence and reproduction. This is an extremely important factor, not only for the workers concerned, but also for the whole future development of society.

 

The transformation of productive forces into destructive forces

 

Finally on the issue of productive forces, we come to yet another characteristic of capitalism: their growing transformation into destructive forces.

Marx explained how “These productive forces received under the system of private property a one-sided development only, and became for the majority destructive forces; moreover, a great multitude of such forces could find no application at all within this system.”

“We have shown that at the present time individuals must abolish private property, because the productive forces and forms of intercourse have developed so far that, under the domination of private property, they have become destructive forces, and because the contradiction between the classes has reached its extreme limit.”

The productive forces have already developed so far that capitalist property relations have not only become a fetter on the complete, free development of the productive forces, but this very development brings in its wake ever more destructive forces. Of course, destructive forces existed before, but only in the epoch of imperialism have they taken on a world-encompassing character, where they have the potential to cast back the whole of humanity countless generations in its level of development, or even destroy it completely.

The dramatic danger to mankind of environmental destruction driven by the goal of profit (global warming, deforestation, exhaustion of natural resources), the danger of nuclear wars with millions dead, show the extent to which under capitalism the development of productive forces is accompanied by the development of destructive forces. This includes the destructive impact of exploitation and the capitalist labour process on the worker. As Marx warned:

“Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.”

 

 

Endnotes

 

1 V. I. Lenin: Imperialism and the split in socialism (1916) (emphasis in original). He gives a similar summary of the definition of imperialism in the plan of an article (see V. I. Lenin: Plan of the article “Imperialism and our attitude towards it.” In CW, volume 39 (Notebooks on imperialism)

2 V. I: Lenin: Introduction (1915) to N. Bukharin: Imperialism and world economy

3 Marx, K Capital, Vol 3 p.568

4 Marx, ibid

5 V I Lenin, Imperialism , the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Moscow 1968, p 93

6 ibid

7 ibid, p.116

8 ibid.

9 Ibid. p.83

10 V. I. Lenin: Imperialism and the split in socialism (1916) (emphasis in original).

11 V. I. Lenin: Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International

12 Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft (1915), Berlin 1929, p. 190f. (Translated for this article)

13 Evgenii Preobrazhensky: Marx und Lenin (1924); in: Eugen Preobrazenskij: Die sozialistische Alternative. Marx, Lenin und die Anarchisten über die Abschaffung des Kapitalismus, Berlin 1974, p 134ff. [Translated for this article.]

14 This false understanding was a feature of social democracy and later of Stalinism, on the basis of which the latter developed the theory of socialism in one country in 1924.

15 Leon Trotsky: Introduction to the German edition (1930) of The Permanent Revolution, London 1962, p.22

16 Friedrich Engels: Dialektik der Natur; in: MEW 20, S. 511f, (Emphasis in original, translated for this article).

17 Nikolai Bukharin: Economics of the transformation period, (New York) 1971 p.69. (Emphasis in original, translated for this article)

18 V I Lenin: Preface to French and German editions. Ibid. P.8. Emphasis in original.

19 For 1971-2000 see World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2002, p.234; for 2000-2005 see United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2007, p.2. The figures between 1971-2000 are based on the World Bank calculations of GDP at constant 1995 prices and exchange rates. The figures for 2000-2005 are based on the UN calculations of GDP at constant 2000 prices and exchange rates. The 2.7 per cent is the arithmetic mean for the figures for the years 2001-2005: 1.6 per cent , 1.9 per cent , 2.7 per cent , 4.0 per cent and 3.5 per cent

20 World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2007, S. 3; http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2...

21 PricewaterhouseCoopers: UK Economic Outlook March 2007, p. 33

22 ILO: A Fair Globalisation : Creating Opportunities For All (2004) p.36

23 United Nations: World Economic and Social Survey 2006. Diverging Growth and Development, p. 9

24 World Bank Indicators, 2005, http://www.worldbank.org/data/wdi2005/wditext/Section4.htm and World Bank Indicators, 2006, http://www.devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm

25 For the years 1970-2000: OECD – Understanding Economic Growth (2004), http://213.253.134.29/oecd/pdfs/browseit/1104011E.PDF, p.18f. The statistics are for the 24 member states of the OECD. They therefore include not only imperialist countries but also states such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Mexico and New Zealand which are semi-colonies. In recent years these countries had a growth rate which was higher than the average for the imperialist economies. Therefore, to the extent that they affect this OECD average it is to raise it. Nonetheless these OECD figures are useful approximations because the semi-colonial states within the OECD do not weigh heavily in comparison to the imperialist countries. The figures for 2000-2005, with the exception of those for the EU, are drawn from World Bank: World Development Report 2007, page 295. For the years 1960-1969 we have quoted the OECD statistics from: Robert Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble. The US in the World Economy, London 2002, p. 47. Figures for the imperialist states in this source are based on the G7. The figures for the EU-15 for the years 1960-1969 are based only on Germany. The figures for the EU-15 for the years 1999-2005 are those for the 11 EU states that belong to the Eurozone and are drawn from: European Commission: the EU Economy 2006 Review, p.61, http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2006/e...

26 European Commission: Statistical Annex of European Economy Autumn 2006, p.52. Because there are no figures for the EU-15 for the years 1961-70 and 1971-80 in these EU statistics, for these years we have used the arithmetic mean of the figures for Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy. Similarly, because the figures for the USA and Japan in the EU statistics only go up to 2003, we have used figures from the following sources: for the USA 2001-2005, Economic Report of the President 2007, p. 290. For Japan, World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.1 where the data for the years 2000-2004 are given. http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm

27 World Bank: World Development Indicators 2004, p. 220, World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.9 http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm

28 United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2006, p. 15

29 United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2006, p. 158

30 Barclays Capital (2006) “Global Outlook: Implications for Financial Markets”, Economic and Market Strategy, December 2006, p. 17

31 Gérard Duménil/Dominique Lévy: Capital Resurgent. Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (2004), presented in: Chris Harman: Snapshots of capitalism today and tomorrow, International Socialism Journal (ISJ) 113, http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=292&issue=113

32 Gérard Duménil/Dominique Lévy: Capital Resurgent. Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (2004), abgebildet in: Chris Harman: Snapshots of capitalism today and tomorrow, International Socialism Journal (ISJ) 113, http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=292&issue=113

33 The net profit rate, unlike the gross profit rate, is calculated on the basis of net capital value, that is, after the deduction for annual depreciation of fixed capital.

34 Robert Brenner : “After Boom, Bubble, and Bust: Where is the US Economy Going?” in Worlds of Capitalism: Institutions, Economic Performance, and Governance in the Era of Globalization (2005), p.204. The data for Japan begin in 1952, those for Germany, 1950. The figures for the USA and Japan are based on the non-financial corporate sector, those for Germany on the non-farming corporate sector.

35 Fred Moseley: Marxian Crisis Theory and the Post War U. S. Economy, in: A.Saad-Filho (ed.), Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Introduction, (2003) p. 212 and Fred Moseley: Is The U.S. Economy Headed For A Hard Landing? http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/fmoseley/HARDLANDING.doc. Moseley’s calculations of profit rates relate to the entire economy and include the profits of both the non-financial and the financial sectors.

36 Doug Henwood: After the New Economy, New York 2003, S. 204; see also http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/NewEcon.html

37 Labour market developments in the euro area, in: Quarterly Report on the Euro Area 3/2006, p. 28. By “unadjusted wage share” is meant the growth in the share of wages in national income without reference to changes in the total number of wage earners.

38 Phillip Anthony O’Hara, Growth and Development of Global Political Economy, Routledge 2006, p57

39 See International Labour Organisation, Global Employment Trends, January 2008

40 ibid

41 See: http://www.miprox.de/Wirtschaft_allgemain/Derivate.html

42 Data compiled from: UNCTAD: World Investment Report 1995, p. 411ff. and 421ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2000, p. 306ff. and 319ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2006, p. 307ff. The figures for South East Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union (C. I. S.) are only partially complete because in the earlier UNCTAD statistics these countries were grouped together with those East European states which entered the EU in 2004 and this distorts the statistics. With regard to FDI, “permanent” should be understood as the totality, often accumulated over a long period of time, of invested capital in, or from, a country. By contrast, “flow” refers to FDI newly invested in a given year. “Domestic FDI” refers to the share of imported FDI in total fixed investment or GDP of the country concerned. “Overseas FDI” refers to the exported FDI as a proportion of gross fixed investment or GDP of the country from which the FDI is exported.

The UNCTAD categories “developed countries” and “developing countries” are clearly very problematic and express imperialist arrogance at the conceptual level. In general, the category “developed country” refers to the imperialist states and “developing country” means semi-colonial. However, in this respect there is a not unimportant limitation: UNCTAD includes the semi-colonial countries of Eastern Europe which joined the EU in 2004 and in which FDI plays an important role in capital accumulation, with the “developed countries” in its latest “World Investment Report”. The UNCTAD tables are also weakened by the fact that they include the states of South East Europe and the former Soviet Union as a separate category from the other countries. In reality, however, all these countries, with the exception of Russia, are semi-colonies. By contrast, Russia is an imperialist state.

43 UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2006, p. 7

44 K.Marx, Capital, Volume 3, Harmondsworth 1981, p.572

45 IMF: Global Financial Stability Report (April 2007), p.65

46 United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2007, p. 58

47 World Bank statistical tables

48 Friedrich Engels: Letter to Walther Borgius (25.1.1894); in: MEW 39, S. 205 (Emphasis in Original)

49 Nicolai Bukharin: Economics of the Transformation Period, New York 1971, p. (S. 69) Original emphasis.

50 Leon Trotsky: War and the Fourth International (1934); in: Writings 1933-4 New York 1972. p. 304

51 Global Britain Briefing Note, No 45 (6th November 2006): European Union 2005 Prosperity Rankings; World Bank: World Development Report 2007, pp. 289 and. 295. The figures for China do not include Hong Kong.

52 M. O’Mahoney/B. van Ark (Hrsg.): EU Productivity and Competitiveness: An Industry Perspective (2003), p. 20, Bart Van Ark: Europe’s Productivity Gap: Catching Up or Getting Stuck? (2006), p. 10 and World Bank: World Development Report 2007, p. 295.

53 Michael Pröbsting: „Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang“. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 33

54 Gilles Moëc/Laure Frey: Global Imbalances, Saving Glut and Investment Strike; Banque De France: Occasional Papers No. 1, February 2006, p. 5

55 Siehe: Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : The Economics of U.S. Imperialism at the Turn of the 21st Century (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm

56 Siehe: Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : The Economics of U.S. Imperialism at the Turn of the 21st Century (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm

57 On this, see Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : Neoliberal Dynamics: A New Phase? (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm.

58 Zbigniew Brzezinski: The Grand Chessboard? American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York, 1997, p.40

59 V. I. Lenin: ibid. p.12

 

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Imperialismus, Globalisierung und der Niedergang des Kapitalismus (2008)

 

Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionärer Marxismus 39, August 2009, www.thecommunists.net

 


(Die Graphiken in diesem Dokument können in der unten angehängten pdf Version eingesehen werden.)

 

 

Das Modell der kapitalistischen Zyklen von Marx ist nach wie vor ausreichend, um die heutige Krise zu erklären. Worin liegt nun die Bedeutung der Leninschen Analyse des Imperialismus im Zeitalter der Globalisierung? Im Folgenden betrachten wir die heutige Gültigkeit der Imperialismus-Theorie und zeigen, dass diese ebenfalls unabdingbar ist zum Verständnis der vergangenen Entwicklung des Kapitalismus und seine Zukunft.

Rund 50 Jahre nach dem Erscheinen der Erstausgabe des ersten Bandes des “Kapitals” war Lenin in der Lage, den Kapitalismus auf der Grundlage des vielfach wiederholten Ablaufs des kapitalistischen Zyklus zu studieren. Seine wichtigste Schlussfolgerung war, dass die angehäuften Auswirkungen dieser Wiederholungen zu einem qualitativen Wandel des Kapitalismus geführt haben.

Ursprünglich war der Kapitalismus eine Produktionsweise, in der die Konkurrenz zwischen den Kapitalisten trotz der damit verbundenen Barbarei und Ausbeutung eine vorantreibende Kraft war, die im Großen und Ganzen ein Wachstum der Produktivkräfte wie auch des Gesamtprodukts der Gesellschaft bewirkte. Doch Lenin stellte fest, dass der Kapitalismus zu einem System geworden war, in dem Monopole vorherrschen und diese eine Tendenz der Einschränkung weiteren Wachstums bewirkten. Wie wir sehen werden, meinte Lenin damit nicht, dass es überhaupt keine Weiterentwicklung gäbe, sondern dass der Kapitalismus im Vergleich zum Zeitalter der „freien Konkurrenz“ in das Stadium seines Niedergangs eingetreten sei.

Es gibt keinen Grund zu bezweifeln, dass Lenin angesichts der Umstände, unter denen er während des Ersten Weltkrieges und seiner revolutionären Folgen schrieb, ein baldiges Ende dieses „Zeitalters des Niedergangs“ durch die internationale proletarische Revolution erwartete bzw. diesen für möglich hielt.

Heute, fast hundert Jahre später, ist die Frage, ob sich aufgrund der weiteren Entwicklung des Kapitalismus seine Analyse und seine Schlussfolgerungen nicht als falsch herausgestellt haben, ganz legitim. Unsere Schlussfolgerung lautet, dass zwar die Niederlagen der revolutionären Bewegung in den 1920er Jahren dem Imperialismus das Überleben und die Kapitalvernichtung im Zweiten Weltkrieg ihm einen weiteren Lebensabschnitt ermöglichten. Nichtsdestotrotz beweisen die jüngeren Entwicklungen, dass er nicht in der Lage war, seine historischen Schranken zu überwinden.

Weiters beinhaltet der „Niedergang“ einer ganzen Produktionsweise die fortgesetzte Entwicklung und Reifung jener Kräfte, welche die Grundlage der darauf folgenden Produktionsweise darstellen. Daher hat die längere Lebensspanne des Imperialismus nicht nur die fortgesetzte Entwicklung von Ungleichheit, Armut und Umweltzerstörung bewirkt, sondern auch die Herausbildung einer höher integrierten Weltwirtschaft und eines noch größeren Gegensatzes zwischen einem im Höchstmaß vergesellschafteten System der Produktion und einer noch nie da gewesenen Konzentration des Privateigentums an diesen Produktionsmitteln.

 

Lenins Charakterisierung des Imperialismus

 

Auch wenn das offensichtlichste Merkmal des Imperialismus die Unterordnung der Mehrheit aller Länder unter eine Handvoll mächtiger Staaten ist, so war dies für Lenin nicht das wichtigste Merkmal. Er argumentierte vielmehr, dass dies die Entwicklung der kapitalistischen Monopole bis zu dem Punkt, da diese die Produktion beherrschen, sei. „Die Ablösung der freien Konkurrenz durch das Monopol ist der ökonomische Grundzug, das Wesen des Imperialismus.“ (1)

Die Monopole selbst erwuchsen aus dem „Freihandel“ in der vorangegangenen Epoche des Kapitalismus. „Ganz besonders ist dabei zu beachten, daß dieser Wechsel durch nichts anderes herbeigeführt ist, als durch unmittelbare Entwicklung, Erweiterung, Fortsetzung der am tiefsten verwurzelten Tendenzen des Kapitalismus und der Warenproduktion überhaupt.“ (2)

Marx schrieb, auf die Herausbildung von Aktiengesellschaften verweisend: „Es ist dies die Aufhebung der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise innerhalb der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise selbst und daher ein sich selbst aufhebender Widerspruch, der prima facie als bloßer Übergangspunkt zu einer neuen Produktionsform sich darstellt. Als solcher Widerspruch stellt er sich dann auch in der Erscheinung dar. Er stellt in gewissen Sphären das Monopol her und fordert daher die Staatseinmischung heraus. Er reproduziert eine neue Finanzaristokratie, eine neue Sorte Parasiten in Gestalt von Projektenmachem, Gründem und bloß nominellen Direktoren; ein ganzes System des Schwindels und Betrugs mit Bezug auf Gründungen, Aktienausgabe und Aktienhandel. Es ist Privatproduktion ohne die Kontrolle des Privateigentums.“ (3)

Ebenso beschrieb Marx, wie Aktiengesellschaften und Kredit als Übergangsphase vom Kapitalismus zu einem System basierend auf gesellschaftlichem Eigentum agieren: „Es ist andrerseits Durchgangspunkt zur Verwandlung aller mit dem Kapitaleigentum bisher noch verknüpften Funktionen im ReproduktionsProzess in bloße Funktionen der assoziierten Produzenten, in gesellschaftliche Funktionen.“ (4)

Die Monopole stellten die fortgeschrittenste Form der kapitalistischen Organisation dar und konnten nur in den hoch entwickelten kapitalistischen Ökonomien entstehen, wo die Stärke der Monopole am heimischen Markt ihnen auch erlaubte, die Kontrolle über die wichtigsten Rohstoffe zu übernehmen. Ebenso war die Entwicklung der Monopole eine Vorbedingung für die Fusion des Banken- und Industriekapitals und der daraus folgenden Herausbildung des Finanzkapitals, welches die materielle Basis der Bankenoligarchie darstellte, welche die entwickelten kapitalistischen Ökonomien beherrscht. Diese Aspekte der „Monopolisierung“ ermöglichten den Übergang der alten „Kolonialpolitik“, der „'freibeuterischen' Besetzung des Landes“, wie Lenin es nannte, hin zur monopolistischen Einverleibung der Länder und den daraus resultierenden Kämpfen um die Aufteilung der Welt.

Wenn, wie Lenin sagte, das Monopol die „ökonomische Essenz“ des Imperialismus darstellt, dann ist ein Verständnis seiner Analyse des Monopols genauso unabdingbar wie das Verständnis seiner Analyse der Epoche.

Während er die enorme Macht der Monopole erkannte, betonte er auch, dass diese „… unvermeidlich die Tendenz zur Stagnation und Fäulnis (erzeugen). In dem Maße, wie Monopolpreise, sei es auch nur vorübergehend, eingeführt werden, verschwindet bis zu einem gewissen Grade der Antrieb zum technischen und folglich auch zu jedem anderen Fortschritt, zur Vorwärtsbewegung; und insofern entsteht die ökonomische Möglichkeit, den technischen Fortschritt künstlich aufzuhalten.“ (5)

So wie daher der Freihandel seine eigene Aufhebung hervorbringt, so stellt das Monopol nicht nur das fortgeschrittenste Element innerhalb des Kapitalismus dar, sondern tendiert auch zur Aufhebung der treibenden Kraft des kapitalistischen wirtschaftlichen Fortschritts, der Konkurrenz zwischen den Kapitalen. Sobald ein mächtiger Konzern den Markt für Rohstoffe kontrolliert und seine Profite durch Monopolpreise absichert, ist er nicht mehr unter dem gleichen Druck, effizientere Produktionsmethoden zu entwickeln.

Gleichzeitig sehen wir aber, dass Lenin hier über eine Tendenz und nicht über eine absolute Barriere für weiteren Fortschritt spricht. Vor allem in Bezug auf den gesamten Globus darf der Begriff „Monopol“ nicht wortwörtlich verstanden werden im Sinne eines einzigen Produzenten in einem bestimmten Wirtschaftssektor. Lenin meinte mit Monopol vielmehr eine Handvoll großer Konzerne in den entwickeltsten kapitalistischen Ländern, die in der Lage waren, Preisabsprachen zu treffen, und dies auch taten. Er meinte damit jedoch nicht, dass diese Vereinbarungen die Konkurrenz untereinander vollkommen beseitigen könnten, insbesondere nicht am Weltmarkt.

Zum Verhältnis von Monopol und ökonomischem Fortschritt schreibt Lenin: „Gewiß kann das Monopol unter dem Kapitalismus die Konkurrenz auf dem Weltmarkt niemals restlos und auf sehr lange Zeit ausschalten (das ist übrigens einer der Gründe, warum die Theorie des Ultraimperialismus unsinnig ist). Die Möglichkeit, durch technische Verbesserungen die Produktionskosten herabzumindern und die Profite zu erhöhen, begünstigt natürlich Neuerungen. Aber die Tendenz zur Stagnation und Fäulnis, die dem Monopol eigen ist, wirkt nach wie vor und gewinnt in einzelnen Industriezweigen, in einzelnen Ländern für gewisse Zeitspannen die Oberhand.“ (6)

In Lenins Verständnis des Kapitalismus in der Epoche des Imperialismus gibt es eine Art permanenten Konflikt zwischen der Dynamik des Wirtschaftswachstums, der Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte und der Tendenz zum Niedergang. Aber dies darf nicht als ein stabiles Gleichgewicht verstanden werden, in der ein Faktor die anderen ausbalanciert. Im Gegenteil, verpflichten uns nach Lenin die charakteristischen Merkmale des Imperialismus dazu, „ihn als parasitären oder in Fäulnis begriffenen Kapitalismus zu kennzeichnen.“ (7) Nichtsdestotrotz „wäre (es) ein Fehler, zu glauben, daß diese Fäulnistendenz ein rasches Wachstum des Kapitalismus ausschließt; durchaus nicht, einzelne Industriezweige, einzelne Schichten der Bourgeoisie und einzelne Länder offenbaren in der Epoche des Imperialismus mehr oder minder stark bald die eine, bald die andere dieser Tendenzen. Im großen und ganzen wächst der Kapitalismus bedeutend schneller als früher, aber dieses Wachstum wird nicht nur im allgemeinen immer ungleichmäßiger, sondern die Ungleichmäßigkeit äußert sich auch im besonderen in der Fäulnis der kapitalkräftigsten Länder.“ (8) Als Lenin diese Zeilen schrieb verwies er ausdrücklich auf Großbritannien und, wie wir sehen werden, kann heute das gleiche über die USA gesagt werden.

Dieses grundlegende Verhältnis zwischen dem Potential des Kapitalismus zur Ausweitung der Produktion und Weiterentwicklung der Produktivkräfte und der notwendigen Bildung von Monopolen, die dieses Potential einengen, schafft den theoretischen Rahmen für die bekannte zusammenfassende Definition des Imperialismus:

„1. Konzentration der Produktion und des Kapitals, die eine so hohe Entwicklungsstufe erreicht hat, daß sie Monopole schafft, die im Wirtschaftsleben die entscheidende Rolle spielen; 2. Verschmelzung des Bankkapitals mit dem Industriekapital und Entstehung einer Finanzoligarchie auf der Basis dieses ‘Finanzkapitals’; 3. der Kapitalexport, zum Unterschied vom Warenexport, gewinnt besonders wichtige Bedeutung; 4. es bilden sich internationale monopolistische Kapitalistenverbände, die die Welt unter sich teilen, und 5. die territoriale Aufteilung der Erde unter die kapitalistischen Großmächte ist beendet. Der Imperialismus ist der Kapitalismus auf jener Entwicklungsstufe, wo die Herrschaft der Monopole und des Finanzkapitals sich herausgebildet, der Kapitalexport hervorragende Bedeutung gewonnen, die Aufteilung der Welt durch die internationalen Trusts begonnen hat und die Aufteilung des gesamten Territoriums der Erde durch die größten kapitalistischen Länder abgeschlossen ist.“ (9)

Aus dieser Analyse ergeben sich für Lenin auch klare Schlussfolgerungen für die historische Einordnung des Imperialismus, dass er nämlich in diesem das höchste und letzte Stadium des Kapitalismus sieht:

„Es ist begreiflich, warum der Imperialismus sterbender Kapitalismus ist, den Übergang zum Sozialismus bildet: das aus dem Kapitalismus hervorwachsende Monopol ist bereits das Sterben des Kapitalismus, der Beginn seines Übergangs in den Sozialismus. Die gewaltige Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit durch den Imperialismus (das, was seine Apologeten, die bürgerlichen Ökonomen, ‘Verflechtung’ nennen) hat dieselbe Bedeutung.“ (10)

Dieser letzte Punkt ist von größter Bedeutung, denn der Kapitalismus in seinem höchsten und entwickeltsten Stadium schränkt nicht nur die weitere Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte ein, sondern steigert auch die Vergesellschaftung der Produktion in einem nicht dagewesenen Ausmaß. Dies treibt den Konflikt zwischen der gesellschaftlichen Macht der Monopolbourgeoisie, die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung zum Zwecke der Absicherung der eigenen Profite zu behindern, auf der einen Seite und der Notwendigkeit der weltweit vernetzten Arbeiterklasse, die Kontrolle über die Produktion zwecks Absicherung des eigenen physischen Überlebens auf der anderen Seite bis zum Äußersten. Lenin schreibt in einem anderen Artikel unmißverständlich: „Die Epoche des kapitalistischen Imperialismus ist die des reifen und überreifen Kapitalismus, der vor dem Zusammenbruch steht, der reif ist, dem Sozialismus Platz zu machen.“ (11)

Auf die Erkenntnis, dass der Imperialismus das Stadium des Kapitalismus ist, in welchem dieser nicht nur beginnt, ein Hemmnis für den wirtschaftlichen Fortschritt zu werden, sondern gleichzeitig auch die Kräfte für seine eigene Überwindung hervorbringt, wies schon Bucharin hin, mit dem Lenin im Exil zusammenarbeitete:

„Die moderne Gesellschaft, die die Produktivkräfte gewaltig entwickelt, die immer neue Gebiete erobert, die die gesamte Natur in ungeahntem Maße der Herrschaft des Menschen unterwirft, beginnt, in den Fesseln des Kapitalismus zu ersticken. Die Widersprüche, die im Wesen des Kapitalismus begründet sind, die zu Beginn seiner Entwicklung erst im Keimzustande vorhanden waren, haben mit jedem weiteren Schritt des Kapitalismus zugenommen und sich zugespitzt. In der imperialistischen Epoche wachsen sie bis ins Ungeheuerliche. Die Produktivkräfte erfordern in ihrem heutigen Umfang kategorisch andere Produktionsverhältnisse. Die kapitalistische Hülle muß unvermeidlich gesprengt werden.“ (12)

Ein anderer marxistischer Theoretiker, Eugen Preobraschenski - einer der wichtigsten bolschewistischen Ökonomen der 1920er und führenden Köpfe in Trotzkis Linksopposition - betonte bei seiner Behandlung der Beiträge von Marx und Engels zur Überwindung des Kapitalismus ebenso die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Auswirkungen des Niedergangscharakters der imperialistischen Epoche. „Lenin muß die kapitalistische Wirtschaft nicht nur in der Zeit ihres beginnenden Falls und Zerfalls analysieren, sondern er muß die kapitalistische Gesellschaft als Ganzes in der Epoche ihres Unterganges untersuchen. (...)Lenin machte die Analyse des Staates und damit die Analyse des kapitalistischen Staates in der Periode des anfänglichen Zerfalls des ganzen kapitalistischen Systems. (...)Umgekehrt, lebt Lenin in der Periode des Zerfalls des Kapitalismus, in der Epoche der beginnenden proletarischen Revolution ...“ (13)

In der Imperialismus-Analyse der Kommunistischen Internationale bereits angedeutet und besonders von Trotzki und Bucharin betont, ist die Bedeutung des Weltmarkts ein weiteres Charakteristikum der marxistischen Imperialismus-Theorie.

Die politischen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse in jedem Nationalstaat können vom marxistischen Standpunkt aus betrachtet nicht nur und nicht einmal in erster Linie aus den inneren Faktoren abgeleitet werden, sondern nur als ein politisches und ökonomisches Weltsystem. Der imperialistische Kapitalismus existiert nicht als eine Aneinanderreihung zahlreicher Nationalstaaten und -ökonomien (14). Vielmehr sind die Weltwirtschaft und die Weltpolitik - die sich wiederum als Schmelztiegel aller nationalen Faktoren zu einer eigenständigen Totalität über diese erheben - die ausschlaggebenden Triebkräfte. Die ungleichzeitige und kombinierte Entwicklung des Weltkapitalismus trifft mit den jeweils lokalen Besonderheiten eines Landes zusammen und verschmilzt dann zu der jeweils spezifischen nationalen Dynamik der politischen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse eines bestimmten Staates.

„Der Marxismus geht von der Weltwirtschaft aus nicht als einer Summe nationaler Teile, sondern als einer gewaltigen, selbständigen Realität, die durch internationale Arbeitsteilung und den Weltmarkt geschaffen wurde und in der gegenwärtigen Epoche über die nationalen Märkte herrscht.“ (15)

Die kapitalistische Produktionsweise - der Produktions- und Reproduktionsprozess des Kapitals auf erweiterter Stufenleiter - verkörpert ein dynamisches und zugleich krisenhaftes, fragiles, von explosiven Gegensätzen geprägtes Gleichgewicht. Ein Gleichgewicht, das daher an bestimmten Punkten aufgrund seiner inneren Widersprüche immer wieder zerbricht und zerbrechen muss. Mit anderen Worten: Es ist ein Gleichgewicht im dialektischen Sinne als vorübergehender Einheit von Gegensätzen, die zur Sprengung ihrer Klammer und Aufhebung auf höherer Ebene drängt. Schon Friedrich Engels betonte: „Alles Gleichgewicht (ist) nur relativ und temporär.“ (16)

Auf ökonomischer Ebene drückt sich dies in wiederkehrenden Rezessionen bis hin zu Wirtschaftsdepressionen aus. Das gilt auch für den Kapitalismus in seiner Totalität, als Gesamtheit von ökonomischer Basis und politischem und ideologischem Überbau sowie auch im gesellschaftlich konstruierten Verhältnis von Mensch und Natur. Innere Widersprüche führen zu politischen und gesellschaftlichen Explosionen (Kriege, Umweltkatastrophen, spontane Aufstände wie zuletzt in Frankreich, revolutionäre Krisen usw.). Bucharin verallgemeinerte das folgendermaßen: „Von diesem Standpunkt aus ist also der Prozess der kapitalistischen Reproduktion nicht allein ein Prozess der erweiterten Reproduktion der kapitalistischen Produktionsverhältnisse: Er ist zugleich ein Prozess der erweiterten Reproduktion der kapitalistischen Widersprüche.“ (17)

Fassen wir zusammen: Wenn wir also vom Imperialismus als der Epoche des Niedergangs des Kapitalismus sprechen, so meinen wir damit keineswegs seine Unfähigkeit, die Technik, die Maschinerie, kurz die Produktivität der Arbeit steigern zu können. Vielmehr meinen wir damit die weitgehende Unfähigkeit des Kapitalismus, technologische Neuerungen und wirtschaftliches Wachstum in gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt der Menschheit umzuwandeln. Die Monopolisierung bewirkt, dass wir trotz Wachstum und Innovation in bestimmten Sektoren für bestimmte Perioden insgesamt eine sinkende Wachstumsdynamik vorfinden. Aufgrund dieser Tendenzen sehen wir eine zunehmende Instabilität und Krisenhaftigkeit des Weltkapitalismus auf ökonomischer und politischer Ebene.

Der Imperialismus ist eine Epoche des scharfen Aufeinanderprallens grundlegender Widersprüche des Kapitalismus. Dieses Aufeinanderprallen führt zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt notwendigerweise zu offenen Explosionen wie Kriegen und Revolutionen. Offensichtlich wurde die Theorie des Imperialismus in einer Periode entwickelt und ausgearbeitet, in der die Merkmale der imperialistischen Epoche unmittelbar sichtbar waren. Doch spätere Generationen von MarxistInnen mussten die tatsächlichen Entwicklungen verarbeiten, die eine Überwindung der unmittelbar explosiven Konjunktur nicht durch eine proletarische Revolution, sondern durch eine kapitalistische Konterrevolution sahen, eine zeitlich begrenzte Abschwächung der Widersprüche des Imperialismus zum Vorteil der Kapitalisten.

Eine solche Überwindung, die dem Imperialismus einen neuen Lebensabschnitt ermöglicht, setzt voraus:

• dass die herrschende Klasse der Arbeiterklasse historische Niederlagen zufügt und so den Preis der Ware Arbeitskraft qualitativ senkt;

• dass große Mengen überschüssigen Kapitals in einem ähnlich qualitativen Ausmaß zerstört werden und

• dass sich eine neue kapitalistische Weltordnung unter klarere Vorherrschaft einer imperialistischen Großmacht herausbildet.

Es bedurfte zweier Jahrzehnte und eines weiteren Weltkrieges, um solche Voraussetzungen nach den revolutionären Aufbrüchen zu schaffen, der Nachkriegsboom 1948-1973 war eine solche Periode. In ihr stagnierten die Produktivkräfte keineswegs, es kam vielmehr zu einem rasanten Aufschwung. Technologische Erneuerungen führten zu allgemeinen, gesellschaftlichen Fortschritten und der Lebensstandard der Mehrheit der Arbeiterklasse stieg.

Nichtsdestotrotz bestätigte das Ende dieser Periode und die Art wie dieses zustande kam - die tumulthaften Ereignisse in den späten 1960er und frühen 1970er Jahren - die Theorie Lenins. Jedoch erreichte die Krise zu dieser Zeit nicht die Ausmaße der Periode nach dem Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges und konnten daher durch eine qualitativ weniger intensive Konterrevolution gelöst werden. Dies führte aber nicht zu jenem Schub für den Kapitalismus, der zur Auslösung eines weiteren „langen Booms“ notwendig gewesen wäre.

Kann es in der Zukunft wieder zu einem langen Boom kommen, ähnlich wie in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren?

Vom marxistischen Standpunkt aus gesehen wäre es falsch, eine solche Möglichkeit auszuschließen. Aber ebenso falsch wäre es, sich diese Möglichkeit als bloße Wiederholung der Ereignisse, die zur langen Aufschwungperiode geführt haben, vorzustellen. Der Monopolkapitalismus des 21. Jahrhunderts ist nicht der Gleiche wie jener vor 50-60 Jahren. Die Produktivkräfte haben sich seitdem enorm entwickelt und damit auch die Destruktivkräfte. Ein Weltkrieg heute hätte unbeschreiblich schrecklichere Folgen für die Menschheit als der Zweite Weltkrieg (inklusive der Gefahr der Auslöschung von Teilen der Menschheit und der Zerstörung der Zivilisation). Die enge globale Vernetzung der Weltwirtschaft bringt mit sich, dass jede schwere regionale Erschütterung - sei es wirtschaftlicher, politischer oder militärischer Natur - sich weltweit auswirkt. Die Möglichkeiten einer auch nur temporären Milderung der imperialistischen Widersprüche und eines neuerlichen langen Aufschwungs sind also heute deutlich geringer als Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Alternative „Sozialismus oder Barbarei“ tritt im 21. Jahrhundert klarer und schärfer denn je hervor.

 

Exkurs: Was sind die Produktivkräfte?

 

Bei der Auseinandersetzung, ob die „Globalisierung“ die Imperialismus-Theorie Lenins bestätigt oder widerlegt, spielt die Frage der Produktivkräfte eine zentrale Rolle. Daher brauchen wir Klarheit, was dieser Begriff bedeutet (18).

In der marxistischen Theorie umfassen Produktivkräfte sowohl Maschinen und Rohmaterialien, deren Produktion und Wachstum sich in Statistiken wie dem Brutto-Inlandsprodukt ausdrücken, als auch - und dies ist noch wichtiger - die Menschen, die die Produktionsmittel bedienen und zu diesem Zweck bestimmte Formen der gesellschaftlichen Arbeitsteilung eingehen: die Arbeiterklasse (19). Das „Wachstum der Produktivkräfte“ beinhaltet daher nicht nur die Größe der Arbeiterklasse, sondern auch ihren Lebensstandard und ihr kulturelles Niveau. Wenn wir dies berücksichtigen, fällt es nicht schwer, sich Bedingungen vorzustellen, unter denen ein fortgesetztes Wachstum des materiellen Outputs stattfindet und gleichzeitig der Lebensstandard oder die Anzahl der ArbeiterInnen oder beides sinkt. Wenn wir also die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte im Zeitalter der Globalisierung betrachten, müssen wir sowohl ihre quantitativen und qualitativen Auswirkungen auf die Arbeiterklasse in Erwägung ziehen als auch die Statistiken für die Produktion.

Die Bedeutung dieses Verständnisses liegt darin, dass Marx den sich entwickelnden Widerspruch zwischen den Produktivkräften und den Produktionsverhältnissen als die Triebkraft der Revolution ansah. Das bedeutet, dass im Kapitalismus, wie auch in vorherigen Klassengesellschaften, die fortgesetzte Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte durch die Klassenstruktur und die daraus resultierende Kontrolle der Produktion und Distribution eingeschränkt ist. Dies wäre natürlich eine nichts aussagende Annahme, wenn die Produktivkräfte nur aus Maschinen, Rohmaterialien und Produkten bestehen würden. Doch sobald die Arbeiterklasse mitberücksichtigt wird, macht diese Annahme Sinn - in einer Welt, in der in manchen Ländern Millionen Menschen arbeitslos sind und in anderen Ländern Millionen Hunger leiden, weil Finanzkapitalisten ihre Spekulationsgelder vom Immobilienmarkt in Lebensmittel-Futures umleiten.

 

Der Imperialismus heute

 

Im Folgenden wollen wir vor allem unsere Grundthese von der zunehmenden Krisenhaftigkeit und dem Niedergang des Kapitalismus in den verschiedenen Facetten untersuchen und belegen. Danach wenden wir uns den Folgewirkungen und ihren Widersprüchen zu. Besonderes Augenmerk legen wir auf die zyklen-übergreifenden Auswirkungen der von uns benannten Widersprüche, die im Imperialismus wirken. Daher betrachten wir v.a. die längerfristigen, sich über mehrere Zyklen erstreckenden Tendenzen. Zwar endet jeder Zyklus damit, dass „überschüssiges“ Kapital zerstört wird, doch wenn diese Zerstörung nicht umfassend genug ist, wird das Kapital im nächsten Zyklus eine höhere organische Zusammensetzung haben als zuvor. Wenn sich dieser Prozess über mehrere Zyklen hinweg wiederholt, kommt es zu einer strukturellen Überakkumulation von Kapital und die Kapitalisten sehen sich zunehmenden Verwertungsschwierigkeiten im Produktionsprozess gegenüber.

Ein verbreiteter Unfug vieler Apologeten und Propagandisten des Kapitalismus besteht darin, einzelne Länder oder kurze Zeitabschnitte heranzuziehen und anhand dieser zu „beweisen,“ dass die kapitalistische Globalisierung ein Segen für die Menschheit sei. Oft wird dabei auf China oder auf einzelne Konjunkturabschnitte der US-Ökonomie verwiesen. Eine marxistische Analyse der Lage des internationalen Kapitalismus darf jedoch nicht nur und nicht in erster Linie auf ein bestimmtes, kurzfristiges, nationales Phänomen zu achten, sondern muss - wie schon Lenin betonte - das Augenmerk auf alle wesentlichen weltweiten Erscheinungen und Tendenzen legen. Es gilt, die Totalität der weltweiten Entwicklung zu verstehen.

„Um diese objektive Lage darstellen zu können, darf man nicht Beispiele und einzelne Daten herausgreifen (bei der ungeheuren Kompliziertheit der Erscheinungen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens kann man immer eine beliebige Zahl von Beispielen oder Einzeldaten ausfindig machen, um jede beliebige These zu erhärten), sondern man muß unbedingt die Gesamtheit der Daten über die Grundlagen des Wirtschaftslebens aller kriegführenden Mächte und der ganzen Welt nehmen.“ (20)

Wir versuchen daher, möglichst umfassende, globale, längerfristige Entwicklungslinien herauszuarbeiten bzw. stellen kurzfristige Phänomene in einen größeren Kontext.

Zunächst noch eine kurze Vorbemerkung zu den bürgerlichen Statistiken. Uns ist bewusst, dass die Verwendung bürgerlicher Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistiken nicht unproblematisch ist. Einige der einflussreichsten statistischen Serien werden von großen Institutionen wie dem Internationalen Währungsfond (IWF), der Weltbank oder von Zentralbanken der verschiedenen Länder herausgegeben. Gerade weil deren Prognosen für nationale und internationale wirtschaftliche Entwicklungen großen Einfluss haben können, haben diese Institutionen ein Interesse daran, zumindest keinen Beitrag zu einem „Vertrauensverlust“ zu leisten und tendieren daher dazu, negative Entwicklungen in ihren Statistiken herunterzuspielen.

Darüber hinaus beinhalten die bürgerlichen ökonomischen Kategorien und Konzepte die ideologischen Schwächen der bürgerlichen Wirtschaftswissenschaften. So können z.B. Profite auf verschiedene Weisen berechnet werden: Profite vor Steuern, nach Steuern, nach Abschreibungen, inklusive Kapitalverschleiß, einbehaltene Profite usw. All diese Kategorien verschleiern, dass die Profite aus unbezahlter Arbeit herrühren. Darüber hinaus können wichtige Änderungen in der Berichterstattung der Profite Resultat von technischen, rechtlichen oder Berechnungsänderungen bzgl. Steuern, Bewertungen oder der Berechnung des Verschleißes sein.

Schließlich zeigt sich im am meisten verwendeten Wertmaßstab für nationale Wirtschaften und deren Wachstum der fetischisierte Charakter der bürgerlichen Wirtschaftskategorien - dem Brutto-Inlandsprodukt (BIP). Während der Marxismus die Wirtschaft als System betrachtet, in dem Güter und Dienstleistungen, deren Wert letztlich durch die in ihnen steckende und zu ihrer Herstellung notwendige Arbeitszeit gemessen wird, sehen bürgerliche Ökonomen die Wirtschaft als ein durch Preise reguliertes System des Austausches von Gütern und Dienstleistungen. Das Ergebnis ist, dass das „BIP“ entweder auf der Grundlage der gesamten Kaufpreise für alle Güter und Dienstleistungen berechnet wird oder, als Alternative, auf der Basis des durch alle Güter und Dienstleistungen generierten Einkommens. Darüber hinaus wird die Gesamtheit aller Güter und Dienstleistungen mit Methoden berechnet, die den verschiedenen Sektoren der Ökonomie  unterschiedliche Gewichte  geben.

Das bedeutet, dass die BIP-Zahlen keine direkte Entsprechung in den marxistischen Kategorien finden. Sie können z.B. nicht anzeigen, ob der gesamte geschaffene Wert realisiert wurde oder ob Veränderungen bei der Wertzusammensetzung der Ware als Resultat von Veränderungen bei den Produktionstechniken stattfinden.

Nichtsdestotrotz können angesichts der Tatsache, dass in etwa die gleiche Methode bei der Erstellung von statistischen Reihen über einen längeren Zeitraum verwendet wird, Veränderungen beim BIP u.ä. Statistiken als Indikatoren für tatsächliche Veränderungen wirtschaftlicher Aktivitäten verwendet werden. Dadurch können wir, gemeinsam mit der Verwendung anderer Statistiken, einen Überblick über das relative Wachstum und die Dynamik einer Ökonomie gewinnen.

 

Sinkendes Wachstum des Outputs

 

Zur Untersuchung der Weltwirtschaft. Beginnen wir mit dem empirischen Nachweis der niedergehenden Dynamik des imperialistischen Kapitalismus heute anhand des sinkenden Produktionszuwachses. Zuerst nehmen wir die Wachstumsdynamik des weltweiten Brutto-Inlandsproduktes, welches den jährlichen Output der Industrie, des Dienstleistungssektors sowie der Landwirtschaft widerspiegelt. Die Zahlen der Tabelle 1 sind in Zehnjahres-Schritten angeführt, während die zum Vergleich herangezogene Tabelle 2 in Zwanzigjahres-Schritten gegliedert ist. Das Gesamtbild der Periode von 1970 bis 2006 ist aus Grafik 1 ersichtlich.

 

Tabelle 1: Wachstumsraten des Welt-Brutto-Inlandsproduktes (in % pro Jahr) (21)

1971-1980            +3.8%

1981-1990            +3.2%

1991-2000            +2.6%

2000-2005            +2.7%

 

Tabelle 2: Wachstumsraten des Welt-Brutto-Inlandsprodukts - Vergleich 1960-1980 und 1980-2000 (in % pro Jahr) (22)

1960-1980            +4.7%

1980-2000            +3.0%

 

Grafik 1: Wachstumsraten des Welt-BIP 1970 - 2006 (23)

 

 

Noch deutlicher wird das Bild des kapitalistischen Niedergangs, wenn wir das Brutto-Inlandsprodukt ins Verhältnis zur Bevölkerungsentwicklung setzen. Die ILO (International Labour Organisation) hat berechnet, dass in den 1960ern das Welt-Brutto-Inlandsprodukt pro Kopf um 3,7% gewachsen, die Wachstumsrate seitdem aber stetig gefallen ist. In den 1970ern schrumpfte diese auf 2,1%, im darauf folgenden Jahrzehnt weiter auf 1,3%. Letztlich erreichte die Wachstumsrate einen neuen Tiefpunkt in den 1990er Jahren, dem ersten Jahrzehnt der Globalisierung, mit nur 1,1%. Dieser Trend setzte sich fort. So zeigten die ersten drei Jahre des neuen Jahrhunderts ein durchschnittliches Wachstum von knapp 1% (24).

Wenn wir nun das Bild des Welt-Kapitalismus differenzieren und in seine beiden wesentlichen Teile zerlegen - die imperialistischen Metropolen und die halbkoloniale Welt - sehen wir, dass bei allen Unterschieden die allgemeine, langfristige Tendenz die gleiche ist. Basierend auf gewichteten Durchschnittswerten errechnet das UNO “World Economic and Social Survey” von 2006, dass das jährliche Pro-Kopf-Wachstum des BIP am Ende der 1960er mit 3,5% am höchsten war, in den 1970ern auf 2,7%, in den 1980ern auf 2,0% und schließlich in den 1990ern auf 1,7% sank. Für die „Entwicklungsländer“ betragen die entsprechenden Zahlen 3,7% in den späten 1960ern, 1,8% in den 1970ern, 2,0% in den 1980ern und in den 1990ern 1,7% (25).

Die gleiche Tendenz findet sich auch im Herzen der Mehrwerterwirtschaftung - der Industrieproduktion. Laut Angaben der Weltbank sehen wir einen ähnlich stetigen Rückgang der weltweiten Wachstumsraten der Industrieproduktion von 3,0% in den 1980ern auf 2,4% in den 1990ern und einem Durchschnitt von 1,4% bis 2004 (26).

Betrachten wir nun die imperialistischen Staaten, wo die große Masse des Weltkapitals beheimatet ist, etwas genauer. Tabelle 3a zeigt die Wachstumsraten des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts in den großen imperialistischen Staaten, während Tabelle 3b die Wachstumsraten der Industrieproduktion darstellt.

 

 

Tabelle 3a: Wachstumsraten des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts sowie Inlandsprodukts pro Kopf in den imperialistischen Staaten (in % pro Jahr) (27)

                               Imperialistische                   USA                                       Japan                                     EU-15

                               Staaten

                                BIP         BIP p.K.                BIP         BIP p.K.                BIP         BIP p.K                 BIP         BIP p.K.

1960-1969           +5.1%    +3.8%                   +4.6%   +3.3%                   +10.2% +9.0%                   +5.3%    +3.5%

1970-1980           +3.4%    +2.5%                    +3.2%    +2.1%                    +4.4%    +3.3%                    +3.0%    +2.6%

1980-1990           +3.0%    +2.3%                    +3.2%    +2.2 %                   +4.1%    +3.5%                    +2.4%    +2.1%

1990-2000           +2.5%    +1.8%                    +3.2%    +2.2%                    +1.3%    +1.1%                    +2.0%    +1.7%

2000-2005           +2.2%    -                              +2.8%    -                             +1.3%    -                             +2.0%    --

 

Tabelle 3b: Wachstumsraten der Industrieproduktion in den imperialistischen Zentren (in % pro Jahr) (28)

                               USA                      Japan                    EU-15

1961-1970           +4.9%                    +13.5%                 +5.2%

1971-1980           +3.0%                    +4.1%                    +2.3%

1981-1990           +2.2%                    +4.0%                    +1.7%

1991-2000           +4.1%                    +0.1%                    +1.5%

2001-2005           +1.4%                    -0.1%                     +0.1%

 

Tabelle 4: Wachstumsraten der weltweiten Kapitalakkumulation (in % pro Jahr) (29)

1980-1990           +3.9%

1990-2000           +3.2%

2000-2004           +1.2%

 

Wir sehen also insgesamt eine niedergehende Wachstumsdynamik in den imperialistischen Ökonomien, auch wenn diese in den USA, v.a. seit 1990, weniger dramatisch verläuft als in anderen imperialistischen Staaten (zu den Gründen hierfür weiter unten). Die längerfristige Auswirkung dieser Niedergangstendenz kann man in Tabelle 4 beobachten, die eine Verlangsamung der Wachstumsrate der Kapitalakkumulation erkennen läßt. Dies ist die unausweichliche Konsequenz dessen, dass die wiederholten Wirtschaftskrisen nicht ausreichend viel Kapital zerstört haben, um neuen Schwung in das kapitalistische Wirtschaftssystem als Ganzes zu bringen. Diese Entwicklung zeigt auch, wie die Maßnahmen der Bourgeoisie zur Stabilisierung des Kapitalismus, wenn dieser von den politischen und sozialen Konsequenzen des Zyklus bedroht wird, die grundlegenden Probleme des Kapitalismus längerfristig verschärfen.

Dieser Trend kann ebenso klar in der in Grafik 2 abgebildeten Entwicklung der Investitions- und Sparraten gesehen werden.

 

 

 

 

Grafik 2: Globale Spar- und Investitionsquote als Anteil am BIP, 1970-2004 (30)

 

 

Tabelle 5: Anteil der gesamten Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen sowie der Ausrüstungsinvestitionen am BIP, 1970 - 2004 (31)

 

 

Betrachten wir abschließend die Kapitalakkumulation in einzelnen ausgewählten Ländern und berücksichtigen wir dabei insbesondere die Entwicklung jenes Bereichs in der bürgerlichen Wirtschaftsstatistik, die der Marxschen Kategorie des fixen konstanten Kapitals am nächsten kommt: den Ausrüstungsinvestitionen.

Das gleiche Bild ergibt sich, wenn wir uns die sinkende Dynamik der Erweiterungsinvestitionen - die Netto-Investitionen - anschauen. Unter Netto-Investitionen versteht man die Gesamtinvestitionen minus jenen Teil, der nur zur Ersetzung von bereits eingesetztem Kapital dient. Mit anderen Worten: Die Netto-Investitionen zeigen an, in welchem Ausmaß die Kapitalbasis erweitert wird. Die Aussagekraft der Wachstumsdynamik der Netto-Investitionen liegt darin, dass diese deutlicher die tatsächliche Geschwindigkeit der erweiterten Reproduktion des Kapitals widerspiegelt. In diesem Zusammenhang zeigt Grafik 3 besonders deutlich, wie schwer Japan von den Maßnahmen getroffen wurde, die angesichts der Rezession in den frühen 1990ern - dem Beginn der Periode der Globalisierung - ergriffen wurden.

 

Grafik 3: Netto-Investitionen als Anteil am Netto-Inlandsprodukt in den imperialistischen Ökonomien, 1980 - 2006 (32)

 

 

 

 

Steigende organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals

 

Trotz einer Verlangsamung des Wachstums des Kapitalstocks steigt in den imperialistischen Metropolen der Kapitaleinsatz pro Arbeitskraft. Mit anderen Worten: Es steigt die organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals. Die folgende Grafik zeigt dies unmissverständlich, auch wenn die Angaben nicht eins zu eins der organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals gleichzusetzen sind.

 

Grafik 4: Verhältnis zwischen konstantem Kapital und Arbeit (in Dollar pro Arbeitsstunde), 1946-2001 (33)

 

 

Die sinkenden Wachstumsraten der Produktion und der Investitionen sind Konsequenzen der steigenden organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals, die wiederum letztlich zu einem langfristigen Fall der Profitrate führt. Wir betonen, dass es sich hier um eine langfristige Tendenz handelt und nicht um einen linearen, Jahr für Jahr voranschreitenden Fall. Teilweise gelang es den Kapitalisten auch, dem Fall entgegenzusteuern (zu den entgegenwirkenden Maßnahmen siehe unten). Nichtsdestotrotz ist die Tendenz eindeutig.

Betrachten wir zuerst die Entwicklung der Netto-Profitraten in den imperialistischen Kernländern seit dem Beginn des Nachkriegs-Booms Ende der 1940er Jahre (34).

 

Tabelle 6: Netto-Profitraten im nicht-finanziellen Unternehmenssektor in den USA, Japan und Deutschland, 1948-2000 (35)

                                               USA                      Japan                    Deutschland

1948-1959                           14.3%                    17.3%                    23.4%

1959-1969                           15%                       25.4%                    17.5%

1969-1979                           10.3%                    20.5%                    12.8%

1979-1990                           9.0%                      16.7%                    11.8%

1990-2000                           10.1%                    10.8%                    10.4%

 

Betrachten wir nun die Entwicklung der Profitrate in den USA, der größten imperialistischen Macht, seit dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs und dem Beginn der Boom-Periode. Seit den späten 1980ern gibt es eine Debatte zwischen marxistischen ÖkonomInnen über den Niedergang der US-Ökonomie im Allgemeinen und die Frage der Profirate im Besonderen. Auch wenn Teilnehmer dieser Debatte wie Robert Brenner, Fred Moseley, Tom Weisskopf, Doug Henwood, Levy und Dumenil u.a. unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen und Methoden verwenden, so existiert zwischen ihnen doch ein Konsens darüber, dass sich die Profitraten in den 1950ern und 1960ern in einem Allzeithoch befanden und danach mit der Rezession 1973-75 einen scharfen Einbruch erlebten. Der nächste Höhepunkt fand zwischen 1993-1996 statt, auch wenn er nicht an das Niveau der 1950er und 1960er Jahre heranreichte. Tabelle 7 und Grafik 5 zeigen Berechnungen von Fred Moseley und Doug Henwood, die den Gesamttrend demonstrieren.

 

Tabelle 7: Die Entwicklung der Profitrate in der US-amerikanischen Wirtschaft 1947-2004 (36)

1947            22%           

1952            21%

1957            18%           

1962            20%

1967            19%           

1972            16%

1977            12%

1982            11%

1987            14%                                   

1992            15%

1997            18%

2001            14%

2004            19%

 

 

Grafik 5: Entwicklung der Profitrate im nicht-finanziellen Unternehmenssektor, USA 1952-2002 (37)

 

 

Wir sehen, dass das imperialistische Kapital in der Nachkriegsperiode vom tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate geprägt ist. Dem US-Kapital gelang es, dieser Tendenz etwas entgegen zu wirken, allerdings zu einem Preis und mit Methoden, die weder verallgemeinert werden können noch von dauerhafter Natur sind (siehe unten).

 

Methoden des Kapitals, seinem Niedergang entgegen zu wirken und ihre krisenverschärfenden Auswirkungen

 

Anfang der 1980er startete die imperialistische Bourgeoisie ein Roll-Back gegen die in den Jahren des „langen Booms“ erkämpften sozialen und politischen Errungenschaften der ArbeiterInnen und unterdrückten Völker. Ihr Ziel war die Steigerung der Ausbeutung, um so die Profite steigern zu können. Ihre Politik, der „Neoliberalismus“, beinhaltete folgende Aspekte:

• Privatisierung staatlichen Eigentums;

• Bildungs- und Sozialabbau;

• Flexibilisierung und Prekarisierung der Arbeitswelt, um die Kosten für die Ware Arbeitskraft zu verbilligen;

• zunehmender Rassismus gegen und Ausbeutung von ImmigrantInnen;

• Einschränkung demokratischer Rechte;

• massiver Kapitalexport;

• Militarisierung der Außenpolitik.

Dies waren Maßnahmen, die den Weg zur “Globalisierung” eröffneten. Einer der augenscheinlichsten Erfolge des Imperialismus war die Zerschlagung der Sowjetunion und die Zerstörung der nach-kapitalistischen Eigentumsverhältnisse in den ehemaligen Ostblock-Staaten, in China und Vietnam. Dort existierten seit Beginn der 1950er planwirtschaftliche Wirtschaftssysteme, die trotz aller Entartung durch die Herrschaft einer stalinistischen Bürokratie enorme soziale Fortschritte für die Bevölkerung brachten. Darüber hinaus wurde auch der globale Wirkungsbereich des Kapitals enorm eingeschränkt. Mit der Wiedereinführung des Kapitalismus gelang der Bourgeoisie eine enorme geographische Ausbreitung, nachdem ihr diese Regionen jahrzehntelang verschlossen waren. Ebenso gelang der Bourgeoisie eine enorme Stärkung sowohl gegenüber der Arbeiterklasse als auch gegenüber den unterdrückten Völkern in den Halbkolonien.

 

Die Angriffe auf die Arbeiterklasse auf ökonomischer Ebene

 

Das Kapital versucht mit allen Mitteln, die Lohnkosten (inklusive dem Soziallohn) zu drücken und so den Anteil der Mehrarbeit und damit den Mehrwert zu erhöhen. Dieser Prozess findet in allen Ländern statt. Dies ergibt sich eindeutig aus den beiden folgenden Grafiken, die eine sinkende Lohnquote am Volkseinkommen sowohl in den USA als auch in der EU aufzeigen und aus der sich im Umkehrschluss die steigende Gewinnquote ergibt.

 

 

 

Grafik 6: Entwicklung der Lohnquote in der EU und in den USA, 1991 - 2005 (38)

 

 

In den USA kann man die Umverteilung von den Löhnen zu den Profiten besonders deutlich sehen. Während von 1947-79 die Familieneinkommen in allen Bevölkerungsgruppen relativ gleich anstiegen (zwischen +94 und +120%), verringerte sich in der Periode 1977-94 (und in den späten 1990er noch mehr) für die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung das Familieneinkommen. Der US-Ökonom Doug Henwood schätzt, dass der Reallohn des durchschnittlichen Arbeiters in den USA zwischen 1973 und 96 um 14.1% fiel! Gleichzeitig konnte das reichste 1% der Bevölkerung einen dramatischen Zuwachs verbuchen (+72%!). Heute besitzt diese Geldaristokratie - das reichste ein Prozent der Bevölkerung - 40% des gesamten gesellschaftlichen Reichtums; das entspricht einem Anteil, der seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg nur in einem einzigen Jahr erreicht wurde: 1929, dem Jahr des Börsenkrachs (39). Gleichzeitig müssen die amerikanischen ArbeiterInnen immer länger arbeiten, um ein durchschnittliches Familieneinkommen zu sichern.

Die Offensive der Bourgeoisie gegen die Arbeiterklasse und die Unterdrückten war natürlich nicht nur auf die USA beschränkt, sondern fand weltweit statt. Das Ergebnis war eine massive Umverteilung des Reichtums zugunsten der Bourgeoisie und ein Anstieg der Ungleichheit. Die folgende Grafik veranschaulicht, dass in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten nur in einer kleinen Minderheit der Länder - in denen nur 5% der Weltbevölkerung leben - die Einkommensungleichheit zurückging, während sie für die große Mehrheit anstieg.

 

Grafik 7: Zu leistende Arbeitsstunden, um das durchschnittliche Familieneinkommen zu verdienen, USA 1947-2001 (40)

 

 

Grafik 8: Anzahl der Menschen, deren Einkommen zwischen 1980 und 2000 gesunken ist sowie der Länder mit einem sinkenden Brutto-Inlandsprodukt pro Kopf (41)

 

Die wachsende Ungleichheit kann man auch anhand des „Gini-Koeffizienten“ sehen, der die Ungleichheit auf einer Skala von 0 bis 1 misst: je höher die Zahl, desto ausgeprägter die Ungleichheit. Phillip O Hara hat in seinem Buch Growth and Development of Global Political Economy die Entwicklung des „Gini-Koeffizienten“  berechnet.

 

Tabelle 9: Die Entwicklung der Einkommensungleichheit (Gini-Koeffizient) in den USA, UK, Brasilien und China (42)

                                                               USA                      UK                         Brasilien                              China

1970er Jahre                                       0.39                       0.26                       0.55                                       --

1980er Jahre                                       0.40                       0.29                       0.56                                       0.20

1990er Jahre                                       0.46                       0.32                       0.61                                       0.28

Anfang 2000er Jahre                       0.44                       0.36                       0.63                                       0.45

 

Diese Zahlen zeigen klar, dass der Neoliberalismus sowohl in den imperialistischen Kernländern als auch in den Entwicklungsländern - China und Brasilien gelten als wirtschaftliche Vorreiterländer - zu einer größeren sozialen Ungleichheit geführt hat und sich der Reichtum in immer weniger Händen konzentriert. Im vergangenen Jahrzehnt hat die Globalisierung den Massen keine Vorteile gebracht, sondern nur größere Ausbeutung und Verarmung.

Eine weitere Konsequenz der Überakkumulation von Kapital und dem Versuch der Unternehmer, die Arbeitsproduktivität durch Rationalisierungen zu steigern, ist das weltweite Anwachsen der Arbeitslosigkeit. Obwohl die globale Beschäftigung zunimmt, steigt gleichzeitig auch die Arbeitslosigkeit. Die Beschäftigungsrate blieb in der gegenwärtigen Periode konstant bei ca. 62%. Das hat dazu geführt, dass Ökonomen von einem „Boom ohne Arbeitsplätze“ oder einer „geringen Auswirkung des Wachstums auf die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen“ sprechen, da der Boom bis zum vergangenen Jahr zu keiner Ausweitung der Beschäftigung im weltweiten Maßstab geführt hat (43). Es wird geschätzt, dass selbst nach dem Konjunkturaufschwung von 2004-05 ca. 43,5% der Beschäftigten unter der Armutsgrenze von zwei US-Dollar pro Tag leben müssen. (2002 waren es sogar 50%). Die „Internationale Organisation für Arbeit“ der UNO (ILO) stellt fest: „Es gibt noch immer 486,7 Millionen ArbeiterInnen weltweit, die nicht genug verdienen, um sich und ihre Familien über die Armutsgrenze von 1 US-Dollar pro Tag zu bringen und 1,3 Milliarden ArbeiterInnen, die nicht genug verdienen, um sich und ihre Familien über die Armutsgrenze von 2 US-Dollar pro Tag zu bringen. In anderen Worten, 4 von 10 ArbeiterInnen sind arm.“ (44)

Dabei berücksichtigen diese Zahlen noch nicht einmal die hunderte Millionen Menschen, die arbeitslos sind oder im informellen Sektor arbeiten. Die ILO fährt in ihrem Bericht fort, dass “es sehr wichtig ist, wenn die Periode hohen Wachstums besser genutzt werden würden, um nachhaltigere und produktivere Arbeitsplätze zu schaffen.“ Doch wie wir gezeigt haben, wandern im Kapitalismus die Profite und die Früchte des Wachstums in die Taschen der Spekulanten und Reichen. Der Kapitalismus kann daher nicht den Lebensstandard der Massen heben, er ist nicht in der Lage, den Fortschritt der wichtigsten aller Produktivkräfte zu gewährleisten: der Arbeiterklasse.

 

Monopolisierung des Kapitals und Globalisierung

 

Wie wir gesehen haben, sah Lenin das Wachstum der Monopole als das grundlegende Merkmal des Imperialismus an. Gerade der Prozess der Monopolisierung wurde im Zeitalter der kapitalistischen Globalisierung massiv vorangetrieben. So fand in den letzten 25 Jahren eine massive Fusionstätigkeit im Banken- und Industriesektor statt.

Noch bemerkenswerter ist jedoch die gewachsene Bedeutung der multi-nationalen Konzerne, also global agierender Monopole. Heute kontrollieren diese Konzerne (und ihre Tochterunternehmen) 2/3 des Welthandels. Die dreihundert größten Konzerne besitzen _ der produktiven Unternehmensanlagen weltweit und mehr als die Hälfte des Weltmarktes bei dauerhaften Konsumgütern, Stahl, Luftfahrt, Elektronik, Erdöl, Computer, Medien, Raumfahrt und Autoindustrie.

Eine der wichtigsten Besonderheiten der gegenwärtigen Periode ist der weltweit rasant voranschreitende Monopolisierungsprozess. Die dem Kapitalismus innewohnenden Prozesse der Konzentration und Zentralisation des Kapitals und der Herausbildung von Monopolen finden nicht mehr nur auf nationaler Ebene statt, sondern auch und insbesondere am Weltmarkt. Vor diesem Hintergrund sahen wir in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten einen Anstieg des Welthandels und noch mehr des Kapitalexports, der weit über dem Wachstum der Produktion liegt. Wenn man 1975 als Ausgangsjahr für das Welt-BIP, das Volumen des Welthandels und den Kapitalexport heranzieht, dann zeigen Berechnungen der Deutschen Bundesbank und des IWF, dass um die Jahrhundertwende das BIP um 230%, der Welthandel um 400% und der Kapitalexport um mehr als 3.000% gestiegen sind (45).

 

Tabelle 10: Globalisierung und Kapitalexport. Die wachsende Bedeutung ausländischer Direkinvestitionen (ADI) (46)

 

Die Monopole werden durch sinkende Profitraten in ihren Heimatmärkten und ein solch hohes Maß an Kapitalakkumulation, welche den nationalen Markt allein zu klein werden lässt, zu größerer Internationalisierung getrieben. Die für den Konkurrenzkampf notwendigen gewaltigen Investitionen erfordern zur profitablen Verwertung immer größere Absatzmärkte. Daher drängt das Monopolkapital zur Internationalisierung, daher auch die Auslagerung von Teilen der Produktion in die Exportmärkte und an die billigsten Arbeitsstätten. Moderne Technologien und billige Transportkosten helfen dabei. Hand in Hand damit geht die Erzwingung der weltweiten Öffnung der Märkte. Das Resultat dieser Entwicklung ist, dass ausländisches Kapital in den vergangenen 25 Jahren sowohl in den imperialistischen Staaten als auch in der halb-kolonialen Welt massiv an Bedeutung gewonnen hat. Tabelle 10 zeigt die gewachsene Bedeutung von ausländischem Kapital und ausländischen Direktinvestitionen sowohl auf weltweiter Ebene als auch innerhalb der „entwickelten Länder“, also den imperialistischen Staaten, und den „Entwicklungsländern“, also den halb-kolonialen Ländern bzw. den Staaten der ehemaligen UdSSR.

Es sei an dieser Stelle darauf hingewiesen, dass wir hier nur von jenem Teil der Kapitalexporte sprechen, der in der einen oder anderen Form mit dem Produktions- und ZirkulationsProzess des Kapitals in Verbindung steht (eben den ausländischen Direktinvestitionen). Wie wir jedoch später sehen werden, besteht der Großteil des weltweiten Kapitalexports aus Kredit- und Spekulationsgeschäften.

Kapitalexport findet sowohl von imperialistischen Staaten in Halbkolonien statt als auch - und sogar stärker - zwischen imperialistischen Staaten. Der verstärkte Kapitalexport in die Halbkolonien ist ein Resultat niedergehender Profitraten in den imperialistischen Zentren und dem Versuch des Kapitals, durch Investitionen und Handel mit kapitalistisch weniger entwickelten Ökonomien, diesem Trend gegenzusteuern. Daher die vielen Investitionen in den „Emerging Economies“ wie Südostasien in den 1990ern oder in China und Indien.

Der Kapitalexport zwischen den imperialistischen Staaten wiederum dient vor allem der Vorantreibung der Monopolisierung, teils in Form der beschleunigten Zentralisation des Kapitals - durch verstärkte Zusammenarbeit zwischen den bzw. Übernahme von Monopolen durch andere Monopole. Daher sind ein bedeutender Teil der ausländischen Direktinvestitionen zwischen den imperialistischen Staaten keine Neu- oder Erweiterungsinvestitionen, sondern dienen der Finanzierung der Übernahme anderer Unternehmen.

Betrachten wir daher die Entwicklung der Verteilung der Kapitalexporte zwischen den imperialistischen und den halbkolonialen Staaten in den letzten 25 Jahren.

 

 

Tabelle 11: Verteilung der weltweiten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen nach Staatengruppen (47)

 

Aus der Tabelle können wir v.a. zwei Schlussfolgerungen ziehen: Erstens, dass der Großteil der ausländischen Direktinvestitionen zwischen den imperialistischen Metropolen fließt, wenn auch tw. als Zahlungsmittel für die Übernahme von Monopolkapital durch konkurrierendes Monopolkapital. Zweitens, dass der Kapitalexport vor allem seit 1990 - dem Beginn der Hochphase der Globalisierung - zu einem wachsenden Teil von den imperialistischen Zentren in die halbkolonialen Länder fließt (z.B. China). Das Kapital versucht also, durch verstärkten Kapitalexport und Monopolisierung, dem tendenziellen Fall der Profitrate entgegenzuwirken.

 

Parasitismus, Spekulation und Schulden

 

Doch die Erfolge der Bourgeoisie bei der Steigerung der Ausbeutung brachten dem Kapitalismus keine neue Wachstumsdynamik oder ein Wachstum der Profitraten im produktiven Sektor der Ökonomie. Im Gegenteil: die Tendenz der Spekulation und der Flucht in unproduktive Geldanlagen verstärkt sich in der Globalisierung. Dieser Prozess wird durch die weltweite Öffnung der Märkte, inklusive der Finanzmärkte für das imperialistische Kapital gefördert. Allein am globalen Devisenmarkt werden täglich Werte von 1.900 Milliarden gehandelt - eine Verdreifachung gegenüber 1989! In vielen Ländern verdreifachte sich der Bestand ausländischen Vermögens zwischen 1980 und 2000 von durchschnittlich 36% des BIP auf 100%.

Die Flucht in die Spekulation hat inzwischen solche astronomischen Werte erreicht, dass die Bezeichnung „Casino-Kapitalismus“ zum geflügelten Wort wurde. Der marxistische Ökonom Doug Henwood stellte Berechnungen an, nach denen in den USA das Verhältnis des gesamten Geldvermögens im Verhältnis zum Bruttoinlandprodukt zwischen 1952 und 2003 von ca. 400% auf knapp 850% anschwoll - nachdem es am Höhepunkt im Jahr 2000 gar über 925% lag (48)! Während das Brutto-Inlandsprodukt der USA 12 Billionen US-Dollar beträgt, umfasst der Markt für Derivate 128 Billionen US-Dollar - ist also mehr als zehnmal so groß! Dies zeigt nicht nur die weitgehende Entkoppelung des spekulativen Marktes von der Produktion, sondern auch das enorm instabile Potential des Casino-Kapitalismus. Wie 1929 könnte ein Zusammenbruch der Finanzmärkte die gesamte Weltwirtschaft in den Abgrund stürzen!

Entsprechend nimmt die Bedeutung des spekulativen Geldkapitals innerhalb des Gesamtkapitals zu. Zwischen 1994 und 2000 war in den USA der spekulative Finanzsektor für _ des gesamten Profitzuwachses verantwortlich. Insgesamt stieg jener Teil der Profite, der nicht in der realen Produktion, sondern im großteils spekulativen Finanzsektor erwirtschaftet wurde, dramatisch an (Grafik 9).

 

Grafik 9: Entwicklung des Anteils der folgenden drei Komponenten am Gesamtprofit von Unternehmen in den USA, 1948-2001 (%): Industrie, Finanzsektor, Auslandsinvestitionen (49)

 

 

Die wachsende Rolle der Spekulation zeigt sich auch in den internationalen Kapitalbewegungen. Auch hier emanzipiert sich das Geldkapital scheinbar immer mehr vom unmittelbaren Produktionsprozess. Die folgende Grafik zeigt, dass heute nur ca. 1/7 aller internationalen Kapitalflüsse Direktinvestitionen sind. Die restlichen 5/6 beziehen sich auf Banken- oder Spekulationsgeschäfte.

 

Grafik 10: Zusammensetzung der internationalen Kapitalflüsse, 1980-2005 (50)

 

 

Ebenso wuchs in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten die Verschuldung massiv an. Das Kapital versucht, den Akkumulationsprozess durch vermehrtes Vorschießen von Geldkapital und Verringerung der Zirkulationskosten durch Kreditaufnahme in Gang zu halten. Dabei ist die objektive Rolle des Kredits zweischneidig. Einerseits beschleunigt der Kredit den Kapitalkreislauf, andererseits beschleunigt er in Zeiten der Krise den Bankrott. Marx schreibt hierzu: „Das Kreditwesen beschleunigt daher die materielle Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte und die Herstellung des Weltmarkts, die als materielle Grundlagen der neuen Produktionsform bis auf einen gewissen Höhegrad herzustellen, die historische Aufgabe der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise ist. Gleichzeitig beschleunigt der Kredit die gewaltsamen Ausbrüche dieses Widerspruchs, die Krisen, und damit die Elemente der Auflösung der alten Produktionsweise.“ (51)

Die wachsende Verschuldung findet auf allen Ebenen statt - Unternehmen, Staat, Privathaushalte - wie man anhand der folgenden Tabelle sehen kann.

 

 

 

Tabelle 12: Hypothekenschulden der Haushalte in Prozent des verfügbaren Einkommens, 1992-2003 (52)

                                               1992                      2000                      2003

USA                                      58.7%                    65.0%                    77.8%

Japan                                    41.6%                    54.8%                    58.4%

Deutschland                                      59.3%                    84.4%                    83.0%

Frankreich                                          28.5%                    35.0%                    39.5%

Italien                                                  8.4%                      15.1%                    19.8%

Kanada                                                               61.9%                    68.0%                    77.1%

Großbritannien                                 79.4%                    83.1%                    104.6%

Spanien                                               22.8%                    47.8%                    67.4%

Niederlande                                      77.5%                    156.9%                 207.7%

Australien                                          52.8%                    83.2%                    119.5%

 

Die folgende Grafik zeigt die langfristige Zunahme der Verschuldung der privaten Haushalte am Beispiel der USA.

Doch nicht nur die privaten Haushalte sind zunehmend verschuldet, sondern auch die Unternehmen.

 

Grafik 11: Verschuldung der privaten Haushalte in den USA (Hypothekenschulden und Konsumkredite in Prozent des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts), 1952-2006 (53)

 

 

Grafik 12: Verschuldung der privaten Haushalte und Unternehmen in den USA (in Prozent des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts), 1952-2006 (54)

 

Die nächste Übersicht zeigt das Anwachsen der Unternehmensschulden im Verhältnis zum Gewinn.

 

 

Grafik 13: Unternehmensschulden im Verhältnis zum Gewinn in den USA, 1952-2000 (55)

 

 

Zusammengefasst können wir sagen, dass die Verschuldung bis zur Kreditkrise 2007 einen historischen Höchststand erreicht hat und der Kapitalismus immer mehr auf Pump lebt. Das immer größer werdende Kreditvolumen war wiederum ein Resultat der Unfähigkeit des Kapitals, den langfristigen Niedergang der produktiven Arbeit zu überwinden.

 

Zunehmende Plünderung der halbkolonialen Welt

 

Ebenso unterwarf die imperialistische Bourgeoisie in den letzten Jahrzehnten erfolgreich die „Dritte Welt“ - oder wie MarxistInnen sagen, die Halbkolonien. Unter Halbkolonien verstehen MarxistInnen jene Staaten, die zwar formell staatlich unabhängig sind, wirtschaftlich und letztlich auch politisch jedoch vom Imperialismus abhängig sind.

Mit der Globalisierung fand eine massive Durchdringung der halbkolonialen Länder durch die Monopole - die multinationalen Konzerne - und damit ein Prozess forcierter imperialistischer Ausplünderung statt. Dies erfolgte oft durch „strukturelle Anpassungsprogramme,“ mit denen die Weltbank und der IWF die Entwicklungsländer zu neoliberalen Reformen wie Sozialabbau, Privatisierung des Gesundheits- und Bildungswesens oder der Öffnung der heimischen Märkte für die multinationalen Konzerne zwang. Durch massiven Kapitalexport in Form von Krediten, Direktinvestitionen, spekulativen Anlagen usw. schuf die Bourgeoisie die Voraussetzungen, um Riesengewinne über Unternehmensprofite, Zinseinnahmen und Fondsgewinne einzustreichen.

Das Ergebnis ist ein enormer Netto-Transfer von Kapital aus den Halbkolonien in die Taschen der imperialistischen Bourgeoisie (Tabelle 13).

 

Tabelle 13: Netto-Transfer von finanziellen Ressourcen in Entwicklungsländer und ehemalige stalinistische Staaten 1995-2006 (in Milliarden US-Dollar) (56)

 

Zusammengerechnet ergibt dies allein für den Zeitraum 1995-2006 einen Netto-Abfluss von 2.877,7 Mrd. US-Dollar, die von halbkolonialen Ländern in Richtung imperialistische Zentren flossen! Um sich ein Bild vom Ausmaß dieser finanziellen Aussaugung durch das Finanzkapital zu machen, wollen wir folgende Berechnung vornehmen: 2005 betrug das kombinierte Brutto-Inlandsprodukt dieser Regionen 10.952,9 Mrd. US-Dollar (57). Der Abfluss von 782,8 Mrd. US-Dollar in diesem Jahr entsprach knapp 7,2% des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts der halbkolonialen Welt. Wohlgemerkt, bei dieser Zahl handelt es sich nicht um die Profite des imperialistischen Kapitals - von denen ja ein Gutteil im Land selbst entweder konsumiert wird oder zwecks neuer Profitgewinnung in die Kapitalakkumulation fließt - sondern ausschließlich um jenen Teil, der direkt aus der halbkolonialen Welt heraus geplündert wird.

Diese Zahlen sind erschütternd genug, aber sie zeigen bei weitem nicht die ganze Wahrheit. Die verschiedenen strukturellen Anpassungsprogramme, WTO-Runden u.a. Vereinbarungen haben den sozialen Zusammenhalt vieler Länder zerstört, haben zu Bürgerkriegen, Hunger, Aufständen und Revolutionen geführt. Seit 2000 haben wir viele Krisen erlebt. 2001 die schwere Krise in Argentinien, als der IWF die Wirtschaft mit seinen Diktaten zerstörte. Wir haben Rebellionen gegen den Neoliberalismus in Paraguay, Bolivien, Nigeria, Thailand, Venezuela u.a. Ländern gesehen. Auch die jüngste Krise in Kenia kann der Verschlechterung der Einkommenslage vieler Menschen in der Periode des neoliberalen Booms zugeschrieben werden.

Diese dem Imperialismus eigene Entwicklungstendenz der Ausplünderung der Halbkolonien führt zu wachsender Instabilität und Zerrüttung großer Teile der halbkolonialen Welt. Afrika ist hierbei im negativen Sinne des Wortes Vorreiter dieser verheerenden Entwicklung.

Für den Imperialismus - und allen voran für die USA - bedeutet das, verstärkt in der halbkolonialen Welt zu intervenieren. Wenn die lokalen herrschenden Klassen nicht mehr in der Lage sind, die dortigen Ausbeutungsverhältnisse zugunsten des Imperialismus zu sichern, muss der Imperialismus die Sache selbst in die Hand nehmen. Das Resultat ist eine verstärkte Anbindung der halbkolonialen Staaten an die reichen Metropolen - sei es durch die direkte Koppelung der Währung (Dollarisierung in Lateinamerika, Currency Board ...), sei es durch die weltweit zunehmende Stationierung imperialistischer Truppen in halbkolonialen Ländern (Balkan, Zentralasien, Philippinen, Kolumbien, Tschad ...), durch Stellvertreter-Kriege (Somalia) oder durch die Errichtung offener Protektorate (z.B. Balkan, Afghanistan, Irak).

Diese Maßnahmen mögen die Profite steigern, aber gleichzeitig verschärfen sie die sozialen Konflikte und Klassenkämpfe. Die fortgesetzten Attacken auf Löhne und Sozialleistungen, jetzt auch noch verstärkt mit globaler Inflation gekoppelt, senken die Konsumtionskraft der Arbeiterklasse und von Teilen der Mittelschichten und provozieren den Klassenkampf von unten. Die zunehmende Auspressung der halbkolonialen Welt birgt unzweifelhaft große materielle Vorteile für das imperialistische Kapital. Aber ebenso unausweichlich führt dies auch zum Widerstand der unterdrückten Völker.

 

Die Untergrabung der Hegemonie der USA

 

Wir wenden uns nun den Perspektiven der kapitalistischen Weltordnung zu und betrachten die Wechselwirkung der ökonomischen und politischen Faktoren und wie sie zu Konflikten zwischen den großen imperialistischen Mächten führen. Friedrich Engels beschrieb das Verhältnis zwischen ökonomischer Basis und politischem Überbau folgendermaßen: „Wir sehen die ökonomischen Bedingungen als das in letzter Instanz die geschichtliche Entwicklungen Bedingende an. (...) Nur sind hier zwei Punkt nicht zu übersehen. a) Die politische, rechtliche, philosophische, literarische, künstlerische etc. Entwicklung beruht auf der ökonomischen. Aber sie alle reagieren auch aufeinander und auf die ökonomische Basis. Es ist nicht, daß die ökonomische Lage Ursache, allein aktiv ist und alles andere nur passive Wirkung. Sondern es ist die Wechselwirkung auf Grundlage der in letzter Instanz stets sich durchsetzenden ökonomischen Notwendigkeit.“ (58)

Daher kann Kapital nur existieren, wenn der Austausch der Waren und der Verwertungsprozess des Kapitals gesellschaftlich geregelt und organisiert wird - daher die Bedeutung von Staat, Rechtsverhältnissen usw. Das Kapital kann nur existieren, wenn die Wert schaffende Ware Arbeitskraft ständig reproduziert und produziert wird und neue Arbeitskräfte geschaffen werden. Dies findet außerhalb des Arbeitsplatzes statt: durch das Gebären und Aufziehen von Kindern sowie die unbezahlte Arbeit von Frauen.

Kapitalismus setzt also nicht nur die Herstellung und Wiederherstellung von Waren und Kapital voraus, sondern auch - und damit naturnotwendig verbunden - die Herstellung und Wiederherstellung der gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen, die erstere erst ermöglichen.

„Der Prozess der Reproduktion ist nicht nur ein Prozess der Reproduktion der materiellen Elemente der Produktion, sondern ein Prozess der Reproduktion der Produktionsverhältnisse selbst.“ (59)

Die Aufrechterhaltung des widersprüchlichen Gleichgewichts einer von Klassengegensätzen zerfressenen Gesellschaft wäre undenkbar, ohne ein feinmaschiges, ideologisches Gewebe, das die unterdrückten Klassen und Schichten an die herrschende Bourgeoisie bindet und dafür sorgt, dass sich diese mit Ausbeutung und Unterdrückung in einem gewissen Maß abfinden. Sowohl die Dynamik als auch die Fragilität des kapitalistischen Produktions- und Reproduktionsprozesses haben in der imperialistischen Epoche allgemein und in der gegenwärtigen Periode der Globalisierung im Besonderen an Schärfe gewonnen. Das bedeutet, dass sich die Gegensätze zwischen verschiedenen Tendenzen der imperialistischen Ökonomie, der imperialistischen Politik und der imperialistischen Ideologie(n) verstärken und explosiver werden - wie auch die Gegensätze zwischen verschiedenen Sektoren des kapitalistischen Weltmarktes.

Nun gehört der Widerspruch zwischen den Produktivkräften und den Nationalstaaten zu einem der grundlegendsten im Kapitalismus - in der Epoche des Monopolkapitalismus (Imperialismus) gilt das umso mehr. Trotzki schrieb dazu: „Als klassische Arena schuf sich der Kapitalismus im Kampf mit dem mittelalterlichen Partikularismus den Nationalstaat. Doch kaum richtig zusammengefügt; begann er sich schon in eine Bremse für die wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Entwicklung zu verwandeln. Aus dem Widerspruch zwischen den Produktivkräften und dem Rahmen des Nationalstaats, in Verbindung mit dem Grundwiderspruch - zwischen den Produktivkräften und dem Privateigentum an den Produktionsmitteln -, erwuchs eben die Krise des Kapitalismus als der Weltgesellschaftsordnung.“ (60)

Aus diesem Widerspruch ergibt sich für den imperialistischen Kapitalismus die überlebensnotwendige Dringlichkeit eines Hegemons - einer imperialistischen Großmacht und der damit verbundenen Monopolkapitalgruppe, die die zentrifugalen Kräfte des niedergehenden Weltkapitalismus zusammenhält und für einen halbwegs geordneten Ablauf des internationalen Produktions-, Reproduktions- und Zirkulationsprozesses sorgt.

In der Periode zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen 1914-1945 fehlte ein solcher Hegemon. Das war ein wesentlicher Grund - neben dem historisch hohen Niveau der Organisierung revolutionärer ArbeiterInnen - für die schweren Erschütterungen des Kapitalismus in dieser Zeit. Seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg spielte der US-Imperialismus die Rolle des Weltpolizisten. Doch in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten erlebten wir zwei miteinander zusammenhängende und einander verstärkende Prozesse: Einerseits befindet sich der Kapitalismus in einer immer tiefgreifenderen Krisenperiode. Andererseits sinkt die globale wirtschaftliche Vormachtstellung der USA. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist der amerikanische Hegemon immer weniger in der Lage, seine Aufgabe als Weltpolizist zu erfüllen. Doch hinter der scheinbaren Dominanz der USA wirken wichtige Prozesse, die sie weltweit und im Verhältnis zu den anderen imperialistischen Mächten schwächen.

Betrachten wir zuerst einige wirtschaftliche Kerndaten der USA. Wie Tabelle 14 zeigt, sind die USA nach wie vor eindeutig die stärkste Wirtschaftsmacht.

Auch wenn der US-Kapitalismus von der allgemeinen Tendenz der Stagnation der Produktivkräfte betroffen ist, gelang es den USA in den 1990ern besser als den imperialistischen Konkurrenten, seinen wirtschaftlichen Niedergang zu bremsen und den Fall der Profitrate in gewissen Maßen umzukehren. Aus diesem Grund konnte der US-Kapitalismus in den vergangenen 10-15 Jahren, den ökonomischen Aufholprozess seiner wichtigsten Konkurrenten, Japan und die EU, aufhalten.

 

Tabelle 14: Vergleich zwischen den Staaten: Brutto-Inlandsprodukt, Brutto-Inlandsprodukt pro Kopf und Bevölkerung (2005) (61)

Land                                     Einwohner                         BIP in                                                   BIP pro Kopf

                                                Millionen                            US-Dollar, Mrd                                 in US-Dollar

Welt                                       6,438                                    44,385                                                  6,987

USA                                      297                                        12,455                                                  42,007

EU-25                                    459                                        13,300                                                  28,951

EU-15                                   385                                        12,615                                                  32,741

Japan                                    128                                        4,506                                                     35,215

Rußland                              143                                        764                                                        5,337

China                                   1,305                                     2,229                                                     1,709

Indien                                  1,095                                     785                                                        717

 

Tabelle 15: Die Entwicklung der wirtschaftlichen Stärke der EU und Japans im Vergleich zu den USA, 1980-2005 (62)

                                                              BIP                                                        BIP pro Arbeitsstunde

                                                              (in % der USA)                                  (in % der USA)

                               1980      1990      2000      2005                                      1980      1990      2000      2005

USA                       100%     100%     100%     100%                                    100%     100%     100%     100%

EU-15                   111%     104.9%  94.5%    101.3%                                  84.9%    88.9%    93.7%    91%

Japan                    37.4%    40.3%    33.8%    36.2%                                   61.4%    71.3%    74.9%    74%

 

Dem US-Kapital gelang es besser als seinen europäischen Konkurrenten, seine Arbeiterklasse zu zwingen, mehr Stunden pro Jahr und mehr Jahre im Leben für weniger Lohn zu arbeiten sowie einen größeren Teil seiner Bevölkerung in den Arbeitsprozess hineinzupressen.

„In marxistischer Terminologie können wir den Vorteil des US-Kapitals (gegenüber dem EU-Kapital, d. A.) dahingehend zusammenfassen, daß es in der Schwächung der Arbeiterklasse und vice versa in der Steigerung der Ausbeutungsrate in der Periode des globalen Kapitalismus mehr Erfolg gehabt hat, als das in Europa der Fall war.“ (63)

Nichtsdestotrotz geriet die hegemoniale Rolle des US-Kapitals in vielen Bereichen unter Beschuss. Betrachten wir zunächst die Stellung der USA beim weltweiten Kapitalexport in Hinblick auf die Direktinvestitionen, wo wir eine eindeutige Stärkung der EU auf Kosten der USA feststellen können.

Ein ähnliches Bild ergibt sich beim Welthandel, genauer gesagt beim weltweiten Export. Während die USA nach wie vor ein wichtiger Importeur von Waren sind, ist ihr Anteil an den weltweiten Exporten mit 8.9% so niedrig wie noch nie seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (trotz eines für das Exportgeschäft günstigen Wechselkurses).

 

 

Tabelle 16: Verteilung der ausländischen Direktinvestitionen nach Staaten und Regionen (64)

 

Tabelle 17: Anteile der Staaten und Regionen am Welthandel 1948-2003 (65)

 

Gleichzeitig geraten die USA als hegemoniale imperialistische Macht in eine wachsende Abhängigkeit von der Weltwirtschaft und Weltpolitik. Denn das erfolgreiche Vorantreiben der kapitalistischen Globalisierung vergrößert auch die Abhängigkeit des US-Kapitals vom Weltmarkt. Um die Zufuhr der eigenen Ökonomie mit billigen Rohstoffen und Halbprodukten, um profitable Anlagemöglichkeiten für das eigene Kapital im Ausland sowie die Bedienung der Zinsen zu sichern, müssen die USA und die anderen imperialistischen Mächte ihren Zugriff auf die halbkoloniale Welt festigen. Aus dem gleichen Grund müssen sie die Halbkolonien zwingen, ihre Industrie und Banken an das imperialistische Kapital zu verscherbeln oder sie zur noch weiteren Öffnung der Märkte anzuhalten.

Folgende Zahlen sollen die wachsende Abhängigkeit des US-Imperialismus von der Weltwirtschaft - und damit auch Weltpolitik - veranschaulichen. So mehrt sich z.B. mit jeden Tag die Abhängigkeit der US-Wirtschaft vom regelmäßigen Zufluß ausländischen Geldkapitals. Das Ergebnis ist ein seit Jahren wachsendes Zahlungsbilanzdefizit (das Verhältnis aller Waren-, Dienstleitungs- und Geldkapitalexporte aus den USA in die Welt minus alle Waren-, Dienstleitungs- und Geldkapitalimporte aus der Welt in die USA). Ende 2006 erreichte das US-Zahlungsbilanzdefizit eine Rekordhöhe von 800 Mrd. US-Dollar. Dies entspricht einem Wert von 6.8% des Brutto-Inlandsprodukts und somit in etwa so viel wie der Gesamtwert der Netto-Investitionen in den USA im gleichen Jahr. Mit anderen Worten, die USA müssen täglich über 2 Mrd. US-Dollar ausländisches Kapital importieren, um ihren Konsum und ihre Investitionen zu sichern.

Woher kommt das Kapital, mit dem die USA ihr Defizit finanzieren? Wie die folgende Statistik zeig, kommt es vor allem von den OPEC-Staaten (also dem Nahen Osten) sowie Ostasien (Japan, China, Südostasien) (66). So wird auch ein wichtiger ökonomischer Beweggrund der US-Außenpolitik ersichtlich. Die USA müssen alles daran setzen, ihre Vorherrschaft im Nahen Osten und in Ostasien zu wahren, um auch weiterhin die dortigen Regierungen zur Finanzierung ihrer Schulden anzuhalten.

Damit einher geht die Tendenz, dass nicht nur der Besitz US-amerikanischer Kapitalisten an ausländischen Kapitalen zunimmt, sondern der Besitz ausländischer Kapitalisten an US-amerikanischen Kapitalen noch rascher wächst. Dies wurde besonders im Zuge der Kreditkrise 2007, als Staatsfonds aus Saudi-Arabien, Dubai, China u.a. Schlüsselexporteuren große Kapitalvolumen aufbrachten, um siechende US-Finanzriesen vor dem Bankrott zu retten.

 

Grafik 14: US-Auslandsdirektinvestitionen und Auslandsdirektinvestitionen in den USA im Verhältnis im Verhältnis zum Netto-Inlandsprodukt der USA, 1952-2003 (in Prozent) (67)

 

 

Die dramatische Veränderung der weltweiten Position des US-Imperialismus wird noch deutlicher, wenn man die Entwicklung seiner Rolle als Gläubiger bzw. als Schuldner gegenüber dem Rest der Welt betrachtet. Waren die USA bis 1985 ein Netto-Gläubiger gegenüber dem Rest der Welt, hat sich das seitdem radikal gewandelt. Heute sind die USA der weltgrößte Schuldner. Wiegt man Schulden und Guthaben der US-Wirtschaft gegeneinander auf, so ergibt sich eine Netto-Verschuldung von 25% des BIP (68)!  Die größer werdende Abhängigkeit der USA vom Weltmarkt zeigt sich auch darin, dass das US-Kapital einen wachsenden Anteil des Gesamtprofits aus seinen Investitionen im Ausland bezieht. Während das US-Kapital 1978 noch 10% seiner gesamten Profite im Ausland machte, wuchs dieser Anteil bis 2001 auf 25,7% (69).

Aus diesen kurzen Ausführungen wird klar, dass das US-Kapital zunehmend abhängig von seinen weltweiten Investitionen sowie von der Kapitalzufuhr zur Finanzierung seiner Investitionen im eigenen Land ist. So wird deutlich, dass die relativen ökonomischen Erfolge der USA in den letzten 15 Jahren nicht nur auf eine Steigerung der Ausbeutung der heimischen Arbeiterklasse zurückgehen, sondern mindestens ebenso auf die zunehmende Plünderung der Welt. Es liegt auf der Hand, dass diese Methoden keineswegs ein Erfolgsmodell für alle anderen kapitalistischen Staaten sind - wenn alle so „erfolgreich“ plündern, bleibt nicht genug für alle Diebe übrig. Darüber hinaus sind dies Methoden, die nicht unbegrenzt fortgesetzt und gesteigert werden können. Ab einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt werden die wirtschaftlichen Verluste für die anderen kapitalistischen Staaten zu groß und sie werden die Finanzierung der USA einschränken.

Schon jetzt macht sich der wachsende Druck auf viele Länder bemerkbar, ihre Waren nicht mehr nur in US-Dollar zu handeln, sondern auf den Euro umzusteigen. Kein Wunder, dass in den vergangenen vier Jahren der Wert des Euro gegenüber dem US-Dollar von 0,87 auf 1,34 um mehr als die Hälfte gestiegen ist. Ab dem Moment, wenn die anderen Länder ihre Dollar-Währungsreserven auflösen bzw. nicht mehr so viel Kapital in die USA exportieren, könnte die US-Wirtschaft einen schweren Schlag erleiden.

Die wachsende Abhängigkeit von Weltmarkt und -politik bedeutet auch, dass der US-Kapitalismus mehr und mehr durch weltweite Erschütterungen, Instabilitäten und Widerstände verwundbar wird. Genau deswegen greifen die USA zu einer immer aggressiveren, militaristischeren Außenpolitik, um ihre Konkurrenten und Gegner niederzuhalten. In den Worten des früheren US-Sicherheitsberaters Zbigniew Brzezinski ist das Leitmotiv für die Außenpolitik der USA treffend zusammengefasst: „Bedient man sich einer Terminologie, die an das brutalere Zeitalter der alten Weltreiche gemahnt, so lauten die drei großen Imperative imperialer Geostrategie: Absprachen zwischen den Vasallen zu verhindern und ihre Abhängigkeit in Fragen der Sicherheit zu bewahren, die tributpflichtigen Staaten fügsam zu halten und zu schützen und dafür zu sorgen, daß die Barbaren-Völker sich nicht zusammenschließen.“ (70)

Es stellt sich somit die Frage, welche imperialistische Macht die USA als Hegemon ablösen könnte? Die einzige Macht, die aufgrund ihrer wirtschaftlichen Stärke dafür überhaupt in Frage kommt, ist die Europäische Union. Alle anderen imperialistischen Staaten sind zu schwach, um der Welt ihren Stempel aufzudrücken.

Allerdings ist es unrealistisch, dass die EU in absehbarer Zeit die eindeutige Führungsmacht werden könnte. Zuerst einmal muss man hierbei anmerken, dass die EU - im Gegensatz zu den USA - kein einheitlicher Staat ist, sondern ein Staatenbund, in dem es permanent Konflikte und Machtkämpfe zwischen verschiedenen Staaten wie Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien gibt. Es gibt in der EU selbst keine eindeutige Führungsmacht. Zwischen den nationalen herrschenden Klassen gibt es Konflikte darüber, ob bzw. wie die EU mittels einer Art Verfassung zu einem einheitlicheren und schlagkräftigeren Block geformt werden soll. Darüber hinaus ist die EU weit davon entfernt, auf wirtschaftlicher Ebene den Weltmarkt zu dominieren. Auf politischer oder militärischer Ebene gilt dies noch viel mehr. Natürlich versuchen die herrschenden Klassen des deutsch-französischen Blocks, ihren Rückstand auf die USA aufzuholen. Aber dieser Prozess braucht Zeit und - was noch wichtiger ist - je mehr die EU gegenüber den USA aufholt, desto schärfer werden der Konkurrenzkampf und damit die wirtschaftlichen und politischen (und ab einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt wohl auch militärischen) Konflikte zwischen beiden.

 

Schlussfolgerungen

 

In den letzten hundert Jahren haben wir eine langfristige Tendenz zur Stagnation gesehen, deren Grundlage die steigende organische Zusammensetzung des Kapitals und die zunehmende Monopolisierung ist. Die Widersprüche innerhalb und zwischen den imperialistischen Mächten nehmen ebenso zu wie die Vorherrschaft der USA untergraben wird und die weltweite wirtschaftliche und politische Instabilität zunimmt.

Diese Entwicklungen bestätigen Lenins Konzept des Imperialismus. Die monopolistische Bourgeoisie beherrscht die Sektoren der Produktion mit der modernsten Technologie, der höchsten organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals und daher der stärksten Tendenz der fallenden Profitrate. Die Überakkumulation des Kapitals führt zum Kapitalexport, zum Parasitismus und der Spekulation in Aktien, Immobilien und Finanzderivaten. Währungsturbulenzen verschärfen die inner-imperialistischen Rivalitäten und den Konkurrenzkampf zwischen den imperialistischen Bourgeoisien um die Aufteilung und Neuaufteilung der Welt; gleichzeitig versuchen Nationalstaaten die Kosten der Abwertung abzuschieben und auf ihre Rivalen und Untergebenen abzuwälzen.

Die gegenwärtige Periode der Globalisierung hat die Leninsche Konzeption des Imperialismus mehr denn je bestätigt. Der mächtigste aller imperialistischen Staaten war in der Lage, die Früchte seiner Erfolge gegen die eigene Arbeiterklasse sowie des Zusammenbruchs des Ostblocks zu ernten. Er war in der Lage, alle erdenklichen „entgegenwirkenden Ursachen“ zum Einsatz zu bringen, um die Profitraten zu steigern und der dem Imperialismus eigenen Tendenz zur Stagnation entgegenzuwirken.

Doch wie die Kreditkrise 2007 und die darauf folgenden Ereignisse gezeigt haben, konnten diese Maßnahmen nur vorübergehend eine Dynamik wiederherstellen. Heute kommt die Weltordnung Lenins Modell näher, als dies in den letzten 50 Jahren der Fall war. Vor uns liegen mit Gewissheit eine Zunahme der Instabilität und eine Fortsetzung der „Epoche von Kriegen und Revolution“ - gerade deswegen sollte Lenins Schlussfolgerung nicht vergessen werden: „Der Imperialismus ist der Vorabend der sozialen Revolution des Proletariats.“ (71)

 

Fußnoten

(1) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus und die Spaltung des Sozialismus (1916); in: LW 23, S. 102. An einer anderen Stelle gibt er eine ähnliche Definition des Imperialismus. (Siehe: W. I. Lenin: Plan zum Artikel „Der Imperialismus und unsere Stellung zu ihm;“ in: LW 39, S. 793f.)

(2) W. I. Lenin: Vorwort zu N. Bucharin: Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft, in: LW 22, S. 102f.

(3) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III; in: MEW 25 S. 454

(4) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III; in: MEW 25 S. 453

(5) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß, in: LW 22, S. 281

(6) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß, in: LW 22, S. 281

(7) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß, in: LW 22, S. 305

(8) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß, in: LW 22, S. 305f.

(9) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß (1917), in: LW 22, S. 270f.

(10) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus und die Spaltung des Sozialismus (1916); in: LW 23, S. 104

(11) W. I. Lenin: Der Opportunismus und der Zusammenbruch der II. Internationale; in: LW 22, S. 108

(12)12 Nikolai Bucharin: Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft (1915), Berlin 1929, S. 190f.

(13) Eugen Preobrazenskij: Marx und Lenin (1924); in: Eugen Preobrazenskij: Die sozialistische Alternative. Marx, Lenin und die Anarchisten über die Abschaffung des Kapitalismus, Berlin 1974, S. 134f.

(14) Dieses falsche Verständnis zeichnete den Sozialdemokratismus und später den Stalinismus aus, der auf dieser Basis 1924 die Theorie des „Sozialismus in einem Land“ entwickelte.

(15) Leo Trotzki: Die permanente Revolution; in: Leo Trotzki: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Die permanente Revolution, Frankfurt a. M. (1971), S.7

(16) Friedrich Engels: Dialektik der Natur; in: MEW 20, S. 511f, .

(17) Nikolai Bucharin: Ökonomik der Transformationsperiode (1920), S. 148.,

(18) Eine ausführlichere Diskussion der Frage der Produktivkräfte hat der Autor dieser Zeilen in folgenden Artikel unternommen: Die widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte im Kapitalismus; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 37 (2007)

(19) „Von allen Produktionsinstrumenten ist die größte Produktivkraft die revolutionäre Klasse selbst.“ (Karl Marx: Das Elend der Philosophie, MEW 4, S. 181.

(20) Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß (1917), in: LW 22, S. 194

(21) Für 1971-2000 siehe World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2002, S. 234; für 2000-2005 siehe United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2007, S. 2. Die Zahlenreihe zwischen 1971-2000 beruht auf Weltbank-Berechnungen des GDP zu konstanten Preisen und Wechselkursen von 1995. Die Zahlenreihe zwischen 2000-2005 beruht auf UN-Berechnungen des GDP zu konstanten Preisen und Wechselkursen von 2000. Die 2.7% ergeben sich aus dem arithmetischen Mittel der Angaben für die Jahre 2001-2005 (1.6%, 1.9%, 2.7%, 4.0% sowie 3.5%).

(22) World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2007, S. 3

(23) PricewaterhouseCoopers UK Economic Outlook March 2007, S. 33

(24) ILO: A Fair Globalisation : Creating Opportunities For All (2004) S. 36

(25) United Nations: World Economic and Social Survey 2006. Diverging Growth and Development, S. 9

(26) World Bank Indicators 2005, sowie World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.1

(27) Für die Jahre 1970-2000: OECD - Understanding Economic Growth (2004), S. 18f.; Die Statistik bezieht sich auf die 24 Mitgliedsstaaten der OECD. Sie umfasst daher nicht nur imperialistische Länder, sondern auch Staaten - wie Ungarn, Tschechische Republik, die Slowakei, Mexiko oder Neuseeland - die einen halbkolonialen Charakter besitzen. Diese Länder hatten in den letzten Jahren eine Wachstumsrate, die über dem Durchschnitt der imperialistischen Ökonomien lag. Insofern verzerren sie diesen OECD-Durchschnitt etwas nach oben. Nichtsdestotrotz sind diese OECD-Zahlen nützliche Annäherungswerte, da die halbkolonialen Staaten innerhalb der OECD gegenüber den imperialistischen Ländern nicht allzu sehr ins Gewicht fallen. Die Angaben für 2000-2005 beziehen sich - mit Ausnahme jener für die EU - auf: World Bank: World Development Report 2007, S. 295. Für die Jahre 1960-1969 haben wir die OECD-Statistik zitiert aus: Robert Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble. The US in the World Economy, London 2002, S. 47. Bei diesen Angaben beziehen sich die Zahlen für die imperialistischen Staaten auf die G-7. Die Angaben für die EU-15 für die Jahre 1960-1969 beziehen sich nur auf Deutschland. Die Angaben für die EU-15 für die Jahre 1999-2005 beziehen sich auf die 11 zur Euro-Arena gehörenden EU-Staaten und entstammen folgender Quelle: European Commission: THE EU ECONOMY 2006 REVIEW, S.61

(28) European Commission: Statistical Annex of European Economy Autumn 2006, S. 52f. Da in der angeführten EU-Statistik keine Angaben für die EU-15 für die Jahresreihe 1961-70 und 1971-80 haben wir in diesen Fällen das arithmetische Mittel von Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien und Italien verwendet. Da in der angeführten EU-Statistik die Angaben für die USA und Japan nur bis 2003 reichen haben wir in diesen Fällen folgende Quellen verwendet: Für die USA 2001-2005 wurde folgende Quelle herangezogen: Economic Report of the President 2007 (USA), S. 290. Für Japan wurde verwendet World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.1 http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm wobei sich diese Daten auf den Zeitraum 2000-2004 beziehen.

(29) World Bank: World Development Indicators 2004, S. 220, World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, Table 4.9 http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section4.htm

(30) United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2006, S. 15

(31) United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2006, S. 158

(32) Barclays Capital (2006) “Global Outlook: Implications for Financial Markets”, Economic and Market Strategy, December 2006, S. 17

(33) Gérard Duménil/Dominique Lévy: Capital Resurgent. Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (2004), abgebildet in: Chris Harman: Snapshots of capitalism today and tomorrow, International Socialism Journal (ISJ) 113

(34) Bei der Netto-Profitrate wird - im Unterschied zur Brutto-Profitrate - die Profitrate anhand des Netto-Kapitalwerts berechnet, also nach Abzug des jährlichen Verschleißes des fixen Kapitals.

(35) Robert Brenner : “After Boom, Bubble, and Bust: Where is the US Economy Going?” in Worlds of Capitalism: Institutions, Economic Performance, and Governance in the Era of Globalization (2005), S. 204. Die Zahlenreihe für Japan beginnt 1952, jene für Deutschland 1950. Die Angaben für die USA und Japan beziehen sich auf die nicht-finanziellen Unternehmenssektor, die für Deutschland auf den nicht-landwirtschaftlichen Unternehmenssektor.

(36) Fred Moseley: Marxian Crisis Theory and the Postwar U. S. Economy, in: A.Saad-Filho (ed.), Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Introduction, (2003) S. 212 bzw. Fred Moseley: Is The U.S. Economy Headed For A Hard Landing? Moseleys Profitratenberechnungen beziehen sich auf die gesamte Wirtschaft und umfassen die Profite sowohl des nicht-finanziellen als auch des finanziellen Sektors.

(37) Doug Henwood: After the New Economy, New York 2003, S. 204; siehe auch http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/NewEcon.html

(38) Labour market developments in the euro area, in: Quarterly Report on the Euro Area 3/2006, S. 28. Unter unbereinigter Lohnquote versteht man die Entwicklung des Anteils der Löhne am Volkseinkommen ohne Berücksichtigung der Veränderung der Anzahl der Lohnabhängigen. Da die Lohnquote hier unbereinigt ist, unterscheiden sich die Zahlen von der vorhergehenden Grafik. Die Tendenz ist jedoch die gleiche.

(39) Siehe Kevin Phillips: Die amerikanische Geldaristokratie (2003) S. 160 bzw. 174

(40) Doug Henwood: After the New Economy, New York 2003, S. 41; siehe auch http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/NewEcon.html

(41) Alan Freeman: The Inequality of Nations; in: Alan Freeman/Boris Kargalitsky: The Politics of Empire. Globalisation in Crisis,London , 2004, S. 50

(42) Phillip Anthony O Hara, Growth and Development of Global Political Economy, Routledge 2006, p57

(43) See International Labour Organisation, Global Employment Trends, January 2008

(44) Ebenda

(45) Siehe: http://www.miprox.de/Wirtschaft_allgemain/Derivate.html

(46) Daten zusammengestellt aus: UNCTAD: World Investment Report 1995, S. 411ff. sowie 421ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2000, S. 306ff. sowie 319ff., UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2006, S. 307ff. Die Angaben zu Südosteuropa und der Staaten der ehemaligen Sowjetunion (GUS) sind nur teilweise vollständig, da in früheren UNCTAD-Statistiken diese Ländern gemeinsam mit den osteuropäischen Staaten angeführt wurden, die 2004 der EU beitraten und somit die Statistik verzerrt hätten.

Unter Beständen an ausländischen Direktinvestitionen versteht man die - oft über einen längeren Zeitraum angehäufte - Gesamtheit des in einem Land bzw. von einem Land investierten Kapitals. Unter Ströme hingegen die jeweils in einem Jahr neu getätigten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen.

ADI im Inland bezieht sich auf den Anteil von importierten ADI an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen bzw. BIP des Empfängerlandes. ADI im Ausland bezieht sich auf den Anteil von exportierten ADI an den Brutto-Anlageinvestitionen bzw. BIP des Landes, von dem die ADI ausgehen.

Die UNCTAD-Kategorien „Entwickelte Länder“ und „Entwicklungsländer“ sind natürlich höchst problematisch und drücken die imperialistische Arroganz auf begrifflicher Ebene aus. Im Großen und Ganzen kann man unter der Kategorie „Entwickelte Länder“ die imperialistischen und unter „Entwicklungsländer“ die halbkolonialen Ländern einordnen. Allerdings gibt es hier eine nicht unwichtige Einschränkung: Die UNCTAD zählt die halbkolonialen Länder Osteuropas, die 2004 der EU beitraten und in denen die ADI eine große Rolle in der Kapitalakkumulation spielen, in ihrem jüngsten „World Investment Report“ zu den „Entwickelten Länder“.

Die Tabelle der UNCTAD weist darüber hinaus die Schwäche auf, dass sie die Staaten Südosteuropas und der ehemaligen Sowjetunion in eine gemeinsame Gruppe einordnen und diese von den anderen Kategorien trennen. Tatsächlich jedoch besitzen alle diese Länder mit Ausnahme Russlands einen halb-kolonialen Charakter. Russland ist hingegen ist ein imperialistischer Staat.

(47) UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2006, S. 7. Bezüglich der Spalten für das Jahr 2005 weisen wir noch einmal darauf hin, dass die UNCTAD die halbkolonialen Länder Osteuropas, die 2004 der EU beitraten, nun zu den „Entwickelten Länder“ zählt. Da in diesen Ländern das imperialistische Kapital eine große Rolle in der Kapitalakkumulation spielt, sind die Veränderungen zwischen 2000 und 2005 nicht zuletzt auch auf diesen Faktor zurückzuführen.

(48) Doug Henwood: After the New Economy, New York 2003, S. 191

(49) Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : Neoliberal Dynamics: A New Phase? (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm

(50) IMF: Global Financial Stability Report (April 2007), S.65

(51) Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III; in: MEW 25, S. 457

(52) Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland: Economic Trends 1/2006, S. 9

(53) Roland Fressl (CPM): Market Facts. Immobilienmarkt (2007), S.8; http://www.securitykag.at/pdfs/marketfacts/Immobilienmarkt.pdf

(54) Roland Fressl (CPM): Market Facts. Immobilienmarkt (2007), S.8; http://www.securitykag.at/pdfs/marketfacts/Immobilienmarkt.pdf

(55) Wynne Godley/Alex Izurieta (The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College): Strategic Prospects and Policies for the U.S. Economy, S. 8

(56) United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2007, S. 58

(57) Wir berechnen hierfür anhand der aktuellen Weltbank-Statistik das Welt-Bruttonationaleinkommen minus dem Brutto-Nationaleinkommen der „high income“-Staaten (die wir für diesen Zweck grob mit den imperialistischen Ländern gleichsetzen). Siehe World Bank: World Development Report 2008, S. 335

(58) Friedrich Engels: Brief an Walther Borgius (25.1.1894); in: MEW 39, S. 205

(59) Nikolai Bucharin: Ökonomik der Transformationsperiode (1920), S. 69

(60) Leo Trotzki: Krieg und die Vierte Internationale (1934); in: Trotzki Schriften 3.3. S. 555

(61) Global Britain Briefing Note, No 45 (6th November 2006): European Union 2005 Prosperity Rankings; World Bank: World Development Report 2007, S. 289 bzw. 295. Bei den Angaben zu China ist Hong Kong nicht berücksichtigt.

(62) M. O'Mahoney/B. van Ark (Hrsg.): EU Productivity and Competitiveness: An Industry Perspective (2003), S. 20, Bart Van Ark: Europe's Productivity Gap: Catching Up or Getting Stuck? (2006), S. 10 sowie World Bank: World Development Report 2007, S.  295.

(63) Michael Pröbsting: „Amerikanisierung oder Niedergang“. Widersprüche und Herausforderungen für das imperialistische Projekt der europäischen Vereinigung; in: Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 35, S. 33

(64) UNCTAD: World Investment Report 2006, S. 7

(65) WTO: International Trade Statistics 2006, S. 28f. Die Angaben für die EU beziehen sich auf die EWG (6) für 1963, die EG (9) für 1973, EG (10) für 1983, EU (12) für 1993 und EU (25) für 2005. Die Angaben für die Jahre 1948 und 1953 setzen sich aus dem addierten Anteil am Welthandel von Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien zusammen.

(66) Gilles Moëc/Laure Frey: Global Imbalances, Saving Glut and Investment Strike; Banque De France: Occasional Papers No. 1, February 2006, S. 5

(67) Siehe: Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : The Economics of U.S. Imperialism at the Turn of the 21st Century (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm

(68) Siehe: Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : The Economics of U.S. Imperialism at the Turn of the 21st Century (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm

(69) Siehe dazu Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy : Neoliberal Dynamics: A New Phase? (2004) http://www.cepremap.ens.fr/~levy/biblioa.htm.

(70) Zbigniew Brzezinski: The Grand Chessboard ? American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, New York, 1997, S. 40

(71) W. I. Lenin: Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus. Gemeinverständlicher Abriß (Vorwort von 1920), in: LW 22, 198

 

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Die widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte im Kapitalismus

Die Frage des Fortschritts im Kapitalismus vom Standpunkt der marxistischen Theorie aus betrachtet

 

Von Michael Pröbsting

 

 

 

Vorwort der Redaktion: Im Folgenden veröffentlichen wir einen Artikel von Michael Pröbsting über die Produktivkräfte des Kapitalismus. Diese Arbeit wurde 2007 in Revolutionärer Marxismus Nr. 37 – dem deutschsprachigen Organ der Liga für die Fünfte Internationale (LFI) – veröffentlicht. Sie wurde bald darauf auch auf Englisch übersetzt und im Buch The Credit Crunch veröffentlicht. Genosse Pröbsting war seit 1989 führendes Mitglied der LFI und wurde mit einer Gruppe Gleichgesinnter im April 2011 aus der LFI ausgeschlossen, als sie sich der zunehmenden zentristischen Degeneration der LFI widersetzten. Gemeinsam mit Genossinnen und Genossen in anderen Ländern bauten sie eine neue internationale Organisation auf – die Revolutionär-Kommunistische Internationale Tendenz (RCIT). Die RCIT ist heute in 11 Ländern präsent. Genosse Pröbsting ist Internationaler Sekretär der RCIT.

 

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

 

Zahlreiche bürgerliche Ideologen aber auch diverse pseudomarxistische Theoretiker sehen den Kapitalismus aufgrund der jüngsten technischen Entwicklungen und der Globalisierung in einer tiefgreifenden Aufschwungsphase. Inmitten einem Meer zunehmender Armut, Kriege und Klimakatastrophen und allgemeine einer um sich greifenden Zukunftsangst proklamieren sie zur Verteidigung ihrer kühnen Behauptung eine phänomenale Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte.

 

Wir wollen an dieser Stelle keine konkrete Analyse der Weltwirtschaft vornehmen – diese bleibt einer zukünftigen Ausgabe des Revolutionären Marxismus vorbehalten -, sondern konzentrieren uns auf eine theoretische Untersuchung des Begriffs Produktivkräfte und des Fortschritts vom Standpunkt der marxistischen Theorie aus betrachtet.

 

Allgemein gesprochen begehen die offenen und versteckten Apologeten des Kapitalismus einen grundlegenden, methodischen Fehler im Verständnis der Produktivkräfte: Sie setzen Produktivkräfte mit Produktion von Waren (bzw. Akkumulation von fixen Kapital) gleich. Aus diesem Grundfehler resultieren weitere Fehler. Sie können keine Tendenz zur Stagnation der Produktivkräfte erkennen, wenn das Brutto-Inlandsprodukt um sagen wir 2% oder 3% wächst oder der Kapitalstock um 1,5% zunimmt.

 

Rekapitulieren wir als erstes, was Marx und die Marxisten eigentlich unter Produktivkräften verstehen. Produktivkräfte umfassen sowohl die materiellen Mitteln und Resultate der Produktion – also Produktionsmittel (Maschinen etc.) und Waren – als auch die Menschen, die die Produktionsmittel bedienen und zu diesem Zweck bestimmte Formen der gesellschaftlichen Arbeitsteilung eingehen. Es versteht sich von selbst, daß Produktionsmittel und Arbeiter einander gegenseitig bedingen und – vom kapitalistischen Gesichtspunkt aus gesehen – der Zweck der Anwendung der Arbeiter an den kapitalistischen Produktionsmitteln darin besteht, Waren und dadurch Mehrwert zu produzieren. Produktivkräfte sind also nicht bloß eine Ansammlung von materiellen Dingen, sondern beinhalten auch und vor allem die Menschen und ihre Lebensbedingungen.

 

 

 

Der gesellschaftliche Charakter der Ware und der Produktivkräfte

 

 

 

Kapital und Ware sind zuallererst einmal eine gesellschaftliches Verhältnis – also ein Verhältnis zwischen Menschengruppen (Klassen). Marx schrieb dazu:

 

Das Kapital besteht nicht nur aus Lebensmitteln, Arbeitsinstrumenten und Rohstoffen, nicht nur aus materiellen Produkten; es besteht ebensosehr aus Tauschwerten. Alle Produkte, woraus es besteht, sind Waren. Das Kapital ist also nicht nur eine Summe von materiellen Produkten, es ist eine Summe von Waren, von Tauschwerten, von gesellschaftlichen Größen.[1]

 

Anders formuliert: Kapital und Waren sind ein Verhältnis von Tauschwerten, welches sich auch in Form von Gebrauchswerten manifestiert. Es ist ein im höchsten Maße dialektisches Verhältnis von Inhalt und Form, Wesen und Erscheinung. Friedrich Engels faßte diesen Sachverhalt folgendermaßen zusammen:

 

Die Ökonomie handelt nicht von Dingen, sondern von Verhältnissen zwischen Personen und in letzter Instanz zwischen Klassen; diese Verhältnisse sind aber stets an Dinge gebunden und erscheinen als Dinge.[2]

 

An einer anderen Stellen wies Friedrich Engels auf die widersprüchliche Einheit des Begriffs umfassende „Produktivkräfte“ sowie seine umfassende, totale Bedeutung hin:

 

Einerseits Vervollkommnung der Maschinerie, durch die Konkurrenz zum Zwangsgebot für jeden einzelnen Fabrikanten gemacht und gleichbedeutend mit stets steigender Außerdienstsetzung von Arbeitern: industrielle Reservearmee. Andrerseits schrankenlose Ausdehnung der Produktion, ebenfalls Zwangsgesetz der Konkurrenz für jeden Fabrikanten. Von beiden Seiten unerhörte Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte, Überschuß des Angebots über die Nachfrage, Überproduktion, Überfüllung der Märkte, zehnjährige Krisen, fehlerhafter Kreislauf: Überfluß hier, von Produktionsmitteln und Produkten - Überfluß dort, von Arbeitern ohne Beschäftigung und ohne Existenzmittel; aber diese beiden Hebel der Produktion und gesellschaftlichen Wohlstands können nicht zusammentreten, weil die kapitalistische Form der Produktion den Produktivkräften verbietet, zu wirken, den Produkten, zu zirkulieren, es sei denn, sie hätten sich zuvor in Kapital verwandelt: was gerade ihr eigner Überfluß verhindert. Der Widerspruch hat sich gesteigert zum Widersinn: Die Produktionsweise rebelliert gegen die Austauschform. Die Bourgeoisie ist überführt der Unfähigkeit, ihre eignen gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräfte fernerhin zu leiten.“ [3]

 

Dieses Verständnis behielten auch die marxistischen Theoretiker nach dem Ableben der Gründungsväter des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus bei. Stellvertretend für sie sei Nikolai Bucharin – ein führender Theoretiker der Bolschewiki und der Kommunistischen Internationale – zitiert:

 

In der Tat, es ist offensichtlich, daß wenn wir wissen, wie die Produktionsmittel und wie die Arbeiter sind, so wissen wir auch, wieviel sie in einer bestimmten Arbeitszeit produzieren; durch diese zwei Größen wird auch die dritte – das erzeugte Produkt – bestimmt. Diese zwei Größen bilden, zusammengenommen, dasjenige, was wir als materielle Produktivkräfte der Gesellschaft bezeichnen.[4]

 

 

 

Der Mensch als wichtigster Bestandteil der Produktivkräfte

 

 

 

Aber sie gingen noch weiter und betonten, daß der wichtigste Aspekt der Produktivkräfte der Mensch ist. Das ist nur allzu logisch, denn es ist nur die lebendige Arbeit, die die natürlichen Reichtümer und die Produktionsinstrumente in Produktivkräfte der Menschheit verwandeln und verwenden können.

 

Marx betonte die zentrale Stellung des Proletariats im Verständnis der gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräfte:

 

Eine unterdrückte Klasse ist die Lebensbedingung jeder auf den Klassengegensatz begründeten Gesellschaft. Die Befreiung der unterdrückten Klasse schließt also notwendigerweise die Schaffung einer neuen Gesellschaft ein. Soll die unterdrückte Klasse sich befreien können, so muß eine Stufe erreicht sein, auf der die bereits erworbenen Produktivkräfte und die geltenden gesellschaftlichen Einrichtungen nicht mehr nebeneinander bestehen können. Von allen Produktionsinstrumenten ist die größte Produktivkraft die revolutionäre Klasse selbst. Die Organisation der revolutionären Elemente als Klasse setzt die fertige Existenz aller Produktivkräfte voraus, die sich überhaupt im Schoß der alten Gesellschaft entfalten konnten.“ [5]

 

Ähnlich hob auch Bucharin (und mit ihm Lenin) die Bedeutung der menschlichen Arbeitskraft für das Verständnis der Produktivkräfte in ihrer Totalität hervor:

 

Die gesamte Arbeitskraft der Gesellschaft, der rein kapitalistischen Gesellschaft das Proletariat, ist einerseits eine der beiden Komponenten des Begriffs Produktivkräfte (denn die Produktivkräfte sind nichts anderes als die Gesamtsumme der vorhandenen Produktionsmittel und der Arbeitskräfte); dabei ist die Arbeitskraft, (...), die wichtigste Produktivkraft.[6]

 

Diesen Gedanken betonte auch Trotzki in einer während des I. Weltkrieges verfaßten Arbeit, wo er die Arbeiterbewegung als „die wichtigste Produktivkraft der modernen Gesellschaft“ bezeichnete. [7]

 

Schließlich sei noch eine weitere Erklärung der komplexen Natur der Produktivkräfte durch den deutschen trotzkistischen Theoretiker Franz Jakubowski angeführt:

 

Naturkräfte werden zu Produktivkräften erst in ihrer Anwendung durch die menschliche Arbeit. Nur durch ihre Einbeziehung in menschliche Verhältnisse, nur durch die Verwendung für menschliche Zwecke werden sie zu sozialen Kräften. Zu Produktivkräften werden Naturkräfte erst, wenn sie der Produktion und Reproduktion des menschlichen Lebens dienen. Die wichtigste Produktivkraft ist die menschliche Arbeitskraft.[8]

 

Wenn wir also den Standpunkt der Marxisten zusammenfassen, so ergibt sich, daß der Entwicklungsgang des Kapitalismus nicht ausschließlich anhand der Auf und Ab’s des materiellen Outputs gemessen werden darf. Sicherlich ist dies ein sehr aussagekräftiger Indikator, denn das Wertgesetz und seine Entwicklung schlägt sich langfristig in der Produktionsdynamik von sich in Gebrauchswerten manifestierenden Tauschwerten niederschlägt.

 

Aber die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte drückt sich auch in der Entwicklung der Ware Arbeitskraft und ihren Reproduktionsbedingungen aus. Mit anderen Worten: wie entwickeln sich die gesellschaftlichen Lebensbedingungen der ArbeiterInnenklasse. Dies ist ein äußerst wichtiger Faktor nicht nur für die betroffenen Arbeiter und ihre Familien, sondern auch für die gesamte zukünftige Entwicklung der Menschheit.

 

Die Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Lebensbedingungen der ArbeiterInnenklasse ergeben sich aus dem Wesen ihrer Existenz – also einer Klasse von LohnarbeiterInnen, die ihre Arbeitskraft als Ware an die Kapitalisten verkaufen. In diesem Prozeß schaffen sie mit ihrer Arbeit eine bestimmte Menge an Waren, in denen mehr Wert steckt, als sie als Lohn vom Kapitalisten erhalten. Diese Mehrarbeit eignet sich der Kapitalist als Mehrwert an.

 

Das Arbeitsvermögen des Lohnarbeiters ... tritt nicht nur nicht reicher, sondern es tritt ärmer aus dem Prozeß heraus, als es hereintrat. Denn nicht nur hat es hergestellt die Bedingungen der notwendigen Arbeit als dem Kapital gehörig; sondern die in ihm als Möglichkeit liegende Verwertung, ... existiert nun ebenfalls als Mehrwert, Mehrprodukt, mit einem Wort als Kapital ... Es hat nicht nur den fremden Reichtum und die eigene Armut produziert, sondern auch das Verhältnis dieses Reichtums als sich auf sich selbst beziehenden Reichtum zu ihm als der Armut, durch deren Konsum es neue Lebensgeister in sich zieht und sich von neuem verwertet.[9]

 

Damit kommen wir auch zu der mit der kapitalistischen Ausbeutung verbundenen Verelendung der Arbeiterklasse. Marx unterschied bekanntlich zwischen der relativen Verelendung und der absoluten Verelendung des Proletariat, wobei hier wichtig ist, unter Proletariat die gesamte Klasse zu sehen (also nicht nur die aktiv beschäftigten Arbeiter, sondern auch die Arbeitslosen, proletarische Jugendlichen und Pensionisten etc.). Unter relativer Verelendung verstand er die wachsende Kluft zwischen dem Reichtum des Kapitals und jenem der Arbeiter. Dies schließt eine Zunahme des Arbeitereinkommens nicht aus, nur eben langsamer als das Wachstum der Profite.

 

Es zeigt sich hier, wie progressiv die objektive Welt des Reichtums durch die Arbeit selbst als ihre fremde Macht sich ihr gegenüber ausweitet und immer breitere und vollere Existenz gewinnt, so daß relativ, im Verhältnis zu den geschaffenen Werten oder den realen Bedingungen der Wertschöpfung die bedürftige Subjektivität des lebendigen Arbeitsvermögens einen immer grelleren Kontrast bildet. Je mehr sie sich – die Arbeit sich – objektiviert, desto größer wird die objektive Welt der Werte, die ihr als fremde – als fremdes Eigentum – gegenübersteht.[10]

 

Unter absoluter Verelendung verstand Marx das Sinken der materiellen Lebensverhältnisse des Proletariats in seiner Gesamtheit.

 

Je größer der gesellschaftliche Reichtum, das funktionierende Kapital, Umfang und Energie seines Wachstums, also auch die absolute Größe des Proletariats und die Produktivkraft seiner Arbeit, desto größer die industrielle Reservearmee. Die disponible Arbeitskraft wird durch dieselben Ursachen entwickelt wie die Expansivkraft des Kapitals. Die verhältnismäßige Größe der industriellen Reservearmee wächst also mit den Potenzen des Reichtums. Je größer aber diese Reservearmee im Verhältnis zur aktiven Arbeiterarmee, desto massenhafter die konsolidierte Übervölkerung, deren Elend im umgekehrten Verhältnis zu ihrer Arbeitsqual steht. Je größer endlich die Lazarusschichte der Arbeiterklasse und die industrielle Reservearmee, desto größer der offizielle Pauperismus. Dies ist das absolute, allgemeine Gesetz der kapitalistischen Akkumulation. Es wird gleich allen andren Gesetzen in seiner Verwirklichung durch mannigfache Umstände modifiziert, deren Analyse nicht hierher gehört. (...)

 

Das Gesetz, wonach eine immer wachsende Masse von Produktionsmitteln, dank dem Fortschritt in der Produktivität der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit, mit einer progressiv abnehmenden Ausgabe von Menschenkraft in Bewegung gesetzt werden kann - dies Gesetz drückt sich auf kapitalistischer Grundlage, wo nicht der Arbeiter die Arbeitsmittel, sondern die Arbeitsmittel den Arbeiter anwenden, darin aus, daß, je höher die Produktivkraft der Arbeit, desto größer der Druck der Arbeiter auf ihre Beschäftigungsmittel, desto prekärer also ihre Existenzbedingung: Verkauf der eignen Kraft zur Vermehrung des fremden Reichtums oder zur Selbstverwertung des Kapitals. Rascheres Wachstum der Produktionsmittel und der Produktivität der Arbeit als der produktiven Bevölkerung drückt sich kapitalistisch also umgekehrt darin aus, daß die Arbeiterbevölkerung stets rascher wächst als das Verwertungsbedürfnis des Kapitals. (...)

 

Das Gesetz endlich, welches die relative Übervölkerung oder industrielle Reservearmee stets mit Umfang und Energie der Akkumulation in Gleichgewicht hält, schmiedet den Arbeiter fester an das Kapital als den Prometheus die Keile des Hephästos an den Felsen. Es bedingt eine der Akkumulation von Kapital entsprechende Akkumulation von Elend. Die Akkumulation von Reichtum auf dem einen Pol ist also zugleich Akkumulation von Elend, Arbeitsqual, Sklaverei, Unwissenheit, Brutalisierung und moralischer Degradation auf dem Gegenpol, d.h. auf Seite der Klasse, die ihr eignes Produkt als Kapital produziert.[11]

 

Das Steigen der relativen Verelendung ist für die meiste Zeit ein typisches Merkmal für den kapitalistischen Produktions- und Reproduktionsprozeß. In Perioden des kapitalistischen Niedergangs hingegen findet auch ein Prozeß der absoluten Verarmung statt. Es läßt sich schwer bestreiten, daß für die Masse der Arbeiterklasse und der unterdrückten Schichten weltweit ein Prozeß der absoluten Verarmung stattfindet. Natürlich trifft das nicht in jedem einzelnen Land, nicht in jedem einzelnen Jahr und für jede einzelne Schicht der Klasse zu. Aber als ein allgemeiner, weltweiter Prozeß ist dies eine unbestreitbare Tatsache.

 

 

 

Umwandlung der Produktivkräfte in Destruktivkräfte

 

 

 

Schließlich kommen wir noch zu einem weiteren Charakteristikum der kapitalistischen Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte in der imperialistischen Epoche: der zunehmenden Umwandlung der Produktivkräfte in Destruktivkräfte.

 

Marx selber wies schon vorausblickend darauf hin:

 

Diese Produktivkräfte erhalten unter dem Privateigentum eine nur einseitige Entwicklung, werden für die Mehrzahl zu Destruktivkräften, und eine Menge solcher Kräfte können im Privateigentum gar nicht zur Anwendung kommen.“ [12]

 

Wir haben gezeigt, daß die gegenwärtigen Individuen das Privateigentum aufheben müssen, weil die Produktivkräfte und die Verkehrsformen sich so weit entwickelt haben, daß sie unter der Herrschaft des Privateigentums zu Destruktivkräften geworden sind, und weil der Gegensatz der Klassen auf seine höchste Spitze getrieben ist.“ [13]

 

Die Produktivkräfte haben sich bereits so weit entwickelt, daß die kapitalistischen Eigentumsverhältnisse nicht nur zu einer Fessel für die vollständige, freie Entfaltung der Produktivkräfte geworden sind, sondern die Produktivkraftentwicklung in einem zunehmenden Ausmaß immer monströsere, zerstörerische Kräfte – Destruktivkräfte – hervorbringt. Sicherlich gab es auch früher Destruktivkräfte, aber erst in der Epoche des Imperialismus nahmen sie einen weltumspannenden Charakter hat, wo sie das Potential haben, die ganze Menschheit in ihrer Entwicklungsstufe um unzählige Generation zurückzuwerfen bzw. überhaupt als ganzes zu vernichten.

 

Die dramatische Gefährdung der Lebensgrundlagen der Menschheit durch die systematische Umweltzerstörungen durch die Profitgier des Kapitals (globale Erwärmung, Ozonloch usw.) oder auch die Gefahr nuklearer Kriege mit Millionen Toten – all das zeigt, wie sehr die Produktivkraftentwicklung im Kapitalismus zugleich Destruktivkraftentwicklung ist. Marx selber schrieb schon vorrausblickend:

 

Die kapitalistische Produktion entwickelt daher nur die Technik und Kombination des gesellschaftlichen Produktionsprozesses, indem sie zugleich die Springquellen alles Reichtums untergräbt: die Erde und den Arbeiter.[14]

 

 

 

Die widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte

 

 

 

Wenn Marxisten also von der Tendenz der Produktivkräfte zur Stagnation sprechen, so meinen sie damit nicht ein wirtschaftliches Null-Wachstum und schon gar nicht einen Stillstand des technischen Fortschritts. Dies ist im Kapitalismus auch gar nicht möglich.

 

Der Zweck des Kapitals ist seine Selbstverwertung, also seine Vergrößerung, Ausbreitung, also Akkumulation. Die im entwickelten Kapitalismus normale Produktionsweise ist daher die Reproduktion des Kapitals auf erweiterter Stufenleiter. Alles andere wäre – so Marx im II. Band des Kapitals – „eine befremdliche Annahme“:

 

Die einfache Reproduktion auf gleichbleibender Stufenleiter erscheint insoweit als eine Abstraktion, als einerseits auf kapitalistischer Basis Abwesenheit aller Akkumulation oder Reproduktion auf erweiterter Stufenleiter eine befremdliche Annahme ist, andrerseits die Verhältnisse, worin produziert wird, nicht absolut gleichbleiben (und dies ist vorausgesetzt) in verschiednen Jahren.[15]

 

Ebenso revolutioniert der Kapitalismus beständig seine technischen Grundlagen. Anders kann es auch gar nicht sein! Denn – wie schon Marx feststellte – die Existenzweise des Kapitals vollzieht sich notwendigerweise in Form der Konkurrenz.

 

Begrifflich ist die Konkurrenz nichts als die innere Natur des Kapitals, seine wesentliche Bestimmung, erscheinend und realisiert als Wechselwirkung der vielen Kapitalien aufeinander, die innere Tendenz als äußerliche Notwendigkeit. (Kapital existiert und kann nur existieren als viele Kapitalien und seine Selbstbestimmung erscheint daher als Wechselwirkung derselben aufeinander.)[16]

 

Diese Konkurrenz zwingt das Kapital dazu, permanent nach Möglichkeiten der Ersetzung der der menschlichen Arbeit durch Maschinen zu suchen, um so den Lohnanteil am Gesamtkapital zurückdrängen und somit billiger produzieren zu können. Daher finden im Kapitalismus immer wieder technische Neuerungen zwecks Steigerung der Produktivität statt. Es reicht aus - ohne hier ins Detail gehen zu können – beispielhaft folgende zentralen technischen Neuerungen der letzten 200 Jahre zu nennen: die Dampfmaschine, die Eisenbahn, die Telegraphie, das Auto, das Flugzeug, Radio, Fernsehen, Raketen, Computer, die Mobiltelephonie, die Fortschritte im Bereich der Genetik usw.

 

Tatsache ist, daß sich der Grad der jugendlichen Frische bzw. der Überalterung und Verfaulung des Kapitalismus nicht an dem Umfang der technologischen Entwicklungen ablesen läßt. Demnach wäre ja der Kapitalismus in den letzten 200 Jahren eine stetig voranschreitende Gesellschaftsordnung gewesen und statt dem von Marx und Lenin diagnostizierten Zusammenbruchstendenzen würde er vielmehr ein ungebrochenes Fortschrittspotential aufweisen. Offenkundig ist dem aber nicht so und eine kurze Rekapitulation der Geschichte des imperialistischen Zeitalters macht dies klar: diese technischen Fortschritte waren begleitet von wirtschaftlichen, politischen und menschlichen Katastrophen – darunter zwei Weltkriegen, das Holocaust, Hiroshima um nur die bekanntesten Beispiele zu nennen.

 

Nein, die Schranke des Kapitalismus besteht nicht in der Erschöpfung seiner Möglichkeiten zur technischen Erneuerung oder gar einem technischen Zusammenbruch der Ökonomie. Die Schranke besteht sich vielmehr in dem Kapitalismus als gesellschaftliche Produktionsweise innewohnenden Widersprüchen. Mit anderen Worten: den explosiven Widerspruchspotential, das dem lebendigen Prozeß des gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisses zwischen Kapital und Arbeit anhaftet. Nicht umsonst schrieb Marx:

 

Die wahre Schranke der kapitalistischen Produktion ist das Kapital selbst[17]

 

Was wir also im modernen Kapitalismus sehen, ist eine im höchsten Maße widersprüchliche Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte. Einerseits erleben wir eine – vom Stachel der kapitalistischen Konkurrenz angetriebene – Revolutionierung der Technik. Andererseits sehen wir eine zunehmende Untergrabung des gesellschaftlichen Fortschritts der Menschheit und der wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen ihrer Reproduktion. Letzteres ist jedoch das wichtigste Faktor der Produktivkräfte. Jene, die die Produktivkräfte auf die Technik reduzieren, unterliegen letztlich dem gesellschaftlichen Nebel des Warenfetischismus und ignorieren die Warnung von Marx:

 

Allein die politische Ökonomie ist nicht Technologie.[18]

 

Natürlich wäre es ein kindischer Umkehrschluß, den Stand der Technik, als unwichtig oder sekundär abzutun. Im Gegenteil sie ist eine zentrale Grundlage für die ökonomische Basis und damit die gesamte gesellschaftliche Entwicklungsrichtung.

 

 

 

Trotzki und die Frage der Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte

 

 

 

Der marxistische Theoretiker und Revolutionär Leo Trotzki verstand es, die der imperialistischen Epoche eigene widersprüchliche Entwicklung von technischen Neuerungen und stagnierender Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräfte dialektisch miteinander zu verbinden.

 

Der menschliche Fortschritt steckt in einer Sackgasse. Trotz der letzten Triumphe der Technik wachsen die natürlichen Produktivkräfte nicht an.[19]

 

Das Manifest hat den Kapitalismus gebrandmarkt, weil er die Entwicklung der Produktivkräfte hemmt. Zu seiner Zeit jedoch, wie auch im Laufe der folgenden Jahrzehnte, war diese Hemmung nur eine relative: Wenn die Wirtschaft in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts auf sozialistischen Grundlagen hätte organisiert werden können, so wäre der Rhythmus ihres Wachstums unvergleichlich schneller gewesen. Diese These, theoretisch unbestreitbar, ändert nichts daran, daß die Produktivkräfte bis zum Weltkrieg im Weltmaßstab ununterbrochen weiter gewachsen sind. Erst im Laufe der letzten zwanzig Jahre ist trotz der modernsten Entdeckungen von Wissenschaft und Technik die Periode der unmittelbaren Stagnation und sogar des Niedergangs der Weltwirtschaft angebrochen.[20]

 

Die wirtschaftlichen Voraussetzungen der proletarischen Revolution ist schon seit langem am höchsten Punkt angelangt, der unter dem Kapitalismus erreicht werden kann. Die Produktivkräfte der Menschheit stagnieren. Die neuen Erfindungen und die technischen Fortschritte dienen nicht mehr dazu, das Niveau des materiellen Reichtums zu erhöhen. Unter den Bedingungen der sozialen Krise des ganzen kapitalistischen Systems laden die Konjunkturkrisen den Massen immer größere Entbehrungen und Leiden auf. Das Anwachsen der Arbeitslosigkeit vertieft wiederum die finanzielle Krise des Staates und unterhöhlt die erschütterten Geldsysteme. Die Regime – die demokratischen wie die faschistischen – taumeln von Bankrott zu Bankrott.[21]

 

Die Technologie ist jetzt unendlich mächtiger als am Ende des Krieges von 1914/18, wohingegen die Menschheit sehr viel mehr von Armut betroffen ist. Der Lebensstandard ist in einem Lande nach dem anderen gesunken.[22]

 

Wir sehen hier also, daß Trotzki keinen mechanisch-technischen Begriff der Produktivkräfte hatte, sondern einen gesellschaftlichen, worin der Arbeiterklasse und ihrer Entwicklung ein zentraler Platz eingeräumt wird.

 

 

 

Schlußfolgerungen

 

 

 

Fassen wir die Ergebnisse unserer Überlegungen zusammen. Die Entwicklungsdynamik der Produktivkräfte drückt sich auch in der Entwicklungsdynamik der Kapitalakkumulation und Warenproduktion aus, aber nicht ausschließlich. Sie drückt sich ebenso auch im allgemeinen Entwicklungsgang der Gesellschaft (Armut, Arbeitslosigkeit, Umweltzerstörung) und der Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Organisation der Arbeit aus.

 

In anderen Worten: es existiert ein eindeutiger Zusammenhang, eine Verbindung zwischen der Entwicklungsdynamik der Produktivkräfte und der Entwicklungsdynamik der Kapitalakkumulation und Warenproduktion aus. Sie hängen miteinander zusammen, sind aber nicht identisch! Da Maschinen und Technik Teil der Produktivkräfte sind, ist die Entwicklungsdynamik der Kapitalakkumulation und Warenproduktion ein wichtiger Indikator für die Entwicklungsdynamik der Produktivkräfte. Er ist jedoch nicht der einzige Indikator. Weitere Indikatoren sind die Entwicklungsdynamik der allgemeinen Reproduktionsbedingungen der Arbeiterklasse und der Menschheit, Arbeitslosigkeit und Armut und Formen der Zerstörung von Produktivkräften (z.B. durch Kriege oder Umweltkatastrophen).

 

Zusammengefaßt meinen Marxisten, wenn sie heute von der Tendenz der Produktivkräfte zur Stagnation sprechen, folgende Entwicklungen:

 

* Weitgehende Unfähigkeit des Kapitalismus, technologische Neuerungen und wirtschaftliches Wachstum in gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt der Menschheit umzuwandeln. Im Gegenteil, der Kapitalismus untergräbt zunehmend die Möglichkeiten des Fortschritts für die Menschheit.

 

* Sinkende Wachstumsdynamik sowohl der Warenproduktion als auch der Kapitalakkumulation.

 

* Zunehmende Instabilität und Krisenhaftigkeit des Weltkapitalismus auf ökonomischer und politischer Ebene.

 



[1] Karl Marx: Lohnarbeit und Kapital, in: MEW 6, S. 408 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[2] Friedrich Engels: Karl Marx, „Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie“ (1859); in: MEW 13, S. 476; (Hervorhebung im Original). Aus dieser Grundlage der „Verdinglichung der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse“ ergibt sich das Phänomen der Warenfetischismus, „dieser Religion des Alltagslebens“ im Kapitalismus. (siehe dazu Karl Marx: Kapital Band I, MEW 23, S. 85-98 sowie Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 838f.)

[3] Friedrich Engels: Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft; in: MEW 19, S. 227f. (Hervorhebung im Original)

[4] Nikolai Bucharin: Theorie des historischen Materialismus (1921), S. 125 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[5] Karl Marx: Das Elend der Philosophie, MEW 4, S. 181. (Hervorhebung durch uns) Auch an einer anderen Stelle bezeichnet Marx den Menschen als „die Hauptproduktivkraft“ (Grundrisse der politische Ökonomie, in: MEW 42, S. 337)

[6] Nikolai Bucharin: Ökonomik der Transformationsperiode (1920), S. 91

[7] Die Arbeit wurde unseres Wissens nach nie auf deutsch oder englisch übersetzt. Das Zitat haben wir folgendem Artikel entnommen: Michael Löwy: Die nationale Frage und die Klassiker des Marxismus; in: Nairn/Hobsbawm/Debray/Löwy: Nationalismus und Marxismus, Berlin 1978, S. 114

[8] Franz Jakubowski: Der ideologische Überbau in der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung (1935), Frankfurt a.M. 1968, S. 30. Franz Jakubowski war trotz seiner jungen Jahre nicht nur theoretisch versiert, sondern wurde 1935 auch Führer des trotzkistischen „Spartakusbundes“ im deutschen Freistaat Danzig. 1936 wurde die Organisation von der Gestapo ausgehoben und Jakubowski zu drei Jahren Haft verurteil. Trotzki schrieb über den Prozeß einen Artikel. („Der Danziger Trotzkisten-Prozeß“ (29.4.1937); in: Schriften über Deutschland Band II, S. 711ff.)

[9] Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, in: MEW 42, S. 366.

[10] Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, in: MEW 42, S. 368.

[11] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band 1; in: MEW 23, S. 673ff. (Hervorhebung im Original)

[12] Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Die deutsche Ideologie, in: MEW 3, S. 60

[13] Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Die deutsche Ideologie, in: MEW 3, S. 424. (Hervorhebung im Original)

Das Marx und Engels zu diesem Zeitpunkt das Entwicklungspotential des Kapitalismus zu früh als ausgeschöpft sahen und diesen Standpunkt später korrigieren mußten, ist eine Tatsache, auf die auch Trotzki in seinem Essay „90 Jahre Kommunistisches Manifest“ hinwies. Sie tut der analytischen Logik der Argumentation jedoch keinen Abbruch.

[14] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band 1; in: MEW 23, S. 529

[15] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, II. Band, MEW 24, S. 393f.

[16] Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, in: MEW 42, S. 327 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[17] Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band 3; in: MEW 25, S. 260, (Hervorhebung im Original)

[18] Karl Marx – Einleitung zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, MEW 13, S. 617

[19] Leo Trotzki: Marxismus in unserer Zeit (April 1939), Wien 1987, S. 11, im Internet: http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/trotzki/1939/04/marxismus.htm

[20] Leo Trotzki: Neunzig Jahre Kommunistisches Manifest (1937); in: Denkzettel. Politische Erfahrungen im Zeitalter der permanenten Revolution, Frankfurt a. M. (1981), S. 333 (Hervorhebung im Original)

[21] Leo Trotzki: Das Übergangsprogramm (1938), S. 5, im Internet: http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/trotzki/1938/uebergang/index.htm (Hervorhebung von uns)

[22] Leo Trotzki: Manifest der IV. Internationale zum imperialistischen Krieg und zur proletarischen Weltrevolution (1940); in: Leo Trotzki: Schriften zum imperialistischen Krieg, Frankfurt a. M. (1978), S. 138 (Hervorhebung von uns)

 

World economy – heading to a new upswing? (2009)

Michael Pröbsting, published in Fifth International, Volume 3, No. 3, Autumn 2009, www.thecommunists.net

(Find the Tables and Graphs in the pdf version of this article below)

 

 

Many commentators have argued the worst of the crisis is over. Michael Pröbsting asks whether there are grounded reasons for this optimism and looks at the obstacles facing a new wave of expansion.

In the bourgeois media, reports of an upturn in the global economy are increasing. The task of Marxists is a scientific investigation of this question. In this, we must neither take a dogmatic, schematic position, suggesting that any recognition of an upturn necessarily contradicts the Marxist analysis of declining capitalism, nor an eclectic impressionist view that takes the assessments of bourgeois economists at face value. What is needed is a rigorous scientific investigation of the short-and long-term tendencies of the capitalist world economy from the standpoint of the working class, that is the point of view, which reveals the cyclical pattern of world economic trends on the internal collapse of capitalism and the impact of this on the proletarian class struggle. In the following, we focus our investigation on the imperialist metropolises which are at the heart of the global economy. However, it is necessary to point out that, although the world economy is dominated by imperialist capital, it is of course far more extensive than that. In particular, countries like China play a growing role in the global economy.

 

A brief sketch of the Marx’s theory of the capitalist cycle

 

Let us start with a brief recapitulation of the Marxist theory of the capitalist economic cycle. The starting point is the recognition that there is a “fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.” in the following: “Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist.” 1 This contradiction, between the social character of the productive forces and production and the private, capitalist nature of the ownership of the means of production and the appropriation of what is produced, is the foundation on which the laws of development of capitalism and their inner contradictions develop. Production for profit leads to the steady accumulation of capital, a gradual replacement of living labour by dead labour, of human labour by machines. In Marx’s terms, this is described as a steady decrease in the proportion of variable capital and an increase in the proportion of constant capital or an “increasing organic composition of capital”. Since only the social work of the wage labourer creates value and, thus, also surplus value for the capitalist, there is a long-term tendency of the profit rate to fall. The contradiction between the social character of production and the capitalist nature of ownership leads to periodic crises of over-accumulation of capital and, consequently, overproduction. Cyclical crises, therefore, have their roots in the contradictory, crisis-ridden nature of the capitalist economic system itself

According to Marx, the cycle is divided into several phases that begin with a crisis. This results in a dramatic decline in production followed by stagnation or depression then recovery, prosperity, overheating and, finally, a return to crisis.2

The crisis results from the over-accumulation of capital, that is, there is a surplus of capital that cannot be profitably invested. At the top of the cycle there is a crisis of overproduction, that is a huge surplus of commodities, which exceeds the consuming power of society (that is, the wages of the workers and that part of the surplus value of the capitalists that is not accumulated) and cannot be sold. Parallel to this we have a fall in prices, a halt in the circulation of credit, crisis on the stock markets and a slump in trade. The valorisation process of capital falters and industrial capacity utilisation drops. At the same time, wages fall, many companies perish and there is a massive increase in unemployment. “It is no contradiction that this over-production of capital is accompanied by more or less considerable relative over-population. (…) , an over-population of labourers not employed by the surplus-capital…” 3 In short, the crisis leads to an enormous destruction of productive forces. Through such a destruction of capital, the contradictions will be temporarily reduced and a new phase of capital accumulation can begin. “The crises are always but momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions. They are violent eruptions which for a time restore the disturbed equilibrium.” 4

In the phase of depression, industrial production is stagnant, prices remain at a low level and trade is weak. Mass unemployment continues and demand for credit by firms is restricted so interest rates remain relatively low. However, it is in this phase that the conditions for the subsequent recovery are created. The capitalists try to increase profits by reducing production costs. On the one hand, this can be done by increasing the exploitation of workers, cutting wages or increasing labour intensity. On the other hand, however, and this is the choice of the stronger capitalists, it can also be done by investing in “labour-saving” machinery. In other words, by renewal of fixed capital and introduction of technical innovations. This makes profitable production possible, despite the fall in prices and the diminished purchasing power of society. With this renewal of fixed capital, the production of means of production is revived, this increases demand for raw materials and labour and, then, for consumer goods, etc. Gradually, the depression gives way to a phase of expansion.

In the phase of revival, production increases further and, with it, prices. Accumulation of capital accelerates, the rate of profit rises. There is an increase in demand for loans as the confidence in profitable investment opportunities for capital rises, trade intensifies as does speculation on the exchanges. Thus, the expanded reproduction of capital is consolidated and the revival goes into the upswing.

In the phase of recovery, there is a significant growth in value production beyond that of the previous cycle. Capital accumulation accelerates dramatically and the capitalists make massive investments in expansion and increase capacity utilisation. There is now a general optimism, new companies are founded, turnover accelerates as do prices, loans and stock market speculation. Wages rise again, and unemployment falls.

Now comes the stage of overheating, of overproduction. The earlier investments now need to bring appropriate profits to service the existing loans, to make further investments, etc. The accumulated capital needs to be valorised profitably. Logically, all capitalists want this, so all maximise their production. This leads to an overproduction of commodities but does not yet come to an open crisis. It still seems that marketing opportunities are growing, speculation ensures prices continue to rise so there are more profitable investment opportunities. The limitless supply of loans by banks and other financial institutions, which want to valorise their accumulated, non-productive, money capital, to the industrial capitalists, cover up overproduction and allow an artificial expansion of production. At a certain point, however, the accumulated contradictions lead to a violent expression, and the over-accumulation of capital opens the crisis. The capitalist cycle again moves into its crisis phase.

To summarise: the material basis of the cycle is the movement of the accumulation of productive capital. Capital is accumulated in order to create surplus value, the basis of profit. Accumulation does not occur in a vacuum, but under the conditions of competition between the capitalists. Capitalists are continually forced to increase the productivity of labour, in order to get a competitive advantage over their rivals. In addition to cutting wages or extending working hours this is also done via the expansion and improvement of the machinery used by the workers. The valorisation process of capital, therefore, always includes the replacement of machinery, the fixed component of constant capital. Therefore, reproduction of social capital generally takes place on an expanded basis. The process of renewal of fixed capital does not take place gradually but in fits and starts because capitalists respond to the prospects of making profit. During the upswing, the capitalists expect to gain the highest possible rate of profit by the highest possible utilisation of fixed capital. Then the crisis and the consequent devaluation or destruction of fixed capital create the conditions for a new round of investment.5

 

The current historical crisis as a result of the previous period

 

The cyclical crises of capitalism do not represent repetitions of the valorisation process of capital on an unaltered basis. In each cycle, the reproduction of social capital takes place on an expanded basis and the valorisation process of capital leads to increasing accumulation, particularly of the fixed part of constant capital. This results in a relative decline of the variable capital and an increase in the organic composition of capital so that the rate of profit tends to decline. Therefore, from cycle to cycle, the gulf between the mass of accumulated capital and, relative to that, the increasingly impoverished mass of the population, grows wider. As a result, within the capitalist cycles there is tendency to exacerbate the crisis and ultimately towards breakdown.

It was on this note that Marx concluded the final chapter, “The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation” of the first volume of Capital:

“This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” 6

In this famous quote, Marx anticipated the era of imperialism as the highest and the last stage of capitalism in its history, the epoch of its decline and transition to socialism. Later, Lenin elaborated the character of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism and summarised it in the following words:

“We have to begin with as precise and full a definition of imperialism as possible. Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic, or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.“ 7

The historic character of the imperialist epoch as transitional lies in the fact that capitalism has advanced the productive forces and the socialisation of production so far that it causes clashes with the bourgeois relations of production that are so sharp that they put the collapse of the capitalist mode of production on the agenda, though not, of course, permanently. Time and again, the human race is faced with the alternative of socialism or barbarism. The current dramatic economic crisis, coupled with the growing rivalry between the superpowers and the mounting ecological disaster confirms fully the validity of Lenin’s theory of imperialism.

The development of the fundamental contradiction between the social character of the productive forces and the private, capitalist ownership of the means of production has resulted in such a concentration and centralisation of capital that free competition between the capitalists, characteristic till the end of the 19th Century, has been replaced by monopoly capitalism and the domination of a few imperialist powers over the world’s population. Monopoly capital can temporarily modify or restrict the spontaneous enforcement of the law of value. Because of its hegemony, its degree of organisation and its fusion with the bourgeois state, monopoly capital can more easily off-load the consequences of capitalist crises onto the working class, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle classes and the weaker sectors of capital. All these modifications can affect the actual course of development of the law of value but, at the same time, they aggravate the capitalist contradictions and eventually lead to a trend of deepening capitalist crisis. (Note: The enforcement of the law of value is modified by the monopoly. It is not really limited, because, like the law of value, it is realised only through its partial negation as, for example, in the value-price transformation. Similarly the monopoly price. Thus the monopoly price is not something “outside” of the law of value, at a certain level of development of capitalism it is the necessary form through which the law of value must be realised).

Cycles, therefore, are a permanent feature of the history of capitalism. Concrete economic and political factors, the balance of power between the classes, etc. can play an important role in the actual course of development of the cycle, but the most important, most fundamental factor that determines the dynamics of the cycle does not depend on conjunctural issues, but on the historical era or period of capitalism in which it takes place. Trotsky said in his article about the capitalist curve of development that cycles evolve very differently, depending on whether they take place in a historical period (curve) of capitalist boom, stagnation or decline. He wrote:

“… capitalism is not characterized solely by the periodic recurrence of cycles otherwise what would occur would be a complex repetition and not dynamic development. Trade-industrial cycles are of different character in different periods.”8

For this reason, the Communist International emphasised the idea of analysing the cycles in the context of the historical epoch or period.

“But should the tempo of development slacken, and the current commercial-industrial crisis be superseded by a period of prosperity in a greater or lesser number of countries, this would in no case signify the beginning of an “organic’ epoch. So long as capitalism exists, cyclical oscillations are inevitable. These will accompany capitalism in its agony, just as they accompanied it in its youth and maturity.” 9

The current cycle is in fact a clear proof for this. Although the working class has offered very little resistance to the offensive of the bourgeoisie and therefore the cost of the crisis has largely been shifted onto the working class, and even though the bourgeoisie mobilised huge sums of money for rescue and stimulus packages, these measures have not been sufficient to allow for a robust revival of the economic cycle. The structural problems of over-accumulation of capital are much too big to be offset by cyclical measures.

The specific characteristics of the period of globalisation could not remove the essential characteristic of our epoch, the imperialist epoch, the highest and final stage of capitalism. The basic contradiction of capitalism, the growing antagonism between the social character of the productive forces and the private character of its acquisition, leads in particular in the era of monopoly capitalism to the fact that the steady expansion of commodity production and thus the valorisation of capital on an ever higher scale, comes into ever sharper contradiction to the shackles of the capitalist appropriation of profit. The capitalists are trying to increase the productivity of labour and, thereby, their profits, by producing cheaper than their industries’ average production costs which are decisive for the average rate of profit. In this way, they hope to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals. Thus fewer and fewer workers use more and more machines, in other words, the share of value-creating human labour, the variable capital, within the total capital decreases while the share of the value-transmitting (but not value-creating) machines, raw materials, real estate, the constant capital, is rising. This rising organic composition of capital leads to a long-term tendency of the profit rate to fall.

The increasing socialisation and internationalisation of production demonstrates the historical obsolescence of capitalism, where private property prevents a rich and sustainable development of the productive forces. Lenin was quite right in writing:

“It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism, the beginning of its transition to socialism. The tremendous socialisation of labour by imperialism (what its apologists, the bourgeois economists, call “interlocking”) produces the same result.“ 10

And further on:

“The epoch of capitalist imperialism is one of ripe and rotten-ripe capitalism, which is about to collapse, and which is mature enough to make way for socialism.” 11

The consequent difficulties in investing capital profitably, the tendency of the profit rate to fall, result in the capitalists investing less and less of their surplus value in the expansion of productive capital and more and more in speculation and unproductive sectors. The capitalists have to spend an increasing share of their profits on dividends or to repay debt, or buy back their own shares in order to get the casino of speculation going again.

The severe recession in 2007-2009 can only be understood as the result of the accumulated contradictions of the previous capitalist period. The current cycle takes place in the epoch of declining capitalism, of capitalism in its old age. As we have already said many times, the era of globalisation was characterised by a broad offensive of the bourgeoisie: a massive attack on the working class, the destruction of nearly all the degenerated workers’ states and increased subjugation and exploitation of the semi-colonial world. Through these attacks, the bourgeoisie was able to increase both the rate of surplus value (mainly through the increase of absolute surplus value) and the imperialist extra-profits from the semi-colonies. However, the historic tendency of capitalism to decline is rooted in the fact that the organic composition of capital (that is, the ratio of value-transmitting constant capital to value-creating variable capital) is rising to such a degree that it is increasingly difficult for capital to halt the declining rate of profit by counteracting measures. For this reason, only a relatively small share of the increased gross profit, indeed an ever decreasing share, enters into the accumulation of capital. To an ever larger extent, the profits have moved into the realm of speculation and debt repayment. The result of the period of globalisation was that the bourgeoisie not only failed to revive capitalist accumulation but that they prevented a massive decline in the global economy only by borrowing increasingly greedily and shortsightedly from future reserves. In other words, they brought a certain stability to the global economy by accumulating massive debts and, by a huge artificial inflation of the speculative sector, created artificial profits and “prosperity”. The contradictions of the present were glossed over, for a time, by the inflation of the contradictions of the future.

The enormous mass of money capital that migrated into the highly speculative world of currency markets and the hedge funds has been referred to many times. The following table for the U.S. in the period 1947-2007 also shows the vast, growing share of dividend payouts and share repurchases on profit before tax.

The over-accumulation of capital, the falling rate of profit, the tendency to aggravation of the crisis, all these have characterised the global economy for decades. Amongst bourgeois and many leftist theoreticians, the long boom created the illusion that capitalism had found a way to escape its tendency to breakdown. In fact, the long boom was due to exceptional circumstances, namely the massive destruction of capital through two world wars and the severe depression after 1929 and the enforcement of a political world order led by an imperialist power after the (temporary) stabilising settlement with the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR. Since the early 1970s, the world economy has been characterised by the over-accumulation of capital and the related tendency to stagnation. This tendency towards stagnation could not be reversed by the capitalist offensive in the period of globalisation, quite the opposite, it became even stronger. (see Table 2) However, this tendency towards stagnation was very uneven because at the same time an accelerated accumulation of capital took place in parts of the world that are backward from the standpoint of capitalist development but are, nonetheless, important. (China, India)

This worsening tendency towards the over-accumulation of capital in the period of globalisation was reflected in the fact that in the largest national economy in the world, the USA, because of the lack of profit expectations, the capitalists invested a decreasing proportion of their surplus value in the expansion of their capital stock. This slackening of the capital accumulation process is reflected in a declining level of net investment (that is, the expansion investment, in contrast to those investments that only replace the physical or morally obsolete capital). Table 3 shows clearly that the slackening of the capital accumulation process arising from the difficulties in the valorisation process of capital have not become less, but sharpened in the period of globalisation. The same picture emerges for the European imperialist powers. The growth rate of net capital stock in the EU-15 countries gradually reduces: from an annual average of 4.2% (1961-73), 2.7% (1974-85), 2.4% (1986-1990), 2.1% (1991 — 1995), 2.2% (1996-2000) and finally 2.0% (2001-2005). 15

The increasing valorisation problems of capital are reflected in a growing proportion of surplus, unused capital. A clear indicator for this is the declining capacity utilisation in industry. The high points of capacity utilisation in U.S. industry were 85.1% in the 1980s and 84.9% in the 1990s. Since 2000 it has never once crossed the 81% mark. The lows on the other hand in these three cycles were 78.7%, 73.5% and, in June 2009, the historic low of 68%. 17 Put bluntly, in mid-2009 almost 1/3 of productive capital was not utilised for the valorisation process in the United States! So, here too, we see that, in the period of globalisation, not only was it not possible to solve the contradictions of capitalism, but they even increased. Graph 2 gives a clear picture of the declining tendency of capital accumulation in the United States from 1967 until today.

This faltering, crisis-ridden capital accumulation process resulted in increasing flows of surplus value either to the speculative sector (2007 41% of all US profits were derived from the financial sector!) or into export of capital abroad. The result is a downward momentum of expanded reproduction of capital, reflected by declining rates of growth of commodity production in the period of globalisation. While in the 1960s industrial production in the imperialist centres grew by an average of 5 to 13% per year, this trend slowed in the 1980s to 1.7 to 4% and amounted on average in the 2000s to only between 0.5 and 1%.

 

Is the world economy facing a new upswing in the economic cycle?

 

We can see now that the world economy reached the bottom of the recession, which began in late 2007 in the USA, in the first quarter of 2009. Since then, the recession has weakened or moved in individual countries into a slight upswing. Overall, we do not expect a sharp upturn. Whether there will be a slight recovery or a second recession, similar to what happened in 1980-82, depends on various factors. In any case, the current recession, despite its historically profound nature, could not address any of the fundamental problems of the capitalist order, let alone resolve them. This applies both to the economic contradictions, the over-accumulation of capital and the crisis of the profit rate, and to the political contradictions, the growing rivalry between the imperialist powers.

The cyclical movement of the global economy can be measured by various indicators, which, in one form or another, reflect the development of value production. The following indicators show that the capitalist world economy is still in the phase of stagnation, or at the very beginning of the cyclical upturn. These figures indicate a growth in GDP in Japan, Germany and France in the 2nd or they predict it for the 3rd quarter of 2009.

More meaningful than the GDP, however, is the data for industrial production that correlates more closely with value production. Again we see here, albeit weaker than with the GDP, a certain revival of industrial production in the imperialist centres, first in Japan, later in the U.S. and the EU. There was a sharp drop in industrial production until the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2009. In recent months, however, there is a slight upturn in industrial production. In Japan, this revival had already begun in March, in the U.S., however, only in July.

This slight increase in industrial production takes place from a very low base. In all imperialist countries, there was the most dramatic drop in industrial production and investment since the depression of 1929. In the United States, the level of gross domestic investment at the end of the 1st quarter of 2009 was 26.8% below the level of the 3rd quarter of 2007, when the recession began. 22 If one bears in mind the dramatic extent of decline in industrial production, one would perhaps expect a sharp upturn. In fact, we see only a slight recovery in recent months. The reason is that there has not been a real recovery in capital accumulation. The bourgeoisie has prevented the collapse of capitalism by investing enormous aid packages in all major countries. These state capitalist measures have resulted in the arrest or the consolidation of the money-capital sector and created some incentives to stimulate demand for consumer goods such as cars (scrappage premium). But these measures are partly time-limited and anyway could not protect many companies from bankruptcy. The capitalists do not have optimistic expectations for increasing the rate of profit. The economy is still characterised by massive over-accumulation. The organic composition of capital, that is, the steadily rising share of constant capital at the expense of variable capital, requires an ever larger, more destructive annihilation of fixed capital in order to trigger a new cycle of capital accumulation. Quite obviously, despite the enormous destruction of values, up to 45% of global wealth has been destroyed by the crisis,23 insufficient destruction of capital has taken place to allow a strong economic recovery.

This slackening of capital accumulation can be measured by various indicators. The over-accumulation of capital has reached such enormous proportions that in the U.S. and the Euro area, the utilisation of industrial capacity is still at historic lows and about 30% of capacity is fallow. In Japan, where an incredible low point of only 50.4% was reached in the 1st quarter 2009, the recovery started earlier. 24 In any case, the relevant figures indicate that the capitalist world economy still is in the phase of stagnation or at the very beginning of a slight recovery.

This is also evident when we look at the development of gross fixed investment, which reflect the dynamics of capital accumulation. A decline in investment in all the imperialist countries has continued in the 2nd quarter of 2009, even though it has slowed compared to previous quarters.

What is the reason for the reluctance of capitalists to start investing on a large scale and, thereby, open a new cycle of reproduction of capital on an expanded scale? It ultimately lies in the fact that the rate of profit has fallen and the prospects for any substantial increase are low. However, this should not obscure the fact that there have been changes in the last few months. In fact, there has been an important trend reversal; the fall of the mass of profit has been halted and a process of growth has begun. However, this growth is limited and, given the huge debt and the excess capacity, the capitalists will use these profits only to a limited extent for new investments.

Since profit expectations are low and the over-accumulation of capital is burdensome, the reproduction of social capital on an expanded scale takes place haltingly. Despite a certain revival of production, no new jobs are created, around the world, unemployment rises and wages are falling. Overall, a rise in unemployment of more than 25.5 million is projected in the imperialist countries alone (the OECD countries) between the peak of the last economic cycle and projections for next year. In the U.S., unemployment has soared already to 9.3% in 2009 and is even projected to rise to 10.2% in 2010. 29

It is not surprising that the recent OECD interim global report comes to the conclusion that the world economy will probably grow only slowly. The study’s author says that the crisis has over burdened the main industrial countries:

“Over-capacity, low profitability, high and rising unemployment, barely rising wages and in some countries the real estate crisis adversely affect private consumption. In addition, consumers, businesses, banks and governments have to reduce the debts they have accumulated in the wake of the crisis.” 32

Therefore, the author continues: “This means that short-term political support for a strong economy is necessary.”

 

State capitalism and public debt

 

Thus we come to a crucial point: Why did the capitalist world economy not collapse in historically the worst crisis since 1929? The most important answer lies in the decisive intervention of the capitalist state, which came to help the capitalist class by huge public borrowing. The economic stimulus programmes of the governments around the world amounted to a volume of 2.5 trillion US dollars, equivalent to 4% of global GDP. To this can be added the rescue packages for banks and other parts of the capital.

The central role of state intervention in the prevention of an economic breakdown becomes obvious when one looks at the latest economic numbers. In the U.S., for example, it was only the category “government spending” that increased in the 2nd quarter of 2009 by +6.4% (year on year), while all other sectors in the GDP statistics (private consumption, private investment, exports and imports) showed a decline. 33 A similar development happened in the European Union. Also in Japan the state played an important role, but here the exports in the last quarter grew too.

The result of this intensified state capitalist intervention is a dramatic increase in public debt. Within 2-3 years the debt of the imperialist powers, in relation to output, grew; in the EU by about 33 per cent, in the United States by 50 per cent and in Japan, starting from an already very high level, by 20 per cent.

This has enormous implications for the governments’ economic policies. In the U.S., for example, the budget deficit in 2009 will be $ 1.59 trillion or 11.2% of annual GDP. This is the highest level since 1945. 35

Overall, we now see the highest level of state capitalist intervention since 1945. This etatism, however, takes place less in the direct form of nationalisation as in the indirect form of taxation, state orders for the military, etc. This is because the widespread nationalisations in the past were usually in the context of the massive destructions of capital caused by war. The First and Second World Wars required, for military, political, economic and social reasons, a high degree of state monopoly capitalist centralisation. After the Second World War, the bourgeoisie was massively weakened and discredited and the reconstruction projects were so great that private capital could not, or would not, make the necessary investments. Today, as long as monopoly capital does not look directly and immediately into the abyss of its annihilation, so long the state will focus on indirect interventions.

The expansion of public debt is also a huge programme to safeguard the profits of the banks. They benefit in two ways from the state intervention; first they are saved from collapse, then they are paid to organise the repayment of the debt. Moreover, the banks do not have to give credits for businesses and consumers, but can rely on speculative transactions in bonds. Overall, however, this also has the effect of slowing down further the upturn in the industrial sector and of mass consumption. This then reinforces the stagnation tendencies and flattens the recovery further, it could also be the source of a second bubble and its bursting in the short-term.

The consequences of the historically high national debt are manifold. Weaker capitalist states, such as semi-colonial countries in the South and in Eastern Europe, could prove to be unable to service their debts and to register officially bankrupt. The major powers have the ability to print money. In each case, however, the public budgets of all the capitalist states will be heavily burdened by the need to pay interest. This in turn has enormous political and economic consequences: the capitalist state is less than ever in a position to support the capitalists by means of subsidies and tax concessions. At the same time, the state will inevitably raise mass taxes for the working class. This in turn limits the potential of private consumption and therefore limits the consuming power of society. On the other hand, this will make the state more than previously visible as an enemy of the working class and lead to a politicisation of the class struggle.

In contrast to previous economic cycles, there is today no leading imperialist power that is economically strong enough to act as the locomotive for the world economy. In recent decades, the U.S. has played this role but today it is economically weaker than ever before since the 1930s. In recent decades, the U.S. has been saddled with enormous debts in the state, the federal states and municipalities, households and businesses. This debt has been increased dramatically by $9 trillion by the economic and banking aid packages. This is accompanied by the continuing balance of payments deficit, which decreased in recent months only because imports shrank even faster than exports. Although the dollar is still the most important currency in the world, its dominance is now questioned as is shown by reports that the Gulf states are already undertaking negotiations with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar as the currency for the global oil trade.36

To summarise: The low point of the sharpest recession since 1929 now seems to be behind us and the imperialist economies are in the phase of stagnation or a slight upswing. The collapse of the global economy has been prevented by massive state capitalist interventions, but the ruling classes were not able to reduce a single one of the fundamental problems of the capitalist order, let alone solve them. This applies both to the economic contradictions, the over-accumulation of capital and the crisis of the profit rate, as well as the political contradictions, the growing rivalry between the imperialist powers. The upswing in the world economy is therefore weak and, because of low investment and a new speculative bubble, could even enter into a second recession in 2010. In any case, the bourgeoisie will make every effort to foist the cost of the crisis onto the working class in the coming years. This can only be prevented if the proletariat unites in a determined fight and, ultimately, eliminates capitalism by international socialist revolution. For this, the overcoming of the crisis of leadership and the creation of a world party of socialist revolution – the Fifth International – is necessary.

 

ENDNOTES

1 Friedrich Engels: http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

2 Karl Marx: http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch22.htm. In Volume I of Capital Marx describes the development of the cycle in the following way: „ periods of average activity, production at high pressure, crisis and stagnation“ (Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band I, MEW 23, S. 661; http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S3).

3 Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 266, http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm

4 Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Band III, MEW 25, S. 259, http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm

5 Marx had already pointed this out in the second volume of Capital: “This much is evident: the cycle of interconnected turnovers embracing a number of years, in which capital is held fast by its fixed constituent part, furnishes a material basis for the periodic crises. During this cycle business undergoes successive periods of depression, medium activity, precipitancy, crisis. True, periods in which capital is invested differ greatly and far from coincide in time. But a crisis always forms the starting-point of large new investments. Therefore, from the point of view of society as a whole, more or less, a new material basis for the next turnover cycle.”, http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch09.htmhttp://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm

7 V. I. Lenin: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

8 See L Trotsky:, http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/04/capdevel.htm

9 Theses on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Communist International, in Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International, London 1983, p.202

10 V. I. Lenin: http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

11 V. I. Lenin:, http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x02.htm

12 Christian E. Weller and Amanda Logan: Investing for Widespread, Productive Growth, Center for American Progress, December 2008, p. 18

13 For 1971-2000 see World Bank: Global Economic Prospect 2002, S. 234; for 2001-2009 see United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects 2008, p. 1 bzw. World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009 – Update as of mid-2009, p. 2. The figures between 1971-2000 are based on the World Bank calculations of GDP at constant 1995 prices and exchange rates. The figures for 2001-2009 are based on the UN calculations of GDP at constant 2000 prices and exchange rates. The 2.3% is the arithmetic mean for the figures for the years 2001-2009: 1.6%, 1.9%, 2.7%, 4.0%, 3.4%, 3.9%, 3.7%, 2.1 and -2.6%.

14 Federal Reserve Bank St. Louis: International Economic Trends, August 2009, S. 1

15 European Commission: Statistical Appendix to “European Economy, Spring 2009, p.216

16 Christian E. Weller and Amanda Logan: Investing for Widespread, Productive Growth, Center for American Progress, December 2008, p. 11

17 FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, July 15, 2009, S. 1

18 FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 16. September, 2009, S. 4

19 European Commission: Statistical Appendix to “European Economy, Spring 2009, p. 57. Because there are no figures for the EU-15 for the years 1961-70 and 1971-80 in these EU statistics, for these years we have used the arithmetic mean of the figures for Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy.

20 Jorgen Elmeskov (OECD): What is the economic outlook for OECD countries? An interim assessment, 3rd September 2009, p. 3

21 Figures for the USA are taken from: FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 16. September, 2009, p. 7; Figures for the Euro-Zone are taken from: EZB Monthly Bulletin, September 2009, p. 149; Figures for Japan are taken from: Research and Statistics Department, Economic and Industrial Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry: Indices of Industrial Production (Preliminary Report), July 2009, p. 6. All figures for years and quartals are related to the figures in the year before. The monthly figures are related to the month before.

22 Ted H. Chu (Lead Economist and Director of Global Industry Analysis, General Motors): Economic and Auto Industry Outlook, June 5, 2009, p. 8

23 See Megan Davies and Walden Siew: “Stephen Schwarzman says 45 per cent of global wealth written off by financial crisis”, Reuters, March 11, 2009, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25170415-12377,00.html

24 See Taro Saito: The Worst May be Over for Japan’s Economy— Short-term Economic Forecast (Fiscal 2009-2010), Economic Research Group of the Nippon Life Insurance Company, Juli 2009, p. 4

25 Figures for the USA are taken from: FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, 16. September, 2009, S. 7.; Figures for the Euro-Zone are taken from: EZB Monthly Bulletin, September 2009, S. 150; Figures for Japan are taken from: Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi: The Outlook for the Japanese Economy, August 2009, S. 20 (Figures for Japan relate to an Index, where the figure in the year 2000 is 100)

26 Figures for the years 2006-2008 for all countries are taken from: IMF: World Economic Outlook, April 2009, p. 191; Figures for the Quartiles for all countries are taken from: Eurostat news release, 2 September 2009, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-02092009-BP/EN/2-020.... All figures for years relate to the year before and, for quarters, to the quarter before.

27 Figures for the USA are taken from: BEA: Gross Domestic Product: Second quarter 2009 (Second Estimate), Corporate Profits: Second quarter 2009 (Preliminary Estimate), 27. August, 2009, S. 12; Changes in relation to the period ahead. Figures for Japan are taken from: Taro Saito: The Worst May be Over for Japan’s Economy— Short-term Economic Forecast (Fiscal 2009-2010), Economic Research Group of the Nippon Life Insurance Company, July 2009, p. 8. The figures for USA and Japan can not be compared. In the case of the USA they are for Corporate Profits. The figures for years relate to the year before and, for quarters, to the quarter before. In the statistics for Japan the category „Ordinary Profits“ is used and the figures for the quarters relate to the quarter before.

28 UniCredit – What is the eurozone growth potential, July 2009, p. 21

29 See Congress Of The United States, Congressional Budget Office: The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2009, p. 28

30 OECD Employment Outlook 2009: Tackling the Jobs Crisis (Summary in English), p. 2

31 Jorgen Elmeskov (OECD): What is the economic outlook for OECD countries? An interim assessment, 3rd September 2009, p. 19

32 Jorgen Elmeskov (OECD): What is the economic outlook for OECD countries? An interim assessment, 3rd September 2009, p. 2

33 See BEA: Gross Domestic Product: Second quarter 2009 (Second Estimate), Corporate Profits: Second quarter 2009 (Preliminary Estimate), 27. August, 2009, p. 5

34 European Commission: Statistical Appendix to “European Economy, Spring 2009, p. 185

35 See Congress Of The United States, Congressional Budget Office: The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2009, p. 2

36 See Robert Fisk “The demise of the dollar“ in The Independent, 6 October 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar...

 

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Theses on Maoism

By Michael Pröbsting

 

Note from the Editor: We print here a document written by Michael Pröbsting as a summary of the political and class characteristics of Maoism. It was written as a resolution for a congress of the League of the Fifth International (LFI) in early 2011. It was adopted at this congress with hardly any amendment. But since comrade Pröbsting, together with other comrades, was expelled only a few months later as a result of the centrist degeneration process of this organization, the LFI could not bring itself to publish this document since then. We print it here therefore for the first time. Given the important role Maoist organizations play in various semi-colonial countries, we consider this subject as a very significant question. The document is unchanged except that we replaced “LFI” with “RCIT”.

 

* * *

 

1.            Maoism is Stalinism with characteristics which are specific to conditions in the poorer, semi-colonial countries. Historically it developed both programmatically and organisationally as part of the Stalinist III International. Maoism emerged as a specific political current in the Chinese bureaucratic workers state only after the power struggle sharpened between national bureaucracies – the Russian and the Chinese – and led to a break (similarly like the break between Stalin/Moscow and Tito/Yugoslavia in 1948). However these were breaks, which had no fundamental programmatic and class differences as their background but rather the national power interests and questions of applying Stalinist policy under differing specific national conditions.

2.            Trotsky predicted that the sections of the Communist International would, under the influence of Stalin’s “socialism in one country”, degenerate from Marxism along a national path as the CPSU had done. The CPC eventually did so – in particular adapting to the enormous preponderance of the peasantry and the CPC’s near total abandonment of the urban and rural proletariat and severing its ties with the revolutionary and centrist traditions of the CPC from 1921-1927. More living influences on the party were the Third ultra-left Period and the Fourth Popular Front Period, especially because in the latter Mao Zedong became the pre-eminent leader of the party. Long periods of geographical isolation from the supervision of the Comintern and the Soviet party allowed Mao to remodel its ideology and practice. In the five years before and the decade after Stalin’s death the centripetal, disintegrative tendencies in world Stalinism produced Maoism (along with the national roads of Tito, Togliatti, Hoxha, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Abimael Guzmán etc.).

3.            Maoism shares with traditional Moscow-Stalinism the essential elements of a programme and ideology which has its social origin in the material interests of a bureaucracy linked with the workers and oppressed movements. The most important ideological elements which lead us to see Maoism as a specific variant of Stalinism are the following:

i)             Socialism in one country. Maoists share the view that Socialism can and should be built on a national terrain first. This is why various Stalinist states which had sympathy with Mao (like Hoxha in Albania or for some time Kim il-Sung in North Korea) orientated towards autarky. Certainly the most barbarous and bizarre example for the Maoist attempt at an autarkic state was Kampuchea where the Pol Pot regime murdered millions before it collapsed in 1979.

ii)            A mechanistic theory of separate historic stages on the road to working class power. Maoists share the concept that on the road to socialism the working class should first fight for a separate historic stage – called “New Democracy” – in which capitalism is not abolished. According to this New Democracy the Maoist Party leads a coalition of antagonistic classes – the Bloc of Four Classes. This Bloc of Four Classes – similar to the “anti-fascist democracy”, “anti-monopolistic democracy”, “national-democratic revolution” etc. concepts of the pro-Moscow Stalinists – include formally the workers, the peasants, the small business and the “patriotic” capitalists. In fact the new democracy subordinates the working class to the bureaucracies orientation towards a bloc with the patriotic bourgeoisie.

iii)          Rejection in practice of the concept of the hegemony of the working class. While formally defending the leading role of the working class the Maoists in fact substitute for the working class the leading role of the Stalinist party and subordinate the proletariat to the struggles of non-proletarian layers (peasantry guerrilla war, student movementist policy etc.). Therefore the CPC in China focused on building a peasant guerrilla army, similarly the CPN(M) in Nepal till 2006, the CPI(Maoists) in India, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, CPP in Philippines etc.. The Maoists who prefer the strategy of “mass line” to the “protracted people’s war” develop – if they succeed in building some mass influence – into parliamentarist, reformist parties (like the PCR in Argentina, various CPI(ML)’s in India, the Nepalese CPN(M) after 2006).

iv)           National-orientated concept of Party building. Deriving from the theory of Socialism in one country the Maoists have a nationally-based concept of party building. There have been attempts to create international Maoist movements. But they are not real international organisations with an international democratic centralism but rather alliances of national parties. Since there is no party strong enough to materially subordinate and dominate such an international (as the Russian CPSU was in the Stalinist III. International) these Maoist “Internationals” are usually subject to continued fragmentation. Behind the divisions and splits with the “elder brother” party or “great leader” are often the divisions along national party lines (China-USSR; China-Albania; in the RIM between Nepalese UCPN(M), the RCP(USA) and the Peruvian PCP-"Sendero Luminoso" etc.)

v)            Bureaucratic model of the party including the leader cult (Great Helmsman, etc). Maoist parties are dominated by a bureaucratic leadership. They lack internal democracy including the right to form tendencies or factions. Expulsions and splits are often accompanied with physical confrontations including killing (e.g. the various suppression of rival leaders in the “Cultural Revolution in China, the Philippine’s CPP murder of oppositionists, armed confrontations between Indian Maoists). The Maoist version of Criticism and Self-Criticism is usually a masquerade where the leadership publicly punishes oppositionists.

4             Maoism developed in China under different social and historic circumstances than Russian Stalinism.

i)             it emerged in China which was a poor semi-colony colony in the process of being torn apart by rival imperialisms.

ii)            it was formed as a result of a historic defeat for the working class in the Revolution 1925-27 which led to the physical annihilation of the workers vanguard by the Kuomintang.

iii)          it emerged against the background not of workers struggles but of a peasant war waged by largely peasant soldiers amongst a peasant population under the leadership of a largely urban, petty bourgeois dominated leadership

5.            Thus Chinese Maoism – and Maoism as an international movement – is strongly influenced by petty-bourgeois, populist revolutionism. This is the result of the combination of the petty-bourgeois milieu on which Maoism usually is orientating to and the petty bourgeois form of guerrilla struggle. In addition to this Maoism integrates various pre-socialist national traditions into its ideology (like the Sun Yat-sen ideology in China, the Inca tradition in Peru by the PCP, Skanderbeg in Hoxha’s Albanian PLA).

6.            Maoism developed a strongly petty-bourgeois idealist/subjectivist philosophical approach which de facto abandoned dialectical and historical materialism. It replaced an objective class analysis with an idealist view of the party and more particularly its great leader who supposedly embodies the proletarian spirit. It could declare anything proletarian which it approved of, using Mao’s idealist standing of the Marx’s dialectic back on its head (with the principle contradiction being identified by party/leader in terms of the current bloc or turn). This Maoist method was suited to isolated (and self-isolating) political forces drawing on petty bourgeois milieus (intelligentsia/poor peasantry) - ranging from the German and Italian Maoists or their US versions, in the former cases isolated by huge bourgeois workers party from the mass of the working class and the latter by the political backwardness of the American workers. In Asia it was normally a matter of social geographical isolation (in mountains and forests) modelled in some senses on conditions during an immediately after the Long March.

7.            Important elements in the Maoist strategy are the concepts of protracted people’s war” and “mass line”. Where Maoism gains some kind of mass influence these concepts are two variants of a petty-bourgeois, popular-frontist conception. The “people’s war” conception can express the radicalism of the oppressed poor peasants but it subordinates them to the party bureaucracy and their strategic goal of the bloc of the four classes. The “mass line” concept means an orientation towards building of bureaucratically party-led mass organisation. It usually subordinates these mass organisations either to the guerrilla struggle as legal cover organisations where they play purely a role as rallying support for the main form of struggle – the armed struggle. Or they serve as instruments to strengthen the party’s reformist drive for participation in the bourgeois state or – under specific circumstances like in China in the early 1950s – for taking power where the party expropriates the bourgeoisie while politically building a dictatorship against the working class. A classical example of the compatibility of petty-bourgeois armed struggle and reformist parliamentarism is the UCPN(M) in Nepal. Within a few months and without any serious internal struggle the party switched in 2006 from the guerrilla struggle to the coalition government with open bourgeois parties with a concept to establish a bourgeois republic based on a capitalist economy.

8.            Another important innovation of Maoism was the reactionary, idealist theory of denouncing the USSR as “social imperialism”. The theory of characterising the USSR as social imperialism could of course refer to many reactionary features of Moscow’s policy – national oppression in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, subordination of semi-colonial revolutions to Moscow’s foreign policy, subordination of economic development in other bureaucratically degenerated workers states to that of the USSR etc. But it ignored the objective class base of the USSR as a degenerated workers state where capitalism was abolished and a (bureaucratically) planned economy introduced above which a bureaucratic dictatorship ruled on the top of a bourgeoisified state apparatus. To justify a designation made out of a clash of national state interests it declared the USSR to be “state capitalist” without the slightest serious attempt at a socio-economic analysis of how property relations were transformed from “socialism” to “capitalism” or how a political counterrevolution occurred between Stalin’s death and Krushchev’s ascent. The social imperialism theory was a generalised form of Stalin’s “theory” born in the 1930s where inner-party opponents where denounced (and often murdered) as “fascists” or “imperialist agents”. The reactionary consequences of this theory was a failure to defend the USSR and its allies against imperialism but instead Beijing collaborated –after Mao’s famous meeting with Nixon in 1972 – with US imperialism tacitly against Moscow. (see e.g. China’s support for the pro-imperialist UNITA against the MPLA government in Angola or its support for the reactionary Mujahedin in Afghanistan against the PDPA and the Soviet troops after 1979) An ideological reflection of this reactionary policy was Mao’s so called Three Worlds Theory which divided in three parts: the First World (the two superpowers USA and USSR), the Second World (the superpowers' allies) and the Third World. This concept justified the reactionary support of Beijing for right-wing, pro-US dictatorships (like the Shah in Iran, the Marcos-regime in Philippines or Pinochet in Chile) and oppressive regimes like the Bandaranaike’s government in Sri Lanka who slaughtered thousands of youth in the rebellion of 1971. Albeit Albania’s Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha – and with him many Maoists who turned away from China after 1978 – later denounced the Three Worlds Theory they essentially kept the reactionary social-imperialism concept.

9.            Related to this lack of a materialist class analyses is the widespread confusion in Maoist ranks on the Leninist theory of labour aristocracy. While sectors of it denounce the huge majority of the white working class in the imperialist metropolises as “bourgeoisified”, part of the labour aristocracy and even not being workers at all (like the MIM), others virtually deny the existence of a labour aristocracy as a social layer (like the German MLPD). Both ignore Lenin’s correct thesis that the labour aristocracy is the privileged, top strata of the working class which is bribed and paid by the bourgeoisie out of the imperialist super-profits (derived from the semi-colonial world and the super-exploited layers of the working class in the metropolises itself).

10.          After the split between the USSR and China the following situation emerged:

i)             China was the weaker power – therefore Beijing had much less material means to finance a bureaucracy in other Stalinist parties

ii)            Those few pro-Beijing parties which had a mass influence either suffered a historic defeat (PKI in Indonesia 1965, CPT in Thailand in the early 1980s) or drifted away and adapted to their own national bourgeoisie who was in conflict with Peking (the CPI(M) in India). The latter was not really a Maoist party but (initially) a left Stalinist party (Moscow’s alliance with India and China’s invasion of India presented huge difficulties for any party aligned to either. Total Independence was the best solution.) The Maoists in the party split away and launched a guerrilla war against the Indian state (the Naxalite movement). A series of events fragmented Maoist’s trying to remain loyal to the CCP: the fall of Lin Biao (1971), Nixon’s visit to Beijing (1972), fall of the Gang of Four (1976), the rise of Deng (1978).

iii)          Therefore Maoism was a much weaker international movement compared with Moscow-Stalinism.

iv)           However given the discredit character and rottenness of Moscow’s policy of peaceful co-existence with imperialism Maoism became an attractive as a programmatic/ideological model for various petty-bourgeois revolutionist movements (like the 68-movement in the West, the CPP/NPA in the Philippines, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, CPI(Maoists) India etc.)

v)            It had an additional flair because of the semi-civil war in China during the Cultural Revolution which gave Mao – after the liberation war – a second time a “revolutionary”, militant, non-apparatchik flair.

vi)           Various degenerate Trotskyists adapted to Maoism proclaiming Mao’s theory of permanent revolution and the cultural revolution as (yet another) sort of unconscious Trotskyism

11.          These specific historic conditions – more radical ideological appearance, less centralised bureaucratic control from the centre in Peking – help to explain the many different shades of Maoism from left reformism to left-centrism.

12.          Marxists are – in line with the united front tactic – always prepared to collaborate with Maoists in the class struggle against the enemies of the working class and the oppressed. Of course given the repressive and even murderous acts that Maoists like other Stalinists have committed on Trotskyists (and indeed on one another) as partners in such a united front they must be able to defend themselves. At the same time it is necessary to explain to the Maoists – amongst whom are many dedicated fighters against oppression and exploitation – that their theory and practice is alien to Marxism and is an obstacle for the liberation struggle of the working class and the peasantry. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency appeals to them to rethink and to break with Maoism and join the ranks of authentic Marxism. Forward to the Fifth International!

 

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan

 

April 1988

 

 

 

Note by the Editor: The following document has been published in 1988 by our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International. It was initially published in “Trotskyist International” No. 1 (Summer 1988) – the theoretical journal of this tendency.

 

 

 

1. In 1978 the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power. It was a party based on the urban intelligentsia and the upper ranks of the armed forces. The party was based on the Stalinist monolithic model but was riven by factional conflicts. The PDPA’s programme consisted of a series of democratic reforms, based on continuing the policy of co-operation with the USSR which had been pursued by the king until 1973, and which Daoud, in conjunction with the CIA and the Shah of Iran, was attempting to stop. The seizure of power had popular support in the towns. It was, however, not a Soviet organised putsch. The Soviet Union had hitherto been content with Afghanistan as a neutral buffer state. In return the Soviet Union pumped in large amounts of aid being concerned only that the Afghan regime was “friendly”. But the effects of Soviet aid (army training, education etc) were to pro-Sovietise the majority of the army officer corps and state bureaucracy.

 

The initial reform programme of the PDPA embraced land redistribution to the advantage of the rural poor, an industrialisation programme in co-operation with the USSR/Comecon and a programme of women’s rights involving a campaign for literacy and against the bride-price. Conflicts within the PDPA, the repressive and bureaucratic nature of the PDPA’s “reform” programme, coupled with mounting imperialist subversion, dramatically narrowed the base of the regime during 1979. This was a direct result of the Stalinist policies of the PDPA which proved incapable of mobilising the most oppressed layers of Afghan society against the most entrenched reactionary interests. The reforms were sufficient to provoke protests from the bigger landowners and the mullahs, but they were not radical enough to win active support from much of the rural poor. They did not provide sufficient military and material aid, and were carried through in a bureaucratic manner. This prevented the independent organisation of the masses. In an escalating civil warm the disparate forces of Islamic and monarchist reaction threatened to completely destroy the faction-ridden and weak PDPA regime.

 

The Stalinist programme of a “stages” model was responsible for this situation: the idea of independent bourgeois democratic development proved once more to be an illusion. There can be no fundamental improvement of the conditions of the masses without a dramatic boosting of the productive forces to a sufficient level to lay the necessary material bases for this. This can only be achieved by the programme of permanent revolution in the whole of Central Asia.

 

2. The Soviet Union entered Afghanistan in order to preserve a friendly regime on its southern border and to thwart imperialism’s plans, which hoped to turn Afghanistan into an anti-Soviet buffer which could be used as a listening post and to strengthen Islamic reaction in Soviet Central Asia. The bureaucracy organised the invasion in order to protect its own interests.

 

The invasion did not take place at a time when imperialism was immediately threatening the USSR with war. However, it did coincide with US losses in the region (Iran), the election of Reagan and the end of the Carter period of detente. Hence Afghanistan’s civil war was to become a major front in the renewed anti-Soviet drive of imperialism.

 

While entering Afghanistan to protect its own interests, the Kremlin bureaucracy was forced to intervene on the progressive (i.e. PDPA supporting) side of the Afghan civil war. But it had no interest in defending or extending the reform programme of the PDPA. Its military might was aimed against at those that wished to do so, as well as against the forces of militant reaction. However, in attacking the rebels, the Soviet Armed Forces (SAF) physically defended the fragile progressive forces in Afghanistan to some extent. This was the only progressive consequence of the invasion.

 

3. We condemn the invasion as counter-revolutionary because:

 

a) Its formal violation of the PDPA government and party and the installation of a Soviet backed minority faction split the progressive forces and threw some of them into the arms of reaction. Further, by formally violating the Afghan peoples’ right to self-determination, it handed an extra weapon to imperialist backed reaction. The invasion therefore weakened the indigenous working class and poor peasantry, even if it temporarily strengthened the military offensive against the reactionary rebels.

 

b) It threatened any independent organisation of the working class with full scale Stalinist repression. Given the imposition of the counter-revolutionary Kremlin bureaucracy’s military repressive regime, Afghan revolutionaries have to struggle to break this hold in order to seize power, which is their strategic aim.

 

Nevertheless, once the intervention had occurred, revolutionary communists had to adopt tactics related to the existing situation, however undesirable or disadvantageous. In conditions of civil war, where the working class and its allies are unable to take independent military action against Afghan reaction and the Soviet backed Afghan government, we suspend the demand for the withdrawal of the SAF.

 

Because of the weakness of the progressive forces in the Afghan civil war and their inability to defeat both reactionary Afghan forces and drive out the SAF, there was a need for a united front with the SAF against reaction. Behind the lines of the SAF and the PDPA, the vanguard of the Afghan proletariat would constitute itself in a merciless struggle against Afghan and imperialist reaction and in a struggle against Stalinism’s drive to demobilise the best of the popular masses in its own bureaucratic interests. Being aware of the aims of the SAF, no Trotskyist could “Hail the Red Army!”. However, our goal remained and remains Soviet withdrawal when the progressive forces in Afghanistan were militarily and politically armed to defeat reaction.

 

It is permissible to form tactical united fronts against black reaction with petit bourgeois democrats and Stalinists, be they Afghan or Soviet. Such fronts are of course tactical, i.e. of limited duration or for limited goals (principally the preservation of the lives of the working class and intelligentsia). Equally important is the defence of these forces against Stalinist repression. No united front is possible with the SAF whenever they are attacking progressive forces. In all such circumstances revolutionaries must unequivocally stand with these forces.

 

4. We reject the proposition that because of the invasion of Soviet troops, the national question takes precedence over all other issues and has a progressive dynamic against the SAF. From this point of view, it would be logical to regard the establishment of one or several reactionary Islamic states as progressive. This is wrong on several counts:

 

a) There is not one Afghan national question. There are many.

 

b) The fate of the tribes and nationalities can only be settled internationally; their self-determination could only be realised beyond the framework of the present Afghan borders which divide Baluchis, Pathans, Uzbekhs etc.

 

c) Oppressed nationalities such as the Baluchis see the SAF as a defence against the Pathan dominated rebels.

 

d) Even “independent” national states would be under even tighter imperialist influence through Balkanisation.

 

However, national oppression may occur against peoples who are not in reactionary opposition to Kabul. In these circumstances we would support their right to self-determination, up to and including secession, including armed defence against Pathan chauvinism, whilst excluding any alliance with reactionary forces.

 

5. The rebel Mujahedin is sufficiently well armed and strategically located to be a permanent threat to the Afghan army and the SAF. US aid to the rebels stands now at $1 billion with supplies ranging from stingers to long range mortars. The rebels are militarily and politically disunited, divided between monarchists (some of whom are backed by Saudi Arabia) and Islamic fundamentalists (Iran is backing the Shiites). The Islamic elements are wracked by Sunni/Shiite conflicts. All these divisions render the rebel forces incapable of securing a final victory. Their military actions have, however, proved to be an important thorn in the side of the SAF. All the rebel groups share varieties of the reactionary project of bolstering feudal forms in Afghanistan.

 

The Pakistan based rebels consist of six groups who form the Islamic Alliance, all of which receive aid from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The strongest group is the fanatical Hezbe-Islami which wants to install a far stricter Islamic code than that which operated under the king. Alongside these groups there are, or were, three political currents in Afghanistan itself, as well as the fighters of the individual tribes (Nuristani, Hazara—the latter with Iranian support). These three groups are the social democratic Settem-i Melli (supported by the Pakistani secret service and with the best links with the Chinese bureaucracy), the Maoist GAKA (Schola-e Jewed), and the politically diffuse SAMA which embraces the intellectuals and deserters. Every rebel current has been on the wrong side of the barricades. Despite the views of the Maoists and of some sections of the USFI, none of these forces has a progressive character. The “national” right of self-determination of the Afghan peoples currently has a predominantly reactionary character. Alliances or united fronts with these forces are impermissible.

 

The opposition has been able to take strength not only from imperialism but also from the USSR’s attempts to compromise and conciliate with them.

 

6. In the face of this opposition, the PDPA and the Kremlin have increasingly sought a new stabilisation by making deals with the rebel leaders. Thus Karmal renounced elements of the Khalqi land reform and women’s literacy campaigns. This was designed to appease the reactionary opposition, yet failed to stem their resistance. With the ousting of Karmal and his replacement by secret police chief Najibullah, the regime has stepped up the pace of such policies in the name of “national reconciliation”.

 

Its policy towards the countryside is one of seeking deals with tribal chiefs which involve recognising the chief’s authority over what are then designated as “peace zones”. They are given Soviet arms and aid in a tacit recognition that the PDPA is no longer in control of these areas. Said Ahmad and Malek Jelani, two rebel chiefs once much touted in the West, have signed such deals. Where tribal chiefs will not reach an accommodation, whole areas have been wasted, facing the population with the choice of either moving into the towns or of joining the millions of refugees in Pakistan.

 

Campaigns for women’s literacy , which provoked the Herat revolt led by the reactionary rebels has now virtually ceased. With the Najibullah purge of the Karmalites, the last woman has been ousted from the Politburo. The new campaign for national reconciliation explicitly drops any commitmnnt to women’s rights against the Islamic Code.

 

The Najibullah regime is campaigning to extend the private sector which already accounts for 52% gross industrial product. Investors are now being given a six year exemption from income tax. Big landlords who are prepared to co-operate will have their land returned, the previously landless who cannot make their land pay because of the lack of seed or because their divided lands lie too far from their homes, will have to give it back.

 

In the areas around Kabul, Commissions of National Reconciliation are trying to work with one time oppositionists. Seats have been left vacant in the government for future conciliators. Attempts are still being made to woo the monarch. Najibullah recently stated that the King “could play a big role in unifying the country”. From 1980 this drive for reconciliation with reaction has consistently gone hand in hand with a drive to reach a global compromise with imperialism at the expense of the Afghan workers, peasants and their allies.

 

7. The USSR did not invade Afghanistan in order to “structurally assimilate” it into the Soviet Union, nor to underwrite the transformation of the country into a degenerate workers’ state. Despite the presence of the SAF and the close links with the USSR, Afghanistan remains a capitalist state, however primitive.

 

The USSR’s aim has always been to reach a deal with imperialism that would restore Afghanistan’s “neutral” status from the pre-Daoud days. This policy now takes the form of the Geneva negotiations in which the USSR has made clear its willingness to sacrifice the PDPA regime and withdraw its troops in exchange for a “neutral” Afghanistan. Its hopes for achieving this lie in global detente with the USA. To achieve a settlement in Afghanistan would remove a number of obstacles to the USSR’s current foreign policy aims: improving its relations with various Middle East countries (Iran and Saudi Arabia), and smoothing the path of rapprochement with the Chinese bureaucracy.

 

The Kremlin bureaucracy clearly recognises that it cannot win the war in the short term without massively extending its commitment, e.g. taking the war into Pakistan, a policy which it is not prepared to risk. Hence the USSR’s pressure on Pakistan in particular, in order to achieve a quick settlement.

 

By declaring its intention to pull out its troops in a fixed period, the USSR has posed point blank to Pakistan and its backer, US imperialism, the question of what form of government they are willing to accept in Afghanistan. Both the imperialists and Pakistan have backed Islamic reaction against the USSR. However, they are now worried that division within the opposition as well as the fundamentalist dynamic of its most armed elements could serve to further destabilise the region. An intensified civil war in Afghanistan or the emergence of an Iranian type fundamentalist regime would not please either Pakistan or imperialism.

 

The Soviet bureaucracy hopes to push the Reagan administration and Zia into accepting a joint government in Afghanistan—a coalition of PDPA and Mujahedin elements presided over by the monarchy. They hope to restore the pre-1974 status quo—an Afghanistan firmly within the Soviet sphere of influence, but open to limited imperialist penetration, providing it is not aimed at destabilising Soviet interests. Whilst such a settlement may be temporarily achieved, the project of a permanently “neutral” Afghanistan is a utopia which flows from the Soviet bureaucracy’s reactionary dream of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism.

 

Such a treacherous withdrawal by the USSR confronts the Afghan left, workers and peasants with the imminent threat of a bloodbath at the hands of the reactionary forces. It would have been carried out at the price of the lives of thousands of young Soviet workers in uniform.

 

8. While the PDPA militia appears to have stabilised its numbers, at least in Kabul, there is no sign that the independent forces as yet exist that will be able to defeat the heavily armed, imperialist backed Mojahedin forces. To demand the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops would be tantamount to handing all the progressive forces in Afghanistan—the urban workers,women, teachers, intelligentsia etc.—into the hands of an Islamic dictatorship. We therefore continue to argue against the withdrawal of the SAF. Instead we focus on demands on the SAF to provide the necessary troops, ammunition and economic aid to make land reform, industrialisation, literacy and the defeat of reaction really possible. We demand such aid with no strings. We demand the immediate arming of the urban workers en masse, and their organisation into militias in the face of a potentially unilateral Soviet withdrawal. We fight to win the PDPA militants and sympathisers to complete opposition to the Stalinist treachery currently being hatched in Geneva.

 

9. Inside the USSR we oppose the treachery of Gorbachev and the Kremlin. We also the oppose the “peace movement” campaign for withdrawal. Instead, we argue for genuine internationalist aid from the Soviet workers to Afghanistan’s workers and peasants, and a fight against the bureaucracy in order to secure that aid. That fight for internationalist aid and against the bureaucracy’s class collaboration with imperialism must be used to re-awaken the revolutionary traditions of the Soviet working class on the road to the political overthrow of the bureaucracy. For political revolution in the USSR!

 

10. The Afghan working class and poor peasantry needs a programme to answer its present crisis. The key elements of that programme must include:

 

• No to national reconciliation with reaction! No to the restoration of the monarch.

 

• For a Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage and defended by the armed organisations of the masses, not a Loyah Jirgah of the PDPA and tribal and feudal chiefs! For the Constituent Assembly to be open to all parties that have not sided with reaction in the civil war.

 

• For the nationalisation of the land. The land to those who work it. No to the restoration of the lands of the big landowners. For a programme of interest free credit for the small farmers and peasants, in particular to aid a programme of co-operativisation and resettlement. No expropriation of the lands belonging to the small peasants.

 

• For equal political and social rights for women. Away with the veil and the bride-price!

 

• For the separation of mosque and state. Expropriate the mosques’ lands. Education for all in schools free of the Mosque.

 

• Social and political integration of the refugee population returning from Pakistan.

 

• No to the repressive regime of the PDPA and the SAF. For independent trade unions. For workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils. For soldiers’ committees. For fraternisation with the SAF workers in uniform.

 

• For a programme of industrialisation in the towns and modernisation in the countryside that can provide the material basis for politically defeating reaction! Such a programme will necessitate international co-operation within the region, especially between Afghanistan and the Central Asian Soviet Republics. The best form that this co-operation could take would be a federation of revolutionary workers’ states in Central Asia.

 

• Every independent mobilisation of the workers and peasants must be defended against Islamic and Stalinist reaction. For the formation of armed defence squads and a workers’ and peasants’ militia.

 

• Down with the Geneva sell-out! Down with a reconciliation with the king enforced by Soviet troops! No unilateral withdrawal of the SAF: Afghan workers must decide on the aid they need to defeat reaction. For Soviet aid—arms, training, funds and volunteers—with no strings and under the control of Afghan workers and poor peasants. We oppose a Soviet withdrawal until the workers and peasants can defeat reaction in all its monarchist, feudalist and Islamic forms.

 

• Should the Soviet bureaucracy come to an agreement with imperialism which involves the disarmament of the PDPA militias and handing over the Afghan proletariat, poor peasantry and their allies to Islamic reaction, we are in favour of the armed defence of these forces against the SAF. We would be for the defeat of the SAF in such a conflict, and for forcing them from Afghan soil. For breaking it up and winning its best elements to the side of the Afghan working class and poor peasants. Outside Afghanistan, this would involve calling for the withdrawal of the SAF and for an internationalist campaign of military and financial support for the Afghan working class, poor peasantry and their allies.

 

• Soviet workers must not allow their rulers to murderously leave the Afghan workers and peasants in the lurch. For internationalist aid to Afghanistan against the Kremlin bureaucracy’s Geneva sell-out.

 

• No confidence in the Kremlin lackeys of the PDPA. For a revolutionary (Trotskyist) party in Afghanistan.

 

• For a workers’ and peasants’ government based upon workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils.

 

• There can be no solution within the borders of present day Afghanistan.

 

For a federation of revolutionary workers’ states in Central Asia.

 

 

 

MRCI Theses on Gorbachev

Adopted by the MRCI conference, July 1987

 

1. From the mid-1970s the Soviet economy has shown mounting signs of slowdown and stagnation. Initially, this effect was partially offset by the high world market price of Soviet raw material exports. That cushioning no longer exists. The Stalinist model of a centrally bureaucratically planned economy has increasingly become a drag on the development of the productive forces. Its initial achievements in the sphere of industrialisation cannot disguise its inherent historical limits. The reactionary doctrine of socialism in one country isolated the Soviet economy from the world division of labour and forced industrialisation to be based on the material and cultural backwardness of Russia.

The stifling of proletarian democracy drained post-capitalist property relations of their lifeblood: the direct involvement of the producers themselves in extending and perfecting the productive forces to meet human need. In the hands of the usurping bureaucratic caste the planned economy necessarily developed with profound unevennesses and disproportions. The political expropriation of the proletariat meant that the bureaucracy met their top priority planning targets at the expense of industries and services that would improve the immediate lot of the masses. From the outset, the political expropriation of the working class and the consequent wall of secrecy and privilege that surrounds the bureaucratic caste led to apathy and cynicism on the part of the mass of workers.

2. The bureaucracy was able to develop the productive forces in the 1930s, albeit with gross disproportions. It was then able to concentrate its resources to both defeat German imperialism and reconstruct the USSR after the war, without assistance from imperialism. However its inherent deficiencies became increasingly evident in the 1960s and 1970s.

a) We now witness an economy whose formal growth rates (themselves in decline) cannot conceal a mounting technological gap between most sectors of the economy and the major capitalist powers. There are massive unevennesses between the technological level and relative innovation within the various branches of industry. There are major deficiencies in the quality and range of production in most sectors.

b) At the head of this system is a lethargic, historically indolent and rigidly compartmentalised administrative and management structure. This huge layer is under no real compulsion to modernise and innovate. Freed from the terror over its ranks of the Stalin period, it has an historic tendency to plunder the planned economy and to the corrupt use of its political power. This was dramatically expressed in the Brezhnev period. The inherent conservatism of this giant bureaucratic layer is an ever-increasing drain on the potential of planned post-capitalist property relations. Under these conditions, the planning apparatus and the division of labour within the bureaucracy have become less and less effective as a means of improving quality, overcoming waste and meeting the needs of the masses.

c) The arbitrary and corrupt rule of the bureaucracy stifles initiative, discussion and innovation. This has led the working class and the intelligentsia to become increasingly alienated from, and hostile to, the bureaucratic regime. In itself this is a factor contributing to Soviet economic stagnation. In conditions of economic slump that alienation increasingly threatens to spill over into open struggle against the privileged bureaucracy. For sections of the bureaucracy and for the masses, this was graphically revealed by the struggles of the Polish workers. Solidarnosc signaled loud and clear that the bureaucracy cannot rely on the working class to remain passive in the face of mounting evidence of the bureaucracy’s crisis.

d) A particular legacy of Stalinism is an agricultural sector that has been registering growth in productivity at an even slower rate than the rest of the economy. Shortfalls in agricultural production, together with the more generalised shortage of consumer goods, have made a nonsense of many of the bureaucracy’s incentive bonus schemes. This situation also threatens to ignite popular opposition: the majority of large-scale conflicts between the workers and the bureaucracy are over the question of food shortages.

e) The accumulating problems of the planned economy threaten the ability of the Soviet bureaucracy to maintain its defensive military competition with imperialism and its support for key pro-Soviet regimes around the world.

3. Gorbachev openly proclaims the need for a grand reconstruction of Soviet society (the “perestroika”) in order to break with its stagnation, corruption and demoralisation. In a rhetorical fashion, he regularly points to the scale of the USSR’s crisis. Gorbachev’s programme for tackling the crisis has much in common with that of Andropov, his old mentor and KGB chief. Andropov and the KGB proclaimed the need to purify soviet society by purging it of its dishonesty, corruption and stultification. The scale of the purge was envisaged as being minor compared with that of the Stalin period, however its principal instrument was to be the more effective overseeing of the bureaucracy by the apparatus of repression—the KGB and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD)—the police. This apparatus was also to be unleashed in pursuit of labour discipline. The Andropov project underlined the profoundly repressive nature of the Soviet bureaucracy.

4. Gorbachev came to power in a bloc with Andropov supporters. His initial priority was to get the economy “working again” by controlling the activity of the middle layers of the managerial and administrative bureaucracy. This was mainly to be carried out “from above” by merging ministries and by sharpening the instruments of central direction and, in particular, the inspection mechanisms. Gorbachev’s project was to streamline the Stalinist machine, to produce more immediate and direct links between the individual enterprises and the central economic apparatus. This remains at the heart of his economic programme.

5. Faced with continuing economic stagnation and, no doubt, with bureaucratic resistance within the giant state apparatus, Gorbachev has been forced to refine his programme. Initially the centre was to be the main agent of reconstruction, together with management in the enterprises. Their task was to increase efficiency and to apply “glasnost” to shortcomings in the system. From early 1987 onwards, the hallmark of Gorbachev’s rhetoric has been the need for democratisation from below in order to carry out perestroika . It is this element of Gorbachev’s programme that most threatens his political base within the bureaucracy. The terms of this “democratisation” are severely restricted: it is seen as a limited means of pressurising the inert bureaucracy from below. The bureaucratic leadership is to keep strict control on its terms and limits. It is seen as a vital means of convincing sections of society to actively identify with the regime’s reforms and against their opponents, be they bureaucrats or proletarians.

Gorbachev’s democratisation is extremely tentative. It will be discussed at a special party congress in 1988. What is intended?

a) The introduction of the electoral system for party appointments. This can also serve as a weapon in the hands of the central bureaucracy against entrenched local cliques.

b) The possibility of more than one candidate standing in soviet elections. Based on the Hungarian model, it is a means by which Gorbachev and co hope to mobilise more non-party elements to participate in the soviet apparatus and thereby to buttress its credibility.

c) Plant managers are to be elected every five years and foremen every two years. This is a measure aimed both at keeping local management on their toes, and at strengthening the identification of at least a section of the workforce with management.

None of this is intended to subvert “the leading role of the party”: it is a means of pressurising the apparatus to work more effectively. However, it will:

i) Sharpen conflicts within the bureaucracy itself as the most unaccountable elements attempt to protect their privileges and prerogatives.

ii) Sharpen democratic expectations amongst the masses. To this extent it will serve to re-awaken political argument and debate.

6. Gorbachev is a reflection of the deep crisis of Stalinism. This system does not have the vitality and capacity for self reform necessary to progressively reopen the transition to socialism. Only a political revolution in which the masses overthrow the bureaucracy and take power into their hands through soviets and a workers militia can unlock the door to genuine socialist construction. The workers will have to democratically overhaul the plan to meet human need in order for inequalities and all forms of oppression to disappear. This is not Gorbachev’s intention.

However, the prospect of a serious conflict with the most inert and repressive elements within the bureaucracy, and of more or less open splits in the bureaucracy’s ranks does threaten to open up a period when the working class will have more opportunities to organise and consciously assert itself within the crisis of Soviet society. Unlike Khruschev, Gorbachev has been careful not to raise proletarian expectations with offers of major increases in living standards. He wants to win the backing of the intelligentsia and to severely restrict those workers who have been mobilised in his support, for fear of unleashing sharper struggles. He is aware that to the extent that perestroika encourages the working class to break with its tradition of passive cynicism it potentially opens the road to a left threat to the Stalinist bureaucracy.

7. Political leadership remains the central problem in a working class that is the overwhelming majority of Soviet society, has a high level of formal culture, but which has no tradition of political independence because of years of terror and institutionalised repression. The bureaucracy drowned the Soviet Trotskyists in blood and has systematically expunged that tradition from the proletariat’s historical memory. The reconstitution of revolutionary communism (Trotskyism) in the USSR will be key in determining whether the Soviet workers remain the oppressed victims of the bureaucratic caste sharing a “common ruin” or organise to take power. An open and honest accounting of Lenin and Trotsky’s struggle against bureaucratism and chauvinism can play a vital role in this process.

8. What will perestroika mean for Soviet workers? Unlike the Yugoslav and Chinese bureaucracies, Gorbachev is anxious not to weaken the central bureaucracy’s hold over industry. He hopes to link an increase in the operation of market mechanisms in certain spheres (enterprises to be profitable, prices to be brought into line with market values, private restaurants, etc) with more efficient centralised coordination. The proposed openings to foreign capital and the plans to join GATT and the IMF are far more cautious than either the Chinese bureaucracy’s “open door” enterprise zones or the Yugoslavian bureaucracy’s abolition of the state monopoly of foreign trade. In the countryside, fields will be leased to teams, including to family units. This is not meant to determine the entire shape of Soviet agriculture in the same way as the Chinese land reforms. While Gorbachev aims to strengthen the operation of market forces, his project does not embrace the restorationist logic that other sections of world Stalinism have employed in order to meet the crisis of Stalinist rule. However, there will certainly be a sharpening debate within the Soviet bureaucracy, with an increasingly vocal marketist tendency.

On every front Gorbachev’s policies will have a profound effect on the working class. Unions will lose much of their welfare role and will be pushed towards playing a greater role in keeping tabs on management and expressing some of the workers’ grievances, as a means of heading off a Solidarnosc-type explosion. The new profitability principle will sharpen the contradictions within the unions, if they are both to be a safety valve for workers’ grievances and to tie the workforce to management in a joint drive to boost labour productivity. This will take place at a time when there will be very real attacks on the working class:

i) An end to job security rights.

ii) A drive to increase differentials and inequalities between workers, as well as an end to certain preferential wages for manual workers. There will be a revival of forms of Stakhanovism as the bureaucracy tries to strengthen a supportive labour aristocracy of “productive workers”.

iii) Tighter managerial discipline.

iv) The erosion of the social wage through price increases. Higher prices, and in some cases higher wages will be introduced, but with no guarantee that the latter will secure access to quality goods.

v) For many workers, particularly those working in old or worn out factories, there will be the prospect of wage cuts at the hands of the inspection agency.

9. The task of Trotskyists is to fight for the programme of political revolution in the context of the level of consciousness of the Soviet workers, and taking into account their illusions. We must be able to relate the programme of political revolution to the proposed reforms and to the debates taking place, while never confusing the political revolution with an extension of those reforms or, like Mandel, dropping the slogan of political revolution in favour of a more radical, thoroughgoing and “democratic” perestroika. The programme of political revolution cannot be reduced to democratic, non-class specific demands; it is a programme for working class power. However, this does not mean that we will absent ourselves from the battlefield when the masses struggle for key democratic rights.

A Programme of political revolution

Against social inequality and political repression!

• End the bureaucracy’s privileged access to the special shops, sanatoria and health resorts. Make their services available to all. Abolish the extra pay packet systems, open the wage policies of every enterprise and institute to inspection by the workers. No state official to be paid more than the wage of a skilled worker.

• For a return to the Leninist norm of the Party max. No party member or official to earn more than the average wage of a skilled worker.

• Equal access for all to education at every level. For the dismissal of all educational officials and teachers who have accepted bribes. For workers inspection of entry procedures. For a return to Leninist polytechnic education—all must learn to work, all must learn to administer.

• Abolish the censorship laws. For the free circulation of leaflets and literature, subject to working class scrutiny of their contents. For access to the press for all working class bodies in proportion to their support.

• For workers’ courts of elected jurors and the release of all “political” prisoners of the regime that those jurors see fit to liberate.

• For a new legal code to be openly discussed by workers. This code must place elected workers’ courts at the centre of the legal machinery. All laws must be published openly for all to see. The new code must defend the USSR, in the necessary manner, from imperialist and counter-revolutionary agents.

• For the abolition of the KGB and its replacement by a workers’ security commission on the lines of the revolutionary Chekha. For the abolition of the MVD and its replacement by a workers’ militia.

• For all workers to be trained, armed and organised in territorial militias.

• For the standing army to be cut to a size commensurate with legitimate defence of the USSR against imperialism and physical assistance to other workers’ states and to all forces fighting imperialism. This was the historic role of Trotsky and Lenin’s Red Army.

• For the right of soldiers to assemble, organise and publish. For soldiers’ councils free of all bureaucratic control.

• Drive out the corrupt and the parasitical. For the immediate dismissal of all officials who have ever disciplined workers for criticism or for defending their rights. As the platform of the Left Opposition declared:

“An article should be introduced into the Criminal Code, punishing as a serious crime against the state, every direct or indirect, overt or concealed persecution of a worker for criticising, for making independent proposals, and for voting.”

• For the right of the workers to dismiss all officials/managers known to have profited from corruption. All officials so dismissed to stand trial and receive the necessary punishment in a workers’ court, and to be entitled to no more than the state pension after their ill-gotten gains have been confiscated.

For independent working class organisation!

• Defend and extend the right of the working class to its own independent organisations. For genuine free trade unions, free of bureaucratic control, in which all officials are elected, recallable and paid the average wage of the membership. For that right to include the right to form new representative unions as well as to oust the layer of officials who masquerade as workers’ representatives in the present state unions and to replace them with the workers’ own choice, free from “the leading role of the party”.

• For the right to strike. For a workers’ factory committee in every enterprise.

• Open the books of the enterprises to inspection by the factory committee. For all decisions in the plant to be discussed and ratified by the factory committee. The factory committee should appoint and oversee all administrative personnel with the right to immediate recall and reallocation to the factory floor, as against three yearly elections of state appointees.

• For factory committee management of the factory shop and canteen. For equal access of all workers to the goods in the shops and canteens.

For Soviet democracy!

As the Russian Revolution demonstrated, the workers’ council of recallable delegates is the form through which the working class exercises state power in a healthy workers’ state. Rooted in the factories, the working class communities and the oppressed layers of society, they organise the great mass of the once-exploited to become rulers of their own state. Such bodies have nothing in common with the present soviets in the USSR which have a mock-parliamentary form, with geographical constituencies and, more importantly, which are the creatures of the ruling caste.

The soviets with which the working class will exercise its rule must be forged anew in struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. Through the political revolution they will be transformed from organs of struggle into organs of direct power. Gorbachev has talked of the need to democratise the existing Soviet institutions. Following the Hungarian example, he has proposed that the CPSU should allow more than one screened candidate to stand in an election. Given that Russian workers will be confronted with this controlled attempt to render more credible the democratic mandate claimed by the soviets, and given that the democratisation of the soviets is being discussed in the factories, revolutionary Marxists must raise their distinct voice:

• For a return to the Leninist norms of soviet representation. For all delegates to be “accountable” in the form of recallability. For delegates to represent factories as well as housing complexes in a direct and recallable manner. For Leninist soviets not bogus parliaments and bogus constituencies.

For a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!

• No to the leading role of the CPSU! It is the party of the bureaucracy that parasitically squanders the product of Soviet workers’ labour. For the freedom to form parties committed to the defence of the gains of October 1917 and for freedom for such Soviet parties to put forward candidates and platforms in elections. For the right of any group of workers to put forward candidates for election. No to pre-election screening by the CPSU or any stooge front it may put forward. No limit on the number of candidates—let the workers, not the CPSU, decide!

The majority of active workers have illusions either in Gorbachev himself, or at least in aspects of his perceived programme for democratising and revitalising Soviet society and for rendering the bureaucracy less arbitrary, privileged and unaccountable. Despite the intentions of those who originated this programme, it therefore awakens progressive aspirations amongst the toiling masses. The experience of the Czechoslovak CP in 1968 and of the “horizontal movement” within the Polish Workers’ Party in the Solidarnosc days, suggests that proletarian mobilisations will find a reflection in the state parties. This is so because large numbers of workers are captive members of these parties. This is especially the case with the CPSU.

We firmly believe that the Soviet working class requires a new revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist party if it is to successfully take power back into its hands. However, we cannot ignore the fact that in an escalating political-revolutionary situation, the bureaucracy will come under challenge from sections of the party membership. Where we cannot directly win such rank and file elements to the ranks of Trotskyism, and recognising that such opposition will often be the first politically-independent act of such workers, we should encourage them to put their party to the test by demanding:

• Elections at every level, elections based not upon the criteria of “administrative efficiency” that Gorbachev wants to introduce, but upon open platforms and political competition in open debate. For the lifting of the ban on the formation of factions and on the circulation of platforms which was temporarily imposed by the party of Lenin and Trotsky in 1921.

• The road to political revolution does not lie through reforming the CPSU but through breaking it up as an instrument of mass mobilisation in support of the repressive and privileged bureaucracy.

Political revolution and the national question

Like the Tsarist Empire it replaced, the USSR is a “prison house of nations”. Down with Russification. For the right of all Soviet nationalities to their own language as an official language. Down with the Great Russian chauvinism against which Lenin waged his last struggles.

• For the right of all Soviet nationalities to self-determination up to and including secession, subject to the defence of planned property relations and of the USSR. At the present time we would not advocate secession for any republic: it is not necessary in order to prevent the masses falling under the sway of reactionary forces, as was the case with Trotsky’s use of the slogan “For an independent Soviet Ukraine” in the 1930s.

• We firmly oppose anti-Semitism, which the Stalinist bureaucracy uses as a means of dividing the Russian masses and protecting itself from their anger. It attempts to canalise existing widespread discontent and direct it against the Jews.

• While making no concessions to Zionism, Russian revolutionaries must consistently defend Jewish people in the USSR against oppression, including their right to emigrate if they so wish, subject to the legitimate security interests of the USSR.

For the proletarian internationalism of Lenin and Trotsky!

• Full support for workers’ liberation struggles around the world, and against their cynical manipulation and betrayal by the Soviet bureaucracy. Against the brutal suppression of the east European workers by the Kremlin and its agents.

• For the right of all present members of the Warsaw Pact to leave that pact while maintaining the defence of planned property and of the USSR. For the publication and re-negotiation of all inter-state treaties on the basis of complete equality. For an end to all unequal pricing mechanisms except those that benefit the most impoverished and backward.

• No to a bureaucratic solution to the war in Afghanistan. Faced with pro-imperialist feudal forces, the Stalinists have consistently shown their reactionary nature by oscillating between military repression and rotten deals with these forces. We demand that the USSR provide sufficient support, up to and including troops, to defend the progressive forces in Afghanistan, and that the support be given without strings tying the progressive forces to capitulation. While not endorsing the invasion of Afghanistan or prettifying the role that the Soviet Armed Forces (SAF) have played there, Soviet workers must not allow their rulers to murderously leave the PDPA and their supporters in the lurch.

• The only road to peace and a just end to the war that will serve the Afghan and Soviet peoples, is that of workers’ revolution in Afghanistan. A key task of the political revolution in the USSR is to further that end.

• Guns and aid with no strings to all those who are fighting imperialism.

• For real solidarity with workers struggling against capitalism. No more scabbing on such struggles through the export of goods to break strikes.

For a democratically centralised planned economy!

As the bureaucratic system of planning reaches its historic limits, there is a growing pressure within the bureaucracies for increasing the internal role of the market and opening it up to world capitalism. Against the stranglehold and stagnation of the old mechanisms such proposals can appeal to sections of workers as a type of “self-management”, free from central interference. the doctrines of “market socialism” thus intersect with the most narrow forms of factory consciousness and serve to keep the working class sectionalised and divided as a class force.

• We are for a democratically centralised planned economy which reopens the transition to the historical elimination of the market and all remnants of capitalism. This can only take place through democratic management of the producers themselves, as expressed by workplace-based Leninist soviet organisations. Only the democracy of the toilers can give full expression to both needs and abilities. Only through the democracy of the producers can each have an interest in the development of all.

An isolated healthy workers’ state will have to coexist with market forces at the same time as seeking to overcome them. Without a doubt elements of the Stalinist bureaucratic elimination of the market have actually served to retard the development of sectors of the Soviet economy e.g: the kholkhoz in agriculture, and the service sector.

In these sectors our programme must be based on the following elements:

• Down with the state serfdom of the kholkhoz and sovkhoz. Down with any return to private family farming which, as in China, will serve to retard the long term development of agriculture and of rural society.

• For the democratic reorganisation of the farms, based on the democracy of the rural toilers, not on the whims of the functionaries. For soviets of agricultural workers comprised of farm workers representing working units, and directly accountable to them.

• For a massive injection of funds to raise the material and cultural level of the countryside to that of the cities. Transcend the distinction between town and country. For a genuine and operational co-operative sector, free from bureaucratic tutelage.

Down with all forms of sexual oppression!

One of the most reactionary currents revealed in the current debate in the USSR is that which sees the problems of Soviet society as being in no small measure the result of the “defeminisation” of Soviet women and the “feminisation” of men. This current argues that the presence of women at work and the existence of the social wage has undercut the family unit. There is a renewed campaign to strengthen the family as a unit of social cohesion and stability. There are arguments for easing women back into the home so as to make it possible for Soviet men to win back their self respect as breadwinners. Women workers are also likely to suffer in the labour shakeout. However, there are also signs that the democratisation of the press has allowed women to denounce the double burden they bear in Soviet society and their appalling conditions.

For the first time, youth papers have started to admit that some Soviet youth are gay and face particular problems as such.

• No to the oppression of women—for the real socialisation of housework. For the plan to provide the creche and sanitary facilities that can make this possible. For a massive programme to build restaurants, canteens and social amenities in order to lift the burden that women bear in the USSR.

• For a woman’s right to work and equal access to jobs not subject to protective legislation. In order to fight the legacy of male chauvinism and oppression we fight for an independent working class based Soviet women’s movement.

• No limitation on abortion rights, but for the provision of free contraceptive devices for all to end the barbaric reliance on abortion and give Soviet women real control over their fertility.

• Abolish the barbaric laws against Soviet gays and the brutal repression of gays and lesbians.

Take the road of political revolution!

The alternative to oppression, stagnation and deprivation is for the Soviet workers to take up these struggles against the Soviet bureaucracy. There is an alternative to the rule of the bureaucracy: the workers must take power into their own hands through a proletarian political revolution. That revolution will not have to expropriate the capitalists, but will have to build on that expropriation by ending political rule over the masses and over the productive forces that the caste plunders and squanders.

In the hands of the workers the plan can and must be revised from top to bottom to meet the needs of the workers and the most oppressed and impoverished sections of society. When they are again in control, the Soviet workers will put an end to all repression that is not absolutely necessary for the security of the workers’ state. In order to make a political revolution that can put the USSR on a Leninist path once again it is necessary for the working class to organise and struggle independently. It must not wait for Gorbachev but organise now to form its own unions and factory committees. It must initiate the struggle to oust the corrupt parasites who have been allowed to rule for too long. In the face of inevitable attempts to repress independent workers’ mobilisations, the working class must unite its struggles through soviets of workers’ deputies and an organised militia aided as much as possible by those sections of the SAF that can be rallied to its side.

In this struggle a new mass revolutionary party must be forged in the tradition of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party. Without such a party the working class will be incapable of decisively beating its enemies.

 

Russia: Yeltsin’s October Counter-Revolution 1993

 

Note from the Editor: Below we reprint two statements from our archive about the Yeltsin’s counter-revolutionary coup in Russia in late September and early October 1993. They were published by the predecessor organization of the founders of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) - the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI). One statement (“Fight Yeltsin’s Coup!”) was issued on 30 September 1993, the other (“Yeltsin’s October Counter-Revolution”) on 7 October that year.

A summary of the RCIT's theoretical understanding of Stalinism and the process of capitalist restoration can be found in Michael Pröbsting's book "Cuba‘s Revolution Sold Out? The Road from Revolution to the Restoration of Capitalism" (see chapter II). It can be read online here. For a compilation of our works on Russian imperialism see a special sub-page on the RCIT’s website. Michael Pröbsting is the International Secretary of the RCIT. He was a long-time leading member of the LRCI (1989-2011) until he and other comrades were expelled by the majority of this organization which had entered the road of centrist degeneration.

 

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Yeltsin’s October Counter-Revolution

International Secretariat of the LRCI, 7 October 1993

 

In the days between 21 of September and 5 October the bloody events in Moscow have transformed the political situation. The result of the storming of the White House and Yeltsin’s imposition of draconian emergency powers means that the social counter-revolution has been greatly strengthened. Yeltsin, representing the pro-imperialist, radical restorationist wing of the old bureaucracy and the new bourgeoisie, has taken a giant step towards unifying and concentrating the forces of the state into his hands. Pavel Grachev, Yeltsin’s defence minister, claimed; “The people were tired of dual power and illegality”. In fact, the people have had no say in events and the bloody assault on the constitutional Russian parliament was a massive act of illegality. But he is right that Yeltsin and the restorationists could not carry on in the state of dual powerlessness where parliament and president obstructed each others’ every move.

 

Democrats versus Communists?

 

The conflict between Yeltsin and the parliament was not a battle between democrats and communists as the western media claims. Yeltsin is no democrat. He has violated the constitution, killed or arrested hundreds of his opponents, clamped a near total censorship on the media and dissolved the legislature. This man, who since August 1991 was lionised as the great democratic defender of parliament, has bombarded it with tanks, all but destroying it. Now he boasts that he will rebuild the White House in six months but only to convert it into offices for the Presidency.

Rutskoi and Khasbulatov on the other hand are no communists. Rutskoi stood for election as vice-president on Yeltsin’s anti-communist ticket. They both sided with Yeltsin against the Yanayev putsch in 1991, and supported him when he took power. They are openly in favour of the market, privatisation and a western capitalist parliamentary system. The differences they have with Yeltsin are rooted only in the method and the tempo of the restoration process. Rutskoi and Khasbulatov represent a layer of bureaucratic industrial managers afraid of loosing their privileges in an imperialist dominated economy. They want to slow the pace of privatisation and allow the opportunity for the managers to become the key elements of the new ruling class. Their strident nationalism arises from their fear, correct in itself, that the neo-liberals like Yegor Gaidar will sell Russia’s resources to the imperialist multinationals.

They are also afraid of provoking the working class by a too sudden and too savage attack on their jobs and wages. Yeltsin, on the other hand, has, so far, gone along with imperialism’s demands to accelerate the process. In this sense he is the direct agent of imperialism and the new bourgeoisie.

But the anti-Yeltsin block of parliamentary deputies never had a clear or common alternative programme. Their only point in common was their rejection of Yeltsin’s attempt to consolidate his authoritarian rule. The social base of the hardline Stalinist and Russian nationalist opposition to him lies in the displaced bureaucrats and the newly impoverished layers such as pensioners, ex-soldiers and the unemployed. In the opposition various political forces converged; monarchists, Great Russian chauvinists and open fascists rubbed shoulders with hardline Stalinists and social democratised “communists”.

 

Yeltsin launches his coup

 

In March Yeltsin tried to by-pass the parliament and take all powers into his hands but he was forced to retreat. In the next six months he was preparing its final dissolution. He succeeded in splitting the Civic Union, (the managers’ coalition that dominated the parliament) and won to his side many of their members. Twice Yeltsin vetoed the budget adopted by parliament. The crunch came when the parliament was about to adopt a budget which Yeltsin claimed would prevent the government fulfilling its economic programme. He claimed that this would generate a 25% budget deficit. As part of the preparations for taking control Yeltsin decided to reinstate as deputy prime minister Yegor Gaidar, the author of the neo-liberal shock programme and the minister most hated by the parliament which had forced his sacking at the end of 1992.

Yeltsin’s initial moves were not very decisive or effective. In the first 14 days of his presidential coup he did not even declare a state of emergency or send troops into the White House. Because of the dual power situation, in which the parliament had its own armed militia and where it was not clear whether the army would enforce “unconstitutional” measures by the president, he had to tolerate a situation in which the parliament continued to meet. Street demonstrations were held in support of it and Rutskoi was declared president of Russia. For nearly two weeks the vast Russian Federation had two presidents and two armed powers defying one another.

Yeltsin was obliged to tolerate this situation because he could not afford to be seen as the initiator of a bloodbath that would discredit his “democratic” credentials. Nor could he afford to ignore the advice he received from Clinton and Co not to resort to force. But above all it took enormous efforts to convince the military chiefs to abandon their position of neutrality. To win them over he needed to demonstrate that he had negotiated seriously and that it was Rutskoi and Khasbulatov who were wanton disturbers of the peace.

The crisis revealed the full depth of the “dual powerlessness” which has paralysed Russia for over two years. Yeltsin was not able to persuade the parliament to give in, nor could he immediately coerce it with armed force. The Russian regions, increasingly independent from Moscow, took different positions. Since April with the stand-off between the parliament and the presidency, power was increasingly devolving onto regional bureaucrats and army chiefs.

Throughout the summer Khasbulatov had been touring the regions and republics trying to win them over, claiming that only a strong parliament could protect their autonomy. Yeltsin in turn tried to win them over by offering concessions and promising to create a new upper house parliament to which they would directly elect their representatives. Some of the regions expressed their passive opposition to Yeltsin’s coup but they refused to launch any real actions to back either side in the dispute, and pressed for a negotiated settlement. The Orthodox Church started to play a role that it has not played since 1917. This arch-reactionary institution tried to appear as the mediator in favour of a peace agreement between the rival ruling elites. But it failed when parliament’s proposed compromise—simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in December—was rejected by the would-be dictator.

With the army already weakened and demoralised by the financial and political collapse of Russia and deeply reluctant to intervene, the weakness of Yeltsin’s position was increasingly obvious. He desperately had to get military support in order to show the West and the rebellious regions that he could hold on to power.

 

Why the putschists failed

 

The parliamentarians’ strategy proved to be a complete fiasco. They ended up playing right into Yeltsin’s hands, just as Yanayev and Pugo did in 1991. The deep social and historical reason for this is that they represent no real historic force. Yeltsin represents capitalism and the world bourgeoisie. But Rutskoi and Khasbulatov in no way represent the historic interests of the working class. Indeed, they hate and fear the independent intervention of the workers more than they fear Yeltsin. Their programme for a “controlled” restoration of capitalism offers nothing to solve the problems facing the working class and Rutskoi’s belated call for a general strike in support of parliament was ignored by the overwhelming majority of the working class. In fact, neither of the two presidents demonstrated that they had mass support. Only a few thousand turned out to the rival rallies that Yeltsin and Rutskoi called. The overwhelmingly majority of the Russian toilers remained passive and deeply suspicious of both sides.

Why? Over the last two years Yeltsin has lost much of his initial popularity due to the savage effects of his policies on the working population. But, despite this the masses perceive all too well that Khasbulatov and Rutskoi are merely seeking to defend the privileges of the old bureaucracy. A majority of the population still retain illusions that the market can improve their living standards in the long run. Recent polls show that 60% of the population want more privatisations. Already 20% of the industrial workforce is employed in the private sector. Every month 700-800 firms are undergoing privatisation. In addition real wages for employed industrial workers have roughly kept pace with inflation. This is why working class anger is still not yet focussed primarily on Yeltsin. Apart from threats of action by the powerful miners’ unions over subsidies, Russian workers, unlike those of Poland and the Ukraine, have not yet started a fightback.

The rump of three hundred or so parliamentary deputies who defied Yeltsin to the end were in the main totalitarian Stalinists and ultra-nationalists. They are deeply discredited in the eyes of the masses by their association with the old ruling bureaucracy and its dictatorship. Their authoritarian, anti-semitic and chauvinist propaganda alienates the democratic feelings of both the national minorities and indeed the Russian masses. Together with the continued passivity of the working class this explains why no serious forces rallied to the defence of the parliament. The population of Moscow watched Yeltsin and Rutskoi fight it out like gladiators in the arena.

Yeltsin issued the ultimatum for them to quit the parliament building by 30 September or he would use force to eject them. Nevertheless he was obliged to postpone this deadline and resort once more to the negotiations sponsored by the church. But this too failed. Before Saturday, 2 October only a few hundred, or at most thousands, had expressed their support for the parliament on the streets. On this date the first serious clashes took place between demonstrators and Yeltsin’s riot police. In the afternoon of Sunday, 3 October the largest demonstration took place with between 10,000-15,000 people. The demonstrators marched to the parliament and smashed through the besieging police forces and Interior Ministry troops. About 200 security troops deserted Yeltsin. Liberal journalists report that at this point there was near total panic in the Kremlin. Yeltsin himself was reported to be in a state of paralysis.

Revolutionaries should have critically supported the demonstration’s aim of breaking the siege of parliament. Once it succeeded it was essential to try to regroup more people, to develop much bigger demonstrations and to launch mass actions in the different cities and regions. But, Rutskoi appears to have called for an insurrection. Without any determined effort to involve the masses, above all the working class, this could only prove a total adventure ending in a putsch not a revolution.

The rebels successfully occupied the Moscow mayor’s officers, from which the siege of the parliament had been co-ordinated, but they were bloodily repulsed when they tried to take Ostankino, the main TV station. This attack gave Yeltsin just the pretext he needed to get the army to act. He could now claim that he was facing an attempt to seize power by the Stalinist-nationalist-fascist block, that they had shed the first blood and that he was the injured party. Thus, after an initial very dangerous reverse, Yeltsin was able to launch a devastating counter-offensive. In the following hours he comprehensively defeated the rebels after nearly destroying the White House in a violent assault in which several hundred people died.

On 3 October the conditions simply did not exist to launch an insurrection. It was an indispensable precondition to draw much greater numbers into mass protests against Yeltsin and not just in Moscow but throughout the country. Faced with the masses on the streets it is very likely that the army would have refused Yeltsin’s requests to fire on the masses or that more troops would have deserted to the anti-Yeltsin forces. Instead, the Stalinists and the nationalists showed their fear and contempt for the masses, as well as their total lack of realism, by engaging in an attempt to seize power with a few hundred armed civilians or ex-soldiers. Until now it is not clear who really initiated and led this putsch.

Khasbulatov’s actions were completely contradictory. He tried to persuade the parliament to compromise with Yeltsin several times during the siege. After calling for armed action outside the White House he later denied knowledge of who had ordered the armed assault on Ostankino. Rutskoi seems to have been swept along by events rather than shaping them. It seems likely that it was the hardline Stalinist and ultra-nationalists who were the real organisers of the abortive insurrection. They were doubtlessly seeking to carry out a rapid coup d’etat in which the broad masses would not get the opportunity to play any significant or independent role. The elitist squads of Afghantsi, trained commandos from the Union of Officers, or the brownshirts of Pamyat tried to overthrow Yeltsin with their own puny forces. They clearly hoped that if they could take control of the TV and other important buildings the army chiefs would decide to support them. Their goal was an ultra-nationalist conservative dictatorship. Clearly, revolutionary communists could and can have no political solidarity with this reactionary objective.

 

The imperialists and the coup

 

The most fervent supporters of Yeltsin’s coup were Clinton, Major and the other EC leaders. Despite their hypocritical claims to be the champions of democracy, as soon as their economic interests dictate it they sacrifice it without a moment’s hesitation. The West’s interference in the internal affairs of Russia has been incredibly brazen. All the imperialists backed Yeltsin because they see him as their man in Moscow. They believe that he alone can complete the destruction of the workers’ state, restore a free market economy and support their NATO and UN foreign policy. They knew very well that the big majority in the parliament were also pro-market. They knew its democratic credentials were no better and no worse than Yeltsin’s. But his fall would create a situation in which the influence of the Stalinists and the nationalists would be much greater and Russia’s willingness to do imperialism’s bidding in world politics would be diminished.

But some imperialist commentators have been critical of the way in which Yeltsin managed the situation. Several western journalists criticised Yeltsin for issuing authoritarian ultimatums instead of trying to make a deal. Some are even claiming that we are witnessing the end of the Yeltsin era. Just as Gorbachev was useful to the West to reform the totalitarian state and later Yeltsin served them in demolishing the remnants of the Communist Party and the USSR, so now they are talking about finding new figures without a Stalinist background who could be more easily managed by the the US and the EC.

The outcome of the crisis has not completely satisfied the West. Yeltsin showed that he had little active popular support and that his military backing was far from total and whole hearted. The troops that he used to attack the parliament had to be brought from cities some distance from Moscow and they obviously had problems with their supplies. Several army units clearly resisted being used to repress the parliament. Even the Interior Ministry’s Dzerzhinsky Regiment (Yeltsin’s main pillar of support and responsible for Moscow security) is rumoured to have split.

But most worrying for the West is the fact that to obtain the support of the army Yeltsin has probably made a series of concessions to the High Command, concessions that could prove irksome to imperialism. Thus he has warned the East European states against joining NATO and claimed an equal say in the security affairs of the region with the West. He has claimed the right to intervene in events in what is called the “near abroad”, (ie all the former USSR states), to protect Russian minorities. He has allowed the Russian military to bring about the defeat of pro-US Eduard Shevardnadze in Abkhazia.

The army when it came to the crunch decided to back Yeltsin because they realised that the parliamentary forces had no clear programme, little popular support and would be unable to appease the powerful West. The Russian army wanted above all to avoid any threat to its unity, and desperately feared the prospect of civil war. They preferred to use the events to wring concessions from Yeltsin and to use him for their own purposes. Now Yeltsin has trampled the constitution under the boots of the soldiers. He is henceforth much more vulnerable to blackmail by the military and to any future coup d’etat.

 

The Revolutionary Alternative

 

During these two decisive weeks the key task of Marxists in Russia was to fight for a general strike to smash Yeltsin’s grab for total power. Revolutionaries should have agitated for the trade unions and the workplace committees to form strike committees with delegates elected by rank and file workers to organise the struggle. The workers should have tried to arm themselves, calling on the soldiers to disobey Yeltsin’s orders and create soldiers’ councils. To aid in mobilising the working class it was indispensable to raise demands that workers could feel as vital to their interests and that they would be willing to defend with their own lives. Revolutionary communist should raise these slogans:

• For a minimum living wage and pension with a sliding scale to protect them against inflation. Organise the supply of foodstuffs and basic products at low prices under the control of workers’ and farmers’ direct exchange committees.

• Defend full employment and job security! No sackings or factory closures! Occupy any factory that management tries to close!

• Expel the corrupt bureaucracy from the management of the factories, pits and commercial enterprises! Open all the books! Investigate and expropriate all the mafia businessmen! For workers’ control, exercised by the producers, users and consumers, over both production and distribution!

• Restoration of cheap housing and the health service under workers’ control! Seize the Dachas and the big apartments of the old nomenklatura and those of the new rich. Confiscate all state buildings that are not serving the collective good of the working class and convert them to accommodation for the young, the unemployed, the homeless, and returning soldiers!

• For workers’ management in every enterprise! Stop any more privatisations! Re-nationalise the privatised companies and banks!

• Confiscate all the accumulated privileges of the bureaucrats: the special shops and cars, bank accounts, their high and corruption-based incomes! Expropriation of the “new rich” and the foreign multinationals! Renounce all the agreements with the IMF!

• Full restoration of the monopoly of foreign trade and planned economy but under the control of workers’ councils.

• Complete freedom for the workers’ movement! End the goverment’s monopoly over the mass media. Put them under the control of the workers’ organisations. Repeal all repressive legislation and abolish internal passports and residence permits. Immediate dissolution of the KGB, Interior Ministry troops, the Omov and the other repressive forces!

• For the formation and arming of a workers’ militia based on the factories and other workplaces.

• Complete democratisation of the Russian army. Expel all the restorationist and anti-working class officers! The soldiers should create democratic soldiers’ councils and have the right to strike, reject anti-working class orders and elect their officers!

• For the right of self-determination, including secession if they wish it, of all the oppressed nationalities!

• For independent and militant trade unions! For workers’ councils with delegates elected and recallable by rank and file assemblies! All power to the workers’ organisations!

• Instead of currying favour with the Western imperialists we need to appeal to the workers and peasants which they exploit worldwide! The workers need an internationalist policy to replace Yeltsin’s support for the USA. Down with secret diplomacy! Publish all the secret agreements made by Yeltsin and Gorbachev with imperialism!

 

Tactics in the October battle and after

 

Since the collapse of Yanayev’s coup in August 1991 Boris Yeltsin has been the main enemy of the workers of the Russian Federation. It has been the central task of revolutionaries to work for his overthrow by the class action of the proletariat. In the battle between the parliament and Yeltsin, revolutionaries had to defend the White House and the parliament against Yeltsin’s siege and attack but without giving any political support to Khasbulatov, Rutskoi or the hardline Stalinists. We would not have made any sort of “popular front” with the ultra-nationalists and fascists. Indeed, we would demand that the self-proclaimed socialists and communists break with them. The presence of these groups could only discredit the anti-Yeltsin opposition. If they gained any hold on power they could be expected to launch pogroms against Jews, national minorities and genuine communists.

When Yeltsin launched his coup he promised elections for a new powerless parliament in December and, six month later, presidential elections. The parliament sought only to oblige him to convene simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in December. This squabbling over equally bourgeois constitutional forms could present no real alternative to the population. Revolutionaries should demand the abolition of both the presidency and the parliament in favour of a republic of workers’ councils.

But we have to recognise that the masses remain heavily imbued with bourgeois democratic illusions. That is why we have raised and continue to raise the demand for a revolutionary constituent assembly. Elections to it should be conducted under the control of the mass workers’ organisations and voting should take place in the workplaces. We should fight to make its representatives accountable to, and recallable by, assemblies of their electors, held both in the workplaces and on working class housing estates. This would give the masses the means of doing away with Yeltsin’s bonapartist presidency and with the corrupt caricature of a parliament. A campaign for the convening of such an assembly could be a powerful weapon in awakening the Russian masses from their atomisation, political apathy, and cynicism. This slogan became particularly important with Yeltsin’s dissolution of parliament. It could also have exposed Rutskoi for the empty populist demagogue he is.

 

Yeltsin’s next target

 

Hard on the heels of the crushing of the White House rebels Yeltsin has imposed a severe state of emergency, a strict curfew and a ban on sixteen parties, and several newspapers. He has called on both local and regional soviets to dissolve themselves and has proclaimed that elections to new councils as well as the Federal State Duma will take place on 16 December. He has remained silent on his earlier promise to bring forward presidential elections to Spring 1994. Hitherto, Yeltsin’s writ has not run in vast areas of the country. In whole regions and autonomous republics the power is still in the hands of the local bureaucrats and nationalist leaders. Many of them want more autonomy and even independence. Thus for Yeltsin to finally and completely end the dual power situation throughout the entire Federation he must crush these parliaments and leaders over the next weeks and months. He must ensure that they elect compliant tools of Moscow in the December elections.

This may well prove a harder task than storming the White House. A majority, forty five out of the eighty eight regions and republics within the Russian Federation, refused to openly support Yeltsin’s 21 September dissolution of the parliament. Instead they moved to set up a “Council of the Subjects of the Federation” as an alternative to Yeltsin’s Federal Council and they decided to declare the Presidency vacant and to convene simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in February 1994. Forty three of the regions did not support his state of emergency. As the London Guardian commented on 6 October; “the regions have real power. Unlike parliament, which Mr Yeltsin has succeeded in closing, they control Russia’s purse strings. Some have already started a tax strike by refusing to send to Moscow the money they raise”.

After the storming of parliament Yeltsin ordered the arrest of the head of the Bryansk region and dismissed the governors of Amur and Novosibirsk. The latter had recently declared a temporary suspension of privatisation in his region. Fourteen Siberian leaders had threatened to blockade the trans-Siberian railway. Medvedev, Yeltsin’s representative in charge of the regions, has threatened them, saying, “political sanctions should be imposed on councils up to their suspension and the calling of new elections”. The autonomous republics of Mordova, Tartarstan, Kalmykia, Chechenia and others have all been threatened.

In contrast to this the presidents of nearly all the independent CIS republics forcefully supported him. They did this both to help get Western dollars but also from fear of ending up with an expansionist Kremlin.

 

For Political Revolution

 

Revolutionaries should oppose each and every repressive measure from Yeltsin against these regions or republics, whether their leaders are old Stalinists or fast track restorationists that merely want to do independent deals with the imperialist multi-nationals. We should, of course, denounce the plots and manoeuvres of these local bureaucrats whose only aim is to maintain their privileges or reach lucrative deals with imperialism. Despite the fact that we were and remain opposed to the fragmentation of the Russian Federation we should, nevertheless, defend the right to self-determination of the republics and regions against the new dictator.

We do not believe that the present regime or its constitution can be democratically reformed. We fight for a political revolution that smashes the bureaucracy, the new rich and their repressive forces, reverses the process of capitalist restoration, expropriates the privatised companies, restores in a new democratic form the planned economy with workers’ management, adopts an anti-capitalist foreign policy that stops the selling out of Palestine, Afghanistan, Cuba, Eastern Europe and Southern Africa to the imperialists and promotes the international socialist revolution. We want a revolution that gives all power to workers’ councils. Because the level of concessions already made to capitalism this revolution will have to take on an important social dimension.

We fight for the organisation of democratic local and regional workers’ councils that take all the power in these regions and republics. Only a socialist, voluntary, federation of these councils could open the way to a genuine working class solution. We are against a new Great Russian Empire nor do we support the re-establishment of a bureaucratic USSR. We are in favour of a new socialist federation of all the Russian and non-Russian republics and regions of the former USSR, the former Comecon states and beyond.

The working class must now be prepared for new and far worse attacks. It is seventy years since Stalinism started to crush the self-organisation and democracy of the Russian proletariat. So far this colossal working class has been unable to recover its revolutionary traditions. Now, faced with the attacks that Yeltsin will try to launch with the backing of the army, the working class must recover its fighting capacities or it will suffer a truly historic defeat that will effect the entire world working class. The situation is not hopeless. In Poland after four years of a Solidarnosc regime’s attacks, the pro-imperialist neo-liberal’s are largely discredited and the social democratised ex-Stalinists have massively increased their influence.

In the Ukraine, Lithuania and Albania similar processes are taking place. In the absence of any revolutionary leadership, disillusion with a market that not only failed to bring prosperity but brought hunger and poverty, is turning the working class towards the renovated former Stalinists. But there are doubtless sections of workers who are seeking an alternative to the “social market economy”or the return to some sort of nomenklatura dictatorship. It is to these workers that revolutionaries must urgently address themselves.

Throughout the former USSR and Eastern Europe it is indispensable to lay down the basis of a new Bolshevik, Leninist-Trotskyist party that seeks to organise and promote working class resistance and fight for workers’ council power. Only such a party can lead the masses in all their fights against the economic attacks, against the attacks on their democratic rights. Only such a party can unmask the nationalist fomentors of strife and pogroms, the sinister Stalinist plotters and their fascist allies who want a capitalist totalitarian dictatorship. Only such a party can fight the social democrats, centrists and liberals who want to prostate the workers before the multinationals. Only such a party can lead a proletarian revolution for a socialist federation of workers’ councils—east and west.

For decades the bureaucracy falsely said that the USSR had achieved socialism in one country. They identified the “proletarian dictatorship” with the uncontrolled dictatorship of a pampered and privileged bureaucracy. The Trotskyists were killed in their tens of thousands for fighting against the installation and consolidation of this regime. Yet we always defended the USSR and the gains of the planned economy, for all its distortions, against imperialist attack. Now we alone consistently and openly fight against all attempts to transform the country into an openly capitalist dictatorship. We want to smash both the remnants of the old privileged oligarchy and the embryo of the new capitalist class. We want to re-impose a revolutionary proletarian dictatorship such as that which Lenin and Trotsky led. This would in fact represent a huge extension of democracy for the toilers themselves whilst acting as an iron fist against all the new rich, the black marketeers, the mafias, the old bureaucrats and the new capitalists.

 

* * * * *

 

Fight Yeltsin’s Coup!

International Secretariat of the LRCI, 30 September 1993

 

When Boris Yeltsin announced that he was dissolving the Russian parliament, cutting off its nance and seizing its building, the White House, he was assured of support from all the major Western governments.

Douglas Hurd, for the British Foreign Ofce, was quick off the mark, declaring that Britain had consistently “supported the process of democratic and economic reform in Russia” and that the “mandate of the President had been thwarted by institutions with less democratic credentials”.

Clinton and US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, quickly followed suit, declaring that this constitutional coup was ne, because elections had been promised in the near future. An identical coup launched by President Fujimori of Peru against his congress in April 1992 resulted in Western condemnation and suspension of all aid. In Yeltsin’s case it has been accompanied by calls to speed up the distribution of aid to Russia!

 

Dispensed

 

As always for the imperialist powers, constitutions and laws can be quickly dispensed with when real economic interests are at stake. And they certainly are in Russia today.

While the struggle between the President and the Russian parliament appears to be about constitutional issues it has always really been about differences over the pace and nature of the nal dismantling of the planned economy and the restoration of free market capitalism throughout Russia. The sharpest clashes have been over who controls the budget and decides on economic priorities, over who controls the Central Bank and the degree of subsidies to the state industries.

Yeltsin and his government have continually tried to implement a “fast track” programme for the restoration of capitalism. They want to follow the Polish model of freeing prices, removing subsidies, privatising the big state enterprises and using the Central Bank as a weapon to ensure the market, not the state, determines production.

The programme would lead to the collapse of thousands of state enterprises that only continue to produce because they receive massive credit from the Central Bank. Unemployment will rocket, probably to tens of millions, ination will increase dramatically as subsidies on basic goods are removed.

 

Media

 

Yeltsin’s problem was that he could not win a parliamentary majority for his programme. This was not, as the Western media likes to pretend, because the parliament was stuffed full of “hardline Communists”. Far from it. Ruslan Khasbulatov, Speaker of the parliament, was Yeltsin’s comrade-in-arms on the steps of the White House during the August 1991 coup attempt. He even authored the call-to-arms speech delivered by Yeltsin from the top of a tank. Alexander Rutskoi, who declared Yeltsin’s actions in September an “open coup d’etat”, was Yeltsin’s running mate in the 1991 Presidential elections. One of the biggest groups of deputies is lined up behind Civic Union, which is committed to a transition to a market economy.

Certainly there are remnants of the old hardline Stalinists, linked together with the monarchists and far right in the Russian Unity faction, but they remain a minority. They have come to prominence since Yeltsin’s coup as defenders of the White House because they have links to the Stalinist hardliners and survivors amongst the August coup-mongers in and outside the army. It is they who can supply the arms and the muscle men to defend the parliament.

The roots of the conict between President and parliament lie in the social basis of the hundreds of Peoples’ Deputies. Many of them still represent the old disintegrating ruling bureaucracy; the local council and regional ofcials, the managers of industrial and farm enterprises and the leaders of the old state trade unions. While being in favour of the restoration of capitalism these groups are afraid of losing out in any “big bang” transition to capitalism.

They want guarantees that privatisation will be carried out in such a way that the old bureaucracy can be the beneciaries of the new capitalism by turning themselves into the new ruling class. They also fear that mass unemployment and hyper-ination will cause mass social unrest directed at them, the nearest “representatives” of the government.

This is the cause of the dual power situation in Russia over the last period. Yeltsin has been unable to push through his programme against the powerful remnants of the old bureaucratic caste. These remain particularly strong in the regions, despite Yeltsin’s appointment of his own supporters as governors and executives in the localities.

Meanwhile, at a national level, parliament has been able to water down, evade and occasionally block Yeltsin’s measures. The forces that united in August 1991 against the military coup are now confronting one another on the streets.

The imperialists never had any doubts about where they stood. They wanted Yeltsin’s quick road to capitalism, whatever the cost to the masses of the Russian people. They made it quite clear that there would be little investment until capitalism is rmly entrenched. Yeltsin’s appeals for aid to cushion the impact of his reforms fell on deaf ears. As ination rose, soaring to 350%, wiping out pensions and undermining wages, the parliamentary obstruction increased, as did the disillusion of the masses.

In May this year the Tokyo meeting of G7 promised $43 billion in aid to Russia. Again the imperialists, especially the US, made sure that little of it was given. A mere $1.5 million has been released by the IMF up to September. A key demand of the imperialists was an end to the massive subsidies to industry and basic food products that resulted in the parliament adopting a budget that involved a 25% decit for 1993.

Yeltsin has tried every means at his disposal to end the “dual powerlessness” of the last two years. The April referendum in which Russians were called on to give a vote of condence to Yeltsin and secondly to approve his reforms, in which just over half (58% and 53% respectively) voted yes, was a victory for Yeltsin but one which did not solve his problems with parliament.

His next ploy was to try and go round parliament, convening a series of meetings of regional and republic bosses, to tempt them into agreeing a new constitution which would give him, and them, greater powers. His nal attempt was rebuffed in September. Two days later he announced the unconstitutional dissolution of parliament by presidential decree.

What will Yeltsin do now? In an editorial, shortly after the referendum, Workers Power said that to turn his result into a decisive victory, Yeltsin would have to oust his enemies in parliament and the provinces and gain undivided control over the Central Bank. We wrote, “This will require some sort of unconstitutional act that the army and KGB chiefs will support and carry out. This could mean promulgating a constitution by decree and calling elections to a new parliament.”

This is exactly what Yeltsin is doing. The Western governments’ lauding of Boris Yeltsin’s “democratic credentials” is total hypocrisy. His decree not only swept aside the constitution by dissolving parliament but also proposed a new constitution which has only a few trappings of democracy.

The elections announced for December would only be for a lower house in a bicameral parliament. A “Federation Council” will form the upper house made up of regional and council leaders, such as governors, most of whom are appointed by Yeltsin himself. The lower house, a “State Duma”, will have fewer powers and be made up of 400 elected delegates. Yeltsin could not have chosen a more appropriate name. The last State Duma to function was one convened by Tsar Nicholas the Last in 1905. It was dissolved twice until its composition reected the Tsar’s opinions!

The proposal also removes the Central Bank and the Procurator General’s ofce from parliamentary control and places them under the direct control of the President. The Constitutional Court, which unanimously ruled Yeltsin’s actions unconstitutional, is suspended until the new parliament convenes.

Yeltsin’s new constitution is designed to focus enormous power in the hands of the President and his government, leaving the elected house of the parliament a largely impotent talking shop. Little wonder that Yeltsin, having previously said he would not stand again for President, calmly announced he would have new presidential elections next June and stand for another ve year term.

Yeltsin and his imperialist backers know that to carry out the programme necessary for the restoration of capitalism, the President must have extraordinary powers, must be able to raise himself above the contending groups and classes in society in a “Bonapartist” fashion. Yeltsin is aware that he cannot let the discontent of the masses be reected in democratic institutions.

He is acutely conscious of the results of the Polish elections where the former “Communists” are now the largest party, elected on a platform not dissimilar to the Civic Union’s, committed to slow down, not stop, the pace of privatisation. Neither Yeltsin nor his backers in Washington are willing to contemplate such an outcome and therefore “representative democracy” has to be moulded to the task in hand.

 

Provinces

 

Yeltsin’s path is not completely clear yet. He still has to overcome the opposition in the provinces. Out of the 88 local parliaments, 24 have already gone on record as opposing his coup, threatening to withhold taxes and fuel. His Prime Minister has threatened to dissolve parliaments that obstruct the constitutional reforms.

The Russian President’s success will above all depend on keeping control of the army. So far it has repeatedly declared its “strict neutrality” which in effect means it is siding with the government as long as Yeltsin’s police and interior ministry troops can keep order. Only an outbreak of mass revolt and disorder would lead the army to question its role.

So far the mighty working class in Russia has remained passive, showing no signs of wanting to defend the parliament, or its institutions, stuffed as they are with former bureaucrats and placement. Neither have they shown any enthusiasm for Yeltsin.

The President cannot count on the kind of mass demonstrations or strikes which rallied to his support against the August coup.

 

Giant

 

The Russian working class remains a sleeping giant which still has to recover from the atomisation inicted on it by more than 50 years of Stalinist dictatorship.

Revolutionary socialists in Russia should nevertheless use the crisis to try and rally the workers against this attack on their democratic rights. The parliament should be defended against Yeltsin’s coup even if it means temporarily blocking with the Stalinist and restorationist deputies opposed to Yeltsin, without for one moment giving any support to their political programme or positions.

The workers must organise independently to stop the Yeltsin/Gaidar economic programme for the restoration of capitalism which will mean poverty and unemployment for millions and riches for the few.

They must demand the immediate convocation of a Constituent Assembly with full powers to adopt a new democratic constitution and to pass a programme of emergency measures to deal with the food shortages, economic chaos and ination.

Such an assembly must be convened and protected by workers’ militias organised by workers’ councils throughout Russia. The soldier and sailor conscripts should be called on to refuse to obey Yeltsin and his Generals in implementing their plans for a dictatorial regime. These are the immediate tasks of the hour.n

 

Balkan wars: A peace to end all peace?

League for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency), 30 September 1995, www.thecommunist.net

 

Introduction

We refer readers to the introduction to our essay “Are the Bosnian Muslims a Nation?” where we explain the correction of our line in the first few months in the Bosnian War in 1992 (http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/bosnian-muslim-nation/)

 

* * *

 

 

The history of the Bosnian crisis is littered with failed imperialist peace plans. Each of them involved a recognition by imperialism of territorial gains made over the slit throats and raped bodies of tens of thousands of civilians. These plans drawn up by retired senior politicians and diplomats—Vance-Owen (Mark I and II), Owen-Stoltenberg, the Contact Group and now Clinton— have all put multi-ethnic Bosnia on the dissecting table.

Each plan has awarded greater and greater gains to the ethnic cleansers. At the same time an unholy alliance of the liberal media and the most hawkish and reactionary imperialist politicians has denounced the UN, the US and the EU for standing back whilst these horrors have gone on unchecked. They have called for a full scale military intervention.

Revolutionaries do not criticise imperialism’s failure as a lack of nerve or will. It is the imperialist system that has failed Bosnia—as we predicted from the beginning.

We said then, and repeat now, that any imperialist intervention in the region—military, “peacekeeping” and political—could only lead to a reactionary outcome.

Turning points

1995 has seen three major turning points, each a striking confmirmation of this judgement:

The fall of Srebrenica and Zepa to Serb militias in eastern Bosnia, the ensuing mass murder of their inhabitants by fascist-led groups, and the abandonment of Gorazde by its UN “defenders”.

This laid the ground for a ?nal settlement on the basis of the remaining territorial ambitions of the Bosnian Serbs. A geographically contiguous, ethnically cleansed area which could federate or fuse with Serbia proper was now almost complete.

The US-backed Croatian offensive in Krajina, and the resulting mass exodus of 160,000 Krajina Serbs.

This served two purposes for the imperialists. It resolved all Croatia’s grievances except for the occupation of eastern Slavonia. It massively weakened and divided the Bosnian Serb leadership and at the same time strengthened Slobodan Milosevic within the pan-Serb alliance.

The imperialist air offensive against selected Bosnian Serb military targets.

This ended their self-imposed ban on offensive military action. The air strikes had the aim of forcing Pale to the negotiating table, in order to ?nalise the ethnic division of BiH.

Genocide in Srebrenica and Zepa

Genocidal attacks on the Bosnian Muslims and the multi-ethnic towns and cities have been repeated in every year since 1991. 1995 has seen no let up in the large scale atrocities too, most notably in the enclaves of Eastern Bosnia. The Bosnian government’s offensive in central Bosnia and in Bihac in late 1994 and 1995 led to Ratko Mladic launching a counter-offensive against “soft targets”, the so-called UN safe havens of Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde.

It also led to the renewal of the bombardment of Sarajevo and eventually, in combination with the Krajina Serbs, to an attempt to wipe out the Bihac enclave altogether.

All of these targets were UN designated “safe havens”, where the UN had put in small garrisons of lightly armed “peacekeepers”.

The Bosnian government (BiH) forces defending these enclaves were pitifully ill-equipped. Some had been actually disarmed by the peacekeepers on Serb insistence.

The “peacekeepers” in fact never struck a single blow in defence of their charges. They hid in their bunkers as the Serbs moved in.

Then after slivovitz and cigarettes with the conquerors—including a videoed friendly drink with Mladic—they boarded their armoured vehicles and drove off into the sunset.

The result was the brutal ethnic cleansing of Srebrenica. 25,000 were bussed to BiH lines with UN complicity whilst 2,500 prisoners of war were reportedly massacred by the Serb militias. Why did ethnic cleansing on such a scale not provoke UN retribution? Because the imperialists were already working on a plan which conceded these “indefensible “ areas to the Serbs.

Mladic’s tightening stranglehold on Sarajevo however could not be ignored. A Bosnian government offensive to relieve the city failed due to the massive mine?elds the Serb militias had laid. Without armour, heavy artillery and air cover it proved impossible to break the siege.

However Mladic’s seizure of UN military observers as hostages, whilst it provided a temporary spectacle of the imperialists’ impotence, merely opened the road to a more decisive US intervention. The British and French were alienated and responded by sending in the Rapid Reaction Force. The imperialist powers were momentarily less divided than at any time since the war began.

The Serbs, they could all agree, had to be taught a lesson:

• for the sake of the New World Order elsewhere

• to make them realise that this latest attempt to consolidate a Greater Serbia was bound to fail, that there was a limit to their expansionism.

In addition the onslaught on Bihac in concert with the Krajina Serbs was the last straw for Tudjman’s Croatia. If it had succeeded it would have made the recovery of Krajina dif?cult if not impossible. Tudjman saw the opportunity afforded by imperialism’s’ impatience with the Serbs and launched his deadly onslaught in the Krajina.

The Croatian Offensive

Three months after the swift re-occupation of Western Slavonia in May, Tudjman launched Operation Storm, occupying the entire Serb Republic of Krajina (RSK). 160,00 refugees ?ed to Serb-held northern Bosnia and to Serbia itself.

Tudjman struck at a moment when the RSK was at its most isolated and vulnerable. Its chauvinist leadership engaged in joint actions with the Bosnian Serb Republic and the criminal adventurer Fikret Abdic to wipe out the enclave of Bihac.

Thus the plight of the Serb refugees aroused little international sympathy or protest beyond the habitual backers of Serb expansionism. In the aftermath of the Croat victory, UN and EU observers stood by while the Croat army butchered the remaining elderly Serb inhabitants.

This monstrous act of ethnic cleansing must be condemned and actively opposed by all working class internationalists.

The mass of the population of Krajina have had no say in their leadership’s criminal actions, let alone control over them.

Of course the political leadership of the RSK under Milan Martic, are no innocent victims. In 1990-1, with the aid of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav National Army, they drove over 400,000 Croats out of the Krajina and Slavonia. By bombarding the coastal roads and ports, and blockading the road and rail system linking Croatia proper to the Dalmatian coastal regions, they brought Croatia to the verge of disintegration as a state.

They pushed forward and occupied territory inhabited by only a minority of Serbs before 1990. They joined in the assault on the hard-pressed Bosnian Muslims. Their leadership’s objective was to create a Greater Serbia, no matter what the cost in terms of displacing the Croat and Muslim population. No socialist can support such war aims.

We supported solely and exclusively the self defence of the regions of Krajina that were majority Serb areas before the forced population movements which began in 1990.

We supported the right to self-determination only of these areas, including their right to secede from Croatia. But we never advocated such secession.

The geographical, economic and ethnic composition of both the RSK and Croatia make complete separation a reactionary utopia. It was the attempt to make this goal a reality which led Martic and co. to involve themselves to the hilt in the Bosnian con?ict and the project of a Great Serb state whose territory would stretch from Serbia proper through northern Bosnia to the Krajina.

Only a renewed federal system, based on the freely given consent of the various nationalities and ethnic groups, or on a genuine and full autonomy for all minorities, combined with the restoration of full economic links, can solve this terrible con?ict.

Tudjman’s aims are equally reactionary. He was determined to clear Krajina of its Serb population, people who have lived there for at least three centuries.

Tudjman wants to create a Greater Croatia by incorporating a substantial part of Bosnia, under the cover of a phoney federation.

Socialists must totally oppose the Croatian occupation of the Serb majority areas of the Krajina. During the war between the RSK forces and the Croat state workers should have refused to take sides, ?ghting alongside RSK forces only where tactically necessary for the legitimate defence of populations faced with ethnic cleansing.

NATO strikes - to divide Bosnia

In August 1995 the major imperialist powers grouped in NATO began the use of large scale air attacks against the Bosnian Serbs. Despite the scale and duration of their attacks, they do not as yet constitute a fundamental shift of position by the imperialists from overall neutrality to decisively siding with the BiH forces

There has been no all out attack either on the military personnel or the urban population of the Bosnian Serb Republic. Military targets were initially restricted to the radar and surface-to-air missiles of the Bosnian Serb Republic and to the artillery batteries which have wreaked havoc on the multi-ethnic cities and enclaves of the Bosnian Republic. No more than 10% of the latter were knocked out in the ?rst two weeks of action.

The imperialist intervention, using the pretext of yet another horri?c Serb mortar attack on the Sarajevo market district, was no act of justi?ed retribution, but a coldly calculated manoeuvre to force both Pale and Sarajevo to accept a new US peace plan.

NATO proclaimed that its objective was not to takes sides in the con?ict but only to break the three year long siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb Army. They promised to eliminate its capacity to bombard Bosnia’s towns and cities repeatedly and at will.

To the unwary this might seem a laudable objective after the atrocities in Tuzla and Sarajevo, which has seen 10,000 civilians killed in the siege. Taken on their own these objectives would be progressive ones, just as the BSA’s siege of the cities is reactionary.

But they cannot be taken on their own. The progressive or reactionary content of wars, and of even limited military actions, can not be judged by isolated actions alone. They are indeed the “continuation of politics by other (violent) means”. The question must be asked: what are the objectives of the combatants?

The political aims of the imperialists, since their intervention in the break up of Yugoslavia, are reactionary. They are to create a stable framework for completing the restoration of capitalism and establishing one or two of the Yugoslav successor states as gendarmes for imperialism in the Balkans. To this aim they have subordinated the national rights of Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs. Their peace plans are reactionary and must be opposed in every one of their manifestations.

No worker, no consistent supporter of multi-ethnic Bosnia, can support the NATO military action. It must be condemned.

Having used the arms embargo for four years to prevent the Bosnians from defending themselves, having kept the population on a drip feed of minimal “humanitarian aid”, the air strikes were designed:

• to bring the Serbs to accepting the terms on offer from Holbrooke

• to “prove” to the Bosnians that only imperialism can guarantee their survival in a tiny statelet, and to force them to give up their goal of a multi-ethnic Bosnia.

Both the NATO air strikes and the new peace initiative are a continuation of a policy adopted over a year ago. Faced with a con?dent Serb nationalism, unwilling to compromise, the USA set about ?nding an enforcer on the ground. It turned to Tudjman’s Croatia.

The USA ?rst of all promoted the formation of a Croat-Muslim federation in Bosnia itself and then brokered a military alliance between Sarajevo and Zagreb. It publicly tolerated and privately encouraged Croat offensives to recover the western Slavonian enclave and then the Krajina.

But they have tried hard to avoid creating a force which could go onto the offensive in Bosnia and recover the ethnically cleansed lands. After the Croats’ reactionary ethnic cleansing of Krajina they immediately ordered them to desist from any joint offensive with the BiH army in central Bosnia.

They thus revealed that their true purpose was not justice for the displaced and cruelly oppressed Bosnian people but the stabilisation of the situation via a deal between Zagreb and Belgrade.

In seeking an agreement to withdraw the heavy weapons, and a cease-fire, the imperialists are not seeking to alter the long term military balance between the BiH and the RS. If the balance has now shifted against the Serb forces it is a result of the Croatia army’s extension of the Krajina offensive into Western Bosnia.

The reason for the self-imposed limits on the NATO “war” aims has been stressed by the LRCI since the beginning of the conflict. The imperialist powers, despite their differences over tactics, have a common aim: the containment of Serbia, not its defeat and subjugation.

US and EU imperialism are seeking to defuse the possibility of a Serb-Croat all out war that could drag the neighbouring states into a real Balkan War, and thus avoid the enormous damage this could wreak on NATO, the EU, and their relations with Yeltsin’s Russia.

Three vital concessions have been handed to the warring parties: the Bosnian enclaves surrendered to the Serbs, Krajina “cleansed” by the Croats and the siege of Sarajevo lifted by US bombing. Each has been paid for with the blood of innocent civilians and conscript soldiers.

Now US imperialism has taken the lead in sponsoring a peace deal. Its principal victims will be the multi-ethnic cities and towns of BiH and their working class and student movements.

The ethnic-Muslim population will be pressured into a pseudo-national existence which they never sought, and moreover as an oppressed nation. An inevitable future national liberation struggle by the Bosnian Muslims, analogous to that of the Palestinians, is being prepared.

The imperialist peace deal if it goes through will be a peace to end all peace in the Balkans in the decades ahead.

The beleaguered population of Sarajevo greeted the NATO bombings by dancing in the street. But these celebrations will soon turn to mass protests and even despair as the plans for partition become clear.

The hopes and illusions in imperialist peace, fostered by Alia Izetbegovic, Haris Siladjic and Mohammed Sacirbey since 1991, are going to be shattered in the cruellest fashion.

Like the Vance-Owen, Owen-Stoltenberg, and Contact Group plans before, the current peace plan, unveiled in Geneva on 8 September 1995, represents a further concession to Milosevic and Tudjman’s chauvinism and expansionism. It is a recognition and reward for three years of ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.

The Geneva Accord is a deceitful basis for the dismemberment of Bosnia into two statelets which will initially be spheres of influence for Milosevic and Tudjman but which will probably rapidly evolve into little more than regions of their republics.

Whilst it solemnly proclaims the continued statehood of BiH “within its present borders with continued international recognition”, it immediately outlines its division into two state entities; the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska). Both will have “parallel special relationships” with Croatia and Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro) respectively.

The “right of return” of refugees is being systematically denied in the current peace plan. Tudjman is busily enacting a law to prevent the return of the Krajina Serbs and to confiscate their property.

The Geneva peace plan now includes, on the insistence of the Bosnian Serbs, “compensation” as an alternative to return.

Of course, say the imperialist peace brokers, the refugees of all ethnic groups will still be “free to return” to life under the guns of those who expelled them and killed their relatives.

They know that few will avail themselves of that right.

The plan threatens also to include the division of Sarajevo, by exchanging territory, into compact ethnic zones. The Pale regime’s concession of 21% of the territory they presently hold is not so remarkable when the nature of the terrain (sparsely inhabited mountains) is considered.

Professor Koljevic, deputy to Radovan Karadzic, remarked:

“I’m quite sure we can do the swaps—exchanging quantity for quality, especially land in the Brcko corridor.” (Independent on Sunday 10 September 1995)

Behind closed doors in Paris and Geneva, the USA, its European allies and the major players, Belgrade and Zagreb, have prepared a deal to impose on Pale and Sarajevo.

The coming weeks and months will see all the stops pulled out to overcome the reactionary resistance to this deal from sections of the RSK leadership and the progressive resistance to it from sections of the Bosnian population and armed forces.

Should Socialists Take Sides in Bosnia?

Since the Autumn of 1992, when the Bosnians found themselves the target of a genocidal onslaught by both Serb and Croat nationalists, the LRCI has stood for the defence of multi-ethnic Bosnia and urged workers to take sides with the BiH forces.

Despite the reactionary nationalist politics of the leadership of the BiH government, the Bosnians were waging a just war of self-defence against genocide. Despite the NATO air attacks on the Serb forces, this remains the case today.

The Serb and Croat nationalists’ project of creating “Greater” states for themselves at the expense of the Bosnians are reactionary through and through.

The very existence of both the Muslim ethnic group and the multi-ethnic cities and towns of Bosnia was an obstacle to that project. Hence the mass ethnic cleansing and expulsions carried out by the Bosnian Serbs and their fascist allies in the Summer and Autumn of 1992 and by the Herzegovina Croats in early 1993. The Bosnian Muslims were faced with genocide.

Despite their reactionary nationalist leadership it was necessary for the world working class to support their right to self defence against that genocide.

Throughout we have warned of the reactionary consequences of the policy of Izetbegovic and co, in particular their slavish reliance on imperialism and their repeated, if largely unsuccessful, efforts to embroil it on their side in war with the Serbs. The LRCI warned repeatedly that if they were successful in achieving this then the Bosnians themselves would soon rue the consequences.

The large scale bombing of Serb targets by imperialist warplanes naturally provokes the question: should socialists take sides with the Bosnian Serbs against imperialism?

Aren’t the Serbs objectively anti-imperialist? Is it not the case that imperialism is always “the main enemy” and therefore whoever is fighting it becomes a “lesser evil” and objectively anti-imperialist?

Marxists never take positions in a war on the basis of abstractly counterposed definitions of the combatant states: imperialism, degenerate workers state, semi-colony etc.

Vital as these categories are, they cannot be used to replace a concrete analysis of whether the parties in a given war are progressive.

They cannot be used in isolation from the fundamental objectives the warring sides are pursuing. A war to defend a workers’ state or a semi-colony against conquest and exploitation by an imperialist state is a progressive war.

A war by a section of the fragmenting chauvinist bureaucracy and nascent bourgeoisie of a moribund workers state, to commit genocide against a section of its population is a reactionary war.

A limited, tactical, military intervention by imperialism against the reactionary side in such a national war does not in and of itself change the character of that war and render the Bosnian Serbs “progressive”.

An all out imperialist intervention which subordinated the BiH forces to its reactionary aims would be a different matter (see below).

Thus in Bosnia we have to look at the concrete aims of NATO and the Bosnian Serbs in their present limited conflict. We maintain that they are both thoroughly reactionary.

Whoever sides with the Serbs—if they are serious—must wish to see their victory in the given conflict. They must not only desire to see NATO warplanes downed by the Serbs but the continuation of the siege of Sarajevo and Tuzla.

The Serbs are not trying to drive the UN or NATO forces out of Bosnia.

They are continuing their four-year campaign to drive the Bosnians out of Bosnia.

Do the NATO air attacks make this objective any less reactionary? No! What the Bosnian Serbs are actually “fighting imperialism” over is the “right” to continue to besiege and bombard Sarajevo. Thus the limited conflict of the Bosnian Serbs with imperialism is not a progressive struggle. It is not in, the Leninist sense of the word, either objectively or subjectively “anti-imperialist” at all.

The imperialist powers have been drawn into this conflict, not in order directly to annex the Balkans to the EU nor immediately to restore capitalism, but to prevent a reactionary nationalist war de-stabilising the World Order.

Above all the imperialist powers sought to prevent multi-ethnic Bosnia from acquiring the means to defend itself (the arms embargo) and indeed liberate the ethnically cleansed majority Bosnian areas.

Without an airforce, without tanks and heavy artillery, all attempts to do that are doomed to failure.

As imperialism revealed its true reactionary role, greater and greater numbers of the BiH working class have come to realise that imperialism can do nothing progressive in the region.

Thus the British “defenders” of Gorazde had to retreat amid the gunfire of the local BiH militia who were justifiably trying to seize their arms and ammunition, the better to prepare the real defence of Gorazde.

The danger today is that the confidence of the Bosnian masses in the warplanes of the USA will be restored, and not directed where it should be: the power of their own militias and the solidarity of the world working class.

If so, that confidence will be dangerously misplaced. In the coming months it will be terribly disabused in the peace negotiations that will emerge from the present round of secret diplomacy.

The working class of Bosnia desperately needs to forge its own independent answer to the crisis.

This needs to start with the realisation that NATO, the UN and the European Union are Bosnia’s worst enemies. Whatever tactical advantages the air/artillery bombardment presents to the BiH militia on the ground, overall, strategically, it is reactionary, leading to an end to the struggle for liberation.

Indeed the Pentagon has ordered Izetbegovic’s troops not to take local advantage of the onslaught, lest this upset the plan to secure a reactionary peace in Paris.

During the Rapid Reaction Force bombardment on 29 August UN sources revealed that the BiH forces “had also opened fire with artillery but stopped when the UN threatened to attack them” (Independent 1.9.95).

The mid-September victories of the Croat-BiH forces in north-western Bosnia. whilst they can return thousands of Muslim refugees to their former homes, could simply become part of Tudjman’s drive to make his map a reality.

The BiH working class and militias should denounce the NATO/UN actions and demand their immediate end.

They should demand the breaking of the political alliance with Croatia, place strict limits on military collaboration with Croat forces, denounce the Croatian army’s ethnic cleansing and strive to prevent its repetition in central Bosnia.

Clearly there are already major divisions amongst the Bosnian multi-ethnic population and these are reflected within its government and its leading force the Party of Democratic Action (SDA).

Izetbegovic is inclined to go furthest towards it. As an ethnic-Muslim nationalist he is most likely to concede to the idea of an ethnic partition with only a façade of multi-ethnic Bosnian unity.

His problem is that many ethnic Muslims, especially the soldiers who make up the 7th Brigade, are composed of survivors of the ethnic cleansing of northern and eastern Bosnia. They are ?ghting to recover their homes and will not easily accept a partition which assigns these regions wholly and exclusively to their former torturers.

On the other hand the most multi-ethnic populations—in Sarajevo and Tuzla will resist the principle of ethnic partition.

At the moment they look to premier Siladjic as an opponent of such a partition. But Siladjic is a bourgeois politician unable to give the lead that the Bosnian workers opposed to the US deal need.

It is vital that the working class, especially in Sarajevo and Tuzla, establishes its political class independence, distinguishes itself from all forms of nationalism.

It must denounce the NATO intervention and the US peace plan. It must struggle against the SDA government and as soon as is possible overthrow it both in defence of its own class interests and gains and in the interests of preserving a multi-ethnic Bosnia.

It must address to the war-weary Serb and Croat Bosnians, and indeed to the workers of Serbia and Croatia proper, a call for a mass working class movement to drive from power the opportunists and criminals who have wreaked havoc over the last five years.

A clarion call must be made to the workers of Zagreb and Belgrade for a peace based on strict national equality, the return to their homes of the refugees of every national or ethnic group, of the right to self-determination within the framework of a federation based on the power of the working class of the cities and the working peasants in the countryside.

The working class alone can bring a progressive conclusion —a real peace to this dreadful war. It is the only alternative to either a reactionary peace or a further spiral into barbarism.

Danger of escalating war

During the NATO air bombardment of early September 1995 the LRCI summed up its slogans

NATO has chosen a “high risk strategy” to bring about its peace deal, one that could still lead to the embroilment of its air and ground forces in a full scale war with the Bosnian Serbs, thus even drawing in Belgrade’s regular forces and leading to a diplomatic face off with Russia.

The Vietnam syndrome means that the US military has to intervene with massive technical and numerical force as to assure minimum allied casualties. This tendency to “overkill” runs the danger of escalating the conflict rather than settling it.

The Vietnam syndrome also demands that operational control is given to the US generals, not the politicians. Thus a “contingency plan” to blitz the economic infrastructure of the RSK has been drawn up as a matter of course and casually made public by the generals—even though it is politically unthinkable to the British and French politicians at present.

The longer NATO’s involvement goes on the more it will strengthen the hand of those US politicians who have advocated the all out military alliance with a BiH/Croat federation.

Therefore it is possible, if at the moment not the most likely outcome, that the present actions will escalate into one where imperialism decisively sides with an unleashed Croatian-BiH military alliance and changes its war aims accordingly.

But this would tearing up Clinton’s present plan, and a radical break with Belgrade. It would alienate Russia and China, as well as Greece within NATO and the EU.

It would put an end to using the cover of the UN because of the Russian/Chinese vetoes. Similarly, Greece could prevent the use of the EU mandate.

What is more Britain and France would be at best unwilling allies in such a development. They have threatened to withdraw their forces altogether.

Revolutionaries would be obliged to alter their strategy in the event of a decisive imperialist intervention on the side of the BiH forces, such that it subordinates the latter’s war aims both to those of their imperialist masters and their reactionary Croatian allies.

It would entirely alter the character of the war.

In such circumstances the defence of Bosnia would become subordinate to the defeat of imperialism.

Despite the horrendous crimes of the Bosnian Serb leadership revolutionaries would have no option but to see their victory over an imperialist occupation force as preferable to the imposition of a new imperialist order by imperialist military force.

But that situation has not yet come about.

The Bosnian Serb Republic is under direct attack by imperialist warplanes, cruise missiles and the British and French ground troops of the Rapid Reaction Force.

Whilst we recognise the right of the Bosnian Serbs to defend their traditional majority areas against attack by these forces, it cannot make us in the present conditions defencist with regard to the Bosnian Serb Republic.

Thus in the present limited military conflict between NATO and the Bosnian Serbs, revolutionaries must take a revolutionary defeatist position on both sides.

We condemn the NATO intervention, demand an end to it. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops from Bosnia.

At the same time, we continue to support, critically, the BiH forces in their war of self defence and liberation.

We likewise demand an immediate end to the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo and the surrender of all territory seized as a result of ethnic cleansing since 1991.

Immediately workers throughout the world should demand:

• Stop the air strikes, stop the artillery bombardments, UN/NATO out of the Balkans!

• Down with the reactionary Geneva peace plan! Down with secret Diplomacy!

• Defend multi-ethnic Bosnia. No to imperialist peace plans which carve up Bosnia on ethnic lines

• Once the ethnic cleansers are defeated any settlement must include the right of self determination to all nationalities in Bosnia, including to separation.

• Victory to the forces of BiH in their struggle to regain the lands stolen by the ethnic cleansers! No reliance on imperialism. No holding back on imperialism’s instructions!

• For the right of all refugees, all victims of ethnic cleansing, including the Krajina Serbs to return to their homes. For multi-ethnic militias in all intermixed areas to protect all nationalities.

• End the Arms Embargo! Send heavy artillery, tanks and plans to the BiH army with no conditions!

• End the Economic Blockade of Serbia!

• Restore the devastated economies of all the former Yugoslav states with a workers’ plan which defends the working class against restored capitalist exploitation!

• For a multi-ethnic Workers state of Bosnia as part of a Socialist Federation of the Balkans!

• Massive working class protest action across the world against the reactionary peace deal, for multi-ethnic Bosnia and for the immediate withdrawal of NATO/UN troops.

 

Balkan War

League for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency), 30 April 1999, www.thecommunist.net

 

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Introduction

The Balkans are being torn apart by two wars. The first, waged by NATO with laser-guided missiles from over 700 fighter planes, is designed to bomb Serbia into submission. The second is being mercilessly fought by Serbian army and militia against the Kosovar Albanians with the aim of driving them from their homeland; in a word, genocide.

After three weeks no NATO aircrew or ground troops have died in action; meanwhile the body count of Kosovars butchered by Serb paramilitaries and of Serbs pounded by western bombs rises daily. Who is to blame for this carnage and how can a just solution be imposed on this devastation?

During the last decade the Balkans have been ripped apart by imperial diplomacy and the national chauvinism of local rulers. The dismemberment of empires and federations has unleashed waves of justified uprisings against national oppression and brutal backlashes of despotic regimes keen to incite pogroms against national minorities.

So it was during the first decade of this century. The “Great Powers” of the pre-First World War years arrogantly rearranged borders and shamelessly transferred whole peoples from the rule of one state to another.

Their creations - miniature states with national minorities trapped within them and sections of their ethnic group excluded from them - became at various times aggressive and expansionist powers despite, or rather because of their small size and economic weakness.

Now these same great powers, today known less grandly by acronyms (NATO, OSCE, UN), at one moment urge some peoples to independence (Slovenia and Croatia) and at others proclaim that “international borders are inviolable” in the case of other nationalities (Bosnian Muslims, Kosovar Albanians). Devoid of any genuine democratic purpose, today’s Great Powers have been guided by only two considerations: first, to fast-track the more developed of the ex-Stalinist states of the Balkans to capitalism so that western multinationals can seize the choice markets, industrial assets and raw materials; and secondly, to impose law and order in the region while it passes through the vale of tears of mass unemployment, impoverishment and cultural degradation.

For most of this decade Slobodan Milosevic was the man with whom the west could do business. At the end of all the human suffering during the wars of Yugoslav succession (Serbia versus Slovenia, Croatia against Serbia, Serbia and Croatia for the division of Bosnia) the United States, Britain, France and Germany rewarded those most to blame for the suffering - Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic. Having enshrined in the 1995 Dayton Accords Milosevic’s 1992-3 wholesale ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, it was scarcely any surprise that Milosevic should seek a final solution to the problem of the ethnic Albanians in Kosova.

The timing of this move, beginning in early 1998 was related to events in Kosova and in Serbia. Three years of peace saw the growth of powerful anti-Milosevic movements in Serbia, on the streets of Belgrade and the breakdown of the Albanian Kosovars’ patience with their oppression and the growth of the KLA.

Milosevic knew that if both these forces grew beyond a certain point his days were numbered. As in 1989, 1991 and 1992, he played the card of nationalist war to smash his “enemies within” and force a new and advantageous deal with imperialism.

Serbia’s ruthless campaign to drive out, not merely oppress, the provinces’ Albanians predates NATO’s war, at least to the autumn of last year. Now it has reached a crescendo. The sight of between 600,000 to one million Kosovars flooding across the borders of their own countries, the mounting evidence of a genocidal killing of thousands of young men, the reports by women of systematic rape - the vile “methods’ of Milosevic and Arkan witnessed before in Bosnia - rightly enrage workers around the world.

Those political and moral eunuchs who in the name of opposing NATO try to minimise and cover up these crimes - who refer to these reports as “imperialist propaganda” are corrupting the democratic and class consciousness of the international working class; in a word they are performing the historic role of Stalinism.

But revulsion against the genocidal ethnic cleansers should not blind us to both the complicity of NATO and the EU in the previous careers of Milosevic and the rest, their practical support in 1995 for ethnic cleansing against the Serb population of the Krajina and Slavonia, nor their cowardly aerial bombardment of the civil infrastructure of Serbia. The “democratic” rulers of the USA, France and Britain are themselves “serial genocidists” (in Algeria, Africa, Vietnam and Cambodia) or they have colluded in genocide (Rwanda).

In short they are wholesale oppressors and exploiters of peoples around the world. There is no way - given their institutional chauvinism and racism - that the imperialist states can play the role of defenders of democracy or protectors against genocide. Their pretences to do so are a disgusting sham.

Those “NATO socialists” - like Ken Livingstone and Vanessa Redgrave - who claim this role for it, are, whatever their subjective intentions, actually complicit in the murder of Serbian workers and alibis for the past and future crimes of imperialism against the Kosovars.

While the Serbs are vilified by the west’s governments there have been no shortage of advocates or apologists for the Serbs on the British left. Partly this is based on the simpletons guide to politics: where the imperialists put a minus we put a plus

The enemy of our enemy must be our friend. Some like Tony Benn, Bruce Kent, Tam Dalyell and the crypto and not so crypto - Stalinists of the Committee for Peace in the Balkans urge us to remember that the Serbs were “our” allies in the Second World War, that they are a valiant and Christian people.

Are they referring to the “crusade” being waged by the Yugoslav interior ministry police or Arkans tigers perhaps? To a displaced patriotism for socialist Yugoslavia these gentlemen add more than a dash of Christian chauvinism (or to give it its proper name, Islamophobia). They can scarcely bring themselves to mention the sufferings of the Kosovars let alone acknowledge the scale of Milosevic’s crimes. Their silence on these crimes, their eagerness for a bloc with Serb chauvinist forces who shout down or threaten those who dare to mention them, makes them complicit in genocide and for that they deserve to branded with infamy.

Other socialists who should know better, draw from the correct need to oppose “our own” imperialism the false conclusion that it is best to say as little as possible about the scale and ferocity of the ethnic cleansing directed against the Kosovars.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) falls in behind Benn and the Stalinists and refuses to support the Kosovars struggle against genocide because the KLA calls for NATO intervention.

To the Kosovars in their agony it offers abstract sermons on the need to “put nationalism aside” and unite with the Serbs against their rulers. As on so many occasions in the past the SWP obscures the distinction, emphasised by Lenin and Trotsky, between the nationalism of the oppressor and that of the oppressed.

The world working class movement must make its independent voice heard now. Never was the lack of a workers’ International more painfully felt than over the last years. All working class and socialist organisation worth the name should actively oppose the air attacks on Serbia and Montenegro and any entry by NATO troops into Kosova.

These actions have proved worse than useless from the point of view of protecting the Kosovars. For all these reasons it is in the direct interest of the oppressed and exploited world wide that the imperialist powers - the greatest and most dangerous force for reaction in the world - suffer a heavy defeat.

Such is the case now and each and every time they attempt to impose their will by blockades, bombs and ground forces. This is true even if their enemy (the Serbs in this case) has given the pretext for this attack by an arch-reactionary struggle against a progressive force which the imperialists appear to be supporting for the best of “democratic” reasons.

The world workers’ movement should also recognise the right of the Kosovars to full independence. In every country they should put the greatest pressure on their governments to do this. They should call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Serb forces from Kosova and support the struggle of the KLA and other Kosovar forces to achieve this, as long as the occupation lasts.

They have the right to acquire arms and supplies from whoever is willing to give them and also the right to take any military advantage they can from the NATO bombing. The Kosovar resistance fighters are waging a progressive struggle that deserves, indeed demands, the practical material support of all progressive forces.

Of course it is not inconceivable that imperialism could actually launch a full scale ground war against Serbia. Then not only the retention of Kosova but the independent existence of Serbia and Montenegro would be at stake.

In this case the KLA would likely subordinate themselves to this reactionary goal and to the imperialist forces carrying it out. If this were to happen then the workers’ movement would have to withdraw its support for the KLA.

But at the moment the defence of the independence of Serbia does not begin in Kosova. Indeed the workers of Serbia could best fend off the imperialist attack and intervention in the Balkans by forcing the withdrawal of all Yugoslav troops and police from Kosova.

The most likely outcome however - with or without some Nato ground incursions - is another Dayton, perhaps brokered by the Russians and the Germans via the United Nations. This could create Apartheid-style protectorates in the poorest parts of Kosova to which the refugees, disarmed and disorganised are herded from Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro.

Nato and Russian troops would not only “protect” them but ensure the marginalisation if not destruction of the KLA. Such “autonomy” would be presented as a great step forward and all the other questions such as the refugees return to their own cities and villages, as in the Dayton Agreement, be left to future negotiations - that is, until the first of never.

An imperialist peace - like an imperialist war - will not solve, or not solve for long, the terrible problems of the Balkans. If tragedy is not to succeed tragedy then the chains of oppression must be shattered.

It can only be shattered by a proletarian revolution which spreads across the region uniting Serb, Croat, Albanian workers and peasants in building a Socialist Federation of the Balkans.

But only those workers who transcend nationalism by supporting the oppressed against the oppressor, who never identify an entire people with its rulers and oppressors, who seek in the workers of other nations their best friends and allies - only such people will be able to create a new future for this part of Europe.

London, 16 April 1999

 

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At the end of April the largest summit meeting in American history will take place in Washington as presidents and prime ministers from 42 nations gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The government has told 90,000 federal workers to stay home as the streets will become choked by limousines ferrying 1,700 foreign leaders and dignatories from gala to gala.

A recent article in the New York Times imagined the scene with biting irony:

“Images of shattered towns and burning buildings will be fresh in the world’s mind as the glasses clink at the White House, toasts are exchanged and President Bill Clinton proclaims a new ’’strategic concept’’ for NATO. The ethnic Albanians of Kosova will be ’’the uninvited guests at the summit,’’ said Richard Haass, director of the Brookings Institution, and the spectre of hungry and homeless refugees could haunt the glittering state dinners.”

Judged on past performances it seems unlikely that the ladies and gentlemen will let these images spoil their appetites. But their stomachs may yet be unsettled by another vision, that of defeat and humiliation. Ivo Daalder, until recently senior staff member on European issues on the US National Security Council, has argued:

’’It may be that NATO’s first major engagement turns out to be a failure. And that forces you to ask: What is NATO for? What good is NATO if it can’t deal with a tinpot dictator in the middle of Europe? Its new mission is to ensure security outside its borders. Having defined that mission as fundamental, it is now losing this war and calling into question its own existence.’’

In the first three weeks of its war NATO has launched over 6000 sorties and 1700 bombing raids. Hundreds of sites have been devastated in the attempt to “degrade” Serbias military might. Their smart bombs are still dim-witted and brutal enough to hit residential areas, passenger trains and a convoy of fleeing Kosovan refugees. Over 100 Serb civilians are dead and many injured, and a similar number of Kosovars have been blown to piece by NATO planes.

US diplomats and White House officials know that the future of NATO depends on the outcome in Kosova. At the 50th anniversary celebrations Bill Clinton will outline a new strategic concept for NATO. He will call for NATO to fight outside its members’ borders, in places such as the Middle East or South Asia, in order to defend their own interests. This will not be a declaration of intent for discussion, but a statement of NATO’s active post-cold war strategy. The present war in the Balkans is its first and crucial test.

NATO was formed in 1948 as an alliance of the United States and European powers. It promised a pact of strength that would guarantee peace against a supposedly “bellicose” USSR. But it has waited until now, with the USSR gone and the Cold War won, to launch its first war in Europe. Even the most vociferous warmongers generally regard the aggression as illegal in international law, with NATO having by-passed and thus further discredited the supposed prime instrument of international peace - the United Nations.

At the heart of NATO’s New Strategic Concept is the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF). The CJTF was floated by the Americans in 1993, endorsed at the Brussels Summit in 1994, and described by NATO Defence Ministers in June 1996 as the creation of “multinational and multiservice formations established for specific contingency operations.”

In July 1997, NATO made a “commitment to the wider stability of the Euro-Atlantic area” and the streamlining of the military command structure to enable it to undertake crisis management and peacekeeping operations”.

The Danish foreign minister recently outlined the tasks which the CJTF might be called upon to deal with: “historically based mistrust and friction between ethnic, religious or national groupings, aggressive nationalism, social disruption and uncertainty in light of fundamental economic reforms, illegal migration, drug trafficking and organised crime, and environmental and ecological threats.”

NATO is first and foremost the global military arm of American political and economic power. Its command structure and top personnel remain dominated by the United States. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the US redefined its foreign policy objectives. The path was open for imperialism to tighten its grip on semi-colonial states in the “second” and third world that had achieved a measure of economic and political independence during the Cold War years. The United States and its European allies have arrogated to themselves the role of “world policeman". The reactionary consequences have been demonstrated in the 1990s in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Sudan and Afghanistan and in Bosnia with the implementation of the reactionary 1995 Dayton Accords.

The purpose of every one of these interventions is to ensure that the rulers of these weak states - whether long term semi colonies or former degenerate workers’ states in the process of restoring capitalism - carry out the political and economic diktats of imperialism. Today that means complete subordination to the profit-making of North American, western European and Japanese multinationals. The US government is pledged to tear down every trade and investment barrier in the path of US multinationals. It is determined to guarantee access to oil and raw material reserves, especially in the Middle East and Central Asian republics of the ex-USSR. The political, economic and military agencies (the United Nations, the IMF and World Bank, NATO) exist to enforce compliance or deal with the dire consequences of economic impoverishment and to weaken or destroy Russian influence and control over its ex-”Empire.

The current war against Serbia is the fourth US-led attack on a sovereign state in the 1990s. These are justified in the name of democracy and the need to strike against tyranny. But if this was their real concern, Israel, Indonesia and Turkey at the very least would have seen bombs rain down on them decades ago. Israel has brutalised successive generations of Palestinians, stolen their homeland, expelled countless thousands from their homes, denied their national identity and refused their right to return. The reaction of the US and NATO? To arm Israel, support its economy with billions of dollars, and to collude with its security forces against Arab states and the opponents of Israel living around the world. They have passed over in silence the constant mockery and defiance with which Israel has greeted each and every resolution of the United Nations against this tyranny.

The same goes for the vile Indonesian regime that has butchered hundreds of thousands of the people of East Timor since its invasion in 1975. And Turkey’s 30,000 killings of Kurds living in its country has been sanctioned by its NATO partners. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand NATO and the UN’s alternate willingness and refusal to act. Turkey, Israel and Indonesia are regional allies of the US military and big business. Each and every abuse of human rights, case of torture and mass execution can be disregarded as a result.

One of the ironies of NATO’s current war against Serbia is that President Milosevic was accepted by the US, France and Britain in the early 1990s as the strong man most likely to hold together the remnants of the ex-Yugoslav federation. The NATO alliance was not prepared to intervene against Milosevic’s ethnic-cleansing of Kosova when it began in earnest in spring 1998. Why? Because Milosevic was a co-guarantor of the 1995 Dayton Accords, which was the foundation stone for NATO’s “peace” in the Balkans. The Accords rewarded Serbias ethnic-cleansing in Bosnia of Muslims with an effective partition of Bosnia and a denial of the democratic and national rights of the Bosnian Muslims. Indeed, NATO welcomed the first counter-offensives against the KLA in 1998, since NATO reviled the thought of Kosovan independence for fear that it would lead to an uprising of the ethnic Albanian minority in Macedonia. This could have, in turn, embroiled Turkey and Greece on opposite sides of a conflict between NATO “allies”, but who in reality are bitter enemies.

NATO only threatened Serbia seriously last autumn when the KLA was beaten back by Serbia and the scale of Milosevic’s ethnic-cleansing threatened to create a massive refugee “problem” for EU states. In October 1998, NATO threats of bombardment against Belgrade forced Milosevic to withdraw some forces from Kosova. But the peace policy of the imperialist powers is based on preserving national oppression, on appeasing and using as its gendarmes the bigger nations (and the bigger oppressors). This policy - because of the accumulated wrongs and injustices it involves - only makes a war more bloody and savage when it comes.

At present there are 12,000 NATO troops in Macedonia; 8,000 more are assembling in Albania. More than $1 billion has been spent by NATO in the first two weeks of this war. One Stealth bomber is worth more than Albania’s annual GDP. For one-tenth of NATO’s $400 billion arms’ budget, enough food and medicine could be provided to prevent the deaths of 30,000 children who every day succumb to malnutrition throughout the world.

The size and grotesque expense of the war machine is clear enough. But what are NATO’s war aims in this current conflict? It is not, as we have seen, to end the tyranny of Milosevic over his people, since he has been their favoured broker for reactionary stability in the Balkans since 1990. From the start the war aims were to prevent Kosovan independence and curtail Serbian expansionism. Yet these objectives are constrained by the USA’s unwillingness and inability to deploy ground troops in Europe to win a war against a heavily armed enemy. While willing to “share the burden” of policing a reactionary peace settlement, they are not prepared to accept the deaths of hundreds or thousands of troops. This is due to the lasting effect of the USAs defeat in Vietnam and the political legacy it has bequeathed; simply put, America’s rulers fear the rekindling of a mass anti-war movement inside the USA.

This has left NATO with only one military strategy: bomb Milosevic back to the negotiating table. In the first week of the war this nearly led to disaster for NATO as Serbia declined to resist the aerial bombardment and instead launched a counter-offensive in Kosova against the ethnic Albanians whom NATO pretended to protect. In response the NATO aims broadened to include degrading the military capacity of Serbia to the point where it could not carry out its ground offensive against the Kosovan Albanians.

This too failed utterly as by the end of the second week of the war Serbian troops, special forces and armed Serbian civilians had expelled up to half a million Kosovars and forcibly displaced nearly as many again to inhospitable sites within Kosova. If the killing and terror stopped or slowed it was because Milosevic had achieved his war aims, not because of NATO’s attacks on Serbia.

With NATO already politically embarrassed and even discredited, with disunity within the alliance surfacing, and the bankruptcy of the military strategy so evident, NATO, led by British imperialism, broadened the war aims beyond Rambouillet. Now only the complete withdrawal of all Serbian troops from Kosova would suffice, together with the return of all the refugees and an unconditional acceptance of “international” troops inside Kosova. But despite ratchetting-up the rhetoric, NATO still lacks the political unity and military strategy to achieve these aims.

Therefore, as with Bosnia, a diplomatic agreement that recognises a significant part of what Serbia has already achieved militarily will be the most likely outcome. Partition of Kosova, possibly in the form of a confederation, is still the most likely outcome of NATO’s incoherence, Serbian reactionary successes and Russian diplomacy. This will all take place at the expense of the just democratic rights of the Albanian Kosovars.

The Kosovan government in exile, the KLA and thousands of refugees have reacted to the savage genocide of the Serbs with a policy of reliance upon NATO. This is foolish and short-sighted. NATO’s “humanitarian concern”, unlike the genuine sympathy felt by hundreds of thousands of working class people in NATO countries, is cynical and synthetic. At the Rambouillet talks the Kosovar delegation signed up to the plan for NATO troops and their own disarmament, and signed away their justified democratic right to an independent state.

In the first place NATO launched an air assault on Serbia without even having a provisional military plan for the defence of the ethnic Albanians in Kosova. NATO refused to countenance arms for the KLA; they avoided operations against Serb units on the ground in Kosova; they failed to prepare for the scale of the mass expulsions into Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro.

NATO therefore is fully responsible for the hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths that have and will continue to occur among the refugees as a result of lack of shelter, food, medicine and sanitation. To this must be added the wanton destruction of parts of Pristina itself by NATO bombs, much of which will not be repaired because the west will not donate sufficient reconstruction aid.

Just as tragically for the Kosovars, NATO’s operation against Serbia has effectively buried - for the moment at least - the Serbian working class and progressive opposition to Milosevic under an avalanche of jingoism and hatred of “fifth columnists”. Out of sight and hearing of this well-orchestrated campaign, a beleaguered few send reports out via the internet, but others are assassinated by order of the secret police.

Yet these were the Kosovars’ best allies inside Serbia, at once organising protests against his regime and keeping alive a stream of information about the repression inside Kosova that contested the state-media lies of Milosevic himself. A future multi-ethnic Balkans depends upon the overthrow of Milosevic by the Serbian people, yet NATO has set back this cause.

Finally what can the Kosovars expect of their NATO allies when there are no more targets left to bomb in Serbia? NATO has set its face against Kosovan independence and will at best set up glorified refugee camps in parts of Kosova and call it a “protectorate”. Kosovars be warned: Palestinians robbed of their homes and expelled from their homeland in 1948 are still living in refugee camps in the Gaza strip - they are as old as NATO and the UN! And what fate can Kosovar refugees hope for if they do manage to make their way to Europe or the USA?

Their governments’ touching humanitarian concern was well revealed by their collusion in the forced expulsion of thousands of Kosovars from Macedonia after being violently separated from their families.

Make no mistake, once the political settlement is enforced upon the region, Kosovars in London, Paris, Washington and Berlin will be hounded as scroungers, stealers of jobs, deprived of meaningful benefits and their democratic rights.

It is not enough to ask for NATO’s bombs to stop. Indeed, at some point they will diminish as the war aims of both sides are achieved. No, it is essential that in its air war over Serbia NATO is roundly beaten. NATO’s war over the skies of Serbia is not about stopping ethnic cleansing in Kosova; this only accelerated with the start of the bombing.

It is about reducing the relative political and military independence of a sovereign semi-colonial state and its ability to say no to imperialism. Socialists and democrats should welcome every F-111 shot down over Belgrade; they should rejoice in the political disarray at NATO’s Brussels headquarters when their military and diplomatic offensives fall short of their stated aims.

Why? Not at all because we support the vile chauvinist Milosevic, but rather because NATO’s defeat will allow the political straitjacket that has been imposed on Serbian society to be discarded and an independent opposition to re-emerge.

More, a defeat for NATO will open up deep divisions between NATO members and within the US political establishment, which even now are simmering. This will thereby strengthen the struggles of all the oppressed and exploited in the world. Immediately it will help the struggle of the Kurds against NATO member Turkey.

But it will also help every one who is resisting oppressive governments at present backed by the resources of the US State Department and Pentagon, as for example in Colombia. American and European imperialism will be wounded, forced to return to its lair to lick its wounds; this will embolden all those in these countries who are opposed to imperial military adventures.

The sight of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars arriving exhausted at border crossing posts has brought home the human misery of ethnic cleansing. The pattern of their testimony is similar: they are forced to leave their homes at gunpoint or face certain death at the hands of ski-masked Serb militia. Often they are robbed of their savings and deprived of their proof of Yugoslav citizenship; even the number plates on their cars and trucks are removed to destroy any official sign that connects them with their homeland. Their homes are ransacked at best, or razed to the ground.

The ethnic cleansing did not start in response to NATO’s bombs. NATO’s attack upon Serbia was a catalyst that speeded-up a process already well underway from at least the spring of 1998. Milosevic was determined to resist the justified democratic claims of the Albanian Kosovars for separation from the Yugoslav federation. From the late 1980s he sanctioned police repression of demonstrations and wholesale arrests of leading dissidents, together with “exemplary” murders to terrorise the population. But mere police operations were not enough when 90 per cent of the population do not want to be part of a state that they have been imprisoned within for most of the century. Hence, the “Serbification” and pacification of Kosova could only be assured by mass murder and expulsions - in a word genocide.

The origins of the Kosova national question do not lie simply with the co-existence in the Balkans of Albanians, Greeks and Southern Slavs. They lie in the carve up of the region by the imperialist “Great Powers” - in the 1878 Berlin Treaty and subsequent wars which drew and redrew the borders according to the interests of the worlds most powerful capitalists.

At a conference of the “Great Powers” (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia) held in London in 1913, Kosova was handed over to Serbia, which had been an independent state from 1878, after Russia’s defeat of Turkey. Serbia’s present claim on Kosova thus owes more to the collusion between Serbia and imperialism than anything else. However, Serbia seeks a more “historic” claim to Kosova than this; on their anti-NATO demonstrations Serb nationalists proclaim that Kosovo is the heart of Serbia” on the basis that medieval Serb tribes ruled over this region until their defeat by the Ottoman Turks in 1389, at the Battle of Kosovo-Polje.

In turn, the Albanian-speaking people of the region have an even older “historic” claim. The Albanian nation, which also had its origins in the 19th century, is the product of the merging of peoples who spoke dialects derived from the language of the Illyrian tribes who inhabited the western Balkans from at least the second millennium BC. The ancient Illyrian kingdom based at Shkodár in the north of modern-day Albania, formed in the third century BC, was conquered by and incorporated into the Roman Empire in 168 BC. When the empire was divided in 395 AD, Illyria (including modern-day Kosova, or Dardania as it was designated by the Romans) fell within the eastern empire. Slavic tribes (Croats, Slovenes and Serbs) arrived in Illyria in the fifth and sixth centuries; only in the south (in Kosova and Albania) did the ethnic Illyrians survive. Independent feudal states were established in the region in the 12th and 13th centuries. Among the first of these was the feudal principality of Arbária, established at Kruja in 1190. In 1217 an independent Serb kingdom was established at Prizren, in modern Kosova, and during the reign of Stefan Dusan (1346-55), it annexed Arbaria.

But revolutionary socialists put little value on the “historic” nature of rival nations claims on land. The only national rights we recognise are of peoples to self-determination. It is the Kosovar Albanian people’s right to self-determination that is being systematically denied by Serb rule in Kosova. The chains that bind the Kosovars to national oppression were forged much more recently, in the 19th century, and strengthened in the late 20th century with the fall of Titoism.

When Kosova was handed over from the Ottoman empire to Serbia and Montenegro in 1913 the Albanians fought massively against their new occupiers. Only after several battles, massive imperialist pressure and even the intervention of Ottoman forces against them were the Albanians forced to give in. From the start the bourgeois Serbian regime suppressed them ruthlessly and started a policy of colonialisation. So after 1913 more than half a million ethnic Albanians emigrated from Kosova to Turkey and elsewhere to escape Serbian rule, and by 1940 at least 18,000 Serb families had been settled by the Belgrade regime on their vacated lands. During World War II, Kosova was integrated into a “Greater Albania” under Italian control when the Serb-dominated kingdom of Yugoslavia (formed as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1921 and renamed Yugoslavia in 1929) was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941. The ethnic Albanians of Kosova (the Kosovars) supported the Communist Party-led partisans of Albania and Yugoslavia, both of whom operated in the area, against the Nazi occupation forces and the reactionary Serbian monarchist-nationalists (the Chetniks). In October 1944 Kosova was liberated by the Stalinist-led partisans of the Yugoslavian National Liberation Army.

In 1945 the Yugoslav Stalinists, led by Josef Broz Tito, reneged on an agreement made with Albania to allow the Kosovars to decide whether they should join Serbia or Albania. A Kosovar uprising in the winter of 1944-45 was brutally suppressed by Tito. Kosova was thus once more denied its right to national self-determination; It was forcibly incorporated into the republic of Serbia (under the Serb name Kosova).

Only in 1963 was Kosova made an autonomous province of Serbia but by then another 195,000 ethnic Albanians had been coerced by the Serbian authorities into emigrating to Turkey in the decade running up to this “autonomy”. Kosova was treated as a Serbian colony, its mines providing raw materials for Serbian industry. Despite a process of industrialisation Kosova remained a backward hinterland of Yugoslavia. The average income of the Kosovars in relation to the Yugoslav average declined. While Kosova’s average per capita income was 47% of Yugoslavia’s in 1947, this declined to 46% in 1953, 32% in 1974 and finally 24% in 1990. Following serious rioting by Kosovars in 1968 Tito increased federal funding to Kosova. In 1974, a new Yugoslav constitution gave the Kosova provincial assembly the right to elect its own representatives to the Chamber of Republics and Provinces of the Yugoslav federal legislature. They gained control over the judiciary, security and planning. But socially, Kosova continued to deteriorate with starvation in the northern mines and unemployment reaching 50 per cent by the early 1980s. As one Belgrade journalist put it: “When I was a kid I thought Siptar [pejorative term for an Albanian] was an occupation, essentially just another way of saying manual labourer.”

In 1981 protests against falling living standards and discrimination were suppressed. Led by Kosovar students from the new university in Pristina, they were put down by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army at a cost of more than 300 lives. The 7000 young Kosovars subsequently arrested were given jail terms of six years or more. Thus the myth spread today by, for example the Morning Star, that Tito’s Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic paradise, is just that - a myth. Nevertheless, it was the breakup of Yugoslavia that fuelled Serb racism and ultimately led to the current genocidal strategy of the Serb leadership.

Milosevic became Serbian Communist Party leader in 1987 and set about purging the party of any pro-Albanian elements. He whipped up nationalist sentiment against the Kosovars. This hysterical mobilisation of Serbs led to Kosovar resistance; a miners’ strike in 1988, followed by a half a million strong protest march to Pristina. Twenty-four Kosovar protesters were shot dead by the Yugoslav security forces in February 1989. In March Milosevic forced through changes in the Kosovan assembly to make Kosova give up its autonomy: delegates were “interviewed” one by one by Serbian secret police, the party was purged prior to the vote and civil war was threatened if Milosevic did not get his way.

On 5 July 5, 1990, the only Albanian-language daily newspaper, Rilindja, was banned, as were all TV and radio broadcasts in Albanian. In the following months, some 115,000 ethnic Albanians were driven from their workplaces and Serbs installed in their jobs. At Pristina University, 800 Kosovar lecturers were sacked, ending teaching in the Albanian language and forcing all but 500 of the 23,000 Kosovar students to terminate their studies. Kosovar secondary school teachers were forced to work without pay; otherwise the schools would have had to close. All Kosovars working in state hospitals were fired.

Unemployment among ethnic Albanians in Kosova soared to nearly 80%. In September 1991, Serbian police and paramilitaries unsuccessfully tried to block a referendum on independence for Kosova, organised by the deposed Kosova provincial government. Ninety per cent of the eligible voters turned out, and 98 per cent voted in favour of independence. In elections held despite Serbian authorities’ opposition, on 24 May 1992, the Kosovar writer Ibrahim Rugova was elected president of the independent Republic of Kosova. A Kosova parliament elected at the same time, and also declared illegal by Serbia, attempted to set up a parallel administration.

The years of the “parallel peace” saw thousands of university students, and up to 250,000 school students, educated in a parallel, underground education system. Parallel health services, sports leagues and cultural bodies grew up. At the same time many of the unemployed received rudimentary benefits from Rugova’s LDK government, mainly financed by donations from the 400,000 strong Albanian-American community in the USA. This was not mass civil disobedience - it was a policy of living with the oppressor that, for the moment, suited both Milosevic and the most conservative elements within the Kosovar community.

Rugova’s logic, accepted by many Kosovars, was that Kosova had no powerful allies. Albania was being destroyed by poverty, while the USA had drawn a line in the sand in newly-independent Macedonia, with the 1992 deployment of US troops in Macedonia saying don’t cross. Kosova was on the wrong side of that line and would have to avoid provoking Serbia until things changed.

The parallel peace suited Milosevic because he had other fish to fry: during the 1991-2 war against Croatia and the 1992-5 war to dismember multi-ethnic Bosnia, Milosevic relied on Rugova to keep peace in Kosova. The peace also suited the Kosova small bourgeoisie: the landed families and merchants who headed the traditional Muslim society and enforced their power through clan loyalty. They were entrusted with administering the peace and gained materially in return.

Three events unlocked the situation: the 1995 Dayton Accords, the 1996 student uprising for the reopening of the Albanian-language universities and the 1997 revolution in Albania.

The 1995 Dayton Accords spelled doom for Rugova’s strategy. Here NATO and the UN brokered a reactionary deal that rewarded Serb nationalism with the ethnically cleansed Republika Srbska and rewarded Milosevic with a new prestige as peace-broker in the region. It was in the years after Dayton that the Serbophile reactionary politicians like Britain’s former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd queued up to become advisers to the Milosevic regime. In return for pacifying the Bosnian Serbs, Milosevic was given a free hand in Kosova.

Meanwhile a generation of youth that had grown up under the heel of the Serb police went onto the streets to demand education rights - and were met with bullets and clubs.

Finally the revolution that overthrew the bourgeois Sali Berisha regime in Albania opened that country’s arsenals to the masses and removed the pro-US regime whose refusal to support Kosovan independence had been a powerful block on the movement. Despite the fact that Albania’s new government also refused to countenance independence for Kosova, the masses now had arms in hand and Albania became a more hospitable place for the armed mass resistance to Serb rule in Kosova.

In March 1998 Rugova was re-elected as “President of the Republic of Kosova” in an informal, illegal (for Serbia) consultation. Rugova and his clan are the biggest land owners in Kosova and its biggest bourgeois family. Their ties and interests lie with the Albanian landed clans and with imperialism. While it is probable that Rugova is today under house arrest in Pristina, and that his “accords” with Milosevic are made under duress, it is true that Serbia aims to destroy the power and negotiating strength of the KLA and so restore the prior influence of Rugova who could undoubtedly be made to sign up to a pro-imperialist peace plan that involved partition of Kosova or fake “autonomy” as part of Serbia.

Since 1997 the main force resisting Serbian rule in Kosova has been the Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA). The origins of the KLA lie, on the one side, in a small network of former Hoxa-hite Albanian Stalinists in Kosova and among Albanian emigrants in Western Europe and the USA. The most important of the KLA founding groups came from the Kosova Peoples’ Movement (LPK) and several splits from them. . The LPK was a Maoist/Hoxaist underground organisation which developed into a petty-bourgeois nationalist group. They organised fund raising and laid down the guerrilla strategy for the national liberation struggle. However, the KLA is not itself a Maoist movement. Rather it is an heterogeneous petit-bourgeois national liberation movement that since 1997 has drawn in all shades of political opposition to Serbia. The US emigré milieu formed the most right-wing pro-imperialist part of the KLA and was the main conduit for the pressure of the US upon the KLA delegation at Rambouillet. At Rambouillet and since it is this layer that has been in the ascendancy.

The rejectionist wing of the KLA is led by Adam Demaci who spent 20 years in Tito’s prisons. He refused to attend the Rambouillet talks since they excluded independence in advance. He resigned in protest at the Kosovan delegation’s signing of the Rambouillet treaty. Demaci criticises NATO for refusing to countenance Kosovan independence, but at the same time seeks the assistance of NATO. Nevertheless, Demaci has written since the attacks that the NATO attacks hurt Albanians as much as Serbia and that both people must act against imperialism. He also calls for an independent Kosova with full rights for the Serbian minority and in the past Demaci supported the right of self-determination for Kraijna, the majority Serbian area of Croatia which was ethnically cleansed by Croatian armed forces in 1995. There is also another left wing Kosovan party, the LKCK, which is a left wing split from the LPK. They proclaim they are “Marxist-Leninist” and have some influence inside the KLA. They demand land reform in Kosova and campaign for the nationalisation of the mines and industry. They look to Serbian workers for support.

The KLA is a heterogeneous petit-bourgeois guerrilla organisation in which the pro-imperialist wing is in the political ascendancy. But it is not, as its detractors claim, a creation of the CIA or merely now a catspaw of NATO. The KLA’s critics - and they include British Stalinists as well as Serb nationalists - like to portray it in the same terms as the Mujahedin in Afghanistan or the Nicaraguan contras, funded by drug money from Albania.

If it has received arms from Germany is this a crime? If so then greater crimes were committed by the Serbian guerrillas in the Second World War when they welcomed Winston Churchill’s imperialist planes bombing Chetnik positions, when they took their money and operated with their officers on the ground. If drugs money has paid for the KLA uniforms and AK 47s then that too is entirely legitimate since they would be an even more ineffective fighting force if they had to rely solely upon the financial aid from impoverished Kosovar villagers. But the KLA leadership is completely wrong to support the NATO bombing of Serbia and urge its ground troops to invade. This can only serve to strengthen imperialism in the Balkans, hasten capitalist restoration at the expense of their Serbian brothers and sisters, and will lead to a denial of the Kosovan right to self-determination.

After the 1995 Dayton agreements over Bosnia-Herzegovina, many Kosovars concluded that the peaceful road to independence was a dead end. More and more concluded that Albanians would only be heard by the “international community” when they took up arms. The KLA grew quickly as Serb paramilitaries increased their actions against Kosovar Albanians. In May 1997 around 300 members of KLA launched several attacks on Serbian police. At the same time Rugova called the KLA a Serbian provocation.

The KLA grew substantially during spring 1998. They were also able to arm themselves as a result of the flow of weapons that occurred after the breakdown in the Albanian state from February 1997 onwards. In several weeks an organisation of 300 grew to a movement of 30,000. At this time many right wing forces, as well as Rugova followers, also joined the KLA. Before the mass expulsions it was fighting a classic guerrilla struggle, with solid roots in a number of villages and represented, militarily, all the elements of Albanian Kosovar society struggling against Serbian oppression.

Socialists give the KLA critical support in their fight against oppression and for self-determination.

Support because the Kosovars have shown repeatedly they wish to have their own state and the exercise of this right does not involve the oppression of another people. The KLA is fighting a just war of national liberation.

Yet our support is critical - of the KLA’s methods, aims and ideology. From the mass student demos of 1996-7 to the guerrilla war of 1998-9 was not an inevitable development of the struggle. Indeed, the guerrilla struggle dictated the separation of the vanguard fighters from the towns where the Kosovar working class lived. Mass strikes, arming of the people, local soviets and workers control should have been the primary weapons of struggle. In the end we have been proved tragically correct. As the Serb police moved through Pristina and the major towns of Kosova after 26 March 1999, the KLA was on the defensive, in the countryside. As well as being functionally disastrous, the strategy of guerillaism was also politically disastrous. Rejecting mass urban struggle meant that, without outside help, in terms of modern heavy weapons and communications, the KLA could never go on the offensive. Thus it threw all hopes of offensive liberation struggle onto an intervention by the USA, provoked by the worsening “security situation” in the Balkans.

The KLA should break its political subordination to NATO. NATO will not back independence nor give the KLA the arms they need to fight for it effectively. In addition, and decisively, the KLA leadership, and still more so Rugova have never sought to mobilise the small but important Kosova working class as the central political force to rock the Serbian state. Despite their material weak conditions because of the mass sackings the Kosovar working class is organised in the independent trade union movement BSBK which is critical of Rugova. The northern mining working class has repeatedly shown its willingness to strike and protest but the KLA has embarked on a guerrilla struggle which on its own cannot drive Serbia from Kosova. Since the NATO bombing it has been forced onto the defensive by the Serbs but is seeking to protect the hundreds of thousands in hiding in the mountains. The KLA is now recruiting rapidly from the refugee camps of Albania ands Macedonia.

Before the bombs fell on Serbia, the Serbian government called them “terrorists”; now they call them the advanced ground troops for a NATO invasion of Serbia. Many on the left have been happy to repeat this claim. Less than a year ago the USA agreed with Belgrade and derided the KLA in much the same terms as Serbia. Robert Gelbard, America’s special envoy to Bosnia, denounced the KLA as “terrorists". So did Christopher Hill, America’s chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement. US Secretary of State Madelein Allbright threatened to cut off the KLA from all the support given by the Albanian immigrants in the West and to station imperialist troops at the borders to stop cross-border logistical supplies if they did not sign up to the October 1998 peace deal. None of these fools of the petty-bourgeois left - who serve as foreign agencies of Belgrade - can answer the simple question: If the KLA is a tool of imperialism why do these most powerful and modern states not arm the KLA with high-tech, sophisticated weapons so that they can defend themselves against Serbian tanks, artillery and aircraft? Why does NATO not arm them even now when they are bombing Serbia despite repeatedly appeals from the KLA? The reason is simple. While the KLA leadership would like to become NATO’s ground troops in exchange for their support, imperialism has no interest in them. Because of their mass character and their struggle for Kosovas independence imperialism can’t trust them and therefore will not give them more than tactical support in exceptional situations. As Marxists we develop our tactics not out of the wishes of a leadership but from the objective character of the struggle and the relation between the fighting masses and the organisations which represent them.

The KLA have been criticised for having a policy of killing Serbian civilians. The Yugoslav authorities have claimed that the KLA have carried out massacres and executions of Serbs in three villages between April and September last year, numbering several dozen in total. If the KLA are guilty of mass slaughter of Serb villagers fuelled by ethnic hatred then it must be denounced and the KLA leadership must make it clear that it will punish such actions, and renounce them as any kind of policy. The workers’ movement must never “turn a blind eye” to reactionary and self-defeating chauvinist crimes even when they are committed by oppressed communities themselves. This is self-defeating for the Kosovars because they will never finally establish their national freedom in peace and security without the goodwill of the great majority of the workers and farmers of Serbia and Montenegro. Therefore their correct treatment of the Serb minority in Kosova, those innocent of atrocities against their Albanian Kosovar neighbours, is a medium and long term weapon against the likes of Milosevic, Seselj and Draskovic. For only the Serbian democratic youth, the poor farmers and above all the workers can kick out these fomenters of national hatreds ands punish them as they so richly deserve.

However, an examination of the available evidence does not support the charge that “killing Serb civilians has been part of the KLA’s guerrilla strategy”. (Socialist Workers Party, Stop The War April 1999). If we take the source most hostile to the KLA, the Serb government, we find, on their website (<http://www.serbia-info>) a list of 200 atrocities committed between 14.10.98 and 25.2.99. Of these 41% are straigthforward military attacks on police. A further 20% were attacks on people of Muslim origin. This is explained both by the existence of collaborators among Kosovar Albanians, and by political infighting within the Kosovar resistance. A photo of six bodies on the website is captioned: “Six Albanians loyal to Serbia”. The KLA has accused the 12,000 strong Gorani community of Muslim Slavs, who generally support the LDK, of being collaborators with the Serb secret police. Of the remaining 40 per cent of attacks, three or four patterns emerge. Grenade attacks on cafes in Pristina, roadblock hijackings, resulting in either the beating or shooting of Serb civilians, raids on Serb houses to get weapons, and a variety of other offences. We may speculate that some of these were ethnically motivated revenge attacks. Likewise we may speculate that some were the dirty work of Serb undercover forces. In the entire list of attacks there is not one allegation of rape.

What is true is that with the 10 per cent Kosova Serb population armed to the teeth - like Northern Ireland’s Loyalists or West Bank Jewish settlers - clashes with them and killing of them was inevitable once the guerrilla struggle began. The website does not log how many roadblocks, killings and beatings were meted out by Serb forces in that period - but it surely numbered thousands, not hundreds. Of the 45 Kosovar civilians massacred by Serb police at Recak on 16 January 1999 the website only shows a picture of some Belgrade pathologists, with the caption: “Pathologists on Recak - there was no massacre”.

The conclusion is that, even if we take the lying mouthpiece of the Serb regime’s own figures there is no evidence of ethnic cleansing or attacks on civilians per se as the strategy of the KLA.

The KLA are neither “terrorists”, Albanian contras, drug barons or crazy killers fuelled by ethnic hatred. They are a legitimate politico-military force rooted in the Albanian villages of Kosova that arose to defend them against the Serb paramilitaries who regularly terrorised them in the 1990s. They have grown into a substantial guerrilla fighting force but one that is outnumbered, under-armed and crippled by a false strategy that sidelines the mass political struggle of the working class in favour of armed actions in rural areas.

What faces the KLA, and the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who look to them today, is a sharp crisis of leadership. During the Rambouillet talks and again since the beginning of NATO’s bombing the political representatives of the KLA formed a new government in exile to take the place of Rugova’s LDK (and lay claim to its substantial foreign deposits). The new government is an alliance of the KLA, the United Democratic Movement and - in a subordinated position - the LDK, with the KLA’s Hashim Thaci named as prime minister. When the provisional government was formed, Adem Demaci walked out, claiming correctly that to sign the Rambouillet agreement was to accept NATO’s plan to force Kosovars to accept a statelet within Yugoslavia instead of national independence.

Revolutionary socialist opposition to Rambouillet and the Provisional Government of Kosova must go further than Demac’s. criticisms. The “sign Rambouillet and wait for NATO” strategy has proved a disaster. But even if the dearest wishes of the KLA leaders were fulfilled - with a NATO ground war, and an autonomous protectorate - that would create a roadblock even to national independence. NATO has made it very clear that it wants Rambouillet, not independence for Kosova. Thus ”victory will involve Kosova being forced back either into a federation ruled by the man NATO calls a war criminal or into an imperialist protectorate were decisions are done in Washington and Bonn but not in Pristina!

And in this “safe-haven” Kosova, crawling with NATO troops, what can the Kosovar population expect. Ask the Kurds of northern Iraq: there a UN safe haven allows the most reactionary parties of the Kurdish bourgeoisie to enforce conservative social rule, to play power-game alliances with the Iraqi government, but stands back and does nothing while Islamists gun down leaders of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq whose crime was to organise family planning clinics and festivals on International Women’s Day.

In short the Rambouillet safe haven will be a hell hole: conservatism will rule. The proletarian and peasant mass movements to control the land and the factories and the mines will be made impossible by the presence of NATO troops and the virtual disarmament of the KLA or its incorporation as a tamed Kosovar police force.

Today Kosovar refugees join demonstrations with placards saying “We love NATO” and NATO - Now or Never. We say to them: break with NATO. Only when its own defeat is threatened will it even contemplate a ground war. It will never arm you enough to beat the Serb military on your own because the force that defeats the Serb occupation forces is the force that will impose the next social order on Kosova. In the unlikely event that NATO is forced into all out war on the ground, the only outcome will be a reactionary protectorate, not national self-determination: the road to socialism will be blocked within Kosovo and the road to a socialist federation of all the peoples and nationalities of the Balkans will be blocked as well.

Imperialism has played, and continues to play a destructive and reactionary role in the Balkans and in the break up of former Yugoslavia. But no revolutionary socialist can neglect to point the finger of blame at Stalinism too. For forty years the “Communist” rulers of Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Tito, held the country in a bureaucratic vice. The working class were excluded from political power and economic decision making. Stalinist policies fuelled national hatreds and helped fuel the murderous wars that have tormented the region throughout the 1990s. And rival nationalist bureaucracies built up power bases from which, after the death of Tito, they launched attacks on each other. They prepared the battleground. They are anti-working class criminals.

Yugoslavia, after the Tito-Stalin split, experienced decades of the “market socialism” and economic decentralisation that Gorbachev vainly tried to introduce in Russia from 1985 onwards. Indeed Yugoslavia was the pioneer of market socialism. The Yugoslav economic stagnation and breakdown, which became critical in the mid-1980s, was a crisis of this system in extremis, rather than of the old Soviet model of “command planning”.

Heavily in debt to western financial institutions, Yugoslavia witnessed a deep economic crisis in 1985. The debt totalled one third of the nation’s gross material production. Between 1979 and 1984 real earnings fell by 30 per cent. At the same time inflation spiralled up to 200 per cent by 1988. Mass unemployment meant further misery for the impoverished masses.

The Yugoslav federation had become virtually a confederation after 1974, though with Tito as final arbiter. The bureaucracies of each republic were able to thwart and obstruct any centrally decided measures which harmed them. Tito’s system could not survive his death because no bonapartist arbiter could replace him. Indeed, a cumbersome revolving “collective presidency” was his legacy. This was a recipe for complete paralysis. Yugoslavia, like many third world countries, had been lured into heavy debt by the western banks throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. In the mid-1980s the IMF decided it was pay-back time. The monetarist recipe for Yugoslavia - as everywhere else - was austerity and “economic reform” (i.e. privatisations, closures, opening to western trade). Thus, when the federal bureaucracy was pressured by the IMF to adopt just such a package of “reforms”, this led to waves of mass strikes and demonstrations by industrial workers both in 1987 and 1989. The response of the Serbian bureaucracy was to play the nationalist card.

The rise to power of Gorbachev in the USSR, and the deepening of the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in 1987 had its influence in Yugoslavia too. In Croatia and Slovenia, existing dissident movements came into the open demanding democratisation. Within Serbia itself, democratisation manifested itself primarily in militant demands by the Albanian minority for full republican status within the Yugoslav federation. The response amongst Serbs was the famous memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences inspired, if not written by the father of the Serbian nationalist revival, Dobrica Cosic.

Cosic had specialised in presenting the Serbs as the victims of genocide, of a hysterical and self-pitying rhetoric which confused the real genocide carried out against Serbs by the Nazis and the Croatian Ustashe regime in the Second World War with the largely economically motivated movement of Serbs out of Kosova. “The Serb is the new Jew, the Jew at the end of the twentieth century”, Cosic repeated again and again. Cosic was only the foremost of a whole wave of nationalist writers who presented the Serbs as the victims of a conspiracy to rob them of their historic lands, of their statehood and eventually of their very existence as a nation.

But the only hard evidence they offered was the autonomy of the provinces of Vojvodina, which had large Hungarian and Romanian minorities, and Kosova, which had a huge Albanian majority. They also blamed Serbia’s economic backwardness relative to Slovenia and Croatia on an anti-Serb alliance between all the other federal states, Vojvodina and Kosova.

The upsurge of nationalism amongst the Serb intelligentsia was skilfully utilised by a former bank official and then party chief in Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic. Beginning in 1986, he rose to power in the League of Communists of Serbia, stabbing in the back his former patron Stambolic and his clique. After a famous visit to Kosova, where the Serb nationalists had started to organise mass demonstrations by bussing in Serbs from Serbia proper, Milosevic realised that these demagogic mobilisations, with the implied (and sometimes actual) threats of street violence against his opponents, were the way to oust the old Titoite bureaucrats, grown fat on the plunder of the collective property. He used demagogic calls for an “anti-bureaucratic revolution” against them. He was able also to criticise the federal liberalisation programme - although he did support economic liberalisation, albeit at a slower pace.

To the demands of the autonomous provinces for republican status in 1990 he responded with measures that abolished the provinces’ existing limited autonomy in all but name. When pressure mounted to hold multi-party elections in December 1990, he called a snap election with tight control of the media. The League of Communists was renamed the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and, shamelessly using nationalist demagogy, took 194 of the 250 seats in the Skuptsina (parliament). But the opposition, tied to the IMF policies which would lead to mass unemployment, could not reach beyond the white collar and intellectual strata who valued “democracy” above social security and jobs because they assumed theirs were safe. Through iron control over the media, thuggish police methods, and an astute playing off of extreme nationalist and liberal democratic forces within the opposition, Milosevic ensured that no effective electoral rivals emerged. Whenever discontent with the regime reached boiling point and spilled over onto the streets, Milosevic stepped up or initiated a crisis which enabled him to play the national-chauvinist card. And since all the major forces in the opposition, whether on the fascist right (the Radical Party of Vojeslav Seselj) or the supposedly pluralist “left” (the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic), also banged the nationalist drum, chauvinism began to poison large swathes of Serbian society.

Milosevic’s resistance to a multi-party political system in Serbia and at a federal level stopped the latter re-legitimising itself by national elections. The federal government thus had no mandate for its economic reforms. In a tit-for-tat action the other republican leaders refused to sanction Serbian repression in Kosova. Deepening divisions along these lines led to the collapse of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990 and, over the next 12 months, the federation too, as the republics declared sovereignty and forced the withdrawal of the federal army - because of its predominantly Serbian character.

In Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, what in the rest of East and Central Europe developed into an anti-bureaucratic democratic revolution was transformed, or rather subsumed, into struggles for national independence and/or the extension of dominance over other nationalities. In Serbia mass strike waves by workers resisting the first attempts at restorationist reforms were headed off by Milosevic’s national chauvinist course.

In November 1988 Workers Power wrote:

“ . . . the Serbian Communist Party has embarked on a pogromist crusade to end the partial autonomy of both Kosova and Vojvodina. At its forefront has been Serbian party leader Slobodan Milosevic . . . [who] has authorised a series of anti-Albanian and Greater Serbian demonstrations in Kosova, Montenegro, Vojvodina and Macedonia. He is campaigning for Kosova and Vojvodina to be brought back under direct Serbian control on the road to building a Greater Serbia within Yugoslavia. His politics are quasi-fascist.”

This proved prescient. Within a matter of a few years Milosevic’s chauvinism inflamed rival nationalisms in Croatia and Bosnia - rivalries which effectively destroyed the Yugoslav Federation and started the wars between and within its successor states. Milosevic’s preventative counter-revolution and its rapid imitation by Franjo Tudjman in Croatia (albeit with an overt anti-communist coloration) aborted the unfolding of a political revolutionary crisis in the former Yugoslavia. Instead, the masses were lined up behind the nationalist leaders and used as cannon fodder in the wars of the Yugoslav succession. While the “war” with Slovenia proved to be a farce, the following wars were tragedies. Most importantly, they opened the door to direct imperialist involvement in the Balkans. Once again the rival imperialists saw the opportunity to use the Balkan nations for their own purposes.

The newly strengthened and assertive German imperialism, supported by Austria, had a different perspective to the US and to its major European partners. With historic links and aspirations in Slovenia and Croatia, Germany encouraged Croat and Slovene separatism. Surreptitiously they armed the Croats, hoping to cut away these economically advanced regions and to bring them into a relationship with the German-led Europe as semi-colonies.

In contrast, up to June 1991, the US and its British shield-bearer tried hard to preserve the federation and blocked recognition of the seceding republics. So too did French imperialism, fearful of seeing the new German giant flexing its muscles so soon after unification. But the tide of developments was on the side of German strategy. The Serbian Stalinist bureaucracy was not so intransigent and obdurate because it was defending the workers’ historic gains, but because its survival in Serbia now depended on its espousal of the most extreme Serb nationalist claims and objectives.

The war between Serbia and Croatia ensured that Croatia became independent of Yugoslavia. But it left unresolved the problem of control of the Serbian enclaves in Croatia and Bosnia. Milosevic’s credibility hinged on his ability to impose Serbian control of these enclaves. And war was the only way in which this could be achieved. The war with Croatia, therefore, was the prelude to the savage conflict in Bosnia. Milosevic’s goal was always the expansion of Serbia and the consolidation of its power. To win, he had to do more than just fight. He had to clear whole areas of their existing populations so as to ensure total Serbian domination over them. The grim and criminal process of ethnic cleansing began.

Milosevic’s characteristic obduracy eventually convinced the US-Franco-British bloc that their unitary-state strategy was bankrupt and that there was no alternative to supporting the division of Yugoslavia. They adopted the German plan to ensure the completion of the restoration process, first in Slovenia and then in a larger and economically viable Croatia. This meant sealing off backward Serbia and awaiting the effects of economic crisis which they trusted would eventually bring the downfall of Milosevic and the installation of a more pliable regime. They hoped to get a “democratic” fast-track restorationist regime that will do imperialisms bidding. The Serbs major crime in the imperialists eyes was not that of the horrors committed by the Chetnik butchers or the army bombardments. It was their control over the rump of the Federal army, which enabled them to seize most of the Muslim-dominated buffer zone that the US and EC imperialists hoped to place between Croatia and Serbia.

The break up of the Yugoslav Federation made a terrible war in Bosnia virtually certain, since it was a republic where each of the three main nationalities was a “minority” vis-a-vis the other two. The only force that could have prevented it was the Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian proletariat.

Indeed, in the years 1989-91, the vanguard elements of the working class, together with the progressive intelligentsia and youth tried to do just this in the form of peace movements in all three countries. The final and tragic attempt was the great demonstration of 1991 in Sarajevo. What this revealed was that pacifism alone, no matter how honourable its intentions are as against the chauvinist warmongers, is too limited and reactive. To stop war it was necessary to drive the warmongers from power.

A revolution was needed in all three republics to remove the Milosevics, Tudjmans and Izetbegovics (the leader of the Muslim party in Bosnia). Its aim could only have been achieved by ensuring a voluntary and equal federation with full rights for all minorities and the preservation of a planned economy, but this time under the democratic control of the working class.

Instead of this Bosnia was plunged into war. All three forces - Serb, Croat and Bosnian Muslim - sought to enforce a reactionary nationalist settlement on minorities that had no wish to be incorporated. The Bosnian Muslim leader Alia Izetbegovic’s aim was to preserve the unity of the Bosnian state in an alliance with the Croat nationalists, backed by imperialism, who extended diplomatic recognition to the republic. Such a unitary state included the Serb minority against their wishes, and so threatened them with national oppression.

But a sudden shift in US imperialism’s strategy towards accepting the German plan for the break up of Yugoslavia, a turn by the Croatian government against the Bosnian Muslims in order to carve out a “historic Croatia”, and a ferocious campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in eastern Bosnia by the Yugoslav Army” and Serbian irregulars transformed the conflict into a reactionary war of annihilation against the Muslim people of Bosnia by the Serbs and Croats. By August 1992 there were 50,000 dead and 2 million refugees. Where the working class was strongest - in cities like Tuzla and Sarajevo - multi-ethnic militia fought the pogromists in an alliance with the Bosnian army.

Milosevic’s objective of a Greater Serbia meshed with Tudjman’s project for a “historic” Croatia. Indeed there is considerable evidence that the Bosnian War was a joint effort, once fighting had ceased in Slavonia and Krajina. This clashed with imperialism’s plans to stabilise the Balkans since they saw beyond this a further war in Kosova and maybe in Macedonia too. This held the danger of Greek, Bulgarian and even Turkish intervention a real pan-Balkan war involving Nato allies on opposite sides.

Between 1991 and the end of 1994 the number killed in Croatia and Bosnia was anything between 200,000 and 400,000 people, with 2.7 million people turned into refugees. Late in the war the uselessness of the United Nations Protection Force (Unprofor) was demonstrated in the UN “safe haven” of Srebrenica. When the Serbs attacked, the Dutch Unprofor protectors pressured the Bosnian forces to surrender and then withdrew allowing the city to fall. Thirty thousand women, old men and children made their way by bus and on foot to Tuzla. But some 10,000 young men were rounded up and “disappeared”.

Then the Serb forces under Ratko Mladic started an intensified bombardment of the beseiged capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. The prospect of its fall finally persuaded the US and the EU to undertake some (thoroughly useless) bombing of Serb artillery sites. They scored a direct hit on some tents and one armoured car! What really ended the war was a massive Croatian offensive on the Krajina and a simultaneous, co-ordinated offensive by the Bosnian forces. Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs - for the first time in a position of strategic weakness were now willing to consider the western plans for partition that a series of international figures such as David Owen had submitted over the past three years.

The Bosnian war ended with the cease-fire of 10 October 1995 and the Dayton peace accords on 20 December. Sonorous pledges to a “united and sovereign Bosnia” were made; freedom of movement for civilians, a reversal of ethnic cleansing and the return of refugees to their homes were all promised. In fact only about 250,000 of the 2.5 million displaced Bosnians have returned to their homes. The largest groups of displaced population, the Bosniaks of Eastern Bosnia, the Serbs of the Krajina and the Croats of northern Bosnia stand no chance of being allowed to resettle.

Two entities were recognised at Dayton; the Republica Srpska and the Bosnian Muslim-Bosnian Croat Federation (formed under US pressure in Washington in March 1994). But the two parts of the federation are not one state. The federation army, trained and equipped by the Americans is strictly divided into three Muslim and two Croat divisions. In Mostar, despite repeated attempts, the Croat chauvinists will not allow freedom of movement for Muslims.

The International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague has only managed to indict 74 people, arrest eight and try one. The Republica Srpska has a new president but behind the scenes Karadjic still has considerable power. Their only substantive concession has been withdrawal from the Serb suburbs of Sarajevo in February 1996, but true to their principle that Serbs can only live under a Serb government they emptied these districts of their entire Serb population. As one historian observed:

“The Dayton agreement stopped the war before any of the three warring parties had achieved their political goals. It recognised the nationalist goals of all three governing parties, legitimised the ethnic principle of rule and completed the aim of the war to change the geographical distribution of the population to make national control over territory irreversible.”

Only one of the direct parties to the war - the Bosnian Muslims under Alia Izetbegovic - actually signed Dayton. The Croats of Herzeg-Bosna and the Serbs of the Republica Srpska both refused to sign. They were “signed for” by Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic. The minimal carrying through of Dayton on the Bosnian Serb and Croat sides is totally dependent on Milosevic and Tudjman. Hence imperialism’s tacit support for Milosevic and Tudjman will last as long as both are needed to implement Dayton.

The post-war situation in Serbia was a dire one. There was 60% unemployment and inflation was running at 50% per month. The gross external debt was $9bn. There were 700,000 war refugees from Krajina, Slavonia and Bosnia. Milosevic’s old slogan “All Serbs in One State” was coming true but in a way the Serb population had never dreamed of. In Milosevics ten years of power the average income had more than halved in real terms.

The local elections held on 17 November 1996 were won by the opposition coalition Zajedno (Together) in Belgrade and fourteen other towns - among them Nis, the second city in Serbia. Protests were initiated by the students of Belgrade and the masses responded.

There were daily demonstrations of up to 200,000 in Belgrade and in Nis and other major towns. But according to western commentators “noticeable was the absence from the streets of Serbia’s workers, of organised labour”.

The reasons for this were clear. Zajedno was a coalition of human rights activists, reactionary anti-communist nationalists and advocates of fast track restoration. Such a programme cannot win the organic support of all the students, let alone draw in the Serbian working class.

But at the same time it was clear that Milosevic could no longer mobilise the workers against the opposition either. On 24 December the Serbian Socialist Party tried to stage a rival rally at the same time and in the same place as Zajedno.

It had boasted that 500,000 would turn out. In the event only 40,000 showed up. An OSCE mission of investigation agreed to by Milosevic found in favour of the opposition in 14 out of the 15 results challenged. Milosevic pledged 1997 as “a year of reforms” that would take Serbia towards a market economy and see huge investments.

Promise of foreign investments, however, came at a price. In his last months as Britain’s foreign secretary, Malcolm Rifkind persuaded Milosevic to accept the Zajedno leaders into the government. Vojeslav Seselj was made deputy president and Vuk Draskovic appointed deputy prime minister. Even Zoran Djindjic - who is linked with Radovan Karadjic, the bloody butcher of Bosnia - has been brought into Milosevic’s inner circle.

The shoring up of the Serbian government was necessary to head off workers’ strikes and demonstrations over wages, jobs and conditions. Inevitably, however, it brought war with Kosova closer. In spring 1998 the Yugoslav Army moved into Kosova to flush out the KLA units.

After some initial setbacks, the war took a turn in late summer through to the cease-fire in October 1998, with the Serbian forces going on an ethnic cleansing offensive to clear out the north and east of Kosova - where the mineral-rich mining towns and all the major cities are.

By January 1999, Milosovic, now accompanied by all the nationalist oppositionists as well as the major genocidists from the Bosnian war, the notorious fascist Arkan and the destroyer of Srebrenica, Ratko Mladic, was ready to restart the war. This time, his aim was to drive the Albanian majority out of Kosova once and for all.

Serious historians as well as hack tabloid journalists frequently portray the Balkan wars of the 1990s as the product of “ancient ethnic hatreds”. This is not merely an ignorant explanation of todays conflicts. It is a self-serving lie. It conceals the guilt of both the imperialist powers and the Stalinist and post-Stalinist rulers of ex-Yugoslavia for the bloodbath that has engulfed the region.

The “ethnic hatreds” that have been unleashed in the 1990s were manufactured by rival national leaders in Yugoslavia - notably Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia - for the purposes of their own aggrandisement as that country broke up under the pressure of the economic crisis of the Stalinist regime in the late 1980s. The new nationalisms and chauvinisms were manipulated by imperialism as it sought to benefit from the break up of Yugoslavia.

The “success” of the nationalists has been to ensure that the twentieth century ends as it began - with the Balkans turned into a gigantic killing field. That they have been able to wreak such havoc on the region is a direct result of the failure of both the bourgeois-democratic and proletarian revolution in the Balkans and the conversion of the various states into the playthings of the Great Powers. The Balkan peoples have suffered untold misery as a result: two Balkan wars before 1914; two world wars in which the Balkans were a site of slaughter; forty years of brutal Stalinist dictatorship under Tito; and now, the “wars of the Yugoslav succession”, culminating in a massive imperialist intervention, a genocidal attack on the ethnic Albanian Kosovars by Serbia and the potential for the Balkan powder keg to shower its sparks well beyond former Yugoslavia.

In the nineteenth century, the antiquated and backward Ottoman Empire - which had ruled for four centuries in the Balkans - began to crumble under the impact of the rise of the capitalist industrial powers in Europe, principally France, Germany and Britain. This led to the renewal of the national aspirations of the major peoples of the Balkans. However, in trying to achieve the nationalist ideal of homogenous populations in clearly defined territories, they faced the problem not only of the old rulers (the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires) but also of the ethnic diversity of a large part of the settled inhabitants of the Balkans.

Even the largest of the Balkan peoples, the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Greeks, could not hope to achieve their objectives by their own efforts. The various national dynasties, therefore, looked to the Great Powers - Austria, Russia, Germany, France and later Britain - to support them. The price for such support was that the destiny of the entire region and its peoples was, fundamentally, shaped according to the balance of power between the rival imperialist powers. The region came to be dominated by the imperialist system within which each of the powers operated via chosen “historic” Balkan states and in turn these states oppressed the national minorities within their boundaries. A hierarchy of oppression and exploitation was constructed ultimately to suit the needs of imperialism. This system repeatedly fomented national hatreds and gave its name to imperialism’s policy of divide and rule - Balkanisation.

In 1908, the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote:

“The Balkan Peninsular . . . is divided between six independent states: Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, together with the Austro-Hungarian provinces of Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the six independent states, each of which has its own dynasty, army, currency and customs system, there live many nations and races, divided into separate fragments: Greeks, Turks, Romanians, Bulgars, Serbs, Albanians, Jews, Armenians, Gypsies . . . The frontiers between the dwarf states of the Balkan Peninsular were not drawn in accordance with national conditions or national demands, but as a result of wars, diplomatic intrigues, and dynastic interests. The Great Powers - in the first place Russia and Austria - have always had a direct interest in setting the Balkan peoples and states against each other and then, when they have weakened one another, subjecting them to their economic and political influence . “As early as 1878 Austria took control of the Turkish province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Congress of Berlin ratified this move and as Trotsky noted:

“The states that today occupy the Balkan Peninsular were manufactured by European diplomacy around the table at the Congress of Berlin in 1879. There it was that all the measures were taken to convert the national diversity of the Balkans into a regular melée of petty states.”

War was inevitable. The development of capitalist relations, slow and uneven as it was in the Balkans, was creating the objective need for an all-Balkan political and economic entity. Austria-Hungary wanted to ?ll the vacuum created by Turkey’s demise but, since the Crimean War of the 1850s, this was beyond the Habsburgs’ capacity. Moreover, France, Britain and Russia (the Triple Entente) would not tolerate such an extension of Austria-Hungary’s imperial power.

The crumbling Ottoman edifice was bound to lead to attempts by Balkan nationalities to construct independent states out of the debris. But, as Trotsky foresaw in 1910, if successful revolution from below did not provide the impetus for the creation of a Balkan Federation then:

“State unity of the Balkan peninsular can be achieved from above, by expanding one Balkan state, which ever proves strongest, at the expense of the weaker ones - this is the road of wars of extermination and oppression of weak nations, a road that consolidates monarchism and militarism.”

Two years later, in the autumn of 1912, Trotsky’s prognosis was vindicated. Turkey was in an advanced state of collapse. Meanwhile, the Balkan states, each with their own territorial and national ambitions in the peninsular, had made preparations for war with Turkey. The Balkan League (Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece) was formed in May 1912 to co-ordinate their attack on Turkey and agree a division of spoils.

Serbia wanted to enlarge its territory to include as much of its people as possible. Although carried through by war Trotsky understood that, “at bottom, this striving is irresistible, historically progressive”.

But, under the rule of a reactionary monarchy, there was also a darker side to Serbia’s strivings. Its own drive east to the Adriatic Coast brought it into conflict with the Albanians of that area. In addition, Serbia was quite prepared to drive its borders south into Macedonia and incorporate, by force if necessary, non-Serbs in the process; either that or drive such peoples out altogether in an early version of ethnic cleansing.

Between October and December 1912, the Balkan League countries inflicted a major defeat on Turkey. While Austria-Hungary and the Triple Entente shed no tears, they wanted to ensure that Serbia would be deprived of an Adriatic coastline. They feared it becoming a strong regional power that could threaten their interests. Under the threat of war, Serbia was forced to recognise the creation of the new buffer state of Albania. Imperialism had succeeded in further “Balkanising” the region.

Trotsky recognised that the causes of the war against Turkey were lodged in the preceding decades of imperialist manipulation and the denial of national rights. He supported the struggles and welcomed the successes of the Balkan League. But he was acutely aware that the petty tyrants and oligarchs who ran these small states were driven by more than just the legitimate desire to unite the “nation”. The roots of the second Balkan war, from late June 1913, lay in the conflict of these oligarchies against each other.

Bulgaria and Serbia recognised that conflict between themselves was necessary to divide Macedonia. Greece, too, wanted to extend its northern borders at Macedonia’s expense. Meanwhile, Romania entered the fray against Bulgaria for some of its disputed territory. In the ensuing war, Bulgaria was badly beaten, so much so that Turkey was able to regain land lost in the first war.

This second war cemented the “friendship” between Greece and Serbia that has lasted to this day, as both conspired to deny Macedonian statehood and ethnicity. Serbia also gained Kosova, which, then as now, had an Albanian majority. Some 500,000 people, mostly Turks and Albanian Muslims, were driven from their homes. Fearful atrocities were committed by the Bulgarians, Greeks and Serbians against Albanian, Turkish and Muslim Slav populations in order to clear them from the territories they wished to claim.

Thus, the national struggles descended into terrible wars of conquest and annexation, shaped, above all, by the aspirations of imperialism. Trotsky noted:

“ . . . the difficult conditions in the clutches of which the Balkan peoples are struggling have been determined not by the ethnographic map of the peninsular, or at least not directly by this - but by the self-seeking activity of European diplomacy, which has cut up the Balkans in such a way as to ensure that the separate, artificially isolated parts may by mutual conflict neutralise and paralyse each other. European diplomacy has acted and is still acting, moreover, not just from outside. It has established here, on this soil soaked with blood and tears, its own commission agencies and relay stations, in the persons of the Balkan dynasties and their political tools. On this chessboard kings and ministers are not so much players as principal pieces - the real players look down upon the board from above, and if the game takes a turn unfavourable to themselves they raise a mailed fist threateningly over the board.”

Trotsky, working as a journalist in the Balkans during both wars, talked to many left wing socialists and workers in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania. While there was a genuine desire for national unity, there was also a recognition by the class conscious vanguard that their class interests ran counter to that of their rulers. As one Bulgarian engineer remarked bitterly to Trotsky:

“Our miserable rulers only want to gather the strength to try once more a bloody settlement of accounts with our neighbours. But we think that what is needed is to settle accounts with those in each country who are to blame for our woes, and with our combined forces to build a new order in the Balkans.”

Here was the antidote to the poisonous nationalism that meant war and misery. Here was the voice of working class internationalism. It was a voice that found organised expression in the revolutionary Social Democrats of Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. These internationalists denounced the anti-Muslim atrocities of their rulers, fought against the annexationist ambitions of the rival dynasties and, on the outbreak of war, heroically voted against war credits to finance the carnage.

They recognised that the bourgeoisie, tied to the apron strings of the rival imperialists, could not resolve the national question in a progressive manner. The outcome of the two Balkan wars proved them right. Trotsky summed up the results of these wars:

“It must be said, therefore, about the new boundary lines in the Balkan Peninsular, regardless of how long they may last, that they have been drawn across the living bodies of nations that have been lacerated, bled white, and exhausted. Not one of these Balkan nations has succeeded in gathering together all its scattered fragments. And, at the same time, every one of the Balkan states . . . now includes within its borders a compact minority that is hostile to it.”

This was as true for Serbia as anyone. Serbia had gained most; it had doubled the size of its territory and, while the Serbs living within the Turkish empire had been liberated, there were still Serbs living under Habsburg rule in Bosnia, Croatia and southern Hungary.

To this unstable and still oppressive settlement Trotksy argued that:

“The only way out of the national and state chaos and the bloody confusion of Balkan life is a union of all the peoples of the peninsular in a single economic and political entity, on the basis of national autonomy of the constituent parts. Only within the framework of a single Balkan state can the Serbs of Macedonia, the Sanjak, Serbia, and Montenegro be united in a single national cultural community, enjoying at the same time the advantages of a Balkan common market.”

For that goal to be realised it was necessary to overthrow the emerging national bourgeoisie and landowning classes who, by their wars, were seeking to broaden the scope of their own class dictatorship and find a place as a subaltern regional power under the tutelage of one or other of the main imperialist nations. Only the working class could resolve the legacy of national hatreds that had been created by the regional bourgeoisie and its imperialist backers. Trotsky argued:

“Accordingly, the task of creating normal conditions of national and state existence in the Balkans falls, with all its historical weight, upon the shoulders of the Balkan proletariat . . . The social democratic parties in Bulgaria and Serbia, the most mature representatives of the labour movement in the Balkans, are fighting tirelessly on two fronts: against their own dynastic chauvinistic cliques and against the imperialist plans of Tsarism and the Europe of the stock exchanges. A federal republic in the Balkans, as the positive programme of this struggle, has become the banner of the entire conscious proletariat without distinction of race, nationality or state frontiers.”

For Trotsky, the road of the federal republic, was “the road of revolution, the road that means overthrowing the Balkan dynasties.” Until then, Trotsky was aware that the national antagonism fostered by imperialism would not go away. On the contrary as he said:

“The Eastern Question burns still, discharging poison like a frightful ulcer, in the body of capitalist Europe.”

That ulcer burst in July 1914. Austria-Hungary was desperate to arrest its own decline as a front line power and falsely blamed Serbia for being behind the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne while he was on a visit to Bosnia. Austria, egged on by Germany, declared war on Serbia.

Germany was searching for a pretext to launch a war in Europe which would enable it to repartition the colonial possessions of Russia, Turkey and France, possessions it had long coveted. The first imperialist world war had begun. Tragically, its outcome in the Balkans, unlike in Russia, was not a victorious proletarian revolution, despite heroic revolutionary struggles exploding in the area. Instead, the Balkans were once again organised to suit the needs of the imperialist victors in 1918.

Serbia was repaid for siding with the Triple Entente, by the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In the years that followed, it strove to subordinate all of the other Slav areas, as well as those populated by Albanians, Hungarians, Bosnian Muslims and others. The constant turmoil eventually led, in 1929, to a coup d’etat and royal dictatorship, under Alexander I, which renamed the region under Serb control, Yugoslavia (South Slav). It was the antithesis of the federal republic. It was a prison house of nations, in which nationalist hatreds and rivalries were kept alive.

In the second world war, Germany attempted, once again, to resolve the Balkan question from above - by extending the Nazi dictatorship over the entire region. At the end of the war, and with Germany defeated - by Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Armed Forces in Bulgaria - the question of the state form of the Balkans was once again on the agenda.

The regional Stalinist leaders - Tito, Dmitrov in Bulgaria and Enver Hoxha in Albania - all considered a federation of the Balkans to be the logical answer. Stalin had other ideas.

His overriding concern was the preservation of his own bureaucratic rule and his hegemony over the countries directly liberated by his army. He was a counter-revolutionary, not a liberator. Fearing the combined strength of a Balkan Federation - and its potential rivalry with the USSR - he adopted a policy that was virtually identical to that of the Tsarist diplomats and the “Europe of the stock exchanges”. He wanted to maintain Balkanisation - divide and rule. Thus, while Yugoslavia was to become a federation - supposedly satisfying the national aspirations of its peoples - Bulgaria and Albania were to remain separate altogether.

Yugoslavia itself, under Tito - both before and after his split with Stalin - replicated the oppressive Stalinist regime of the USSR within its own borders. Workers’ democracy was crushed, national rights existed at a formal level but were in reality subordinated to the needs of the central bureaucracy. Serb domination of that bureaucracy remained. The country was developed - or, as in the case of Kosova, underdeveloped - according to the economic needs of the bureaucracy. The state was guarded by a Serb dominated police, army and secret police. Only the Bonapartist rule of Tito was able to preserve this regime from blowing apart.

Nationalist rivalries did not disappear under Tito. They were kept alive by the bureaucracy’s policy of starving poorer regions of investment and resources, by its maintenance of the old Serb domination of the state machine and by the practical denial of national rights by the Stalinist regime. But these rivalries were, so to speak, frozen. The death of Tito, the economic crisis of the Stalinist states in the late 1980s and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 defrosted them. This time the dynasties who sought to use nationalism to divert the working class from its collective, international interests and mobilise them under the banner of chauvinism and national hatred, were the Stalinist bureaucrats in the constituent countries of Yugoslavia. Foremost among them was Slobodan Milosevic who, in 1988, emerged as the key leader of the Serbian Communist Party having made his name by organising pogroms of the Albanians of Kosova.

The socialist federation remains today, as it was in Trotsky’s day, the only progressive long term solution to the national question of the Balkans. But this time the task of the revolutionary socialists is not the overthrow of kings, but the overthrow of the post-Communist regimes who, like the kings before them, have soaked the lands they rule over in the blood of the masses.

As the NATO bombs rain down on Serbian cities and refugee convoys alike, the movement in Britain against the war has been small. Although millions of people feel a deep distaste for Clinton and Blair’s bombing raids, only a few thousands have taken part in marches and protests against NATO.

The main reason for this is the support given to the war by the leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions, even by “left-wing” figures like Ken Livingstone. They point to the plight of the Kosovar Albanians, backed up with appalling TV images of empty cities, squalid refugee camps and burning villages, and say simply: “something must be done”.

But across the population, including the working class, many still mistrust the motives of the warmongers in Washington and Westminster. NATO’s real war aims and indiscriminate actions have obviously not helped the Kosovars one jot. As the conflict deepens, the possibility exists to rally a powerful movement of opposition to the war.

But there is another problem. The main political forces in the anti-war movement are led by dissident Labour MP Tony Benn, the Communist Party and its daily newspaper the Morning Star and the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). Although each of these opposes the NATO bombings without reservation, they are unable to answer the arguments of the pro-bombing lobby with any coherence. The reason? Each of them refuses even to acknowledge the scale of the horror to which the Kosovars have been subjected by Milosevic. They refuse to call for Kosovan independence altogether. Some of them slander the Kosovan forces, all deny that the Kosovar Albanians are victims of genocide.

There is absolutely no reason why opponents of the NATO bombings should do this. If “the first casualty of war is the truth”, then the anti-war movement must be founded on a determination to acknowledge the whole truth. Standing four square with the Kosovan victims of genocide is a basic duty of all socialists and democrats. It is essential to combine the fight against NATO with support for the Kosovars’ struggle against genocide and for national independence.

Unless this is done, working class people who reluctantly support the bombings “to help the Kosovars” will be offered no alternative way of opposing the greatest genocide on mainland Europe since the end of the second world war. By abandoning the Kosovars, the British left shows not only a disgraceful willingness to turn a blind eye to the most savage oppression when it wishes, but also a complete inability to answer the distorted message of the pro-NATO politicians with clear internationalist answers.

Tony Benn and the Morning Star

Benn stands out as one of the only MPs who has spoken out again and again against the war. When Baghdad was bombed last year and during the current air strikes it is his voice we hear on radio and TV programmes calling for an immediate end to the bombing and rejecting NATO’s justifications for its action.

Yet since the onset of this conflict Benn has said nothing about the plight of the Kosovars. When confronted with the argument that the Serbian forces are oppressing the Kosovars, he either ignores it or claims that the mass depopulation of Kosova has only begun since and as a result of the NATO bombings. He has even suggested that the Kosovars might be fleeing the NATO bombings and not the Serb forces that are driving them from their homes and killing them.

Worse still, Benn seems to endorse the Milosevic government’s right to rule the whole of Kosova. He deliberately avoids using the Kosovars’ own term for their province, referring instead to “Kosovo and Metohija", the name used by the Serbian chauvinist government in Belgrade to emphasise its own claim to the province.

The Morning Star is even worse. Instead of basing its opposition to the war on the interests of working class people across the world, which would mean denouncing both NATO and Milosevic, it provides a daily diet of gut-wrenching apologies for the Butcher of Belgrade. It insinuates that the TV footage of anti-Albanian pogroms are faked Western propaganda. It describes the massacres of Kosovars as “excesses", as if Milosevic were pursuing a basically sound goal with a little too much enthusiasm. And that is precisely what the Communist Party of Britain really thinks. In an editorial on 11 April the Morning Star described the Kosovars’ striving for independence as if it were nothing other than a “nationalist” plot by the great powers to break up Yugoslavia, with no inherent justice as a cause in its own right.

This is utter rubbish, an insult to the democratic rights of peoples not just in the Balkans but everywhere. Minority nationalities were and are cruelly oppressed in Yugoslavia by the ruling Stalinist elite. Denial of equal language rights, the right to run their own education and health services and the right to self-determination were not features of “socialist” federations but a travesty of socialist principles. Whole nations cannot be forced into “socialism” at the barrel of a gun by their national oppressors.

The Communist Party has backed this nationalist distortion of socialism since the days of Joseph Stalin. Just as they claimed that workers fighting against bureaucratic dictatorship in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were part of a fascist plot, today they claim, without a shred of evidence, that “many of the leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army trace their roots to a fascist unit set up during World War II by the Italian occupiers” (13.4.99).

The Morning Star’s claim to be opposing nationalism and fighting for socialism is a fraud. In reality, a genuine socialist federation of the Balkans could only be built on a voluntary basis, one which upheld the right of all nations to independence if they choose it. By denouncing and slandering the right of the Kosovar Albanian majority to independence and their own state, the Communist Party turns its most hostile face to the movement of an oppressed nation, while backing the vicious nationalism of the ruling Serbian elite, who are denying other nations their basic rights.

The Socialist Workers Party

This approach is to be expected from the Communist Party and Stalinist fellow-travellers like Tony Benn. But it is surprising for many to see the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) follow suit.

After all, the SWP prides itself on anti-Stalinism. In the past it has backed every movement against Stalinist regimes, including even genuinely reactionary ones like the Islamic forces in Afghanistan in the early 1980s.

Yet since the onset of the NATO bombings the SWP and its paper Socialist Worker has refused to back the Kosovars. Despite having a formal position in support of the right of nations to self-determination, the SWP has opposed raising the call for Independence for Kosova alongside anti-NATO slogans. It refuses to give solidarity to the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), which is the only independent force resisting the massacres and ethnic cleansing of Kosova. And it is trying to play down the scale and meaning of what has happened to the Kosovars.

At a 5,000 strong anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square on 11 April, Mark Steel of the SWP failed to utter a single word about the plight of the Kosovars. The pages of Socialist Worker and its new pamphlet, Stop the War, prove that this was no oversight. The SWP is systematically downplaying Milosevic’s genocide in Kosova.

There can only be one possible reason for this. The SWP has abandoned the Kosovars as the price of a joint campaign and shared platforms with Tony Benn and the Communist Party. Its international policies and principles have been bartered away for short-term advantage in the British anti-war movement.

The key questions of the war are either avoided by the SWP or answered in such a way as to cover-up the Stalinist lies of their current allies. Let us look at these questions.

Are we witnessing a genocide in Kosova?

An entire chapter of Stop the War is devoted to the argument that Milosevic’s treatment of the Kosovars is not a genocide and should not be called a holocaust or compared to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. It says:

"The press, politicians and NATO generals are using words like genocide, fascist and Holocaust lightly. It is wrong to do so."

The SWP says it is necessary to raise this point to counter NATO propaganda. But if this were its aim, it could easily point to numerous genocides and massacres in which the hypocritical NATO powers refused to act or even collaborated. Rwanda is a case in point. It could show up how the West has refused to help the Kosovars up until now, not just by turning away refugees, but by freezing KLA bank accounts, refusing to recognise Kosova as a legitimate state and mounting a diplomatic offensive in the months leading up to the war to get the Kosovars to moderate their opposition to Milosevic and give up their arms.

Instead the SWP tries to rewrite history. Because NATO propaganda now stresses the scale of Milosevic’s crimes, the SWP suddenly tries to play them down with spurious and cynical arguments.

The pre-war population of Kosova was 1.9 million. Of these, 1.7 million were Kosovar Albanians. Over half a million have fled the country and a further 800,000 have been displaced within its borders in the first few weeks of April. Those who refused to leave their villages and cities have been shot. Thousands - especially men of military age - have been murdered.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannia, a genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, religious, political, or ethnic group.” By herding them to the border and wiping out official records of their existence, Milosevic is attempting to drive the Kosovars off the map of Europe. His genocidal war against them may be in its early stages. But its intent is patently obvious.

But the SWP refuse to admit this. Instead, they focus on a comparison with Nazi Germany. Stop the War says Milosevic “is the Serbian version of Norman Tebbit rather than the Serbian Hitler” (p6), that Hitler was the leader of the worlds second largest industrial power when he smashed the German workers movement and took over in 1933; Serbia is a minor country with a totally devastated economy which produces less than Tunisia” (p5) and that the Nazis did not attempt to drive the Jews out of Europe but held them within Europe in order to murder them (p9).

This is demagogy of the worst kind. The racist Norman Tebbit demanded that Blacks and Asians assimilate into mainstream British culture (by cheering for the English cricket team, etc.). Milosevic denies Albanians any rights in Greater Serbia whatsoever and is forcibly driving them from their homes. To describe the perpetrator of the greatest forcible depopulation in post-war European history as no worse than a racist Tory MP is to have lost touch completely with reality. Tebbit, vile racist that he is, never called for compulsory repatriation, let alone set about driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. To compare Milosevic’s actions to those of Tebbit rather than Hitler is not just an insult, it is covering up the reality of Milosevic’s crimes.

So eager is the SWP to play down what is happening, that it says:

"There are real fascists in Yugoslavia today, but they are not in power."

Even if this was true, it has no bearing on the need to back the Kosovars against the massacres. But it is not true. Milosevic’s deputy president, Seselj, is a Serb fascist. He is a key member of the government. Moreover Milosevic’s own politics have long been those of the “red/brown bloc” - the alliance of reactionary nationalist Stalinists and open fascists that has been a feature of decaying Stalinism.

What about the argument that Serbia is a minor country? It is a total red herring, a smoke screen to cover up the paucity of the SWP’s “case". Rwandan Hutus massacred a million Tutsis in a country industrially much weaker than Serbia. Saddam Hussein gassed and murdered Kurds. Were these facts not worth recording and opposing with all our might?

But what about the Holocaust? The Kosovars have not been systematically exterminated, it is true. But before the Nazis could commence the unparalleled horror of the “Final Solution” in 1942, they first stripped the Jews of their democratic rights, their property and their jobs, (1933-35), then they herded them forcibly into ghettos and concentration camps, and finally shot, hanged and gassed them in their millions.

Milosevic carried out the first of these actions in 1988-89 and the second in 1998-99. Should we wait till he carries out the “final solution” before we are allowed to draw historical parallels?

A simple analogy exposes just how cynical and disturbing the SWP’s argument is. If a company announced it was closing a small factory and one of its workers, on reading her redundancy notice, said: “It is just like what they did to the miners", how would a socialist respond? By saying: “Yes it is. They say we are uneconomic so they wreck our lives for profit. Like the miners, we should all fight together, and we should make sure it never happens again."

But, following the “logic” of the author of Stop the War a different argument would emerge: “No, you are mistaken. However horrible the events of our factory closure, they are not the same. We are much smaller than the mining industry. Our communities have not yet been destroyed. To compare the two is wrong. It is an insult to the miners."

Nobody would ever raise such an argument unless they were opposed to action. Which, in the case of the defence of the Kosovars, is precisely the case for the SWP. Their argument is not motivated by a desire to preserve the memory of the unique horror of the Holocaust, but to play down the genocide that is happening in Europe now.

The SWP quotes the Russian revolutionary and enemy of Stalinism, Leon Trotsky, in support of its stance. But he had a different approach when, as a war reporter, he covered the Balkan wars in 1912-13. He wrote of those who covered up the genocide of Albanians and other Muslims in the Balkans:

“Did not the facts, undeniable and irrefutable, force you to come to the conclusion that the Bulgars in Macedonia, the Serbs in Old Serbia, in their national endeavour to correct data in the ethnographical statistics that are not quite favourable to them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population in the villages, towns and districts ... An individual, a group, a party or a class that is capable of ‘objectively’ picking its nose while it watches men drunk with blood and incited from above, massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm eaten while it is still alive.”

Should we support independence for Kosova?

“Towards the end of Tito’s rule he granted Kosovan Albanians certain national rights. Milosevic reversed this as he drove to succeed Tito.” (Stop the War, p20)

These are practically the only sentences in the whole of the Stop the War pamphlet which acknowledge the real national oppression of the Kosovars within Serbia. Not a single article in Socialist Worker since the beginning of the war has detailed the Kosovars’ current or recent oppression.

Yet all Albanian language newspapers, and television and radio stations are banned; unemployment among Kosovan Albanians stands at 80 per cent; their average income is just 28 per cent of the already breadline Yugoslav average; all education in Albanian is banned; hundreds of Kosovar activists rot in jails.

No wonder a 1991 referendum returned a 98 per cent vote for independence on a 90 per cent turnout.

Why do Socialist Worker and Stop the War remain silent on these facts? Because they are hostile to the Kosovars’ legitimate fight for independence.

They write:

“Serbians have to support the right of Kosovan Albanians to self determination, to decide their own future, and Kosovan Albanians have to be for harmony with Serbians and for an end to ethnic tensions.” (p22)

Socialists support the right of all nations to self determination, with only one proviso - that they do not oppress another nationality in the process. And the right to self determination, in this instance, can only mean independence. The Kosovars have “decided their own future” and, like it or not, it is outside of rump Yugoslavia. Anyone who tries to obstruct their right to independence is not fighting nationalism” but supporting reactionary Serbian nationalism, the very nationalism that is trying to retain hold of an oppressed nation against the overwhelming will of its people.

An internationalist approach means supporting legitimate national rights. Only this could win Kosovar Albanians away from the nationalist politics of the KLA leadership and Serbian workers away from Milosevic’s vile Serb chauvinism. The SWP used to recognise this. Their own John Rees, in his pamphlet Socialism and war, makes the point very well:

“As Lenin put it, those who wish to see a pure revolution without nationalist revolts in oppressed countries, will never live to see a revolution. Such revolts can manifest all sorts of religious and nationalist prejudices. But Lenin argued that the political complexion of the leaders of small nations - be they nationalist, fundamentalist, dictators or democrats - should not determine whether socialists in the major imperialist countries support them against imperialism.” (Socialism and war, p19)

Exactly. But the SWP refuses to apply this to the Kosovars today, despite the fact that they are a small nation fighting for freedom against “Greater Serbia".

What is the socialist solution to the national question in the Balkans?

The SWP claims to stand in Trotsky’s tradition by calling for a socialist federation of Balkan republics. This slogan was developed by Trotsky as a weapon against national oppression and nationalist ideas.

The Balkans are a patchwork of different and intermixed nationalities, each of which can only develop, on the basis of capitalism, at the expense of one another. Different nationalist leaders constantly seek to grab land from other nationalities and do deals with different big nation states in pursuit of their aims. The usefulness of Trotsky’s slogan is that it cuts with the grain of the oppressed peoples’ desire for national sovereignty while challenging divisive nationalists and cynical imperialist powers.

But the slogan does not replace the slogan for the right of self determination. Quite the opposite. A socialist federation has to be voluntary and include the right to break away from the federation, otherwise it simply becomes a prison-house of nations, like the old USSR.

For the SWP, however, the Kosovars must abandon their right to independence because that can only mean subordinating their struggle to that of the imperialists. Alex Callinicos argues that:

“The Kosovan Albanians have the right to self determination, just like all the other peoples of the Balkans. But that does not mean that socialists should support the KLA. Nationalist movements which allow themselves to become subordinated to the designs of the Great Powers cease to be independent political forces. All the signs are that the KLA is becoming an instrument of NATO.” (Socialist Worker, 17.4.99, emphasis in original)

But the KLA is clearly not yet reduced to merely “an instrument of NATO”, which is exactly why socialists must now rally support for its fight rather than abandon it to the malicious and deceitful clutches of the imperialist powers. This was the whole meaning of Trotsky’s slogan.

As it is, the SWP are left with no solution to the crisis in the Balkans because no mass force has independently taken up their slogan of a socialist federation. The KLA cannot be supported, say the SWP, so the right to independence must wait until a socialist mass force can arrive at the head of a new struggle. In the meantime, Kosovars’ illusions in NATO grow daily as they are the only force on the planet who seem to be helping them fight the Serb merchants of death.

Equally, if socialists refuse to support the fight for Kosovan independence, Serbian workers will feel no counterweight to the propaganda of Milosevic. If socialists across the world were demanding the arming of the KLA and supported their struggle, while at the same time demanding NATO stops its bombardment of Serbia, then the Serbian workers would have to account for why their staunchest defenders are also against Milosevic’s main policy, ethnic cleansing.

Should socialists fight for the defeat of NATO?

Despite their coverage of the suffering of the Serbian population, the SWP are unable to answer this question. Nowhere in their publications do they call for the defeat of the NATO forces. “Stop the bombing” is as far as the SWP are prepared to go.

But to call on NATO to stop the bombing is not enough. While backing the Kosovars’ own self-defence, socialists should also support the defeat of NATO in its war with Serbia. We should take heart at every military reverse, at the disarray in Brussels when military and diplomatic offensives are set back, at the divisions in the imperialists’ camp which would emerge with a defeat.

This is important because many in the anti-war movement, like Tony Benn, believe that a peaceful imperialist intervention, preferably via the United Nations, is the only solution. It is not. A negotiated settlement would most likely consign the Kosovars to a meaningless protectorate where any rebellion would be put down by the very forces claiming to protect them.

It would allow Milosevic to stay in power and pose as a great “anti-imperialist” national leader, again with any progressive movement to unseat him facing local NATO forces should it challenge the big powers’ strategic and economic interests.

A defeat for NATO, on the other hand, would drive the most reactionary force on the planet out of the Balkans. Workers in Serbia would be able once again to openly oppose Milosevic and restart the fight for wage rises, jobs and against privatisation - issues over which Milosevic and NATO are at one.

The oppressed Kurds would be more confident of challenging NATO member Turkey. And, yes, here in Britain too, workers would face a deflated, anxious and divided capitalist class in our struggles against racism, welfare cuts and factory closures. As John Rees again points out:

“If the peace movement does not reach out to these struggles [for better wages and conditions, democratic rights, etc.], if it restricts itself to simple demands for peace and does not broaden the struggle into a class struggle, it will deny itself of the best chance of stopping the war and of developing into a struggle to strike the power to wage war from our rulers’ hands forever. This is why socialists are not pacifists . . . Where imperialist powers are involved in colonial wars we hope they are beaten.” (Socialism and war, pp18-19)

How can we build a mass anti-war movement?

Unfortunately, the SWP has ignored its own advice and become indistinguishable from the pacifists in this war. The reason they give is that they want to build a mass movement around the most important demand of the day: “Stop the war”.

This is why the Kosovars are ignored, why the defeat of NATO is not called for, why Milosevic’s crimes are hushed up. The anti-war activists are often hostile to Kosova’s independence, largely pacifists and many of them Stalinists with illusions in Milosevic.

So, the party line goes, keep our mouths shut, share platforms with Tony Benn and Bruce Kent of CND, and hand out the party cards at the end of each rally. This is not just deeply opportunist and an abandonment of international socialism. It is also going to fail.

British workers see hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees on their TVs every day. Some now reluctantly support the air strikes because “at least something is being done". There is mounting scepticism about NATO’s war aims. As the conflict gets worse, they may seek out the SWP or the wider anti-war movement for answers.

But when the reply comes that the Kosova Albanians are not facing genocide, that Milosevic is more like Norman Tebbit than Hitler, that the KLA are effectively NATO agents and that the Kosovars should not defend themselves with arms, they will shake their heads and conclude that the left are just as cynical and self-serving in their arguments as the government.

Most dangerous of all, those who rightly want to stop the suffering of the Kosovans could then end up in the arms of “NATO socialists” like Ken Livingstone, who calls for British and US ground forces to invade.

But there is another path to the masses. It means taking a principled, anti-imperialist, anti-nationalist path. It means telling the truth and opposing oppression wherever it raises its head.

The working class movement worldwide must take a clear position on the crisis in Kosova. This must combine defence of the Kosovars against Serbian oppression and, in the event of a NATO use of force, a defence of Serbia against attack.

The world workers’ movement should recognise the right of the Kosovars to full independence. For the last ten years, in every way possible - elections, mass peaceful resistance and finally by armed struggle - they have indicated that this is what they wish.

The Serb minority have the right to protection and the fear of reverse oppression. But they do not have the right to veto the self-determination of the overwhelming majority of the Kosovars. Since the political parties and military organisations which have the overwhelming confidence of the Kosovars have not only expressed this wish but declared Kosova independent and chosen a government the workers’ movement should put the greatest possible pressure on all governments to recognise Kosova and its government.

They should call for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Serb forces and irregular paramilitary formations from Kosova and the disarming of Serb civilian militia. They should collect money - for medicine, food and weapons - to support the struggle of the KLA and other Kosovar parties as long as the Serbian occupation lasts. The Kosovar resistance fighters have the right to acquire arms and supplies from whoever is willing to give them - including imperialist and Islamic governments. They also the right to take any military advantage they can from the NATO bombing.

The Kosovar resistance fighters are waging a progressive struggle that demands the practical material support of all progressive forces. Even so those forces should not give any support to NATO intervention nor place any confidence in the negotiations and diplomacy conducted by “the international community”. NATO, the European Union, the Contact Group , the OSCE and the United Nations represent just so many thieves’ kitchens who will rob and despoil the workers and oppressed nations of the world the moment they entrust their fate to them.

Workers throughout the world should not be deceived into supporting the cowardly air wars against Serbia. On the contrary, by opposing the war, by seeking to bring about a massive wave of revulsion against it, by undermining the morale of the imperialist troops, by obstructing and sabotaging in every way possible the war effort, they must bring it to an end as soon as possible. In short, they must seek to bring about its failure and defeat. The humanitarian goals proclaimed by Clinton and Blair are only a smokescreen for the “world policeman” role that the United States and its European allies have arrogated to themselves since the collapse of the USSR. They are seeking to establish a unilateral right to use full-scale military force on anyone who opposes their economic or military-strategic interests.

The arch-reactionary consequences of this have been demonstrated in the Gulf War, in Somalia, in Haiti, and in Bosnia with the implementation of the reactionary Dayton Accords. Its most recent episodes were the US bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan. Nowhere have these “humanitarian” interventions aided the oppressed and persecuted peoples in whose name they were undertaken. The pretexts are in fact cynical charades.

Military resistance to these attacks by all these countries is fully justified and workers around the world should do all within their power to help bring about the defeat of imperialism in all such attacks. Workers should not be fooled by the millionaire media which always presents the US, Britain, France and the rest as engaged in humanitarian missions or responding to “vicious terrorist attacks”. The overwhelming military power of NATO forces many who resist it to adopt guerrilla or “terrorist” tactics. Messrs Blair, Schroeder, Jospin and DAlema, despite heading parties still rooted in the European workers movement are in reality thoroughgoing agents of imperialism. They are distinguished from their right-wing predecessors only in their covering up their masters’ plans in hypocricy and deceit.

Despite the foul nature of the Milosevic regime workers must oppose all forms of military attack on the territory of Serbia and Montenegro. Rump Yugoslavia is not an imperialist power for all of its colonialism and expansionism in Bosnia or Kosova. Economically, it remains a non-capitalist state, one where the nationalised property relations remaining from its forty years as bureaucratically degenerate workers’ state still exist in a fragmented, dying condition. These remains - the self-managed factories and heavy industries - are under constant attack from the “post-Stalinist” bureaucratic caste which is trying to transform itself into a capitalist ruling class under the supervision of IMF programmes.

The regime of Milosevic was not and still is not fighting NATO to defend the remnants of the planned economy, either during its clashes with imperialism over Bosnia or now over Kosova. Therefore workers in other countries are not obliged to defend the state, as revolutionary Marxists (i.e. Trotskyists) advocated before 1989. Milosevic and the Serbian bureaucracy are no longer defending the planned property relations even as a basis of their own privileges. However workers within Serbia, aided by their class brothers and sisters worldwide, should defend the shattered remnants of the workers’ state - in particular the collectively owned factories - against imperialist attack. But this will also mean a struggle against Milosevic and the Serbian bureaucracy. Workers must not only occupy their workplaces as they have done against the NATO bombing but seize control of them to prevent their privatisation or closure under any of the post-war plans.

In fact only by overthrowing Milosevic themselves can they use them as the basis for reversing the capitalist restoration process and planning the post-war reconstruction of the country. Such a political and social revolution is urgently needed in Serbia both for the sake of the national minorities within Serbia and the adjacent states, who will never be safe or secure as long as the greater Serbian bureaucracy and its expansionist and genocidal projects exists but also for the Serb people itself. They have, in reality, gained absolutely nothing from Milosevic’s wars of conquest except the driving of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from their ancestral homes. “All Serbs in one State” has meant not the reactionary utopia of resurrecting the Serbian empire of the fourteenth century but the Serbia of 1914 but packed with homeless refugees. By expansion, colonisation, ethnic cleansing either of Serbs, Albanian Kosovars, or Bosnian Muslims or Croats no peace or security for the peoples of the Balkans can be achieved.

The right to self-determination of all the Balkan peoples must be granted, including their right to secede and re-arrange their borders by democratic consent. They should form a federation not just of South Slav but of all Balkan peoples and in this way harmony and economic development can be secured. This will mean the return of all the expelled peoples to their homes, impartial justice meted to those who organised their expulsion. All of these peoples of former Yugoslavia have now suffered and have in their midst a minority of the criminals who carried it out.

They must be brought to justice - not before tribunals of imperialist justice in the Hague (let them arraign and try the Blairs and the Clintons, the Bushes and the Kissingers if they have time on their hands) - but before multi-ethnic juries of workers, peasants, youth and women who are free of any complicity in the crimes.

Workers in the west must demand billions in war reparations from the NATO powers for the horrific damage they have done to the bridges, factories, railway lines power stations, hospitals and houses of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosova. We must demand the immediate and unconditional lifting of all sanctions against rump Yugoslavia.

All these measures, like the bombing itself, hit not at Milosevic and his bureaucracy but at the Serbian workers and farmers - consolidating their support for Milosevic and their Serbian patriotism. Measures which destroy Serbian jobs and social security blind Serbian workers to the fact that their true friends and allies are the workers of the other Balkan states and of the EU and the United States as well. But to prove this to them we have to strike the hardest blows possible against our own ruling class and against the murderous policies of Blair and Clinton, Jospin and Schroeder, Aznar and D’Alema.

Who can lead the peoples of the Balkans out of the dreadful carnage which has marked the last decade of the twentieth century? Who can prevent NATO and the likes of Slobodan Milosevic from making certain that the national struggles of oppressed and oppressor continue for decades? Who can prevent the explosions of the Balkan powder keg from spreading to the whole of Europe? Who can overcome the Balkanisation of the peninsular which condemns it to economic backwardness and internecine rivalry?

Only the working class of all nations, regardless of nationality, language, culture or religion can do this. But to do it, it has to wrench itself from the stranglehold of the nationalists of all colours - those of the oppressed and the oppressor. There is only one ideology, only one party that can do this - revolutionary communism which proclaims the unity of the worlds’ workers and the defence of all oppressed peoples .

As Lenin observed at the beginning of the century, only revolutionary communists can be “consistent democrats” because they wish to overcome all questions of national oppression which divide the workers of different countries. Imperialism turns its back even on bourgeois democratic solutions like the rights of nations to self-determination. The co-leader of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, also understood that all genuine popular struggles against national oppression can only fully realise their goals under the leadership of the working class and with the overthrow of capitalism.

What the workers of the Balkans need is a revolutionary communist party with deep roots in the working classes of all the Balkan countries and the national minorities centred on a programme for working class power. Such power will not be a return to the Stalinist dictatorships over the proletariat of the 1945-1989 period but one based on workers’ councils such as made the Russian revolution of 1917 and nearly succeeded in making the political revolution in Hungary in 1956.

Such councils of workers, peasants and soldiers deputies, not only elected but also recallable by their workmates, can prevent both counterrevolution and bureaucracy. They can expropriate the new capitalists and the agencies of the multinationals and transform and modernise the old factories, farm and mines into a democratically planned and collectively owned economy. All the peoples of the Balkans could thus unite - with the militant Greek proletariat too - to create a Socialist Federation of the Balkans on the road to a Socialist United States of Europe.

The League for a Revolutionary Communist International is fighting to build such parties across Europe. It is fighting too for a new revolutionary communist international. If we had such an international today then we could already have rendered massive assistance to the Kosovars against Milosevic, to the Serbs against NATO and brought the best elements of the Serbian and Kosovar workers together to achieve these aims and to go on to fight for the socialist revolution. The LRCI urges:

• Stop the NATO bombing now.

• Stop the genocide in Kosova.

• No to a ground war in Kosova or beyond.

• Victory to the Kosovar national liberation struggle.

• For elected refugee camp committees in Albania and Macedonia; for camp militia.

• Against forced desportations; for refugee control over medical and food supplies; for the uniting of all refugee families.

• Immediate and unconditional recognition of the independence of Kosova.

• Serbian troops out of Kosova.

• Arms with no strings to the KLA.

• Defeat the NATO attacks on Serbia and Montenegro.

• End the UN economic blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.

• Open the borders of the European Union to the Kosovar refugees

• Full social security, medical, educational entitlements and political rights for refugees.

• Down with the Dayton Accords - all imperialist troops out of the Balkans.

• Lift the UN blockade and sanctions against Serbia.

• For a republics of workers’ councils in Kosova, in Serbia and in all the states of the Balkans.

• Halt and reverse the restoration of capitalism - for a democratic emergency plan.

• For a socialist federation of the Balkans.

 

The SWP, imperialism and the "real Marxist tradition"

Published by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency), 30 May 1995, www.thecommunist.net

 

Paul Morris surveys the twists and turns of the Socialist Workers Party on the theory of imperialism, permanent revolution and the "permanent arms economy"

In his article "What is the real Marxist tradition?" John Molyneux answers his own rhetorical question by claiming that a line runs from Marx and Engels, through Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky, to today's SWP. He lists the SWP's major theoretical contributions to the development of that tradition as:

"the state capitalist analysis of the Stalinist states, the theory of deflected permanent revolution in the third world, the analysis of the arms economy boom and the new economic crisis, the critique of the trade union bureaucracy."

We have dealt with the SWP's theory of state capitalism elsewhere.2 The purpose of this article is to show that on imperialism and all questions related to it "deflected permanent revolution" and the permanent arms economy the SWP's theory represents a break with the Marxist tradition, not a continuation of it. It will show that these errors flow from the failings of the theory of state capitalism when applied to the entire world system, and from the SWP's economism.

We look in detail at three related questions:

* Does the SWP support or reject Lenin's theory of imperialism as the starting point for a modern Marxist theory? Was it valid in Lenin's time; is it valid today?

* Does the "permanent arms economy" explain the post war boom?

* Does Cliff's theory of "deflected permanent revolution" help Marxists to understand the emergence of strong "Third World" capitalisms and guide revolutionaries in their practice?'

Lenin's theory of imperialism

What do we mean by the term "imperialism"? We can agree with Alex Callinicos when he notes that:

"Imperialism is neither a universal feature of human society nor a specific policy but 'a special stage in the development of capitalism', indeed, as the title of Lenin's pamphlet states, 'the highest stage of capitalism' ."4

Lenin and other Marxists, however, engaged in a series of debates during the first two decades of the century over the exact nature of imperialism. Often, they could not agree on an answer. But they were all motivated by the same question: what was the cause and consequences of the transformation that capitalism underwent between the mid i 890s and the First World War?

Surveying the new shape of the capitalist economy, Lenin drew what he called a "composite picture", which identified five features. They were to be found, in various stages of development, in all mature industrial capitalist countries:

* the concentration of capital into monopolies and cartels

* the merging of banking and industrial capital into "finance capital"

* the new importance of foreign investment (the "export of capital") as opposed to foreign trade

* the division of the world between international monopolies

* the territorial division of the world between the big imperialist powers.'

This was the highest and last stage of capitalism according to Lenin, one in which capitalism's own contradictions had begun to strangle it. Though the epoch could include periods of economic growth indeed, during the 20 years before Lenin wrote his famous pamphlet growth had prevailed over crisis for Lenin the overall trend in the imperialist epoch was one of stagnation and decline.

Imperialism had evolved as a systemic response by capitalism against deepening cyclical crises which, after 1873, became a prolonged stagnation phase. After 1896, capitalism entered its new epoch and achieved considerable success in restoring profit rates, stabilising the economies of the major powers and promoting the global spread of the system. But it had not succeeded in overcoming its own basic contradictions.

Indeed, for Lenin, imperialism constituted an intensification of these contradictions:

"The intensification of contradictions constitutes the most powerful driving force of the transitional period of history, which began from the final victory of world finance capital".6

Monopoly, the main defining feature of imperialist capitalism, produced a tendency to decay because it suppressed competition (and with it, innovation and productivity) within increasingly large areas of the capitalist economy, only to reproduce the contradictions at a higher level in the form of competition between monopolies and nation states.

It also produced a tendency towards parasitism, with greater and greater areas of the economy devoted to non-productive activity. Parasitism was a key feature of the imperialist epoch for Lenin, signifying the qualitative degeneration of capitalism as compared to its 19th century apogee. It signified a tendency to retard the development of the productive forces, and stimulate the growth of non-productive activity.

Politically, the imperialist epoch placed on the agenda repeated revolutionary opportunities, in marked contrast to the thirty-year period which followed the Paris Commune (1871). It imparted a revolutionary and progressive dynamic to bourgeois democratic struggles in the countries subjugated by imperialism.

Though Lenin's pamphlet Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism was only a "popular outline", and was written under conditions of semi legality, it remains the starting point for any modern Marxist attempt to understand the dynamics of imperialism.

Before we look at the SWP's relationship to Lenin's theory we must first outline our own attitude to that theory.

Of all the theories of imperialism developed in the first quarter of the century, Lenin's remains the most coherent and rounded explanation of the new epoch. But Lenin's theory did contain a number of weaknesses.

For example, he painted a picture of the imperialist heartlands becoming progressively more parasitic on world production, with entire countries and continents becoming devoid of productive industries with, as Hobson put it: "the staple food and manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa".

In addition, Lenin heavily emphasised the export of capital as opposed to the export of commodities to the colonial countries. He predicated this on the inevitable unevenness of economic development in the colonial countries, predicting that imperialism was bound to leave much of the third world backward, underdeveloped and the site of high rates of return on capital compared to returns in the imperialist heartlands.

In fact, the imperialist heartlands did not become centres of parasitic consumption in contrast to a Third World dominated by production. Likewise the majority of capital exports were then, and are now, exported between the imperialist countries, notfrom them to the third world.

Lenin also closely identified the colonial conquest of the less developed countries with the overall tendency to export capital. Whilst he identified a category of "semi colonial" countries, giving the examples of Argentina, China, Turkey and other countries, which imperialism had been unable to conquer, he expected these to be eventually turned into colonies.

However, a contrary tendency emerged in the decades after the Second World War: a generalised system of semi colonies, nominally "independent" but in reality subject to varying degrees of political and economic subordination to the imperialist countries.

Despite the weaknesses mentioned above, Lenin's overall view of imperialism as a specific stage of capitalism, its declining stage, remains valid even though it must be modified to take account of new features produced in later periods within the imperialist epoch. It remains, as Lenin said, an epoch marked by the spontaneous self negation of the law of value; monopoly, state intervention, stagnation and parasitism.

The SR's recent theoretical output on this question, collected in the book Marxism and the New Imperialism, purports to defend and extend Lenin in similar terms'. But it does not. It has a different project entirely that of pure apologetics. The SWP has been forced by events over the last decade to have recourse to parts of Lenin's theory a theory which twenty or thirty years ago they explicitly rejected. This book is an attempt to square the circle between a current, pragmatic "orthodoxy" and the SWP's former very deep and open disagreements with Lenin.

Twice during the life of the IS/SWP tradition its major theorists Mike Kidron in the 1960s and Nigel Harris in the 1980s have launched frontal assaults on the Leninist theory of imperialism.

Today few of the SWP's recent "supporters" of Lenin dare even acknowledge the bald rejection of Lenin's theory once carried in the pages of ISJ by its then editor, Michael Kidron.

But, looked at more closely, the criticisms of Lenin they make today remain very similar, both to those made by Kidron in the 1960s and 1970s, and by Nigel Harris in the 1980s. This makes their "critical support" for Lenin seem more like the proverbial rope supporting a hanged man.

By way of approach to Marxism and the New imperialism therefore, we have first to outline the "history" of the theory of imperialism in the SWP/IS, focusing on the ideas of Kidron and Harris its principal economists for two decades or more.

Kidron versus Lenin

Kidron argued that Lenin's understanding of imperialism had been invalidated by the deep and sustained global growth of post war capitalism, and by the decline of colonialism.

He developed the theory of the Permanent Arms Economy (PAE) as a way of explaining the long post war boom (see box, page 30). The marked stability of capitalism in its main metropolitan centres, for Kidron, removed the impetus to export capital to the Third World and thus led to the decline of colonialism.

In a 1965 article for International Socialism Kidron concluded that:

"However correct the analysis in his day, and however justified the conclusion and these are essentially true even in retrospect [Lenin's theory] must be rejected on at least four counts: finance capital is not nearly as important for and within the system as it was; the export of capital is no longer of great importance to the system; political control in the direct sense meant by Lenin is rapidly becoming dated; and finally resulting from these, we don't have imperialism but we still have capitalism

If anything, it is the permanent war and arms economies that are the 'highest stage of capitalism'."8

What also disappeared, along with Lenin's theory, for Kidron, was any idea that the world's nation states could be divided hierarchically into imperialist powers on the one side, and subordinate, colonial or semi colonial ones, on the other. Instead, the picture emerges of:

"a far more homogeneous world in which many centres of capital and many more potential ones some large and powerful, others weak and willing, yet independent jostle and compete, forming, dissolving and reforming alliances of expediency where before division of labour and the labour of divisions imposed an immutable pattern of relationships ... the transition from imperialism into an arms economy in the mature capitalist countries has corroded a system in which backward countries fulfilled a special function in the world capitalist economy".9

What does this mean for revolutionary socialists? Quite simply, that Lenin and Trotsky were wrong when they said that the national bourgeoisie of backward countries could not lead a revolution against imperialist domination in the 20th century:

"To repeat, the national bourgeoisie or failing it the national bureaucracy has been rescued from oblivion by imperialism's withdrawal ... [the new conditions] demand a practical internationalism based on the growing uniformity in the conditions of exploitation, the growing irrelevance of national struggles and the growing similarity in the immediate aim of the working class the world over."10

The class struggle was becoming the same the whole world over. National struggles were a thing of the past. The Third World bourgeoisie did lead successful bourgeois revolutions against imperialism. These were the main tenets of Kidron's position.

Kidron's theory was modified under the pressure of major changes in the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The "long boom" gave way to a period of generalised world recession. The pattern of capital exports changed markedly. Kidron saw weaknesses in his own account of PAE. As an honest empiricist, finding its description of the world at odds with the new reality, he effectively abandoned it. He decided to return to the "classics", not to Lenin but to Bukharin. And to Tony Cliff, whose state capitalist theory rested on Bukharinite foundations.

Without repudiating his view that imperialism was outmoded as a theory, Kidron did reassert the fundamentally degenerate, declining character of the epoch. Free of the distorting effects of the boom period, and now in a period of "stagflation", renewed mass unemployment, and severe cyclical recessions, he rediscovered the essentially parasitic and declining character of world capitalism in the 20th Century. Looking to Bukharin, he decided it lay in the form of a universal state capitalism:

"which ultimately saps the sources of progressive growth (through accumulation) at the same time as it makes parasitic growth more dangerous".11

This, indeed, restored the theoretical status of the 20th century to that of a transitional epoch, and an epoch of decline. But it rested fundamentally on the notion that there was no division in the world economically or politically between imperialist states and their colonial or semi colonial subordinates. "There are no empires left", Kidron claimed with characteristic directness.

He chose to espouse an updated Bukharinite view of imperialism as a world state capitalism. Lenin was thus once more redundant. Anything that was valuable within Imperialism; the Highest Stage was already contained within Bukharin's work; what was distinctive in Lenin had been refuted by developments since the war.

In the mid 1980s, SWP leader Nigel Harris wrote a book called The End of the Third World, in which he reached much the same conclusion. He reiterated much of the later Kidron's understanding of modern capitalism. For Harris, state and capital were so fused as to change the classic relationship between the state and individual capitalists. Instead of the guarantor of a process of accumulation, the state in the West had become a prime actor in the accumulation process just as Tony Cliff had always insisted it was in the USSR.

The results, for Harris, undermined any notion that imperialism "underdeveloped" certain countries systematically. The emergence of the Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs), such as South Korea, signified for Harris a future in which the potential for bourgeois national development in the Third World was unlimited. Indeed, as the title of the book suggests, for Harris as for Kidron, the "imperialised" Third World no longer existed.

According to this view, imperialism was synonymous with "militarised state capitalism". Since this concept suggested that autarkic state capitalist industrialisation by a semi colony was impossible, Kidron and Harris saw Third World economic development as having destroyed the theory of imperialism.

Such blatant revisionism placed the SWP in a difficult position. They could hardly espouse a theory which said that capitalism was the way forward for the

"Third World". How could they continue to defend their theoretical tradition on the subject of imperialism when the very theorists responsible for it had come to this unpalatable conclusion? The SWP had to denounce Kidron and Harris but rescue their tradition. Enter a new generation of theorists.

Bukharin, state capitalism and imperialism

In 1987, in a reply to Harris, Alex Callinicos was forced to reconsider the relative strengths and weaknesses of Lenin and Bukharin's visions of imperialism. Callinicos wanted to draw back from the conclusions reached by Kidron and Harris.

He correctly attributes their break with the whole concept of imperialism to an "over reliance" on the Bukharinite view. Nevertheless, he has to reassert the view that:

"Bukharin's more rigorous version of the theory of imperialism proved to be a better guide to capitalism in the first half of the 20th century than Lenin's account". 12

More than that, with regard to the post 1945 world economy:

"...Bukharin's vision of the theory of imperialism provided the best framework for understanding the changes that had taken place".

Here the puzzled reader is entitled to ask a number of questions: if Bukharin's one sided theory of imperialism led to the dramatic errors of Kidron and Harris, how much of it can be used to understand post war developments? Which side was the good one? Wherein was it superior to Lenin's theory? Why is Bukharin's theory so central to the SWP's understanding of the world?

Callinicos himself provides a clue:

"Bukharin's analysis, with its vision of a world system composed of militarised state capitals, informed the cornerstone of our tradition, Tony Cliff's theory of state capitalism in Russia".13

But by the late 1980s the world no longer fitted that description. Stalinism was collapsing. Imperialism had, since the end of the long boom, been reordering production on a world scale. Not "crisis free, militarised state capitalisms" but crisis ridden multinational capitalism now confronted the SWP. It appeared that the cornerstone was crumbling. Bukharin has to be defended, lest the whole edifice of State Capitalism as a theory comes crashing down, but he must not be used as cover for Third World nationalism. At the same time, the "weak side" of his model had to be admitted to when it comes to analysing global capitalism in the 1980s and beyond.

Similarly, the Permanent Arms Economy (PAE) had to be defended as another cornerstone of State Capitalism the arms race between the superpowers as the "competition" which made Russia capitalist. It also explained the post war boom and partly underpins the SWP's dismissive attitude to national struggles in the Third World, both still in place today.

Finally, Lenin had to be reincorporated into the picture. After all, he cannot be left out without endangering their claim to stand in the Marxist tradition. Like the curate's egg, Lenin can be pronounced "good in parts". These parts can then be used to offset the one sidedness of Bukharin.

Mixing all these ingredients into a digestible dish is not easy and, in fact, the SWP have failed. All they have done is to arrive at a thoroughly eclectic and ramshackle theory of imperialism one that falls to pieces at the first inspection. It is one, moreover, that empties Lenin's theory of all that is unique and particular to it.

Callinicos "improves" on Lenin and Bukharin

In "Marxism and The New Imperialism" Callinicos, after examining Lenin and Bukharin's definitions of imperialism, makes his own attempt at a definition. It is worth quoting in full:

"1. Imperialism is the stage in capitalist development where

i) the concentration and centralisation of capital tends to lead to the integration of private monopoly capital and the state; and

ii) the internationalisation of the productive forces tends to compel capitals to compete for markets, investments and raw materials at the global level.

2. Among the main consequences of these two tendencies are the following:

i) competition between capitals takes on the form of military rivalries among nation states;

ii) the relations among nation states are unequal; the uneven and combined development of capitalism allows a small number of advanced capitalist states (the imperialist countries), by virtue of their productive resources and military strength, to dominate the rest of the world;

iii) uneven and combined development under imperialism further intensifies military competition and gives rise to wars, including both wars among the imperialist powers themselves and those arising from the struggles of oppressed nations, against imperialist domination. "14

Callinicos claims that, though more abstract than Lenin's definition, the above "captures the core of his conception" and "can be used to show how the dynamics of imperialism give rise to distinct phases in its development". 15

Certainly, any modern definition would have to abstract from the peculiarities of the particular phase of imperialism Lenin observed, in order to account for the distinct phases Callinicos refers to. But this definition, and the understanding it encapsulates, does not "capture the core" of Lenin's conception.

This is a definition of imperialism, which is missing two core features.

First, and crucially, it has nothing to say about the place in history of the imperialist epoch. For Lenin, imperialism was not just "a phase" of capitalism: it was the epoch of capitalist decline and socialist revolution. It was the epoch of transition to socialism in which capitalism's own spontaneous economic laws were operating to undermine and destroy the system as a whole. This merited a whole chapter in Lenin's book, entitled, "The place of imperialism in history".

Such an omission is no trivial blemish. It is akin to an analysis of a living organism which fails to place it within the life cycle of its species. It violates the most elementary laws of the dialectic. Imperialism, as the negation of free competition capitalism, not just one phase amongst many following the demise of free competition capitalism disappears as a concept. There is no mention of imperialism as the "highest stage". Parasitism doesn't get a look in either.

Secondly, this definition omits any concept of economic relations of exploitation between imperialist countries and the dominated countries. It is an exclusively political military definition.

Despite an implicit rebuttal of Kidron's view, that differences between capitalist states were now only ones of "degree", Callinicos suggests that what divides an imperialist power from an oppressed country is its level of productive resources and military strength. How it gets and maintains such resources, and what prevents lesser capitalist countries from gaining them, is not referred to.

Thus, whilst Callinicos' definition is an attempt to secure a Leninist orthodoxy for the SWP, at least at an "abstract" level, it fails from the very beginning. To preserve the "insights" of the PAE, Callinicos is obliged to give a definition which is so abstract as to allow Lenin's theory and Kidron's rounded rebuttal of it to co exist. In addition it attempts to preserve and defend Bukharin's theory. As we shall see, having to square so many circles does not help clarify anything about the shape of imperialism, old or new.

Do imperialist countries "exploit" Third World countries?

This is the central question, avoided by Callinicos' definition. Callinicos reiterates the critique of Lenin put forward by Kidron and others in the IS/SW tradition: that he overemphasised the role of the "export of capital" in his own time, and that this concept is not relevant for understanding imperialism today:

"Far from the prosperity of the capitalists (and workers) in the advanced countries depending on the poverty of the Third World, the main flows of capital and commodities... pass the poor countries by... As we have seen the colonies' chief importance under classical imperialism lay in the raw materials they provided for the increasingly specialised industrial economies of the imperialist metropolis. "16

Can it really be true that the only interest of the Lonrhos, the Unilevers, the Glaxos of this world, in maintaining the subordinate nature of the colonies/semi colonies, is to guarantee raw material sources? The example of India under the British Empire, cited by Kidron extensively in "International Capitalism", should allow us to deal with the question of whether colonies were exploited under the colonial form of imperialism.

For Kidron the British in India provided a textbook example of the imperialist system which Lenin had accurately described, but which had now disappeared.

Kidron had no problem with describing the cheap labour, the rigged terms of trade, the huge underdevelopment of Indian industry and agriculture, the massive net transfers of wealth from India to the British state, as "colonial exploitation".

Callinicos cannot have it both ways. Either colonial exploitation did exist in Lenin's time or it didn't.

All the evidence shows that relations of economic domination and subservience did exist. The result was surplus profits for the imperialist bosses, or "super profits": a higher rate of surplus value on capital invested in the colonies compared to the domestic imperialist economies.

That is why Lenin emphasised the export of capital in his "composite picture" of imperialism. It was the economic underpinning of the imperialist system. It was the secret of understanding why "imperialism is not simply a policy" of the bourgeoisie, to be reversed by a more benign, liberal capitalism. Colonialism was predicated on the need to protect the arena of foreign investment both from competition by other imperialisms and from the development of an indigenous bourgeoisie.

Here we come to another classic feature of imperialism which Kidron, because he believed it had been superseded, had no problem with. Imperialism, for Lenin, necessitated a struggle between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of the colonial country.

To impose and maintain conditions of colonial exploitation imperialism had to wage a struggle against the nascent colonial bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie. It had to deny them access not just to political power and to democratic rights, but to the super profits produced by the highly efficient system of exploitation introduced by imperialism itself. Imperialism often had to destroy the traditional, and restrict the nascent modern, industries of the colonial countries to preserve them as markets for the industry of the "home country".

In summary, it is utterly wrong, not to say ludicrous, for Callinicos to deny, ignore or gloss over the economically exploitative nature of relations between imperialist and colonial states at the time Lenin and Bukharin were writing.

Does that mean imperialist capital's profits and wealth came predominantly from the exploitation of the Third World? No. If the centres of concentration of capital are the imperialist heartlands then it is here that the greatest mass of profits will be made, and the capital accumulation process will be strongest. Lenin's argument was that a differential rate of return on investment, in the first place, encouraged the export of capital.

The role of super profits in imperialism Lenin's theory of imperialism includes the linked concepts of "super profits" and, on the basis of their existence, "colonial exploitation". So, we might add, does Bukharin's "superior" theory. But these two concepts do not appear in Callinicos' definition. Whatever the theoretical rationale for this, the real reason is the SWP's fear of its political implications. They fear that, if imperialism can be shown to "exploit" the Third World, then the class struggle has to be subsumed into the national struggle. They fear that, if superprofits exist, this will confirm the positions of "Third Worldists" who describe the British working class, as a whole, as "labour aristocrats". As we shall see, their fears are groundless (below).

The labour theory of value, and the Marxist understanding of capitalist profits, presuppose, at the highest level of abstraction, equal exchange.

The extraction of surplus value from the labour of the worker takes place through the exchange of wages equal to the value of the labour power of the worker. It does not involve any kind of theft by the bosses. The surplus value originates from the capitalists' ability to deploy the labour bought "fairly" on the market, to create more value than it, itself, embodies.

Nevertheless, at the very heart of Marxist political economy lies the concept of "surplus profit". This is dealt with by Marx in Volume III of Capital. Individual capitalists can make surplus profits.

This suggests that some capitalists can make more than the average, despite the fact that in general, and over time, these differences in profit levels are ironed out. So how do these surplus profits arise? As Marx explains, they arise:

"not because they some capitalists] sell their commodities above the price of production, but because they sell them at this price, because their commodities are produced, or their capital functions, under exceptionally favourable conditions, conditions that stand above the average level prevailing in this sphere."17
As Bukharin writes:

"...additional profit has its source in the difference between the social value of the goods (understanding under 'society' world capitalism as a united whole) and their individual value (understanding under 'individual' the 'national economy')."18

Surplus profits, in short, can be generated within a system of equal exchange.

When we turn to the real world, both in the 19th century and the 20th, it is clear that the process of competitive accumulation is, as Ernest Mandel puts it, "dominated by the indefatigable search for surplus profits."19

Mandel cites four mechanisms which allowed the extraction of surplus profits by imperialism from its colonial capital investments in the "classic" phase.

First, the low average organic composition of capital (capital spent on machinery and materials), compared to the manufacturing sector in the imperialist countries, allowed a greater rate of profit to be earned in the former, since the mass of profits had to be spread over less overall investment.

Secondly, the average rate of surplus value in the colonies often exceeded that of the metropolitan countries, especially because in the colonies the capitalists could extend "absolute surplus value" (which arises from making workers work harder and longer) rather than "relative" surplus value arising from higher productivity.

Thirdly, the presence of a larger reserve army of labour in the colonies allowed the capitalists to push the price of labour power systematically below its value something which could not be achieved for any length of time in a fully developed capitalist economy.

Finally, the colonial system transferred a portion of the cost of administrating the capitalist system onto the colonial peoples, including the bourgeoisie; reducing the amount which had to be raised through taxation in the imperialist heartlands and thus boosting profitability there. Callinicos himself gives a good example of this in his discussion of the role of the "Home Charges", by which Britain "settled more than one third of her deficits with Europe and the United States through India."

Mandel writes that, in all these cases: "We are dealing with surplus profits which do not enter the process of equalisation in the short term, and so do not lead simply to a growth in the average social rate of profit."21

He goes on to show that, whilst this impulse to search for super profits is inherent in all epochs of capitalism it only leads to capital exports on a wide scale in the imperialist epoch. During the free competition epoch, there were readily available sources of surplus profit in the developed countries themselves until the last quarter of the 19th century.

Mandel further demonstrates how the massive turn to capital export was instrumental in engineering a general, if temporary, rise in the average rate of profit, unleashing the long economic boom (1893 1914) which preceded the First World War.

However, alongside the generation of super profits through investment, classic imperialism also involved aspects of unequal exchange.

As Mandel puts it:

"The colonies and semi colonies tended to exchange increasing quantities of indigenous labour (or products of labour) for a constant amount of metropolitan labour (or products of labour). The long term development of the terms of trade was one gauge of this tendency, although other determinants also influenced them." 22

Thus it is clear that classic imperialism contained forms of unequal exchange. However, as Mandel writes:

"Before the First World War and in the inter war period unequal exchange was quantitatively less important than the direct product and transfer of colonial surplus profits ."23

But neither the concept of superprofits, nor of economic exploitation are present in Callinicos' definition of imperialism. "Super profits" and "colonial exploitation", are written off inside the SWP as concepts more akin to "Third Worldism" than to Marxism.

According to Nigel Harris, in an article commended by Callinicos himself:

"While the dominant states do indeed use their dominant position to attempt to transfer resources to themselves, employing brute force, political power, elements of monopoly against weaker states, it is a dangerous theoretical confusion to call this 'exploitation' as if it were the same as the relationship of capital to labour."14

Yet it was Lenin who wrote:

"The imperialism of the beginning of the twentieth century completed the division of the world among a handful of states, each of which today exploits (in the sense of drawing superprofits from) a part of the whole world only a little smaller than that which England exploited in l858."25

That is the "real Marxist tradition", like it or not. And as we shall see it still works as a basic definition of imperialist relations with the Third World.

Imperialist super profits today

Today the colonial system has, by and large, disappeared. But colonialism did not disappear because imperialist exploitation of the Third World disappeared. It did so because the mechanisms for achieving this changed.

Lenin had described "semi colonial" status, such as that enjoyed by China or Argentina pre 1914, as a "transitional form". Such countries were "formally independent but in fact enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence.""

The emergence of a world hegemonic power US imperialism after World War Two necessitated the destruction of the colonial empires of its former allies, and the opening up of the colonial economies to US imperialist penetration. Instead of a "transitional" form, the semi colony formally independent but politically and economically dominated by imperialismbecame the norm.

Germany and Japan received the lion's share of investments due to the need to build them up as bulwarks against the USSR during the Cold War. This transformed the relative importance of super profits derived from the export of capital to the Third World and the forms of unequal exchange which existed alongside them. Ernest Mandel even went so far as to argue that:

"The proportions changed in the late capitalist epoch. Unequal exchange henceforth became the main form of colonial exploitation, the direct production of colonial surplus profits playing a secondary role. "27

Written in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mandel's work did not anticipate just how much this state of affairs was about to change once again as generalised recession hit world capitalism and the major multinationals resorted to different forms of exploitation of the semi colonies to offset this crisis. As profit rates began to decline in the late 1960s, there was a surge in foreign investment from the imperialist heartlands to the semi colonial world as the multinationals relocated parts of their production processes abroad.

In 1960 private direct foreign investment to developing countries stood at $1,741 million. By 1976 it was $7,593 million. Far from becoming "irrelevant" to the developed capitalist economies, the Third World increasingly became the site for direct investment by imperialist bosses who could not profitably invest capital at home or in another developed country. The "classic" phenomenon observed by Lenin and pronounced dead by Kidron had sprung back to life with a vengeance.

What drew the multinationals to Third World sites of direct investment? In 1915 Lenin had written:

"In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap."

As a result of experience over the last twenty five years one could develop each of Lenin's points:

Capital is scarce so the semi colonial bourgeoisie enforces a regime of low taxation to attract foreign investment. This regime is often imposed by supranational imperialist bodies like the IMF and World Bank as a condition of debt re scheduling. Elsewhere, it is the "voluntary" action of a local bourgeoisie pursuing vigorous "open door" policies. In the Republic of Ireland foreign investors are guaranteed a fixed rate of tax of 10% on profits until the year 2010. 28

The price of land is relatively low and huge government handouts are available for manufacturers relocating to Third World sites. Today it is not land prices alone which determine the location of foreign investment, but the willingness of semi colonial governments to bear the costs of that location. Again, using the example of Southern Ireland:

"There are plants of multinational companies sprinkled over the Republic like confetti, conforming to no economic logic but the carrot of tax holidays and massive incentives and the need of every member of the Irish parliament to boast his or her own piece of the action. 29

Wages are low, but post war infrastructural investment means that skills can be high. In addition, repressive regimes which undermine workers' ability to fight for higher wages enable the rate of exploitation to be pushed to its limits. The example of the Mexican maquiladores sector, located just across the border from the USA, shows what the benefits can be for imperialist foreign investors:

"The maquiladoras are manufacturing plants that assemble components imported tax free for re export. The chief lure is cheap labour. In the motor industry, for example, American workers still earn eight times more than Mexican workers. "30

Raw materials are cheap and their prices relative to industrial goods have decreased in the 1980s and 1990s. In part, energy saving technologies and processes have been consciously introduced which has lowered demand for them. In other countries traditional agriculture has been abandoned to be replaced with one cash crop export economies dominated by multinationals and servicing the needs of the metropolitan centres.

These few examples show that private foreign direct investment remains a fact of life in the semi colonial countries. Its motive is the search for higher profit rates, even if it remains a small proportion of total foreign investment world wide, and is concentrated in a few "Newly Industrialised Countries" (NICs).

A 1984 study by Wladimir Andreff describes the advantage the higher semi colonial profit rate gives to multinational corporations (MNCs):

"The profit rate of US MNCs is consistently higher in subsidiaries located in Less Developed Countries (LDCs). The high profitability of their overseas investments has allowed the MNCs to restore their overall profit rates, taking into account the consolidated results of parents and subsidiaries, after l972."31

Nevertheless, foreign direct investment always accounted for only a minority share of the flow of capital to the semi colonies. In 1976 for example it accounted for only 35% of capital exported to the Third World.

The mid 1970s saw a dramatic rise in loan capital exported to the Third World, a rise which culminated in the debt crisis of 1982 and which ushered in a decade of IMF "structural adjustment" programmes. In return for debt rescheduling, semi colonial governments were obliged to tear open their national economies for the benefit of imperialist investors.

According to Susan George:

"If payments of principal are included in the tally, then each of the 108 months from January 1982 through December 1990 witnessed payments from debtors to creditors averaging $12,450,000,000...

At the behest of the [World] Bank and the [International Monetary] Fund, debtor countries have deprived their people particularly the poorest among them of basic necessities in order to provide the private banks and public agencies of the rich countries with the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. This unprecedented financial assistance to the rich from the poor maybe startling but it is nonetheless arithmetically true. "32

The point of all this is to show that, while imperialist superprofits may not be decisive for the balance sheets of the multinational corporations and banks, their reasons for exporting capital to the Third World remain the same as under "classic" imperialism.

They do precisely what Kidron denied: they play a special function for modern capitalism. First, they are the source of super profits which, as Andreff shows, allowed the MNCs to maintain overall profit rates throughout the two recession cycles of 1973 and 1979. Second, they can be made to bear the costs of recession more harshly than capital in the metropolitan countries, through the terms of debt rescheduling and raw material price reduction.

But this is something Callinicos simply will not accept. Discussing the net transfer of value from semi colonial countries to imperialism, via debt repayment, he writes:

"It would be a mistake, however, to see the debt crisis as simply marking the imposition of a new form of 'dependency' on the Third World."33

He cites the phenomenon of capital flight from indebted countries to show how the Latin American bourgeoisie has tried to protect itself from the worst effects of depreciation during the debt crisis. From this, Callinicos draws an extraordinary conclusion:

"The debt crisis thus involves not so much a conflict between nation states, rich and poor countries, but a class struggle in which the Latin American bourgeoisie, increasingly integrated into the international financial circuits, aligns itself with the Western banks and multinational corporations in demanding solutions which further open up their economies to the world market ."34

This is wrong on two counts. First, what are the Latin American and imperialist bosses opening countries like Mexico up to? Collaborative, friendly trade on equal terms? No. The demands of the World Bank and IMF constantly emphasise the need for the removal of obstacles to imperialist exploitation and the imposition of further dependency.

One does not have to be a "dependency theorist" to recognise dependency when it hits you in the face. Imperialism demands the right to set the terms of trade (e.g. NAFTA). It demands the right to set exchange rates, raw material prices and interest rates. It demands guaranteed returns on investments.

It demands scores of mechanisms which make the economic development of countries like Mexico dependent on the imperatives of the imperialists. Listen to The Economist:

"The American economy is all important to the Mexican.

The reverse is clearly not the case, even though Mexico is America's thirdlargest trade partner after Japan and Canada... [In 1991] Mexico's exports to America came to $29 billion, or 11.9% of Mexico's GDP, but only 0.5% of America's.. . 70% of Mexico's trade is with its northern neighbour. Yet the Mexico economy is only one twentieth the size. Hence the fears of being swallowed up." 35

Secondly, the idea that capital flight signifies the absence of conflict between semi colonial bourgeoisies and the imperialists is false. The Financial Times' regular country surveys contain, with monotonous regularity, page after page of complaints about the "unfair" practices of the semi colonial bourgeoisie, its addiction to high taxes, its unwillingness to reform, its nepotism.

Capital flight, though a fact of life, does not negate either the relations of dependence of the semi colonies, nor the conflicts between their rulers and the imperialists. It has even become the subject of such conflicts. According to Susan George:

"One of the major stated goals of the Brady Plan [for debt rescheduling] is to encourage flight capital to return home. A country cannot even be considered for Brady relief, such as it is, until it has signed on for the whole series of IMF type measures: deregulation of markets, fiscal austerity, currency depreciation, lower wages and higher interest rates. Since the advent of Brady, the IMF has added a further ten items to this list of requirements: its support for future debt relief will be made conditional on success in reversing capital flight".36

In summary, imperialist exploitation does exist today albeit in the more sophisticated, semi colonial form. It is mediated through the agency of the semi colonial bourgeoisie as a local ruling class, which certainly takes its cut, but is also restricted to a subordinate role. The super profits are extracted, directly or indirectly, from the rural and urban workers. The point at issue is not, and was not for Lenin, how decisive the mass of super profits thus gained are for the imperialist economy as a whole. The system of colonial exploitation was decisive for the fate of the colonial and semi colonial countries themselves.

Today, as in "classic" imperialism, the export of capital to the Third World in search of surplus profits whether directly through investment, or indirectly through loan capital is a key feature of the imperialist system.

It is what allows us to understand and intervene into struggles in the semicolonies both against the local bourgeoisie and against imperialist economic, political and military domination.

By way of a negative proof of this, let us see what happens when Callinicos attempts such an explanation without the concept of imperialist exploitation.

Marxism and "sub imperialism"

"A key factor in the development of a more pluralistic and therefore more unstable world order has been the rise over the past two decades of the subimperialisms that is, of Third World powers aspiring to the kind of political and military domination on a regional scale which the superpowers have enjoyed globally", Callinicos writes.

The criteria Callinicos lays down for characterising "sub imperialisms" is, like his definition of the entire epoch, non economic. Sub imperialisms aspire to "political and military domination on a regional scale. "37

For Callinicos the term sub imperialism rests on the refutation of the possibility of "semi colonial" existence, and thus, of any possibility of economic domination continuing beyond formal independence. This idea formal independence masking economic subordination to imperialism is described as the "orthodoxy among left nationalists and Third Worldists for a generation.""

Callinicos is confident enough of the validity of the term sub imperialism, as defined by him, to make a list of "sub imperialisms". It includes "Israel, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Syria, Turkey... India, Vietnam, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina".

However, Callinicos cannot decide what makes a sub imperialism. Focusing on Argentina, he cites the work of Dabat and Lorenzano, who characterise Argentina as:

"...an emerging regional capitalist power, combining financial, commercial and technological dependence with the development of a capitalist monopolist economy with regional imperialist features".39

Although they clearly characterise Argentina as "dependent", Callinicos sees no problem using their arguments to label Argentina a "sub imperialism". His main purpose is to agree with their political conclusion, that the war between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas in 1982 was reactionary on both sides:

"It was neither an anti colonial struggle nor a struggle between oppressed and oppressor nations."40

Callinicos then continues:

"Generalising from this broadly correct analysis of the Falklands War we could then argue that the same process of capitalist development which gave rise to imperialism in the first place now produces sub imperialism."

But he draws back from endorsing such a conclusion:

"While this analysis has a large measure of truth it is essential to qualify it. For the rise of the sub imperialism has not taken place in a vacuum. Nor has it created a world composed of capitalist states the differences between whose power are ones of degree rather than of kind. "41

This is the nub of the question, and it is far from just a theoretical one. If the concept of sub imperialism is to mean anything it has to allow us to identify the differences in kind between such countries and the big, established imperialists. It also has to be part of a theoretical system which allows us to understand countries like Bolivia and Rwanda, which are clearly not "subimperialisms".

But the term sub imperialism cannot do this, because it is abstracted from economic relations.

It is certainly true that a number of developed semi colonies have accumulated enough capital, and concentrated it in the hands of ambitious, national bourgeoisies, to attempt regional political domination independent of the wishes of imperialism, and economic development free of the constraints of economic dependence.

Iran and Iraq both fall into this category when we consider the Middle East. But what is the difference "in kind rather than degree" between these countries and the imperialist powers they have, from time to time, clashed with?

Kidron would have answered, none. Callinicos wants to refute that view but he cannot because from beginning to end his own definition of imperialism and imperialist relations remains stonily silent on economic questions.

We are never sure whether a subimperialism is a kind of imperialism or a kind of advanced semi colony. This is bad enough when we are considering Iraq, Argentina etc, but how does Callinicos categorise countries like Bangladesh and Bolivia, countries which clearly fit the definition "semicolony" as defined above?

Quite simply, he never considers the problem. The SWP's new theory of imperialism fails to characterise the majority of countries in the world at all, other than to say that they are "irrelevant" to the modern system of exploitation.

He rounds off his discussion of subimperialisms with the assertion that, with the war between the US led alliance and Saddam's Iraq:

"the difference between an imperialist and a sub imperialist power is being established beyond all serious dispute in the bombardment of Baghdad and the slaughter of fleeing Iraqi troops on the Basra highway. "42

It is, once again, a proof reliant on military political might rather than economic relations. Pointedly, it raises the question of the SWP's own position on the second Gulf War in 1991 and its relationship to the SWP's position during the Malvinas War of 1982.

Though the SWP did not once activate their position, they did on paper support Saddam's Iraq against the imperialist alliance. Citing Trotsky's support for Chiang Kai Shek against Japan in the 1930s, Callinicos wrote:

"It is necessary therefore in a confrontation such as the second Gulf War, to advocate the defeat of the imperialist side while continuing the political struggle against the bourgeois regime leading the anti imperialist side. Underlying this stance is Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution."43

This is correct. But how can Saddam's Iraq be both a sub imperialism and lead the "anti imperialist side"? Surely this makes the concept of subimperialism so flexible as to be meaningless? Only pages before this statement Callinicos writes, about the British domination of Iraq in the 1940s:

"Memories of such humiliating subordination to the imperialist powers survived long after the acquisition by these states of a much more effective degree of independence. They help to explain why anti imperialist rhetoric continues to have a massive popular appeal in countries which can no longer in any sense be regarded as semi colonies". 44

Now if Iraq is not a semi colony, and its anti imperialism is rhetorical rather than real, why on earth support it in a war with imperialism?

And why did "sub imperialist" Argentina not merit the same support against Britain in 1982? The SWP is left with nothing but a flat contradiction of "critical support" for Iraq against the US led coalition in 1992, and "defeat on both sides" between Argentina and Britain in 1982.

A cynic might conclude that this had something to do with the fact that in 1982 Britain alone was at war with Argentina and there was a wave of chauvinist support for the war effort in Britain Ten years later Britain played an auxiliary role in a war where the casualties were nearly all on the Iraqi side. But we are not cynics we prefer to wait and see how the SWP itself explains this contradiction.

Cliff and "deflected permanent revolution"

In 1963 Tony Cliff decided that the experience of the post war colonial revolutions compelled Marxists to "reject a large part" of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution.45

But Callinicos, as we have seen, explicitly bases his support for Iraq in 1991 on that theory.

This is how Cliff sums up Trotsky's position:

"1. A bourgeoisie which arrives late on the scene is fundamentally different from its ancestors of a century or two earlier. It is incapable of providing a consistent, democratic, revolutionary solution to the problem posed by feudalism and imperialist oppression. It is incapable of carrying out the thoroughgoing destruction of feudalism, the achievement of real national independence and political democracy. It has ceased to be revolutionary, whether in the advanced or backward countries. It is an absolutely conservative force.

2. The decisive revolutionary role falls to the proletariat, even though it may be very young and small in number.

3. Incapable of independent action, the peasantry will follow the towns and in view of the first five points must follow the leadership of the industrial proletariat.

4. A consistent solution of the agrarian question, of the national question, a break up of the social and imperial fetters preventing speedy economic advance, will necessitate moving beyond the bounds of bourgeois private property. 'The democratic revolution grows over immediately into the socialist and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.'

5. The completion of the socialist revolution 'within national limits is unthinkable... Thus the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word; it attains completion only in the final victory of the new society on our entire planet'. It is a reactionary dream to try to achieve socialism in one country.

6. As a result, revolution in backward countries would lead to convulsions in the advanced countries. "46
It was Cliff's rejection of the Trotskyist theory of Stalinism in the late 1940s, in favour of his well known "state capitalist" analysis, that forced him to reject this second major cornerstone of Trotskyism. "State capitalism" in Russia had supposedly grown out of the degeneration and overthrow of a workers' revolution. But the new Stalinist regimes first Mao's China, then Castro's Cuba were created from scratch.

If these regimes were to be understood as bourgeois, the results of "state capitalist" revolutions by the national bourgeoisie against imperialist domination, then Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution had to be junked, at least for the post war period. After all:

"...two events of world importance, Mao's rise to power in China and Castro's in Cuba, seem to challenge practically all the assumptions of the theory."47

Cliff cited the absence of a revolutionary proletariat in China and Cuba as the key factor undermining Trotsky's position:

"Once the constantly revolutionary nature of the working class, the central pillar of Trotsky's theory, becomes suspect, the whole structure falls to pieces.

But this does not mean that nothing happens. A concatenation of national and international circumstances makes it imperative for the productive forces to break the fetters of feudalism and imperialism. "48

The needs of the productive forces, the rebelliousness of the peasantry, plus three contingent factors (the role of the state, the weakness of imperialism and the importance of the intelligentsia) actually bring about successful anti-imperialist, i.e. bourgeois revolutions in these countries. This variant Cliff describes "for lack of a better name" as "Deflected, state capitalist, permanent revolution".

Cliff's "contribution" was to abandon the whole basis for the Leninist critique of Menshevism.

Cliff's logic suggests that, had the Russian working class not been subjectively revolutionary in 1917, the productive forces plus the peasantry and the contingent factors of imperialist breakdown could have led, nevertheless, to a successful bourgeois revolution.

In the first place, Cliff is wrong to suggest that Trotsky's theory relied on the "constantly revolutionary nature of the working class". The working class, in Trotsky's theory, was allocated an objectively revolutionary role, irrespective of its consciousness. Trotsky, like Lenin before him, was only concretising the axiom that, in backward countries in the imperialist epoch, to paraphrase Plekhanov, the bourgeois revolution could only triumph as a workers' revolution. Only the workers could carry out the bourgeois tasks progressively.

Did that mean, for Trotsky, that in the absence of proletarian leadership "nothing would happen"?

No. Trotsky was clear that, left to "national bourgeois" or "petit bourgeois" leadership the anti imperialist struggle could only result in the reactionary solution of the bourgeois democratic tasks. The national bourgeoisie would turn against their allies in the working class and peasantry far earlier than their Russian counterparts in 1917. They would replace feudalism not by land redistribution but by capitalist agriculture under their control. They would compromise with the landlords. They would win national "independence" only at the price of real semicolonial servitude and the oppression of their own national minorities.

When we look at every anti imperialist revolution in the post war years other than the ones which resulted in Stalinist states, Trotsky's theory is confirmed.

The experience of Ghana, India, Egypt, Indonesia and Algeria confirms the above prediction to the letter. They did not solve the national question fully; they did not free their countries of the mechanisms of colonial exploitation; democracy was a sham; agrarian relations remained backward, with limited land redistribution serving the rich and the middle class.

Only the Stalinist led anti imperialist revolutions (and Cuba, where the petit bourgeois Castroite movement embraced Stalinism) had a different outcome. Weak and compromised by imperialism, their bourgeoisies were liquidated. These degenerate workers' states were certainly no paradises, either in terms of workers' democracy or a democratically planned economy. But private property in the means of production, feudal agrarian relations, were all abolished and imperialism was deprived of the possibility of exploiting them.

How were these social gains, this independence from imperialism possible? Those who adhere to the "real Marxist tradition" on Stalinism can explain this fact: it was because Castro and Mao, Kim II Sung and Ho CM Minh abolished capitalism .49

Cliff thinks that he remains true to Trotsky's analysis of the 20th century bourgeoisie by reducing the theory of permanent revolution to its first point; namely:

"The conservative, cowardly nature of a late developing bourgeoisie (Trotsky's first point) is an absolute law. "50

Trotsky's "first point" was not unique to his theory. Marx and Engels discovered only too well the "conservative, cowardly nature" of the German bourgeoisie of 1848. But the bourgeoisie which ran away from its own revolution did not remain forever in cowardly dependence on the large landowners. Germany was turned from a feudal patchwork into a unified state because Bismarck and a section of the landowning class carried out the bourgeois revolution "from above".

But Germany would never have become a powerful imperialism without the upward swing of the productive forces.

Thus, capitalism found a way past the cowardly liberal bourgeoisie and transformed it into an aggressive imperialist bourgeoisie. Trotsky's point was that the imperialist epoch had closed off this road in the colonial and semi colonial world: that a Chiang Kai Shek in his day, or a Saddam in our own, cannot be Bismarck, no matter how brutal or decisive they may be.

Cliff's "deflected permanent revolution" miraculously opens this road up again. It says that the semi colonial bourgeoisie and intelligentsia whether in Stalinist guise like Mao, or nationalist guise like Nkrumah can ride the progressive tide of the productive forces and bring about really independent capitalist states.

It is easy to see the relationship of this theory to Kidron's view of post war capitalism. Kidron believed that the ending of imperialism had "rescued the national bourgeoisie". Not only could it make a national revolution, but it was pushing at an open door:

"national independence has come to it, in many cases without a struggle and therewith have come the levers of economic development and its own growth."51

Cliff's abandonment of Trotsky and Lenin's view of the semi colonial bourgeoisie is at one with Kidron's abandonment of Trotsky and Lenin's view of the imperialist epoch.

So are his programmatic conclusions. Cliff writes:

"Marxists should cease to argue over the national identity of the future ruling classes of Asia, Africa and Latin America and instead investigate the class conflicts and future social structures of these continents. The slogan of class against class will become more of a reality. "52

No matter how "abstractly" Callinicos wants to define imperialism, his mere use of the term, and of the term "anti imperialist struggle", in relation to Saddam's war of 1992, and of the theory of permanent revolution to underpin his pro Iraq stance, means he cannot avoid confronting and refuting Cliff's "contribution to the real Marxist tradition" that is if there was an ounce of consistency in his method.

The SWP seems to operate on the principle that, if nobody notices the flat contradictions and implicit refutations of Cliff by other theoreticians, then in time these will simply pass over into a new party "orthodoxy".

Conclusion

"...the theoretical level of the reviving revolutionary left reflects the decades of isolation when the attempt to maintain the basic tenets of Marxism in a hostile environment with few resources inevitably produced a certain primitivism."53

Nothing better reflects the truth of this comment, by SWP leader Duncan Hallas, than the twists and turns of his own organisation on the question of imperialism. In those early years of isolation Cliff rejected Trotsky's theory of Stalinism and replaced it with a theory of bureaucratic state capitalism based on the assertion that Russia's "militarised state capitalism" was only an extreme example of a global phenomenon in the transitional epoch.

Cliff and his followers were obliged to adopt Bukharin's theory of imperialism in preference to Lenin's. Bukharin, in the 1920s emphasised the relative absence of crisis within the state capitalist blocs and located imperialist crisis mainly at the level of its drive to war.

Once the post war boom was underway, and with it the Cold War, Cliff and Kidron felt able to dump Lenin's theory of imperialism altogether in favour of the permanent arms economy.

But this schema fell apart in three stages. First, crisis gripped the imperialist world in the early 1970s, forcing Kidron to abandon the PAE as a global theory. A new generation of SWP theoreticians clung to the PAE, not as a global theory but as an "insight" into what had caused the long boom.

Next, the crisis forced imperialism to embrace the neo liberal economic strategy, breaking up "state capitalism" in both the imperialist countries and the former colonies and undermining the Bukharin model of imperialism.

Finally, Stalinism collapsed, rendering nonsensical any attempt to comprehend the world according to Bukharin's "superior" theory. To understand the reality of "multinational capitalism" the SWP theorists were forced into a shamefaced and partial return to Lenin. But they could not openly attack Kidron and, above all, Cliff. Hence Callinicos' attempt to define imperialism so abstractly as to include Bukharin and Lenin, in one all embracing "definition" which excluded any notion of an economic basis for imperialism.

The SWP today runs scared of the twin spectres of "Third Worldism", and its mirror image, the modern Menshevism of Nigel Harris, who now insists that 20th century capitalism could develop the Third World without dependency and economic domination. But the SWP has no coherent theory with which to reject either tendency.

Mike Kidron wrote in 1977:

'Without theory no organisation can do more than ride the tides of working class consciousness, which might be exhilarating as sport but is irrelevant as revolutionary politics."54

As long as the SWP has no coherent theory of imperialism, and no honest critique of the Cliff/Kidron tradition, it will be tossed about on the waves of war, revolution and counter revolution. Its theory will never rise above the status of crude apologetics for past mistakes. It will continue to ride the surges in working class consciousness with a wild and arrogant optimism only to fall into deep depression at the "downturns" of militancy caused by severe defeats. But it will not build the revolutionary party we need to overthrow capitalism. It will neither defend the theoretical gains of the genuine Marxist tradition nor prove capable of making any of its own.

Endnotes
1 John Molyneux, "What is the real Marxist tradition?", 1S2:20, p47. In this article we will deal with the development of the SWP's positions as expressed in various issues of International Socialism (IS) and it's predecessor International Socialism Journal (ISJ) [these are designated as in the journal's own reference system as IS I XX or IS 2:XX]

2 See P Morris, "The Crisis of Stalinism and state capitalist theory" Permanent Revolution 9 (London 1991)

3 For a full critique of the method, theory and practice of the SWP see The Politics of the SWP: a Trotskyist critique, by Workers Power, London 1994.

4 A Callinicos, "Marxism and Imperialism" 1S2:50, London 1991

5 see VlLenin, Imperialism the highest stage of captialism Collected Works (CW) Vol 22, Moscow 1964, p185304

6 VI Lenin, ibid p 300

7 A. Callinicos, J. Rees, C Harman & M. Haynes, Marxism and the New Imperialism , London 1994

8 M Kidron, "International Capitalism" ISI:20, London 1965, p159

9 ibid p159

10 ibid p164

11 ibid p164

12 A Callinicos "Imperialism, Capitalism and the state today", 1S2:35, London 1987 p82

13 ibid p 82

14 A Callinicos et al, op cit p16

15 ibid p16

16 A Callinicos op cit in IS:50, London 1991, p21

17 K Marx Capital Vol III London, 1968 p780

18 N Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, London 1987 p84

19 E Mandel, Late Capitalism, London 1975, p77

20 Berrick Saul, quoted in Callinicos "Marxism and Imperialism Today" op cit p14

21 E Mandel, op cit p78.

22 ibid p78 23 ibid p345

24 N Harris "Theories of unequal exchange", 1S2:33 London 1987, p 119

25 VI Lenin Imperialism, op cit p284

26 VI Lenin Imperialism, op cit p263

27 E Mandel op cit p346

28 see A Johnson and M, Gallagher "The paradox of Irish economic development" in Class Struggle No 22, Dublin 1994

29 W. Hutton The Guardian, 31 January 1994

30 A survey of Mexico,The Economist, 13 February 1993

31 W Andreff, "The international centralisation of capital and the reordering of world capitalism" Capital and Class No 22 London 1984 p74

32 5. George The Debt Boomerang, London 1992 pXV

33 Callinicos et al. op cit p

34 ibid

35 A survey of Mexico,The Economist op cit

36 S George op cit p90

37 Callinicos et al op cit p45

38 ibid

39 Dabat and Lorenzano Argentina, The Malvinas and the end of military rule (London 1984) quoted in Callinicos et al op cit p45

40 ibid

41 A Callinicos et al, op cit p45

42 ibid p52

43 ibid

44 ibid p49

45 T. Cliff "Permanent Revolution" reprinted ISI:61 London 1973 p18

46 ibid p19

47 ibid p20

48 ibid p27

49 For a full explantion of the process of Stalinist social overturns see Workers Power/Irish Workers Group, The Degenerated Revolution, London 1981

50 T Cliff, "Permanent Revolution", op cit p 27

51 M Kidron, "International Capitalism", reprinted IS1:61, London 1973 p16

52 TCliff opcitp29

53 D Hallas, Review of M Kidron's Western Capitalism Since the War, in IS1:44, 1974, p36

54 M. Kidron "Two insights don't make a theory" in IS 1:100 London 1977,

 

 

The politics of the SWP - a Trotskyist critique

Published in 1993 by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) – the predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), www.thecommunists.net

 

SWP: The view from the Third Camp (1993)

The theory of state capitalism has led Cliff and his various groups into fundamental errors over a series of post-war conflicts. Cliff’s first organisation was built around the journal Socialist Review (SR), which began publication in November 1950, inside the Labour Party. It was the first publication to appear from this stable after Cliff’s break with the Fourth International (FI).

To this day the leaders of the SWP take much pleasure in ridiculing the inability of the FI to come to terms with the nature of the world at the end of the Second World War. Certainly it was true that the majority of the FI proved incapable of recognising that Stalinism emerged from the war strengthened and that imperialism, re-ordered internationally under US hegemony, was set for a sustained period of economic recovery.

It was also the case that increasingly after 1948 the FI revised the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism and abandoned the view that the Stalinist bureaucracy was counter-revolutionary. However, Cliff’s view that Russia was state capitalist and that the world had been divided into two giant capitalist camps provided no better a view of the post war world.

It shared with the FI the belief in an imminent “Third World War”. Also it failed to develop a revolutionary strategy independent of both Stalinism and imperialism. While the FI’s programmatic degeneration led to capitulation, primarily to Stalinist and petit bourgeois nationalist currents, the state capitalists’ “alternative” ended up capitulating to imperialism under the guise of “third campism”.

According to the early SR both Truman’s America and Stalin’s Russia were being propelled by the same motive force in their drive for world domination. Conict between the two imperialisms threatened mankind with the more or less immediate prospect of a new—albeit atomic—world war. As SR No 1 declared:

“The ‘Peace’ Campaign of Stalin’s Russia is no less hypocritical than Truman’s ‘Defence of Democracy’ . . . in their mad rush for prot, for wealth, the two gigantic imperialist powers are threatening humanity with the terrible suffering of atomic war.” (SR Vol 1, No 1, November 1950)

The Cliftes thus accepted the view that the Stalinist bureaucracy was an expansionist class set on global domination at the expense of Truman’s America. This echoing of Cold War propaganda was the constant refrain of the Socialist Review Group (SRG) throughout the early 1950s. In 1954 it was declaring that the two powers were driven towards war with each other by their respective economic problems. Overproduction was increasingly presenting US capitalism with a stark choice:

“Slump or war are the two alternatives facing western monopoly capitalism, and faced with this choice, there is no doubt what the ruling classes of the west will choose.” (SR Vol 3, No 7)

Notwithstanding the “fact” that the Soviet Union was supposedly capitalist as well and propelled by the same laws of motion as the USA, the USSR was depicted as heading to war for different reasons. Underproduction and economic shortages were driving the Soviet bureaucracy towards war by making a grab for Western Europe ever more attractive to the Kremlin:

“The crisis of underproduction pushes Moscow to imperialist expansion. How magnicent the dream of establishing SAGs or mixed companies in Western Europe!” (ibid)

When Soviet withdrawal from Austria, in exchange for guarantees of neutrality on the part of the Austrian bourgeoisie, seemed to confound SR’s perspective, and demonstrated the class collaboration of the Soviet bureaucracy, the journal argued that this was only a temporary turn occasioned by the industrialisation of China and its demands for more steel: China’s need for steel may still push the Kremlin to invade Western Europe later, so SR claimed.

In fact the SRG’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as a state capitalist and expansionist imperialist power gave rise to a totally false understanding of the nature of Stalinism. All the evidence, from Stalin’s foreign policy and from the Soviet Union’s attitude to revolutionary situations which threatened capitalist dominance, demonstrated a totally different role for Stalinism than that ascribed to it by the Cliffites.

Far from being an expansionist force looking for every opportunity to extend its rule at the expense of western imperialism, the Soviet bureaucracy demonstrated in the post-war years, that it was a social formation bent on international class collaboration and compromise with the imperialist bourgeoisie. Not only did Soviet withdrawal from Austria contradict Cliff’s schemas, but in both Greece and Indo-China Stalin demonstrated his intention of maintaining his pact with the bourgeoisie on “spheres of influence” by sabotaging the struggle against imperialism. In Eastern Europe the bourgeoisie was kept in power after the war and no steps were taken to ensure a Stalinist take-over until after the offensive launched by Truman in 1947.

The “Truman Doctrine”, promising military intervention anywhere in the world “threatened by communism” combined with the economic offensive of Marshall Aid, aimed at Eastern as well as Western Europe, faced the Soviet Union with a choice. It could either retreat from Eastern Europe, thus massively weakening its own position in the face of an imperialist offensive, or complete a Stalinist overthrow of capitalism. It chose the latter.

Yet even during the US-led Cold War offensive Stalin continued to demonstrate his reluctance to overthrow capitalist property relations. Until the eleventh hour he repeatedly advised Mao against toppling Chiang Kai Shek’s disintegrating regime. The USSR handed back “its” part of Austria in return for the country’s neutrality and proposed the same for Germany—i.e. a reunified, capitalist, but disarmed and neutral country.

The Third Camp

This did not fit in with the SRG’s analysis of Soviet expansionism, but their analysis did fin very well with a group which wanted to swim with the stream in Cold War Britain. The political consequence of this view for the SRG was that a conflict between the USA and the USSR was a conflict between two imperialisms and as such it was necessary to adopt a position of neutrality in the conflicts between them. (In fact SR’s pages were heavily weighted towards anti-Soviet propaganda during this period, with a regular series of articles from Tony Cliff on the miseries of life in the USSR).

This neutrality took the form of a commitment to building a “Third Camp” under the slogan raised in the first issue of SR: “Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international Socialism”. SR was not the first to raise the idea of a “third camp”—it was the stock in trade of the Tribune group. Figures such as Foot, Mikardo and Crossman denounced Soviet and western imperialism with gusto. But with the Cold War, these social democrats loyally trooped behind NATO and the Anglo-American alliance. It was the Cliftes who picked up the rhetoric and bolstered it with state capitalist theory. Not surprisingly the call for a third camp was raised first in SR by one Stan Newens (later a leading Tribunite MP) in the following fashion:

“The present power of the two world camps is largely based on the dragooning by force and trickery of the many by the few. Let us set up our standard against all such methods and lead the way to working for a genuine international socialism—not for Washington, nor for Moscow.” (SR Vol 3, No 4)

For the SRG the slogan “Neither Washington nor Moscow” suited the prejudices of the left reformist current in the Labour Party, in which they were immersed, very well. It led the SRG into alliance with a motley variety of political tendencies. SR of October 1955 carries a favourable report of a “Third Way is the Only Way” international conference attended by 110 delegates.

While it is silent as to which organisations were represented the nature of SR’s allies is made clear in its pages over the next months. The October 1955 issue contains an article by Max Shachtman extoling the “third way”. By May 1956 SR carried—as a supplement—Tony Cliff’s “The future of the Russian empire” published by Labour Action Shachtman’s US paper) in collaboration with SR.

The Shachtmanites did not hang around in the “third camp” for very long. They were very soon declaring Soviet totalitarianism a greater threat to socialism than US democracy, and putting themselves rmly in the camp of US imperialism. But it was not only the Shachtman group that rallied to the banner of the “third way”. It also attracted the anti-Leninist libertarian “Socialisme ou Barbarie” of P Cardan whose material also appeared in SR and early issues of International Socialism. The Third Camp conference proved a rallying point for libertarians and social democrats who, ultimately, had nothing in common except their hostility, both to the Kremlin bureaucracy and revolutionary Leninism.

Even if the Cliffites pulled back from the logic of Shachtman and Newens’ Third Camp position they nevertheless ended up by refusing to support genuine struggles against imperialism. Their slogan for “International Socialism” was never given a revolutionary communist meaning in the actual struggles against imperialism. This would have meant developing slogans and tactics which both supported unconditionally the struggle against imperialism and aimed to mobilise the working masses against Stalinist counter-revolution. It remained instead a political fig leaf to cover their refusal to give support in the struggle against imperialism. Nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than in the Korean War.

Neutral in the Korean war

The formation of the SRG coincided with the onset of the Korean War. The programmatic conclusions that logically ow from state capitalist theory meant that the SRG inevitably adopted a position in that conflict that failed to distinguish between Stalinist-led struggles for national liberation against imperialism and the forces of imperialism itself. The Communist Parties were seen as agents of Kremlin imperialism—or as SR No 2 (January 1951) called them “Moscow’s Foreign Legion”.

At the end of the Second World War Soviet and US forces occupied Korea. At the same time “Committees of Preparation for National Independence” mushroomed throughout Korea predominantly under Stalinist leadership. An all-Korean People’s Republic government was declared on 6 September 1945. The USA refused to recognise this government and created its own under the much despised emigré rightist Syngman Rhee. The ensuing conflict between the Northern, Soviet backed and Southern, US backed governments was therefore a form of civil war in Korea within which the northern Stalinist regime had the leadership of those forces fighting imperialism and its agents.

When direct military hostilities broke out between the two regimes and the Northern armies overran the South in June, it should not have been difficult for revolutionaries to see which side they were on. They would have been for a victory of the North against the Rhee puppet regime and its US backers. And when—under the cloak of a UN peace keeping force—the USA poured troops into Korea and provoked a direct military conflict with China, it should have been even easier for any socialist not blinded by cold war anti-communist hysteria to know what side to take.

Revolutionary socialists should have unconditionally defended the North Koreans and their Kremlin allies on the recognition that a defeat inicted upon the really expansionist USA would have been a massive blow to its plans. Unlike the SRG it was necessary to draw a distinction between the Stalinist leadership (which eventually sold the struggle short) and the popular mass forces involved, striving to overthrow a hated regime. Defending North Korea and seeking to win the leadership of the Korean masses were complementary not contradictory tasks.

The SRG, however, proceeded to demonstrate quite how reactionary the programmatic conclusions of the theory of state capitalism really are. SR took a predictable and logical view of the conflict. In an article entitled “The struggle of the powers” R Tennant declared that, “The war in Korea serves the great powers as a rehearsal for their intended struggle for the redivision of the globe.” (SR Vol 1, No 2, January 1950) and in an attack on Socialist Outlook’s (a paper run by Gerry Healy) support for North Korea Bill Ainsworth talked of “our opinion . . . that Russia no less than the USA, is imperialist and bent on world domination”. (ibid) It followed that:

“We can, therefore, give no support to either camp since the war will not achieve, the declared aims of either side. Further, so long as the two governments are what they are, viz, puppets of the two big powers, the Korean socialists can give no support to their respective puppet governments.” (SR Vol 1, No 2, January 1951)

The Korean position was not a blunder inadvertently committed by an innocent, fledgling organisation. It flowed logically from the theory of state capitalism. The SRG drew exactly the same conclusion from a similar conflict in Vietnam between Stalinist led anti-imperialist forces under Ho Chi Minh and imperialism’s puppet Bao-Dai. In February 1952 they printed and entirely endorsed a statement of the French La Lutte that declared:

“In Korea, the war continues in spite of the parties for an armistice in which, of course, the Korean people have no say. In Vietnam, likewise, the war continues and the people vomit with disgust at both Bao-Dai, the tool of the colonialists, and at Ho Chi Minh, the agent of Stalin.” (SR Vol 1, No 7)

Cuba's revolution

The Cuban revolution demonstrated the reactionary logic of state capitalism as once again the Cliftes turned their face against those struggling to defeat imperialism. In the face of a US economic and military blockade the Castro regime proceeded to expropriate US holdings and reorganise the Cuban economy on the basis of bureaucratically planned property relations modelled on those of the USSR. At the same time Castro adopted the Stalinist model of state and party.

The Soviet bureaucracy moved to support the Castroite regime with the threat to place Soviet missiles in Cuba which would have served both to extend the international bargaining position of the Soviet bureaucracy and defend the Cuban revolution against imperialist counter-revolution. Cold War warriors and pacists alike raised a hue and cry against Castro’s “undemocratic regime” and against the shipment of Soviet arms to Cuba. So too did Cliff’s renamed International Socialism group (IS).

The Cliftes took Soviet economic aid to the blockaded Castro regime as evidence that dynamic Soviet capitalism was now ready to do battle for the markets of US imperialism. Doubtless hoping that the USSR was about to indulge in some real capitalist competition. An IS editorial, entitled “From Cold War to price war” took increased Soviet trade with India and the shipping of Russian oil to Havana to indicate that:

“Russian oil exports look to be the harbinger of mighty economic conflicts between the giants of capital on either side of the Iron Curtain.” (IS No 3, Autumn 1960)

Mirroring Khruschev’s pompous fantasies about the USSR being poised to outstrip the west economically, the editors continued:

“There seems to be a growing realisation that Russia is beginning to present an economic challenge to western capitalism potentially far more persuasive and threatening than the politico-military challenge of recent years.” (ibid)

As long as the Castroites steered clear of Russian aid the editorial offices of International Socialism were prepared to support them. IS No 6 (NB. there were two number sixes) argued that:

“The pressure on Cuba towards integration into the Soviet bloc will exert pressure towards bureaucratisation of the revolution. But this, so all the evidence seems to show has not yet happened . . . The Cubans only turn to Russian power because there is no power of the international working class for them to turn to. Our defence of the Cuban revolution could itself be a step, even a small one, towards creating such a power.”

Cliff’s “Third Campism” could not deliver oil or guns. Neither could it break an American blockade. As soon as the Castroites looked to Soviet aid in order to defend themselves the Cliftes deserted the Cuban revolution.

To cover their retreat a series of articles were printed by Sergio Junco pushing the view that Cuba had none of the features of a workers’ state and thus deserved no support against the USA. Following in Shachtman’s footsteps Junco very soon decided that because Castro’s internal regime was repressive, it represented a form of society lower than that achieved in the bourgeois democracies.

He spelt out his position in the pages of Young Guard (IS Youth Paper in LPYS):

“Given the fact that there has never been any popular control of revolutionary institutions in Cuba, it makes no sense to say that this is a socialist or even a progressive society. Nationalism is conducive to socialism only when there exists a state which is owned and controlled by the majority of the people. Otherwise, we get a type of state and society which is less progressive than say, liberal democracy, since in the latter the popular forces are able to organise and actively work for the earliest possible substitution of the system.” (“Cuba and socialism”, Young Guard No 4, December 1961, emphasis in original)

It was IS members, most notably Paul Foot, who sprang to Junco’s support in the face of criticism in the pages of the paper.

If the political forms adopted by the Castroites had already turned the Cliftes off the Cuban revolution, the dispatch of Soviet atomic weapons completed the retreat of the IS into their neutralist corner. While being perfectly aware that the Soviet Union assists anti-imperialist struggles only to the extent that it can safeguard its own privileges and security, we would defend the right of anti-imperialist struggles to defend themselves by any means—including Soviet weapons.

In the face of US imperialism’s military might the Castroites really had little choice but to seek Soviet aid. In this situation the IS fulminated with liberal pacist rage. Once again the conict was seen as simply a conict between two imperialist superpowers:

“The terrible fact was that the Cuban people and the rest of us were held to ransom from both sides of the Iron Curtain. If that has not laid the myth that rocketry on one side of the curtain is somehow more humane and defensible than it is on the other, nothing short of war?” (“Cuban lessons”, IS 10, Winter 62-63)

Once again, therefore, the third campists declared themselves against both the USA and the USSR. Young Guard raised the slogan: “All hands off Cuba, no war over Cuba.” (Young Guard No 13, November 1962) The pacifist Paul Foot denied any legitimacy to Soviet nuclear backing for Cuba. Instead he begged his readers:

“Socialists must ask the question: Why did Russia establish nuclear bases on Cuba and more important what political justification was there for doing it?” (Young Guard No 15)

In one sense he was right, his problem was that he could not answer his own set questions. In order to defend itself the Soviet bureaucracy was—in certain circumstances—prepared to extend that portion of the globe that is not directly open to imperialist exploitation. It does not do so because it is a revolutionary force but because the very property relations upon which it rests are in permanent antagonism with the interests and nature of world imperialism.

Soviet military backing for Cuba was not a nuclear umbrella for a capitalist price war. It was a means of increasing the strength of the Soviet bureaucracy through military advantage by underwriting the defence of another (degenerate) workers’ state.

Neither Washington nor Moscow but Vietnam?

The theory of state capitalism logically led the SRG and the IS to argue against support for anti-imperialist struggles that were led by Stalinists. On the surface therefore, the IS group’s support for the Vietnamese NLF’s struggle against US imperialism may seem either inconsistent or even a healthy break with the positions adopted on Korea and Cuba. This seeming inconsistency is easily explained by other consistent elements in the tradition and method of the Cliftes.

As a political tendency they have accommodated to every prevailing wind on the British left. Their position on Korea reflected and adapted to, the fierce climate of Cold War anti-communism of the early 1950s. The Cuban missile crisis coincided with the growth of CND rst time round. The IS group’s denunciation of the nuclear arms race, their rejection of any legitimate role for nuclear weapons as a defence against imperialism reects its accommodation to the CND milieu in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Things had changed quite drastically by the late 1960s however. The Vietnam war had become an inspiration to thousands of youth. To have called for opposition to both North and South, and for a plague on the Stalinist-led Vietcong, would have been programmatically consistent for the IS. But with theoretical consistency threatening to isolate the IS the Cliffites threw themselves in behind “support for the NLF and a North Vietnamese victory”. (IS 32)

They declared the Vietnam War to be unlike previous Cold War conicts:

“The Vietnam war does not fit neatly into the pattern of belligerent incidents between east and west since the war. Such incidents were often the result of direct confrontation between the major powers, each jostling for military or strategic advantage along the undemarcated border between their respective empires—the raw wound that ran through Central Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and South East Asia.” (IS 32)

The small scale of Soviet and Chinese backing at this time was sufficient for the IS group to salve their consciences and decide that China and the USSR were not involved. As a result of this view of Indo-China it was not difficult for the IS to immerse itself in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign as supporters of the Vietnamese Stalinists they had refused to support in the early 1950s.

In defending their decision to back the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong against the USA, the IS had to plumb the depths of state capitalist logic. The IS journal declared that it was giving support:

“In the same way, socialists were required in the nineteenth century to support bourgeois liberal movements against feudal or absolutist regimes.” (IS 32)

Only bourgeois tasks were on the agenda of the Vietnamese revolution:

“Of course, when the issue of American power is settled, we know what kind of regime and policies the NLF will choose—and be forced to choose by the logic of their situation. But that is, for the moment, another ght, the real ght for socialism.” (ibid, emphasis in original)

For the state capitalist theorists then, the ght against capitalism was relegated as a later stage of the Vietnamese revolution.

The Vietnam episode brings to light another essential programmatic ingredient of state capitalist theory—its Menshevik position on the possibilities for socialist advance in the under-developed and “backward” countries. For the Mensheviks every underdeveloped country had to experience a stage of bourgeois capitalist development.

The 1950s and 1960s saw important nationalist movements against imperialism in Egypt and Algeria as well as in Indo-China. Large sections of the centrist and reformist left presumed that this signified a decisive shift in the terrain of the class struggle to a struggle between the “first” and “third” worlds. Against this impressionistic and defeatist “third worldism” the IS constructed their own, no less one-sided, metropolitan centred view of the world. The positions developed by the Cliff grouping in the 1950s and 1960s effectively deny the possibility of the struggle for socialism, for workers’ revolution in the semi-colonial world.

In his initial work on Russia Cliff had declared that state capitalism in Russia was inevitable given the revolution’s isolation and the need to industrialise in order to survive in a hostile environment. In his analysis explicitly states that the only two realistic economic programmes open for Russia in the 1920s were private capitalism or state capitalism.

This is how he explains it:

“One solution to the conflict between state industry and individualist agriculture would have been to make the development of industry depend on the rate at which agricultural surpluses developed. It would have inevitably led to a victory of private capitalism throughout the economy. Alternatively the conict between industry and agriculture might have been resolved by rapid industrialisation based on ‘primitive accumulation’ by expropriating the peasants and forcing them into large mechanised farms thus releasing labour power for industry and making agricultural surpluses available for the urban population.” (T Cliff, Russia: A Marxist Analysis, p97)

Prospects for the Semi-Colonies

Cliff wrongly argued that the subordination of consumption to the accumulation of the means of production was ipso facto a capitalist task. The implications of this is that in societies where pre-capitalist modes of production dominate, or where capitalism is weak, a stage of private or state capitalism is inevitable, unless a revolution in such a country is accompanied by other revolutions in the advanced capitalist world.

This explains the apparent indifference that the IS showed at the prospects of a Stalinist victory in Vietnam—after all what else could be hoped for? Certainly not a genuine workers’ revolution.

The IS theorised this view systematically in the 1960s. It accompanied, necessarily, a thoroughgoing and explicit junking of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. By 1962 Michael Kidron was declaring that imperialism was now the “highest stage but one”, having been replaced as a world system by the “permanent arms economy” (i.e. military competition) as the fundamental motor maintaining stability and expansion in the major capitalist economies:

“It [Lenin’s imperialism] must be rejected on at least four counts: nance capital is not nearly as important for and within the system as it was; the export of capital is no longer of great importance to the system; political control, in the direct sense meant by Lenin, is rapidly becoming dated; and nally, resulting from these, we don’t have imperialism but we still have capitalism . . . If anything it is the permanent war and arms economies that are ‘the highest stage of capitalism . . .’” (IS 20, Spring 1965)

Kidron argued that imperialism had suffered the loss of its colonies “without disaster, without indeed much dislocation or discomfort”. He even refers to the “spontaneous withdrawal of classic imperialism” from the colonies. Imperialist relationships, we are told, were being replaced by new relationships:

“Now, after independence, despite many points of friction and competition that remain, the overriding element is one of mutual independence and convenience.” (IS 20)

Leaving aside this bizarre view of the relationship between the imperialist and imperialised world which would do more credit to a White House brieng than an article written by a socialist, the programmatic implications for the underdeveloped world were stark. Whereas both Lenin and Trotsky had seen a vital role for the working class in leading the struggle against imperialism, because of the weakness of the national bourgeoisie and its enmeshing in world imperialism, now, according to Kidron, “the national bourgeoisie—or failing it, the national bureaucracy—has been rescued from oblivion by imperialism’s withdrawal”. (IS 20)

Kidron goes on to muse that it might well be that the only form through which capitalism can triumph, “in large sections of the world is through state initiative and bureaucratic state capitalism—and the destruction of its bourgeois democratic cousin and rival”. (IS 20)

One result of these developments he argues is “the growing irrelevance of national struggles”. If Kidron poses this development of state capitalism as a possibility, Tony Cliff has no such doubts. Drawing on the “experience” of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, Cliff states forthrightly that Trotsky’s perspective of permanent revolution, whereby the working class can lead the struggle of the oppressed masses both against imperialism and for socialism, is no longer tenable. Trotsky he argues was clearly wrong in assuming “the revolutionary character of the young working class” in these countries:

“In many cases the existence of a floating, amorphous majority of new workers with one foot in the countryside creates difculties for autonomous proletarian organisations: lack of experience and illiteracy add to their weakness. This leads to yet another weakness: dependence on non-workers for leadership. Trade unions in the backward countries are almost always led by outsiders . . . Once the constantly revolutionary nature of the working class, the central pillar of Trotsky’s theory becomes suspect, the whole structure falls to pieces . . . . the peasantry cannot follow a non-revolutionary working class.” (“Permanent Revolution”, IS No 12 Spring 1963).

Deflected Permanent Revolution

In this situation according to Cliff, the intelligentsia of the underdeveloped world is ready and able to constitute itself as an embryonic new state capitalist class and “deect” the permanent revolution into a stage of totalitarian state capitalist development. In Vietnam what was at stake was the construction of “a state-class, not a private or bourgeois class, that is spearheaded by the NLF and has already been instituted in the North.” (IS 32)

Throughout the underdeveloped world the intelligentsia:

“. . . care a lot for measures to drag their nation out of stagnation but very little for democracy. They embody the drive for industrialisation, for capital accumulation, for national resurgence. Their power is in direct relation to the feebleness of other classes, and their political nullity. All this makes totalitarian state capitalism a very attractive goal for intellectuals.” (IS 12)

So having distorted Marx’s analysis of capitalism, junked Lenin’s theory of imperialism and abandoned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the Cliff grouping rounds off its complete rejection of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky by abandoning the revolutionary potential of the working class in the vast majority of the globe! There only remains for these metropolitan chauvinists the “pure” working class of the advanced industrial world.

The leading theoreticians of the IS grouping here demonstrate once again the inability of their theory to provide a way forward for the international proletariat. The special nature and difculties of the proletariat in the semi-colonial world are nothing new for revolutionaries. Indeed, despite Russia’s position as an “old” imperialist power, the country’s very backwardness meant that its working class showed many of the characteristics which Cliff believes should make us write off the revolutionary potential of the working class in the imperialised world.

The ability of the Bolsheviks to lead a socialist revolution in such a “backward” country was not, as Cliff believes, because of Lenin’s organisational genius, but because the Bolshevik party developed a political programme, tactics and strategy which was able to unite the working class behind a revolutionary perspective and draw the peasantry behind it. By rejecting the theory of imperialism and consequently seeing only the “growing irrelevance of national struggles”, the SWP abandons the major weapon in the ght for socialist revolution in the semi-colonies—it abandons the ght for working class leadership in the national struggles against imperialism.

But, of course, it is only to be expected from this grouping, steeped as it is in syndicalism and economism, that once they had decided the working class in the semi-colonies was not spontaneously revolutionary they would write off the possibilities of socialist revolution in these countries.

For Cliff, however, the non-revolutionary nature of the working class in these countries does not mean that there will be no revolution:

“A concatenation of national and international circumstances makes it imperative for the productive forces to break the fetters of feudalism and imperialism.” (ibid)

But these revolutions will not be led by the working class but by the much more cohesive “revolutionary intelligentsia” who are attracted to “totalitarian state capitalism”:

“These forces which should lead to a socialist workers’ revolution according to Trotsky’s theory can lead, in the absence of the revolutionary subject, the proletariat, to its opposite, state capitalism . . . Mao and Castro’s rise to power are classic, the purest and most extreme demonstration of deected permanent revolution. Other colonial revolutions—China, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Algeria etc. are deviations from the norm . . . but they can best be understood when approached from the standpoint of, and compared with the norm.” (ibid)

Tropical Trotskyism

So the best that the semi-colonial world can hope for in their struggles against the oppression of feudalism and imperialism is their replacement by some form, pure or otherwise, of “totalitarian state capitalism”. The only hope that the Cliftes offer for the masses of these countries is that in the “long run”, under these regimes they might well increase in “numbers, cohesion and social weight”. And presumably once they reach the level of the industrialised west they too can have a socialist revolution!

Thus in the mighty struggles against imperialism, in Algeria, in Cuba, in Vietnam and Indo-China, in Nicaragua and Central America today, the SWP’s programme offers no goal worth ghting for. They are left only with a chronic fatalism, with the belief that all these struggles can only end in tears, in a new exploiting, totalitarian system. This fatalism was most clearly summed up in a notorious article by Kidron on the LSSP of Ceylon (the LSSP was an ex-USFI section, then part of a “socialist” coalition government). Kidron argued in his article, entitled “Tropical Trotskyism”, that the difculties facing Ceylon in escaping from semi-colonial servitude were insurmountable.

This is all he had to offer the workers and peasants by way of perspectives:

“If the transition (to a modern competitive economy) is to be made at all—and it is undeniably necessary—productivity will have to be jacked up and wages held down. There is no alternative. All the LSSP can hope for is that the workers will make the sacrifice willingly.” (Socialist Worker, 3 July 1969)

It is a measure of the bankruptcy of state capitalist theory that what started life as a theorisation of moral outrage at the horrors of Stalin’s Russia became a rationalisation of the inevitability of state capitalism except in that portion of the globe where productive forces were ripe enough for the immediate transition to socialism.

State capitalist theory has proven itself to have no real understanding of the dynamics of international class struggle. On each occasion the state capitalists have done little more than retail the options and moods of western radicalism. It has led the Cliftes to adopt reactionary positions on major struggles in the post-war world. SWP members can either follow their leadership and prepare to repeat the old mistakes again, or they can take stock of the compromised history of state capitalism and look once again to the tradition embodied in Trotsky’s Fourth International.

 


The Downturn: New mood, same politics

 

In 1988 the “new mood” joined “the downturn” as one of the stock phrases in every Socialist Workers Party member’s vocabulary. The new mood was the silver lining to the dark cloud of the downturn.

Pauline Smith explains why the change in perspective has not led to any fundamental change in the SWP’s practice.

The SWP’s political method consists of tailing the existing level of consciousness and struggle at all times. It is one of the features of what Lenin called “economism”. In the period of recession and defeat, when workers’ spontaneous militancy had been seriously undermined by unemployment and the anti-union laws, the SWP developed the “downturn perspective” was the result.

It saw the SWP, whose hallmark had been the rank and le movement tactic, become consistent opponents of rank and le organisation. SWP members resigned their stewardships and sang the same funeral hymn over every defeated strike:

“We can only ght for the little things, tea breaks and toilet rolls. At the same time we can make propaganda for socialism”.

In the last few months, though, the tune has changed.

As a new mood of militancy really has gripped sections of workers—in Vickers, Jaguar, the post, the NHS and some sections of local government—the SWP’s line became more and more at odds with workers’ willingness to ght. SWP members in Lambeth NALGO for example argued strike action was impossible, argued against it, only to nd it taking place within days.

The fact that the “new mood” was discovered in 1988, with 1·86 million strike days in the rst seven months compared to 3·18 million in the same period last year, reveals the “turn” for what it is. It is more of a tonic for the troops and a correction of overzealous pessimism than a serious analysis of the situation and the tactics needed.

Further evidence of what the “new mood” means can be gleaned from reports of the SWP’s recent conference:

“Our job is to take the struggle as far forward as possible. That means starting from what the rank and le can do because that has an impact on the trade union leaders.”

The health dispute is a clear example of what this means. In February and March, when thousands struck on days of action and ancillaries and nurses were in dispute together the “new mood” was not even a twinkle in Tony Cliff’s eye. So the SWP opposed the call for an all out strike.

The resurgence of action in the NHS, coinciding with the “new mood” schema at rst prompted the SWP to issue a national leaet calling for an all out strike. With four hospitals on indenite strike it looked like an all out strike was something “the rank and le can do”. By the time the rst national rank and le meeting took place the SWP had not only dropped the call for an all out strike but voted against it in their union branches.

As always they had begun from trying to guess the level of workers’ consciousness, not by ghting for what was necessary. In the nurses’ dispute the suspension of the appeals procedure, the problem this creates for the work to grade and the intransigence of the Tories mean that only an all out strike will win.

But to get an all out strike nurses will have to build it from above and below. As well as trying to spread and consolidate the action on the ground they will have to mobilise to force the leaders to call an all out strike. For this they need rank and le organisation on a national scale. But even a national strike committee proved “too far ahead of workers” for the SWP.

The SWP’s attitude to the new mood of militancy is only a ne tuning of the do-nothing position of the last three years. It also embodies their sterile and one-sided view of relations with the union bureaucracy.

Against some of their members, who argued against placing any demands on the ofcials, the SWP have argued that workers must place demands on the bureaucracy at the same time as spreading the action from below. But from Frickley to the post and the NHS they have refused to spell out how these demands are to be focused against the leadership.

Why? Because only an organisation of rank and le militants, the minority whose ideas on the issues of the day are ahead of the mass of workers, can effectively ght against the bureaucrats, to take control of the action and replace leaders who betray with those who will ght.

The bankruptcy of the SWP in the ght against new realism in general could not be better illustrated than by its recipe to “rebuild the strength of union organisation from the bottom up”. It calls for shop stewards, regular meetings, solidarity etc. All well and good, but it says nothing about how to wrest control of the unions from the present pack of traitors.

There may be a small but important change in workers’ ability and desire to ght. But the SWP’s “new mood” perspective holds no answers to the vital question it poses: how to turn the anger into action.

 


Introduction

 

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the largest group on the British left, began the 1990s in an optimistic mood. With the fall of Thatcher heralding a new period of instability in British politics, the party decided it was time to "go for growth".

Such optimism is to be welcomed. But what many newer recruits to the SWP will not know is that only a few years ago the party was in the grip of a self-defeating pessimism. The SWP’s politics, for most of the 1980s, was dominated by the perspective of the “downturn”.

The move towards the current optimism and away from the preceding mood of doom and gloom represents a dramatic shift in the perspectives and orientation of the SWP. Such shifts are characteristic of its entire history and of its forerunner, the International Socialists (IS). The leader of the SWP, Tony Cliff, likes to justify such 180 degree turns as "bending the stick" in the face of new developments. This is a far cry from the truth.

The zig-zags of the SWP are not tactical responses to changed circumstances in the class struggle on the basis of a consistent Marxist strategy. They are a series of ill conceived political gyrations, inevitable for a group that lacks the ballast of a revolutionary programme. The situation in the real world is made to fit the SWP leadership’s latest schema for the growth or preservation of the party.

These lurches by the SWP, first one way and then another, have bred a form of opportunism known to Marxists as “economism”. That is, the SWP accommodate their politics and arguments to the the ideas prevalent within the working class and the existing level of struggle, failing to mount a practical political challenge to the leaders of that struggle and to give it a revolutionary direction. Occasionally, however, it has led the party to present a “left” face and indulge in sectarian binges. In both variants the remarkable thing is that the SWP never advocate anything other than a set of minimalist, if militant, demands and tactics--most of which are already being fought for by the workers in any case.

In the 1970s the IS cut with the grain of working class militancy but refused to challenge the reformist political limitations of such militancy or the political prejudices of many workers on issues such as racism, sexism and lesbian and gay rights. After the election of a Labour government in 1974 the party attempted to hold the ground it had made by consciously "steering left". Systematic work in the unions was increasingly subordinated to building party fronts like the Right to Work Campaign. Instead of challenging the reformist leaders the SWP set its supporters off on marches around the country and lobbies of TUC congresses, which ended up with them kicking the shins of the bureaucrats rather than challenging their misleadership politically.

On other issues too, the SWP veered wildly. From militant anti-fascism, culminating in the Battle of Lewisham in 1977, the party retreated in the face of media hostility into a popular frontist campaign, the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), which organised rock concerts instead of physically confronting the fascists. From disregarding the importance of the fight for women’s liberation the SWP became prominent activists in the thoroughly feminist and objectively reactionary (i.e. pro-censorship) anti-pornography campaign, "Reclaim the Night". After declaring "the party" in 1976 and standing against Labour in the period before 1979, they became Labour’s undemanding supporters at the election. Their mass party perspective was quietly shelved.

In the course of all of these sharp turns the IS/SWP preferred to rid itself of internal opponents bureaucratically rather than honestly account for the problems with their politics and perspectives. Hundreds of people--including the Left Faction, the forerunner of Workers Power--were expelled simply for raising differences. This process went on and on, and was particularly intense in the period between 1973 and 1979, until the party was thoroughly purged of many of its leading cadre. The Central Committee was, by these means, guaranteed that its past mistakes would not be called to account and that its future policy swerves were unlikely to generate any opposition.

Then came the justification for the SWP’s failure to become the mass party in the 1970s, and its excuse for not trying to become it in the 1980s--the “downturn”. This perspective was a perfect alibi for Cliff and the other SWP leaders. It begins in 1975, the year when the SWP’s period of growth from a tiny propaganda group into an organisation 4,000 strong with roots in the working class came to an end.

Now, they claim, it is beginning to give way to a "new mood" of confidence inside the working class, just at the point when the SWP are recording their best rates of growth for many years. How convenient that the entire class struggle can be understood and categorised according to how well or badly an organisation is growing, especially one which, by the SWP’s own admission, is still not a major factor in the class struggle.

From all of this we can see that the SWP’s view of perspectives has little in common with Marxism. Their perspectives are framed for the benefit of the party, not the class. They are designed to justify the latest turn of the leadership, not equip the members with practical revolutionary answers to take into the class struggle.

What holds the SWP together through all of these chops and changes is its adherence to state capitalism. This theory, which claims that the USSR and Eastern European states were capitalist and that the Stalinist bureaucracy is a collective capitalist class owning and controlling the entire economy, is the fundamental basis of the SWP’s politics. It was over this issue that Cliff split from the Fourth International at the end of the 1940s. It remains the distinctive and unifying theory of the party. Whatever the tactical twists and turns it engages in, all members can still agree on this theory.

State capitalism explains how the SWP has been able to establish international links with other left groups with whom, at many other levels, it has profound disagreements. Its international co-thinkers all agree that the USSR was a capitalist country and are content to unite with the SWP on that basis. The SWP is a profoundly national centred organisation. Its internationalism does not consist of a serious attempt to refound a revolutionary International on the basis of a common world programme. It is scornful of such efforts and has repeatedy argued that until there are mass parties in a number of countries any efforts directed towards constructing a revolutionary International are doomed.

This lack of active internationalism means that it has no problem uniting with other groups despite major differences. The SWP itself reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the British labour movement. Its syndicalism and economism are the manifestations of an adaptation to Britain’s traditions of trade unionist politics. Its fraternal organisations reflect different national pressures and often pursue very different tactics to those the SWP would endorse.

Indeed throughout the history of its international work the SWP has coquetted with groups with a Maoist and even guerillaist orientation (the PRP-BR during the Portugese revolution, and more recently the pro-Albanian Communist Party of New Zealand). So long as they all agree that the USSR was state capitalist these differences are relegated to secondary issues by the SWP. Each national group gets on with its own work and democratic centralism at an international level is not even considered.

The SWP’s attitudes to perspectives, party building and the construction of an International demonstrate their inability to advance a consistent and coherent Marxist strategy. The twists and the turns flow directly from their refusal to develop such a strategy, to anchor their politics in a revolutionary programme.

Marxism has a word for such a method – centrism. The SWP are a centrist organisation. In this pamphlet we demonstrate the different ways in which, at different times, the SWP’s centrism has revealed itself. We appeal to all those members of the SWP who read the pamphlet to discuss its contents with us; we appeal to all those who agree with us to join us.

 


State capitalism - “Call that socialism?”

 

Tony Cliff’s theory of state capitalism lies at the very centre of the Socialist Workers Party’s politics. Since 1950 Cliff’s tendency has defined itself against all others on the international left mainly over the argument that the USSR, China and Eastern Europe were “state capitalist” societies.

In the face of the momentous crisis wracking Stalinism since 1989 Chris Harman has argued that “. . . this theory alone can make sense of the otherwise bewildering events of the last few months, pointing to future options both for the world’s ruling classes and those of us committed to ghting them”(ISJ 46). Mark Abram contests this claim and shows why state capitalist theory fails.

Do you think it’s socialist? This is the stock question that comes back at Trotskyists when they try to explain how and why the USSR and Eastern Europe are “degenerated workers’ states”.

Our answer is simply, no. The USSR is not socialist nor moving towards socialism. It is a society where the workers took power in 1917 and took the first steps of transition towards socialism.

There was no possibility of building socialism in one country, especially in one as backward as Russia. Lenin and Trotsky believed that if the USSR remained isolated and revolutions in the advanced west failed, then the rst workers’ state would be overthrown and capitalism would return.

The revolution did remain isolated. But instead of succumbing to counter-revolution from outside the Soviet working class fell victim to a a different kind of counter-revolution from within; the new Stalinist bureaucracy seized political power and crushed all forms of workers’ democracy.

At the same time it massively extended and consolidated the property relations established by the Soviet dictatorship in the early years after 1917.

Industry, which had been nationalised in the 1918-21 period, was greatly enlarged in a series of Five Year Plans, starting in 1929. Private property on the land was liquidated, as were millions of peasants themselves. The threads of agricultural and industrial production were pulled together into the hands of centralised planning agencies that directed resources between different sectors according to the political criteria set by the new conquering bureaucrats.

Trotsky described this whole process as a political counter-revolution. The social relations established by October 1917 had not be overthrown. But workers’ power—the only thing that could employ these relations in the service of transition—had been crushed. The result was a degenerated workers’ state.

Cliff was not the first person to claim that Russia was state capitalist. From the very beginning of its life “left communists” and Mensheviks claimed that the USSR was, and could never be anything other than, state capitalist.

But Cliff”s theory attempts to stand by the early experience of the Bolshevik Revolution and by Trotsky’s fight against Stalin. Even today Cliff’s followers claim that “state capitalism” is based on Trotsky’s method and that today Trotsky would be a proponent of state capitalist theory. (ISJ 47)

It is the inability of the SWP to fully grasp the significance of the transition period under the dictatorship of the proletariat which is the single most important methodological error that lies at the heart of the theory of bureaucratic state capitalism. For revolutionary Marxists the dictatorship of the proletariat necessarily ushers in a transitional period.

The central task facing the working class in that period is to gradually transform property relations, social life and political power so as to make possible the creation of a communist society. In the transition the productive forces must be massively expanded in order that a society arises which can “inscribe on its banner: from each according to his ability to each according to his needs”. (Marx) Gradually, to the degree social antagonism disappears the working class itself disappears, for the proletariat “is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite . . . private property.” (Marx and Engels, Collected Works Vol 4 p36)

In the field of politics the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky faced three tasks. First the suppression of counter-revolution which was carried out ruthlessly during the civil war period 1918-21. Secondly, this workers’ state, based on soviet power, encouraged the widest democracy of the toilers, recognising that for socialism to be built progressive measures had to be taken to ensure the withering away of the state as a separate power. Thirdly, in order to create the material conditions of a communist society and in order to ensure its very existence the Soviet Republic had to be an instrument for internationalising the revolution. Ultimately the working class can only be victorious on a world scale.

Lenin and Trotsky recognised the impossibility of an immediate leap out of backwardness. The Soviet dictatorship destroyed the bourgeoisie’s rule and ushered in a period of economic transition in which the working class would have to fight to eradicate the forms of capitalist production, exchange and distribution. As Marx had said:

“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerged.” (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

Marx presumed that, for example, remuneration for labour would still take the form of wages which in the early transition would represent exactly what each individual worker had given to society. Bourgeois right or capitalist forms of distribution would inevitably operate in the workers’ state so long as the economy remained impoverished and scarcity was generalised. Only the conscious effort of the workers to progressively raise labour productivity and increase productive wealth could undermine the continued operation of such forms inherited from capitalism. Economically, the key task facing the Soviet workers after 1917 was the subordination of all elements of capitalism—commodity production, profit, law of value, wage inequalities, money—to the principle of conscious planning. The creation of statified property was a necessary means to that end.

However even in the hands of a healthy workers’ state, statified property does not have, in the immediate aftermath of the proletariat revolution, an automatically socialist character. This is determined by whether or not the direction of the property relations is towards the triumph of conscious planning and the creation of socialism. As Trotsky said:

“The latter has as its premise the dying away of the state as the guardian of property, the mitigation of inequality and gradual dissolution of the property concept even in the morals and customs of society.” (Writings 1935-36 p354)

In turn, this triumph can only occur at all if the workers are democratically organised to exercise their own power. Only the self-emancipation of the working class can guarantee the transition to socialism. Because of the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy—itself a product of Russia’s material backwardness and the isolation of the rst workers’ state—the transition to socialism was blocked in the USSR. Trotsky himself was the most intransigent opponent and analyst of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. He recognised the material forces that shaped that degeneration:

“The upsurge of the nationalised productive forces, which began in 1923 and which came unexpectedly to the Soviet bureaucracy itself, created the necessary economic prerequisites for the stabilisation of the latter. The upbuilding of the economic life provided and outlet for the energies of active and capable organisers, administrators and technicians. Their material and moral position improved rapidly. A broad, privileged stratum was created, closely linked to the ruling upper crust. The toiling masses lived on hopes or fell into apathy.” (Writings 1934-35 p175)

The developing Stalinist bureaucracy lashed out first against the communist Left Opposition, crushing it by 1928. Over the next ve years it crushed the restorationist right wing around Bukharin, established a bureaucratic command economy and destroyed each and every remnant of proletarian democracy. By 1927 the political defeat of the working class at the hands of the Stalinist clique was complete. Yet in the process of creating this Stalinist Bonapartism the economic foundations created in the aftermath of destroying capitalism were not only preserved but actually extended on a massive scale, with the liquidation of the Kulaks and the extension of the planned economy. Stalinism’s contradictory character reveals itself in its political expropriation of the Russian proletariat and its extension of bureaucratic planning to all the major elements of the post-capitalist economy. Against the proletariat Stalinism is counter-revolutionary in that it strangles the only force that can effect the transition to socialism. But it does it on the basis of property relations that have a post-capitalist character. It is this dialectical understanding of Stalinism’s contradictory nature that completely eludes each and every state capitalist theorist.

Is it capitalist?

Cliff’s method of analysing the class nature of Stalinist Russia has nothing to do with Marx’s dialectics. He compares the reality of Stalin’s Russia with the norms of a healthy workers’ state in transition towards socialism. In fact he sums up his own method well when, after discussing Marx and Lenin’s programme of proletarian democracy, he continues:

“To the conception, let us now counterpose the reality of the Russian Stalinist state.” (State Capitalism in Russia, 1974 p96)

Not surprisingly Russia fails Cliff’s normative tests. Of course the USSR is not a healthy workers’ state and neither is it socialist. But it is impossible to deduce the class character of a state by contrasting it with programmatic norms. Trotsky himself warned his critics:

“In the question of a social character of the USSR, mistakes commonly flow, as we have previously stated, from replacing the historical fact with the programmatic norm.” (In Defence of Marxism, Pathnder p3)

A revolutionary method of analysis does not counterpose “norm” to “fact” but seeks to analyse their contradictory unity:

“The programme of the approaching revolution in the USSR is determined on the one hand by our appraisal of the USSR as an objective historical fact and on the other hand, by the norm of the workers’ state. We do not say ‘Everything is lost, we must begin all over again.’ We clearly indicate those elements of the workers’ state which at the given stage can be salvaged, preserved and further developed.” (ibid p3)

Using his own method Cliff is only able to prove that Russia is not socialist and not in transition to socialism. So what? Trotsky said that first and with far greater clarity. But Cliff and hundreds of SWP educational meetings, leap from the evidence that Russia is not socialist, to that claim that it is therefore capitalist.

In order to prove Russia is capitalist the Cliff school has had to mangle the very meaning of capitalism and its laws for the Marxist tradition. Cliff applies his own formalistic, non-dialectical method to the sphere of political economy too.

The case for calling Russia state capitalist essentially rests on the nature of the accumulation process in the USSR. For the SWP this argument is used to explain how, why and when capitalism was restored in the USSR. Cliff interprets the creation of the bureaucratically planned economy of the USSR as a social counter-revolution that inaugurated bureaucratic state capitalism in the USSR. For Cliff, the bureaucracy is transformed into a collective capitalist because it undertook the “bourgeois” task of accumulation. As he says:

“Under capitalism the consumption of the masses is subordinated to accumulation.” (p34)

“What is specific to capitalism is accumulation for accumulation’s sake, with the object of standing up to competition.” (p168)

“. . . The fact that the bureaucracy fulfills the task of thecapitalist class, and by doing so transforms itself into a class, makes it the purest personification of this class.” (p169-70)

Cliff has no problem in showing figures for the First Five Year Plan (1929-33) which show a marked shift in priority away from individual consumption towards accumulation of the means of production. These are not in dispute. But within the use to which Cliff puts these figures lies that key element of Cliff’s method, the use of the syllogism: under the first Five Year Plan consumption was subordinated to accumulation; under capitalism, consumption is subordinated to accumulation; therefore the First Five Year Plan was capitalist.

Accumulation by the bourgeoisie is the accumulation of capital which, of course, takes on the concrete appearance of machines, tools etc. However, whether such use values are capital in any given situation is not determined by the mere fact that they are accumulated. As early Wage Labour and Capital Marx argued:

“Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour and raw materials, not only of material products, it consists just as much of exchange-values. All the products of which it consists are commodities . . . Capital does not consist in accumulated labour serving living labour as a means for new production. It consists in living labour serving accumulated labour as means of maintaining and multiplying the exchange-value of the latter.” (Wage Labour and Capital, Marx and Engels, Collected Works p212-3)

The means of production in the USSR do not have the character of commodities, they are not produced for eventual sale on the market. They are transferred from one state enterprise to another, according to a predetermined plan which has decided the proportions in which different sets of commodities will be produced. It is not left to the market to decide which is needed and which, by dint of its inability to find a purchaser is useless.

The healthiest of workers’ states would have to accumulate use-values, in particular means of production. If it is to progress towards socialism it will have to expand production on a huge scale. Consumption will have to be subordinated to accumulation in any workers’ state or socialism is impossible. Under Lenin’s leadership the early Soviet Republic did not somehow become capitalist because all consumption was cut back in an effort to produce munitions and supplies for the Red Army to resist the wars of intervention!

In order to buttress his case Cliff claims that what makes Russia’s accumulation “capitalist” is the fact that it is carried out in order to survive in competition—to repeat a quote from Cliff:

“What is specific to capitalism is accumulation for accumulation’s sake, with the object of standing up to competition.” (p.168)

He decides he does not need to prove that the social relations of production are primarily concerned with the accumulation of exchange values. In order to do so he would have to establish that the wage labour/capital relationship dominates the production process and that, as a result, labour power is a commodity in the USSR. But in the various versions of his book (1948, 1955, 1964, 1974) Cliff has consistently denied this:

“. . . if one examines the relations within the Russian economy, one is bound to conclude that the source of the law of value, as the motor and regulator of production, is not to be found within it. In essence, the laws prevailing in the relations between the labourers and the employer-state would be no different if Russia were one big factory managed directly from one centre, and if all the labourers received the goods they consumed in kind.” (T Cliff op cit. p208-9)

Assuming that the USSR is just like one large company operating on the world market, Cliff believes he only has to prove the existence of, and determining nature of, the competitive relations between the “state capitalist” blocks to demonstrate their capitalist character. Thus:

“But as it is, Stalinist decisions are based on factors outside of control, namely the world economy, world competition.” (p209)

Cliff argues that although the USSR has replaced commodity exchange within the USSR by a mere technical division of labour, the law of value dominates it through the exigencies of world capitalism. Cliff is aware that the USSR’s trade with the imperialist countries is relatively small. He does not stop to consider the implications for a “state capitalism” that deliberately abstains from and avoids capitalistic exchanges.

Instead he tries to prove that the capitalist nature of the USSR is determined by the character and scale of US military competition with the west. Because this competition does not take place through exchange, Cliff is driven to argue that the use-values (i.e. tanks, guns, nuclear warheads) act as though they were exchange values:

“Because international competition takes mainly a military form the law of value expresses itself in its opposite, viz a striving after use-values.” (ibid)

Once again Cliff equates the accumulation of use-values with the accumulation of capital. “Striving after use-values” is only another way of say “striving to accumulate material wealth”, something which has been a common feature of all societies save the most primitive.

There is no doubt that the pressure of military competition does exercise a distorting effect on the Soviet economy, as it will have on the economy of any workers’ state—healthy or unhealthy. But none of this means that military competition can take the place, or have the same results as capitalist competition.

One cannot explain the capitalist character of an economy from an analysis of competition. As Marx explained:

“Competition executes the inner laws of capital; makes them into compulsory laws toward the individual capital. But it does not invent them. It realises them. To try and explain them simply as results of competition therefore means to concede that one does not understand them.” (K Marx, Grundrisse p751-2)

If it is impossible to prove the existence of the law of value from an analysis of competition it is also equally impossible to derive the capitalist character of competition by focussing on the military form of competition. There is nothing specifically capitalist per se about military competition. Again to prove it was such, Cliff would have to show that the state engaging in the competition was producing capitalist commodities, which is exactly what he admits he cannot do. Instead he tries by sleight of hand to invest use values with the character of exchange values.

Is labour power a commodity?

Cliff’s attempts to prove that either “accumulation” or “competition” made Russia capitalist clearly do not stand up. Evident unease at Cliff’s categories has encouraged a debate within the SWP over the question of whether labour power is a commodity in the USSR. Binns and Haynes stand on one side in the argument. In ISJ 2.7 they argued that:

“Labour power cannot be a commodity in the USSR because with only one company (USSR Ltd) purchasing it, there cannot be a genuine labour market there.” (p29)

This is, in effect, Cliff’s argument of thirty years ago, and one we presume he still holds. It does however threaten to bring the entire theoretical edifice of “state capitalism” crashing to the ground. Duncan Hallas obviously sensed this and replied quite sharply:

“If labour power is not a commodity in the USSR, then there is no proletariat. Moreover, if labour power is not a commodity, then there can be no wage labour/capital relationship and therefore no capital either. Therefore, there can be no capitalism in any shape or form.” (ISJ 2:9)

Apart from anything else this is a refutation of Cliff’s work. More recently, Alex Callinicos (ISJ 2:12) has gone to great length to back Hallas up and even openly attacks Cliff on this point.

A false argument has ensued which revolves around whether or not labour power in the USSR is “free” in the sense Marx described it; i.e. free from means of production so that each labourer must sell his/her power for a limited period and be free to change their employer. On the one side, Binns and Haynes can marshal evidence to show what restrictions exist on the free movement of labour in the USSR. On the other hand, Callinicos argues that:

“When we look at the reality of Soviet society, there is no doubt that labour power is a commodity there. Enterprises compete for workers, offering all sorts of illegal bonuses to persuade people to work for them. Workers have a considerable degree of choice—they are not compelled to work in a particular factory.” (ISJ 2:12 p15)

Both approaches are equally one-sided. They emphasise certain aspects of the situation in order to “prove” or “disprove” the commodity nature of labour power. In fact, all Hallas proves is that the Soviet working class is not a slave class. Following the logic of Cliff’s variant of state capitalism Haynes and Binns suggest it is. That fact that wage incentives, bonus payments etc exist in the USSR does not in itself enable Callinicos to shore up Cliff’s state capitalist theory. As we have seen, they would exist in a healthy dictatorship of the proletariat as a result of the fact that it would arise out of capitalism and could not immediately leap to communism where inequalities no longer exist.

For Marx, free labour in the sense of the purchase and sale of labour power was a juridical question, and an essential part in the whole question of the production and exchange of commodities. It is in this area that massive restrictions exist in the USSR, which do not exist under capitalism. The correct starting point is not to focus on the abstracted question “is labour power a commodity?”, but “to what extent is there generalised commodity production in the USSR?” It is clear that commodity production and exchange only exists in pure form in the black market, and co-ops, but even here it is predominantly simple commodity production, not capitalist commodity production.

As far as the state sector is concerned the matter is different again. The bulk of material production in the USSR concerns the production of the means of production. These goods are not produced for the market, as explained earlier. By and large they are not the subject of sale and purchase transactions so the labour and valorisation process in this sector cannot be a process of commodity production. The labour expended in them is directly social labour. In the consumer goods sector, the nature and volume of these, as with capital goods, is determined by the bureaucracy’s “blind planning mechanisms”. However, there is something of a commodity character imparted to consumer goods because unlike capital goods, a considerable portion of consumer goods are distributed in a different manner, not according to a plan.

They are produced for an unknown market and are exchanged against money wages. The labour carried out in this production is not directly social labour, as it is only recognised as such after the sale (if at all).

The same, dialectical, view should be taken of “labour power as a commodity”. The fact that the worker sells, and the bureaucracy purchases, the worker’s labour capacity via the medium of money indicates the continuing commodity character of labour power. However, on the other hand, the market price of labour power is not determined by supply and demand under the pressure of an army of unemployed. The wage fund is set in advance by the bureaucracy which determines general wage levels in different sectors. It is possible to make similar observations about other economic categories such as prices of production, money etc, which achieve their fullest and most developed expression under capitalism but which continue to exist in the USSR in an underdeveloped form as they would in any post-capitalist society.

The bureaucracy as ruling caste

Behind all the garbled economic categories lies one argument that is always at the centre of the state capitalist case. In arguing against the Trotskyist view of the USSR as a degenerate workers’ state, state capitalist theory constantly repeats the refrain that it cannot be any form of workers’ state if the workers are oppressed and have no political power, and that the bureaucratic agent of this oppression must therefore be a ruling class. To quote Alan Gibbons:

“1929 saw the abolition of independent trade unions, the abolition of the right to strike, the forcing down of wages. That these are the policies of Tory governments today shows that Russia has become but one capitalist power among other—the only difference being that in Russia the state itself was the ruling class, that it was state capitalism.” (How the Revolution Was Lost, Alan Gibbons p28)

The central problem is whether the working class can be said to be the ruling class where its political power is not expressed through mass organs of proletarian power or the rule of its vanguard party? Can the class rule of the workers exist where a bureaucratic dictatorship over the working class has been established ? At the heart of this dispute is the question of how Marxists dene the class nature of any state. Trotsky argued on this:

“Friederich Engels once wrote that the state, including the democratic republic, consists of detachments of armed men in defence of property, everything else serves only to embellish or camouflge this fact.” (Whither France)

It followed that the class nature of any state was determined by the property relations that it defends. Despite the monstrous tyranny of the Stalinist bureaucracy the property relations of the USSR—state planning—remain those that the proletariat must take hold of if it is to carry through the transition to socialism. To that extent the property relations remain proletarian despite the rule of the bureaucracy and the need for the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucracy as a prerequisite for using those property relations to effect a socialist transition.

Hallas and Binns have attacked this method of evaluating the character of the soviet state:

“This is a fundamental break with Marx and Lenin and with Trotsky’s own earlier position.” (ISJ 91 September 1976)

It can hardly be call a fundamental break with Marx. This is how Marx posed the question of evaluating the character of a given state:

“It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers . . . which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political forms of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state.” (Capital Vol 3 p772)

For Trotskyists the USSR remains a proletarian state because it defends, and even in certain circumstances extends, the expropriation of capitalism and the subordination of its laws. The SWP’s attempts to prove that the USSR is capitalist do not stand the test of serious examination. But what of their negative case against the “degenerate workers’ state” theory that the non-existence of workers’ power proves that the USSR cannot be a workers’ state?

The history of capitalist development provides instances where the capitalist class did not exercise political power directly but the state was still capitalist. For example, in France in the Napoleonic era, the Restoration period, and the Second Empire of Louis Napoleon all excluded the bourgeoisie from direct access to political power. Trotsky was the first Marxist to develop an analogy between this experience of bourgeois development and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution.

The proletariat lost political power in Russia without the immediate re-introduction of capitalism. However there are important differences between a capitalist state where the bourgeoisie has lost political power and a proletarian state where the working class is politically expropriated. The bourgeoisie did not need to directly rule for capitalism to grow and develop because it is based on the blind spontaneous mechanism of the market. However, the working class cannot move forward to socialism without ruling politically. That is why the transition in the USSR is not only blocked but is reversed.

The bureaucracy undermines the continued existence of even the blind planning that exists. It prepares the ground for the restoration of capitalism. The result of this contradictory state of affairs is that the “state” in the USSR continues in precisely the “form” but not the social content that Marxists seek to abolish—set above and against the toilers. Far from a tendency to ever greater equality, inequalities continue and are even exaggerated.

The capitalist norms of distribution and exchange that Marxists seek to destroy and replace will remain and are strengthened by “market reforms”. All this demands a political revolution by the working class to once again clear the road for the transition to socialism and communism.

The SWP, on the other hand, reduce the question of workers’ state to a political and superstructural question, to the political forms through which the dictatorship was organised. This is at one with the un-Marxist normative method employed in every dimension of the state capitalist argument.

The designation of the Russian bureaucracy as a capitalist ruling class because it performs tasks “normally” historically undertaken by a bourgeois class, is another example of crass schematic thinking.

Cliff expressed it in the following way:

“The fact that the bureaucracy fulfils the tasks of the capitalist class, and by so doing transforms itself into a class, makes it the purest personification of this class. Although it is different from the capitalist class, it is at one and the same time the nearest to it historical essence.” (Russia: A Marxist Analysis p118)

Trotsky showed how the “normal” progress of capitalism in Russia could not occur as it had in western Europe when he developed his theory of permanent revolution. What is “normal” in one historical period becomes “impossible” in the next. In just this fashion it will fall to the international working class in the greater part of the world to undertake extensive industrialisation. Will the proletariat therefore become a bourgeoisie?

If the bureaucracy does not constitute a capitalist class is it possible that it does still, nonetheless, constitute a ruling class? Cliff and co have always attempted to steer clear of the implication that the USSR was some kind of “new class” society as Shachtman, Djilas and others since have claimed. Cliff simply asserts that the bureaucracy is a class because their role can be squared with an extracted quote from Lenin:

“We call classes large groups of people that are distinctive by the place they occupy in a definite historically established system of social production.” (ibid p166)

In fact Cliff fails to grasp what is meant by “definite historically established system of social production”. The USSR is a transitional society comprised of elements of post-capitalist society and elements of capitalism. This is reflected in the fact the bureaucracy has no “definite historically established” role to play in the USSR. While the bourgeoisie under capitalism is a necessary component of the relations of production of the capitalist system, the Soviet bureaucracy is not such a necessary element in the planned property relations of the USSR.

On the contrary its monopoly of political power, its control over distribution is, and always has been (even during the most dynamic phases of Soviet economic development), an obstacle to the full realisation of the potential of the property relations of the USSR.

In all hitherto existing societies the property relations, and the class structures that necessarily owed from them, became a brake on the development of the productive forces of mankind. In the USSR it is not the property relations but a layer of administrators and distributors who block the development of the productive forces.

When we strip away the jumble of pseudo-Marxist categories we can begin to see state capitalist theory for what it is. It proceeds from authority relations in the USSR, from outrage at the evidently repressive coercive regime, to reject Trotsky’s dialectical understanding of the USSR. This is the same method all other “new class” theorists have used and is why it is no surprise that when its use of Marxist terms is debunked state capitalism looks remarkably like a “new class” theory.

 


“Neither Washington nor Moscow” The view from the third camp

 

Conflicts between imperialism and petit bourgeois nationalist and Stalinist-led forces in the semi-colonial world have raged throughout the post-war era. From Korea in the 1950s through to Afghanistan in the 1980s revolutionaries had to declare which side they were on. Here, Dave Hughes asks this question of the SWP and its forerunners.

The theory of state capitalism has led Cliff and his various groups into fundamental errors over a series of post-war conflicts. Cliff’s first organisation was built around the journal Socialist Review (SR), which began publication in November 1950, inside the Labour Party. It was the first publication to appear from this stable after Cliff’s break with the Fourth International (FI).

To this day the leaders of the SWP take much pleasure in ridiculing the inability of the FI to come to terms with the nature of the world at the end of the Second World War. Certainly it was true that the majority of the FI proved incapable of recognising that Stalinism emerged from the war strengthened and that imperialism, re-ordered internationally under US hegemony, was set for a sustained period of economic recovery.

It was also the case that increasingly after 1948 the FI revised the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism and abandoned the view that the Stalinist bureaucracy was counter-revolutionary. However, Cliff’s view that Russia was state capitalist and that the world had been divided into two giant capitalist camps provided no better a view of the post war world.

It shared with the FI the belief in an imminent "Third World War". Also it failed to develop a revolutionary strategy independent of both Stalinism and imperialism. While the FI’s programmatic degeneration led to capitulation, primarily to Stalinist and petit bourgeois nationalist currents, the state capitalists' “alternative” ended up capitulating to imperialism under the guise of "third campism".

According to the early SR both Truman’s America and Stalin’s Russia were being propelled by the same motive force in their drive for world domination. Conflict between the two imperialisms threatened mankind with the more or less immediate prospect of a new--albeit atomic--world war. As SR No 1 declared:

"The 'Peace' Campaign of Stalin’s Russia is no less hypocritical than Truman’s 'Defence of Democracy' . . . in their mad rush for profit, for wealth, the two gigantic imperialist powers are threatening humanity with the terrible suffering of atomic war." (SR Vol 1, No 1, November 1950)

The Cliffites thus accepted the view that the Stalinist bureaucracy was an expansionist class set on global domination at the expense of Truman’s America. This echoing of Cold War propaganda was the constant refrain of the Socialist Review Group (SRG) throughout the early 1950s. In 1954 it was declaring that the two powers were driven towards war with each other by their respective economic problems. Overproduction was increasingly presenting US capitalism with a stark choice:

"Slump or war are the two alternatives facing western monopoly capitalism, and faced with this choice, there is no doubt what the ruling classes of the west will choose." (SR Vol 3, No 7)

Notwithstanding the “fact” that the Soviet Union was supposedly capitalist as well and propelled by the same laws of motion as the USA, the USSR was depicted as heading to war for different reasons. Underproduction and economic shortages were driving the Soviet bureaucracy towards war by making a grab for Western Europe ever more attractive to the Kremlin:

"The crisis of underproduction pushes Moscow to imperialist expansion. How magnificent the dream of establishing SAGs or mixed companies in Western Europe!" (ibid)

When Soviet withdrawal from Austria, in exchange for guarantees of neutrality on the part of the Austrian bourgeoisie, seemed to confound SR’s perspective, and demonstrated the class collaboration of the Soviet bureaucracy, the journal argued that this was only a temporary turn occasioned by the industrialisation of China and its demands for more steel: China’s need for steel may still push the Kremlin to invade Western Europe later, so SR claimed.

In fact the SRG’s characterisation of the Soviet Union as a state capitalist and expansionist imperialist power gave rise to a totally false understanding of the nature of Stalinism. All the evidence, from Stalin’s foreign policy and from the Soviet Union’s attitude to revolutionary situations which threatened capitalist dominance, demonstrated a totally different role for Stalinism than that ascribed to it by the Cliffites.

Far from being an expansionist force looking for every opportunity to extend its rule at the expense of western imperialism, the Soviet bureaucracy demonstrated in the post-war years, that it was a social formation bent on international class collaboration and compromise with the imperialist bourgeoisie. Not only did Soviet withdrawal from Austria contradict Cliff’s schemas, but in both Greece and Indo-China Stalin demonstrated his intention of maintaining his pact with the bourgeoisie on "spheres of influence" by sabotaging the struggle against imperialism. In Eastern Europe the bourgeoisie was kept in power after the war and no steps were taken to ensure a Stalinist take-over until after the offensive launched by Truman in 1947.

The "Truman Doctrine", promising military intervention anywhere in the world "threatened by communism" combined with the economic offensive of Marshall Aid, aimed at Eastern as well as Western Europe, faced the Soviet Union with a choice. It could either retreat from Eastern Europe, thus massively weakening its own position in the face of an imperialist offensive, or complete a Stalinist overthrow of capitalism. It chose the latter.

Yet even during the US-led Cold War offensive Stalin continued to demonstrate his reluctance to overthrow capitalist property relations. Until the eleventh hour he repeatedly advised Mao against toppling Chiang Kai Shek’s disintegrating regime. The USSR handed back “its” part of Austria in return for the country’s neutrality and proposed the same for Germany--i.e. a reunified, capitalist, but disarmed and neutral country.

The Third Camp

This did not fit in with the SRG’s analysis of Soviet expansionism, but their analysis did fit in very well with a group which wanted to swim with the stream in Cold War Britain. The political consequence of this view for the SRG was that a conflict between the USA and the USSR was a conflict between two imperialisms and as such it was necessary to adopt a position of neutrality in the conflicts between them. (In fact SR’s pages were heavily weighted towards anti-Soviet propaganda during this period, with a regular series of articles from Tony Cliff on the miseries of life in the USSR).

This neutrality took the form of a commitment to building a "Third Camp" under the slogan raised in the first issue of SR: "Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international Socialism". SR was not the first to raise the idea of a "third camp"--it was the stock in trade of the Tribune group. Figures such as Foot, Mikardo and Crossman denounced Soviet and western imperialism with gusto. But with the Cold War, these social democrats loyally trooped behind NATO and the Anglo-American alliance. It was the Cliffites who picked up the rhetoric and bolstered it with state capitalist theory. Not surprisingly the call for a third camp was raised first in SR by one Stan Newens (later a leading Tribunite MP) in the following fashion:

"The present power of the two world camps is largely based on the dragooning by force and trickery of the many by the few. Let us set up our standard against all such methods and lead the way to working for a genuine international socialism--not for Washington, nor for Moscow." (SR Vol 3, No 4)

For the SRG the slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow" suited the prejudices of the left reformist current in the Labour Party, in which they were immersed, very well. It led the SRG into alliance with a motley variety of political tendencies. SR of October 1955 carries a favourable report of a "Third Way is the Only Way" international conference attended by 110 delegates.

While it is silent as to which organisations were represented the nature of SR’s allies is made clear in its pages over the next months. The October 1955 issue contains an article by Max Shachtman extoling the "third way". By May 1956 SR carried--as a supplement--Tony Cliff’s "The future of the Russian empire" published by Labour Action Shachtman’s US paper) in collaboration with SR.

The Shachtmanites did not hang around in the "third camp" for very long. They were very soon declaring Soviet totalitarianism a greater threat to socialism than US democracy, and putting themselves firmly in the camp of US imperialism. But it was not only the Shachtman group that rallied to the banner of the "third way". It also attracted the anti-Leninist libertarian "Socialisme ou Barbarie" of P Cardan whose material also appeared in SR and early issues of International Socialism. The Third Camp conference proved a rallying point for libertarians and social democrats who, ultimately, had nothing in common except their hostility, both to the Kremlin bureaucracy and revolutionary Leninism.

Even if the Cliffites pulled back from the logic of Shachtman and Newens' Third Camp position they nevertheless ended up by refusing to support genuine struggles against imperialism. Their slogan for "International Socialism" was never given a revolutionary communist meaning in the actual struggles against imperialism. This would have meant developing slogans and tactics which both supported unconditionally the struggle against imperialism and aimed to mobilise the working masses against Stalinist counter-revolution. It remained instead a political fig leaf to cover their refusal to give support in the struggle against imperialism. Nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than in the Korean War.

Neutral in the Korean war

The formation of the SRG coincided with the onset of the Korean War. The programmatic conclusions that logically flow from state capitalist theory meant that the SRG inevitably adopted a position in that conflict that failed to distinguish between Stalinist-led struggles for national liberation against imperialism and the forces of imperialism itself. The Communist Parties were seen as agents of Kremlin imperialism--or as SR No 2 (January 1951) called them "Moscow’s Foreign Legion".

At the end of the Second World War Soviet and US forces occupied Korea. At the same time "Committees of Preparation for National Independence" mushroomed throughout Korea predominantly under Stalinist leadership. An all-Korean People’s Republic government was declared on 6 September 1945. The USA refused to recognise this government and created its own under the much despised emigre rightist Syngman Rhee. The ensuing conflict between the Northern, Soviet backed and Southern, US backed governments was therefore a form of civil war in Korea within which the northern Stalinist regime had the leadership of those forces fighting imperialism and its agents.

When direct military hostilities broke out between the two regimes and the Northern armies overran the South in June, it should not have been difficult for revolutionaries to see which side they were on. They would have been for a victory of the North against the Rhee puppet regime and its US backers. And when--under the cloak of a UN peace keeping force--the USA poured troops into Korea and provoked a direct military conflict with China, it should have been even easier for any socialist not blinded by cold war anti-communist hysteria to know what side to take.

Revolutionary socialists should have unconditionally defended the North Koreans and their Kremlin allies on the recognition that a defeat inflicted upon the really expansionist USA would have been a massive blow to its plans. Unlike the SRG it was necessary to draw a distinction between the Stalinist leadership (which eventually sold the struggle short) and the popular mass forces involved, striving to overthrow a hated regime. Defending North Korea and seeking to win the leadership of the Korean masses were complementary not contradictory tasks.

The SRG, however, proceeded to demonstrate quite how reactionary the programmatic conclusions of the theory of state capitalism really are. SR took a predictable and logical view of the conflict. In an article entitled "The struggle of the powers" R Tennant declared that, "The war in Korea serves the great powers as a rehearsal for their intended struggle for the redivision of the globe." (SR Vol 1, No 2, January 1950) and in an attack on Socialist Outlook’s (a paper run by Gerry Healy) support for North Korea Bill Ainsworth talked of "our opinion . . . that Russia no less than the USA, is imperialist and bent on world domination". (ibid) It followed that:

"We can, therefore, give no support to either camp since the war will not achieve, the declared aims of either side. Further, so long as the two governments are what they are, viz, puppets of the two big powers, the Korean socialists can give no support to their respective puppet governments." (SR Vol 1, No 2, January 1951)

The Korean position was not a blunder inadvertently committed by an innocent, fledgling organisation. It flowed logically from the theory of state capitalism. The SRG drew exactly the same conclusion from a similar conflict in Vietnam between Stalinist led anti-imperialist forces under Ho Chi Minh and imperialism’s puppet Bao-Dai. In February 1952 they printed and entirely endorsed a statement of the French La Lutte that declared:

"In Korea, the war continues in spite of the parties for an armistice in which, of course, the Korean people have no say. In Vietnam, likewise, the war continues and the people vomit with disgust at both Bao-Dai, the tool of the colonialists, and at Ho Chi Minh, the agent of Stalin." (SR Vol 1, No 7)

The Cuban revolution demonstrated the reactionary logic of state capitalism as once again the Cliffites turned their face against those struggling to defeat imperialism. In the face of a US economic and military blockade the Castro regime proceeded to expropriate US holdings and reorganise the Cuban economy on the basis of bureaucratically planned property relations modelled on those of the USSR. At the same time Castro adopted the Stalinist model of state and party.

The Soviet bureaucracy moved to support the Castroite regime with the threat to place Soviet missiles in Cuba which would have served both to extend the international bargaining position of the Soviet bureaucracy and defend the Cuban revolution against imperialist counter-revolution. Cold War warriors and pacifists alike raised a hue and cry against Castro’s "undemocratic regime" and against the shipment of Soviet arms to Cuba. So too did Cliff’s renamed International Socialism group (IS).

The Cliffites took Soviet economic aid to the blockaded Castro regime as evidence that dynamic Soviet capitalism was now ready to do battle for the markets of US imperialism. Doubtless hoping that the USSR was about to indulge in some real capitalist competition. An IS editorial, entitled "From Cold War to price war" took increased Soviet trade with India and the shipping of Russian oil to Havana to indicate that:

"Russian oil exports look to be the harbinger of mighty economic conflicts between the giants of capital on either side of the Iron Curtain." (IS No 3, Autumn 1960)

Mirroring Khruschev’s pompous fantasies about the USSR being poised to outstrip the west economically, the editors continued:

"There seems to be a growing realisation that Russia is beginning to present an economic challenge to western capitalism potentially far more persuasive and threatening than the politico-military challenge of recent years." (ibid)

As long as the Castroites steered clear of Russian aid the editorial offices of International Socialism were prepared to support them. IS No 6 (NB. there were two number sixes) argued that:

"The pressure on Cuba towards integration into the Soviet bloc will exert pressure towards bureaucratisation of the revolution. But this, so all the evidence seems to show has not yet happened . . . The Cubans only turn to Russian power because there is no power of the international working class for them to turn to. Our defence of the Cuban revolution could itself be a step, even a small one, towards creating such a power."

Cliff’s "Third Campism" could not deliver oil or guns. Neither could it break an American blockade. As soon as the Castroites looked to Soviet aid in order to defend themselves the Cliffites deserted the Cuban revolution.

To cover their retreat a series of articles were printed by Sergio Junco pushing the view that Cuba had none of the features of a workers' state and thus deserved no support against the USA. Following in Shachtman’s footsteps Junco very soon decided that because Castro’s internal regime was repressive, it represented a form of society lower than that achieved in the bourgeois democracies.

He spelt out his position in the pages of Young Guard (IS Youth Paper in LPYS):

"Given the fact that there has never been any popular control of revolutionary institutions in Cuba, it makes no sense to say that this is a socialist or even a progressive society. Nationalism is conducive to socialism only when there exists a state which is owned and controlled by the majority of the people. Otherwise, we get a type of state and society which is less progressive than say, liberal democracy, since in the latter the popular forces are able to organise and actively work for the earliest possible substitution of the system." ("Cuba and socialism", Young Guard No 4, December 1961, emphasis in original)

It was IS members, most notably Paul Foot, who sprang to Junco’s support in the face of criticism in the pages of the paper.

If the political forms adopted by the Castroites had already turned the Cliffites off the Cuban revolution, the dispatch of Soviet atomic weapons completed the retreat of the IS into their neutralist corner. While being perfectly aware that the Soviet Union assists anti-imperialist struggles only to the extent that it can safeguard its own privileges and security, we would defend the right of anti-imperialist struggles to defend themselves by any means--including Soviet weapons.

In the face of US imperialism’s military might the Castroites really had little choice but to seek Soviet aid. In this situation the IS fulminated with liberal pacifist rage. Once again the conflict was seen as simply a conflict between two imperialist superpowers:

"The terrible fact was that the Cuban people and the rest of us were held to ransom from both sides of the Iron Curtain. If that has not laid the myth that rocketry on one side of the curtain is somehow more humane and defensible than it is on the other, nothing short of war?" ("Cuban lessons", IS 10, Winter 62-63)

Once again, therefore, the third campists declared themselves against both the USA and the USSR. Young Guard raised the slogan: "All hands off Cuba, no war over Cuba." (Young Guard No 13, November 1962) The pacifist Paul Foot denied any legitimacy to Soviet nuclear backing for Cuba. Instead he begged his readers:

"Socialists must ask the question: Why did Russia establish nuclear bases on Cuba and more important what political justification was there for doing it?" (Young Guard No 15)

In one sense he was right, his problem was that he could not answer his own set questions. In order to defend itself the Soviet bureaucracy was - in certain circumstances - prepared to extend that portion of the globe that is not directly open to imperialist exploitation. It does not do so because it is a revolutionary force but because the very property relations upon which it rests are in permanent antagonism with the interests and nature of world imperialism.

Soviet military backing for Cuba was not a nuclear umbrella for a capitalist price war. It was a means of increasing the strength of the Soviet bureaucracy through military advantage by underwriting the defence of another (degenerate) workers' state.

From Korea to Vietnam

The theory of state capitalism logically led the SRG and the IS to argue against support for anti-imperialist struggles that were led by Stalinists. On the surface therefore, the IS group’s support for the Vietnamese NLF’s struggle against US imperialism may seem either inconsistent or even a healthy break with the positions adopted on Korea and Cuba. This seeming inconsistency is easily explained by other consistent elements in the tradition and method of the Cliffites.

As a political tendency they have accommodated to every prevailing wind on the British left. Their position on Korea reflected and adapted to, the fierce climate of Cold War anti-communism of the early 1950s. The Cuban missile crisis coincided with the growth of CND first time round. The IS group’s denunciation of the nuclear arms race, their rejection of any legitimate role for nuclear weapons as a defence against imperialism reflects its accommodation to the CND milieu in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Things had changed quite drastically by the late 1960s however. The Vietnam war had become an inspiration to thousands of youth. To have called for opposition to both North and South, and for a plague on the Stalinist-led Vietcong, would have been programmatically consistent for the IS. But with theoretical consistency threatening to isolate the IS the Cliffites threw themselves in behind "support for the NLF and a North Vietnamese victory". (IS 32)

They declared the Vietnam War to be unlike previous Cold War conflicts:

"The Vietnam war does not fit neatly into the pattern of belligerent incidents between east and west since the war. Such incidents were often the result of direct confrontation between the major powers, each jostling for military or strategic advantage along the undemarcated border between their respective empires--the raw wound that ran through Central Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and South East Asia." (IS 32)

The small scale of Soviet and Chinese backing at this time was sufficient for the IS group to salve their consciences and decide that China and the USSR were not involved. As a result of this view of Indo-China it was not difficult for the IS to immerse itself in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign as supporters of the Vietnamese Stalinists they had refused to support in the early 1950s.

In defending their decision to back the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong against the USA, the IS had to plumb the depths of state capitalist logic. The IS journal declared that it was giving support:

"In the same way, socialists were required in the nineteenth century to support bourgeois liberal movements against feudal or absolutist regimes." (IS 32)

Only bourgeois tasks were on the agenda of the Vietnamese revolution:

"Of course, when the issue of American power is settled, we know what kind of regime and policies the NLF will choose--and be forced to choose by the logic of their situation. But that is, for the moment, another fight, the real fight for socialism." (ibid, emphasis in original)

For the state capitalist theorists then, the fight against capitalism was relegated as a later stage of the Vietnamese revolution.

The Vietnam episode brings to light another essential programmatic ingredient of state capitalist theory--its Menshevik position on the possibilities for socialist advance in the under-developed and “backward” countries. For the Mensheviks every underdeveloped country had to experience a stage of bourgeois capitalist development.

The 1950s and 1960s saw important nationalist movements against imperialism in Egypt and Algeria as well as in Indo-China. Large sections of the centrist and reformist left presumed that this signified a decisive shift in the terrain of the class struggle to a struggle between the “first” and “third” worlds. Against this impressionistic and defeatist "third worldism" the IS constructed their own, no less one-sided, metropolitan centred view of the world. The positions developed by the Cliff grouping in the 1950s and 1960s effectively deny the possibility of the struggle for socialism, for workers' revolution in the semi-colonial world.

In his initial work on Russia Cliff had declared that state capitalism in Russia was inevitable given the revolution’s isolation and the need to industrialise in order to survive in a hostile environment. In his analysis explicitly states that the only two realistic economic programmes open for Russia in the 1920s were private capitalism or state capitalism.

This is how he explains it:

"One solution to the conflict between state industry and individualist agriculture would have been to make the development of industry depend on the rate at which agricultural surpluses developed. It would have inevitably led to a victory of private capitalism throughout the economy. Alternatively the conflict between industry and agriculture might have been resolved by rapid industrialisation based on 'primitive accumulation' by expropriating the peasants and forcing them into large mechanised farms thus releasing labour power for industry and making agricultural surpluses available for the urban population." (T Cliff, Russia: A Marxist Analysis, p97)

Prospects for the semi-colonies

Cliff wrongly argued that the subordination of consumption to the accumulation of the means of production was ipso facto a capitalist task. The implications of this is that in societies where pre-capitalist modes of production dominate, or where capitalism is weak, a stage of private or state capitalism is inevitable, unless a revolution in such a country is accompanied by other revolutions in the advanced capitalist world.

This explains the apparent indifference that the IS showed at the prospects of a Stalinist victory in Vietnam--after all what else could be hoped for? Certainly not a genuine workers' revolution.

The IS theorised this view systematically in the 1960s. It accompanied, necessarily, a thoroughgoing and explicit junking of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. By 1962 Michael Kidron was declaring that imperialism was now the "highest stage but one", having been replaced as a world system by the "permanent arms economy" (i.e. military competition) as the fundamental motor maintaining stability and expansion in the major capitalist economies:

"It [Lenin’s imperialism] must be rejected on at least four counts: finance capital is not nearly as important for and within the system as it was; the export of capital is no longer of great importance to the system; political control, in the direct sense meant by Lenin, is rapidly becoming dated; and finally, resulting from these, we don’t have imperialism but we still have capitalism . . . If anything it is the permanent war and arms economies that are 'the highest stage of capitalism . . .'" (IS 20, Spring 1965)

Kidron argued that imperialism had suffered the loss of its colonies "without disaster, without indeed much dislocation or discomfort". He even refers to the "spontaneous withdrawal of classic imperialism" from the colonies. Imperialist relationships, we are told, were being replaced by new relationships:

"Now, after independence, despite many points of friction and competition that remain, the overriding element is one of mutual independence and convenience." (IS 20)

Leaving aside this bizarre view of the relationship between the imperialist and imperialised world which would do more credit to a White House briefing than an article written by a socialist, the programmatic implications for the underdeveloped world were stark. Whereas both Lenin and Trotsky had seen a vital role for the working class in leading the struggle against imperialism, because of the weakness of the national bourgeoisie and its enmeshing in world imperialism, now, according to Kidron, "the national bourgeoisie--or failing it, the national bureaucracy--has been rescued from oblivion by imperialism’s withdrawal". (IS 20)

Kidron goes on to muse that it might well be that the only form through which capitalism can triumph, "in large sections of the world is through state initiative and bureaucratic state capitalism--and the destruction of its bourgeois democratic cousin and rival". (IS 20)

One result of these developments he argues is "the growing irrelevance of national struggles". If Kidron poses this development of state capitalism as a possibility, Tony Cliff has no such doubts. Drawing on the “experience” of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, Cliff states forthrightly that Trotsky’s perspective of permanent revolution, whereby the working class can lead the struggle of the oppressed masses both against imperialism and for socialism, is no longer tenable. Trotsky he argues was clearly wrong in assuming "the revolutionary character of the young working class" in these countries:

"In many cases the existence of a floating, amorphous majority of new workers with one foot in the countryside creates difficulties for autonomous proletarian organisations: lack of experience and illiteracy add to their weakness. This leads to yet another weakness: dependence on non-workers for leadership. Trade unions in the backward countries are almost always led by outsiders . . . Once the constantly revolutionary nature of the working class, the central pillar of Trotsky’s theory becomes suspect, the whole structure falls to pieces . . . . the peasantry cannot follow a non-revolutionary working class." ("Permanent Revolution", IS No 12 Spring 1963).

"Deflected permanent revolution

In this situation according to Cliff, the intelligentsia of the underdeveloped world is ready and able to constitute itself as an embryonic new state capitalist class and “deflect” the permanent revolution into a stage of totalitarian state capitalist development. In Vietnam what was at stake was the construction of "a state-class, not a private or bourgeois class, that is spearheaded by the NLF and has already been instituted in the North." (IS 32)

Throughout the underdeveloped world the intelligentsia:

". . . care a lot for measures to drag their nation out of stagnation but very little for democracy. They embody the drive for industrialisation, for capital accumulation, for national resurgence. Their power is in direct relation to the feebleness of other classes, and their political nullity. All this makes totalitarian state capitalism a very attractive goal for intellectuals." (IS 12)

So having distorted Marx’s analysis of capitalism, junked Lenin’s theory of imperialism and abandoned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the Cliff grouping rounds off its complete rejection of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky by abandoning the revolutionary potential of the working class in the vast majority of the globe! There only remains for these metropolitan chauvinists the “pure” working class of the advanced industrial world.

The leading theoreticians of the IS grouping here demonstrate once again the inability of their theory to provide a way forward for the international proletariat. The special nature and difficulties of the proletariat in the semi-colonial world are nothing new for revolutionaries. Indeed, despite Russia’s position as an “old” imperialist power, the country’s very backwardness meant that its working class showed many of the characteristics which Cliff believes should make us write off the revolutionary potential of the working class in the imperialised world.

The ability of the Bolsheviks to lead a socialist revolution in such a “backward” country was not, as Cliff believes, because of Lenin’s organisational genius, but because the Bolshevik party developed a political programme, tactics and strategy which was able to unite the working class behind a revolutionary perspective and draw the peasantry behind it. By rejecting the theory of imperialism and consequently seeing only the "growing irrelevance of national struggles", the SWP abandons the major weapon in the fight for socialist revolution in the semi-colonies--it abandons the fight for working class leadership in the national struggles against imperialism.

But, of course, it is only to be expected from this grouping, steeped as it is in syndicalism and economism, that once they had decided the working class in the semi-colonies was not spontaneously revolutionary they would write off the possibilities of socialist revolution in these countries.

For Cliff, however, the non-revolutionary nature of the working class in these countries does not mean that there will be no revolution:

"A concatenation of national and international circumstances makes it imperative for the productive forces to break the fetters of feudalism and imperialism." (ibid)

But these revolutions will not be led by the working class but by the much more cohesive "revolutionary intelligentsia" who are attracted to "totalitarian state capitalism":

"These forces which should lead to a socialist workers' revolution according to Trotsky’s theory can lead, in the absence of the revolutionary subject, the proletariat, to its opposite, state capitalism . . . Mao and Castro’s rise to power are classic, the purest and most extreme demonstration of deflected permanent revolution. Other colonial revolutions--China, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Algeria etc. are deviations from the norm . . . but they can best be understood when approached from the standpoint of, and compared with the norm." (ibid)

So the best that the semi-colonial world can hope for in their struggles against the oppression of feudalism and imperialism is their replacement by some form, pure or otherwise, of "totalitarian state capitalism". The only hope that the Cliffites offer for the masses of these countries is that in the "long run", under these regimes they might well increase in "numbers, cohesion and social weight". And presumably once they reach the level of the industrialised west they too can have a socialist revolution!

Thus in the mighty struggles against imperialism, in Algeria, in Cuba, in Vietnam and Indo-China, in Nicaragua and Central America today, the SWP’s programme offers no goal worth fighting for.

They are left only with a chronic fatalism, with the belief that all these struggles can only end in tears, in a new exploiting, totalitarian system. This fatalism was most clearly summed up in a notorious article by Kidron on the LSSP of Ceylon (the LSSP was an ex-USFI section, then part of a “socialist” coalition government). Kidron argued in his article, entitled "Tropical Trotskyism", that the difficulties facing Ceylon in escaping from semi-colonial servitude were insurmountable.

This is all he had to offer the workers and peasants by way of perspectives:

"If the transition (to a modern competitive economy) is to be made at all--and it is undeniably necessary--productivity will have to be jacked up and wages held down. There is no alternative. All the LSSP can hope for is that the workers will make the sacrifice willingly." (Socialist Worker, 3 July 1969)

It is a measure of the bankruptcy of state capitalist theory that what started life as a theorisation of moral outrage at the horrors of Stalin’s Russia became a rationalisation of the inevitability of state capitalism except in that portion of the globe where productive forces were ripe enough for the immediate transition to socialism. State capitalist theory has proven itself to have no real understanding of the dynamics of international class struggle. On each occasion the state capitalists have done little more than retail the options and moods of western radicalism.

It has led the SWP to adopt reactionary positions on major struggles in the post-war world. SWP members can either follow their leadership and prepare to repeat the old mistakes again, or they can take stock of the compromised history of state capitalism and look once again to the tradition embodied in Trotsky’s Fourth International.

 


Bosnia - which side are you on?

 

The SWP has consistently refused to support the right of multi-ethnic Bosnia to defend itself against ethnic cleansing. This article, from 1993, debunks Socialist Worker’s lame excuses.

September 1993 saw the imperialists attempt to put the nishing touches to an agreement which ensures the destruction of the state of Bosnia-Hercegovina. In the same month Socialist Review, the journal of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), led with an article attacking those on the left who called for an end to the arms blockade, and for the arming of the Bosnian Muslims in order that they could defend themselves and their state.

The SWP refuses to take sides in the war in former Yugoslavia. It has constantly argued that revolutionaries should give no support to the “nationalist demagogues who have plunged the ex-Yugoslavia into civil war”.

This “plague on all your houses” position sounds very revolutionary, until we look at the concrete and complex reality of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Then it reveals itself to be not a revolutionary position but a pacist one.

The war in the former Yugoslavia has gone through many turns and stages. The current phase, which began in October 1992, has been dominated by a concerted Serbian and Croatian offensive to carve up Bosnia between them.

Blockade

The results are indisputable. Over a million Bosnian Muslims have been driven from their homes as a result of a massive programme of ethnic cleansing by both Croat and Serb forces. The Muslims, who made up 44% of a population that included 32% Serbs and 17% Croats, have been driven into a tiny area of the country, less than 20% of the territory. Under the latest plan the Serbs control 52% of the territory.

The imperialists and the UN troops on the ground have overseen this bloody war. They have imposed an arms blockade which in reality has only had an impact on the Bosnian Muslims. The Serbs have their own arms industry, while the Croats have no problems receiving arms courtesy of their German backers.

Each defeat of the Bosnian Muslim forces has been followed by a new imperialist plan giving them an ever-dwindling piece of territory. The Vance-Owen plan offered them barely a third of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The latest proposal offers little more than a South African-style “homeland” with the Izetbegovic government desperately trying to win a narrow outlet to the sea.

These are the circumstances in which Socialist Review denounces those who want, as it puts it, to “reduce the civil wars in the ex-Yugoslavia to the suffering of the Muslims”. This, according to the article, is “single issue politics of the worst kind”. Those who call for the arming of the Muslims, for ending the arms blockade, are involved in an “act of conscience salving”.

This is the position that led the SWP to have nothing to do with the Workers’ Aid to Bosnia Campaign. Fortunately the average British worker has a better sense of internationalist solidarity than this supposed “vanguard” party. Despite the very small forces involved, large numbers of trade union organisations rallied to this campaign.

Does supporting the Bosnian government and its army in the current phase of the war mean we are uncritical supporters of its government? Absolutely not. Workers have no interest in supporting the nationalist policies of Izetbegovic, nor of forcing Croats or Serbs into a Muslim-dominated state. We ght for a workers’ republic in Bosnia with autonomy for minority groups and a Socialist Federation in the Balkans.

But by showing that revolutionaries and the workers’ movement are willing to support a just struggle for national rights, and even survival, by ghting alongside and aiding this struggle, socialists can undermine the hold of the nationalists.

By refusing to support this struggle, the SWP’s policy plays into the hands of the extreme nationalists and reactionaries. They can say to workers and small farmers: “Look who the only people actively supporting us are : the Iranian government, the Afghan Islamic fundamentalists etc. They are your real allies”.

Does it mean we have to cover up for the actions of the Bosnian army that also have committed atrocities and “ethnic cleansing” in the war, although on nothing like the scale of the Serbs or Croats? No, we condemn them when they occur. We call for the disbandment of the Musulmanskaya Brigada—the main, overtly Muslim nationalist unit in which many of the Arab fundamentalists serve—and the disciplining and reorganisation of any unit found to be involved in ethnic cleansing.

But Socialist Worker goes out of its way to equate the two sides with such headlines as “Terror used on both sides” (SW 19.6.93), as though this justies a position of neutrality in the war. Does Socialist Worker think that the NLF in Vietnam never committed atrocities? The FLN in Algeria? The ANC in South Africa? Marxists decide to support a struggle on the basis of whether it is a just one or not, not on the basis of the methods used in it.

The SWP has correctly argued against imperialist and UN intervention, rightly arguing that any such intervention can only be for the benet of the imperialists. They have argued that any bombing of the Serbs will drive the Serbian masses further into the arms of the nationalists, just as the economic blockade has. Yet at the same time the SWP opposes the lifting of one key element of the economic blockade: the arms embargo. It is this embargo that has prevented the Bosnian Muslims from defending themselves. It is an embargo imposed by the imperialists—a form of imperialist intervention just as surely as an embargo of food or fuel.

The SWP strategy for breaking the masses from the nationalist leaders in Serbia and Croatia is as deeply awed as its strategy in Bosnia. All hopes for change are pinned on a spontaneous “popular revolt” against nationalist “warlord leaders” resulting from the growing war weariness.

Of course it is greatly to be hoped that such a movement develops. But to ensure its success, to prevent it leading to a reactionary outcome or even fascism, a party of Serbian workers who are free from national chauvinism has to be built. In concrete terms this means supporting the right of Bosnia to defend itself against a predatory war of conquest and genocide being pursued by the Serbian rulers.

The perspective of a spontaneous revolt conveniently absolves the SWP from taking sides in various phases of the war. So keen are they to bolster their position that they have consistently exaggerated and painted up in progressive colours all oppositional movements.

First they looked to the pacists, who organise amongst the students and intellectuals. Most of these groups are now small and isolated. Many of them wanted UN intervention to ensure peace—precisely what the SWP argues against.

In August Socialist Worker declared that the real hope for peace lay in the outbreak of a strike wave in Serbia, including a one day general strike. These were strikes for better pay to compensate for hyper-ination and back pay owed. Of course such strikes resulting from the economic crisis caused by the war and blockade are vitally important. But they do not necessarily take an anti-war or anti-nationalist direction. Workers in Serbia can only be broken from the nationalists if they are won to an internationalist position. For this they need a party which campaigns not only for the defeat of Milosevic and his army but clearly stands for the rights of the Bosnian Muslims and victory in their struggle.

In fact the mass “oppositions” to Serbian leader Milosovic are just as nationalist or further to the right. The “democratic” opposition of Draskovic stands for a Greater Serbia but opposes the present war, while the Serbian Radical Party is both powerful and openly fascist. Workers’ discontent could just as easily be funnelled in these directions as any progressive one.

Tactics

The latest “most hopeful sign yet” discovered by Socialist Worker (25.9.93) was the revolt by Bosnian-Serb soldiers in Banja Luka. Crack troops and tanks seized the town and demanded measures be taken against war proteers mainly ensconced in the local government.

Socialist Worker seems to nd it particularly hopeful that these were “the largest and toughest outt in the Bosnian Serb army”. Indeed they are. They are also responsible for many incidents of ethnic cleansing against Bosnian Muslims. These are precisely the units that are most opposed to any concessions on territory they have seized and “cleansed”.

That is not to say that all these troops can be written off. But their current revolt would have to be entirely transformed if it were to become a vehicle for a progressive solution to the war.

The situation in the former Yugoslavia has brought into focus all the weaknesses in the SWPs politics. In the face of a bloody civil war it is politically disarmed. It can only rail against the nationalists, while having no tactics that relate to workers in Bosnia who are ghting a just war of defence but are under nationalist inuence.

It opposes UN intervention, but opposes the lifting of the arms embargo—a key imperialist policy that has disarmed one side in the conict. It desperately hopes that somehow the economic struggle will reassert itself and solve all problems. Rather than worry its head about developing strategy and tactics that can take the workers forward, it relies as ever on the spontaneous explosion to sweep away the nationalism that infects the workers.

SWP members have the chance at their forthcoming conference to change this rotten position. They should take it.

 


Building the Party - A parody of Leninism

 

One stick that SWP members repeatedly beat the rest of the left with is that they alone are "building the party". Every week in Socialist Worker a column records the week’s new recruits and urges more to join the revolutionary party.

Many books from the SWP stable - Volume One of Cliff’s Lenin and Chris Harman’s The Lost Revolution to name but two - have as their theme the centrality of the party for the making of the revolution. Despite this breastbeating and dogged repetition of truisms, the IS/SWP have never understood the real nature of a revolutionary party on the Leninist model, let alone come close to building one.

In the days before Tony Cliff became a “Leninist” he openly espoused a Luxemburgist model of the revolutionary party. That is, he argued for a non-cadre, non-vanguard party, a party of the whole working class, organised on a federalist - as opposed to democratic centralist - basis. The first edition of his, subsequently doctored, pamphlet on Luxemburg stated:

"For Marxists, in the advanced industrial countries, Lenin’s original position can much less serve as a guide than Rosa Luxemburg's, not withstanding her overstatement on the question of spontaneity." (1959 edition Rosa Luxemburg).

Even after his supposed conversion to Leninism in 1968-69, Cliff’s attachment to spontaneist notions of the party persisted as, for example, when he argued that Luxemburg’s position was superior to Lenin’s 1902-04 position "which was copied and given an added bureaucratic twist by Stalinists the world over". (1969 edition of Rosa Luxemburg). In plain language Cliff is attributing the monoliths created by Stalinism to the model developed by the early Bolshevik Party.

The shift to a “Leninist” model of organisation by the Cliff group came in 1968-69. Cliff justified his previous federalist position on the grounds that the IS had been a propaganda group and "all branches were like the beads on a string". (Neither Washington nor Moscow, Cliff, p.215). However, the shift to more agitational activity, he argued, necessitated a shift to democratic centralism.

The second justification for the shift was the defeat of the French general strike in May 1968. Cliff had empirically registered that a spontaneous mass strike (the biggest ever in Europe) had not produced the revolution. The reason had been the absence of a combat, that is, a “Leninist” party.

Both pretexts were based on an empirical method. Neither accounted for the actual shift in position in the Luxemburg pamphlet. The doctoring of the text (Cliff’s right) was not in any way acknowledged or accounted for (Cliff’s deceitfulness). As such the new turn to"the party" was not the result of a real understanding of the essence of the Leninist model. It was based on copying - and distorting - the organisational form of that model.

Since their turn to “Leninism” the SWP tradition has developed a standard explanation of the need for a party. For example, Cliff wrote, in "Lenin and the Revolutionary Party":

"For the achievement of a socialist revolution a revolutionary party is needed because of the uneven levels of culture and consciousness in different groups of workers. If the working class were ideologically homogeneous there would be no need for leadership." (IS 58, p10)

This leaves out of account the question of political consciousness, the ideas about society, the state and so on which are held by the workers. If the class were ideologically homogeneous on the basis of wrong ideas, for example reformism, nationalism or even racism, there would obviously still be a need for communists to fight for the leadership of the class.

This would have to be done in such a way as to break workers from these ideas and win them to revolutionary communism. The crucial question is whether the working class can develop a revolutionary consciousness out of its own struggles. Cliff argues that it can; the problem is that different workers reach such consciousness at different times.

In What is to be done? Lenin argued most forcibly that the spontaneous ideology of the working class was trade unionism and that this meant "enslavement by the bourgeoisie". The role of the party, argued Lenin, was to bring scientific socialism into the working class.

Of course, even in the supposedly one-sided What is to be done? Lenin recognised that the workers did spontaneously gravitate towards socialism, but the tasks of the party were to conquer and subordinate this spontaneity in order to transform it into revolutionary consciousness.

The SWP have made much of Lenin’s later comment that What is to be done? suffered from being a one-sided polemic against economism. Molyneux, following Cliff, argues that:

"If we accept Lenin’s formulation that revolutionary consciousness has to be brought into the working class then precious little is left of Marx’s fundamental dictum that 'the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class itself'. On the contrary, the role of the working class would be a strictly subordinate one." (Marxism and the Party, p48)

This argument fails to understand either Lenin’s original argumentation or the one-sidedness that Lenin later identified.

What Molyneux wants is not to correct a certain polemical one-sidedness but to deny any validity in Lenin’s position. Molyneux believes that the spontaneous struggle can achieve revolutionary socialist consciousness:

"Indeed it was from the insurgent workers of Paris that Marx learned that the working class cannot simply take over the existing state machine but must smash it." (ibid, p50)

In addition he cites the Chartists, the Russian workers of 1905 and similar examples of major working class political struggles to “prove” his point. Molyneux is merely parroting Cliff when he argues this. Indeed Cliff argues that Lenin reversed his 1902 position in 1905:

"Lenin had to protect his followers from allegiance to What is to be done? His formulation there of the relationship between spontaneity and organisation still bedevils the movement. Yet in 1905 he clearly reversed his position: 'The working class is instinctively, spontaneously social-democratic . . .'" (IS Journal May 1973 - the break in the quota is Cliff's)

Here Cliff is not simply purblind - he is wilfully twisting Lenin’s actual position. The quotation above is much fuller and Lenin is more careful than Cliff suggests. Lenin points to the fact that in the 1905 upheavals the workers were fighting "in a purely Social Democratic spirit" because:

"The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic, and more than ten years of work put in by Social Democracy has done a great deal to transform this spontaneity into consciousness." (Lenin, "The Reorganisation of the Party", Collected Works vol 10, p32)

Far from being a change of position, this was entirely consistent with Lenin’s 1902 view that:

"It is often said that the working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the causes of the misery of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory and for this reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily, provided however this theory does not itself yield to spontaneity, provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself." (What is to be done?)

The SWP’s failure to understand the relationship between spontaneity and consciousness lies at the root of their false notion of the party. Take the examples, cited by Molyneux, of the Chartists, the Communards and the workers in the Soviets. These workers did not raise themselves to the level of revolutionary communist consciousness.

Certainly it was the Commune which provided Marx with the historical experience from which he - the revolutionary communist--generalised the theory of the state. That generalisation, which is essential for the development of a revolutionary strategy, was not made by the Communards, who were not led by communists.

Similarly the first Soviets, in 1905, did not raise the call for armed insurrection against Tsarism. The Bolsheviks did, and in Moscow they won workers to that position. Equally, it was the experience of 1905 which, much later, was generalised into a revolutionary strategy, "All power to the Soviets!", by Lenin.

Their inability to understand the primary role of the party as the ideological vanguard of the class means that for the SWP the party plays a primarily organisational role. It simply links up existing struggles. Molyneux argues:

"The fact of workers achieving socialist consciousness spontaneously does not entail a return to the social-democratic gradualist view [of the party] for this consciousness does not develop gradually, accumulating steadily and inevitably. So the consciousness of the advanced socialist workers must be organised and centralised to increase to the maximum its influence within the ideologically heterogeneous class as a whole." (Marxism and the Party, p50)

To argue against this idea is not, of course, to deny that the party does have a very important organisational role to play. However, if the ideological role, the role of political leadership, is ignored, then the precise nature of the organisational one is equally ignored. In order to fight effectively against capitalism and the capitalist state, particular forms of organisation of the working class are needed. What those forms are, for example, revolutionary trade unions, soviets, militias, etc, can be learnt from past and present struggles. But that is no guarantee that the working class will adopt them spontaneously or that it will adopt them in time.

The lessons of past battles have to be brought into today’s struggle because they have either been forgotten by today’s generation or have never been learned. If the party does not argue for the correct forms of organisation and methods of struggle (tactics) and against insufficient or wrong ideas then those wrong ideas that is, bourgeois ideas, will dominate.

The direct consequence of viewing the party merely as the “generaliser”, the weapon simply for the linking up of struggles, is a rejection of the idea of a cadre party. Consonant with his early positions on Luxemburg, Cliff has always (falsely) counterposed the broad mass party to the supposedly elitist vanguard party. For the IS/SWP, therefore, party building means opening the door to the masses on a minimal basis.

Ian Birchall defended this line in his history of the party in the following terms:

"As had always been the practice in IS, the aim was to win recruits to the organisation on the basis of a minimum agreement on activity and leave the question of education and the wider aspects of IS politics to be developed in the process of work inside the organisation." ("Building the Smallest Mass Party in the World" 1951-1979)

He goes on to admit that many recruits were soon lost - he does not explain why - but insists:

"But there was no way this could be forecast in advance, no magic mark engraved on the foreheads of potential recruits."

This is disgraceful. It is a recipe for deceiving recruits, diluting the political level of the organisation, leaving new recruits passive and politically untrained, and demoralising members.

It deceives people by recruiting them on minimal grounds rather than on the real politics of the organisation. It dilutes the organisation by bringing in members who are not aware of the basis or principles of Marxism, leaving them prey to demagogues, personal prejudices and manipulation by those who are "in the know". It demoralises members because they have not been prepared for the real political tasks facing Marxists, not trained to swim against the stream. It is a recipe for a pliant membership accustomed to accepting the line from above rather than taking part in the internal discussion, debate and criticism that is the lifeblood of a genuine democratic centralist party.

Precisely because a Leninist party aims to lead, any group trying to build such a party must be selective in its recruitment. It has to select, train and recruit people who can stay the course, people who in their fields of work have the ability to lead others. In other words, before it can become a mass party, and in order to become a mass party, the party has to be a cadre party.

Cliff justifies the rejection of a cadre party on the grounds that it is inherently substitutionist. His essay "Trotsky on substitutionism", written in 1960 and republished as recently as 1982, expresses this libertarian view of the party. He argues that there was a causal relationship between the Bolshevik organisation and counter-revolutionary Stalinism:

"However, if the state built by the Bolshevik Party reflected, not only the will of the party but of the total social reality in which the Bolsheviks found themselves, one should not draw the conclusion that there was no causal connection at all between Bolshevik centralism based on hierarchy of professional revolutionaries and the Stalinism of the future." (Trotsky on Substitutionism)

He quotes Trotsky’s Menshevik position against Lenin approvingly. Trotsky wrote:

"The organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole, then the central committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the 'dictator' substitutes himself for the central committee." Cliff comments:

"In Trotsky’s words about the danger of 'substitutionism' inherent in Lenin’s conception of the party organisation and his plea against uniformity, one can see his prophetic genius, his capacity to look ahead, to bring into a unified system every facet of life."

The problem of substitutionism

For Cliff, the Leninist conception of the democratic centralist party is inherently substitutionist. By saying this he is giving support to every anti-communist philistine who argues that Stalin simply took over and continued the work of the party of Lenin!

It is quite clear that, for Cliff, a Leninist party without a Lenin to run it is a dangerous monolith. Why else praise Trotsky’s "prophetic genius" instead of making clear Trotsky’s gross misconception. It was not the cadre organisation that was substitutionist, but the political programme of the Stalinists after Lenin’s death.

They substituted reliance on the Kuomintang and British TUC officials for the building of a revolutionary party and the political independence of the working class. The reason Cliff ignores this real substitutionism is because for him the question of leadership in a programmatic sense is irrelevant.

Ironically, Cliff’s distortion of the Leninist party leads to substitutionism in the SWP. Real democratic centralism requires a real internal party life, an educated and involved membership and an accountable leadership. None of these things exist in the SWP. The leadership’s centrism precludes democratic centralism.

The established Cliffite leadership cannot afford to risk training a membership that could hold them to account. The history of expulsions and purges are eloquent testimonies of this. The result is a high turn-over of members, with the recruits from one period being sacrificed or demoralised during the next. This is a parody of democratic centralism. It substitutes the rule of the faction in the central committee for the real democratic centralist Leninist model.

This has been the situation in the SWP for many years. Each successive “turn” is accompanied by a significant loss of members who were recruited mainly, if not solely, on the practice of the preceding turn. Such comrades are accused of not being able to get out of the rut of routinism, of being conservative and too caught up in their own areas of work to be able to see the need for the party to reorientate.

In an immediate sense this may often be true but if this is the case then the fault lies primarily with the party leadership that allowed them to become routinist, single issue campaigners, not with the comrades themselves. Cliff’s justification for this approach is based on the theory that the party is necessarily built by the leadership "bending the stick" in different directions as circumstances change.

Once more we find the quote-doctor Cliff enlisting Lenin as a supporter of party building via "bending the stick". Cliff argues:

"The readiness to bend the stick far in one direction and then to reverse and bend it far in the opposite direction, a characteristic he had throughout his life, took clear form already at this early stage of his development as a revolutionary leader."

And later on:

"He always makes clear the task of the day, repeating a thousand times what is needed, using the heaviest, thickest strokes to describe the tasks. Tomorrow, Lenin will recapture the balance, will unbend the stick and then bend it in another direction." ("From Marxist Circle to Agitation", IS Journal 52, p22)

This picture of Lenin as the sole arbiter of the political practice of the Bolsheviks, the genius who twists and turns his organisation as he thinks fit, again leaves out of account the political strategy that guided Lenin. It is obvious that any leader needs to be able to shift the emphasis and the focus of work. This is true of the Pope, Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock. Lenin was able to do this extremely well and, it could be said, this made him a great leader, but it was not this that made him a great revolutionary leader.

It was his ability to fight for the communist programme, stemming from his role as a part of a highly developed and trained cadre party, in all sorts of very different circumstances that made him this. In fact his changes of strategy, that is, of programme, were quite rare: the realisation of the bankruptcy of the Second International and the need to call for a Third, the de facto jettisoning of the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry" in favour of the strategy of permanent revolution after April 1917, for example.

In short, Cliff believes that a Leninist party is only healthy if there is a Lenin in charge. If there is, then the party leader or leadership, operates by being able to swing from one direction to another at will. As Rosa Luxemburg put it (in another context) the membership develop the passive virtue of obedience.

Democratic centralism in the SWP

Naturally, the leadership of the SWP has to pay lip service to the norms of democratic centralism. Chris Harman’s essay, "Party and Class", is a case in point. The fact that he can give an account of democratic centralism that is formally correct on many points only makes the organisation’s practical trampling underfoot of these norms all the more shameful.

In talking about the concept of discipline, for example, Harman writes:

"Discipline for Lenin does not mean hiding differences that exist within the party but rather exposing them to the full light of day so as to argue them out." ()

However for such conscious discipline to exist, which means every comrade being convinced, through argument and debate, of the line of the organisation, there must exist a machinery within the organisation for conducting that argument and debate.

Yet the SWP does not have a regular internal bulletin in which the membership can air differences and expose them to the full light of day. It has three or four IBs in the weeks before a conference. Nor does the SWP accept the right of members who disagree with the line, and therefore, want to argue against it, to organise themselves as factions.

Such debate is essential and cannot be restricted, as in the SWP, to a "pre-conference period". Political arguments do not conform to calendars, they are dictated by the course of events. By allowing only limited arguments against its chosen policy the leadership of the SWP ensures that it can prepare the membership to accept its position long in advance of any counter-argument. As a result the inner leadership acts, in fact, as a permanent faction. Not surprisingly it becomes ever more isolated from the pressure of the rank and file, and is increasingly restricted to the members of the apparatus of the organisation.

In every phase of its existence, the SWP Cliffites have got it wrong on the question of the party. On its role in the working class, its organisational principles and the criteria for membership, the SWP make fundamental mistakes and revisions. This why we attack them.

To the right of the SWP, Socialist Organiser (Now the AWL) and Socialist Outlook criticise them for raising the call to build a revolutionary alternative to Labour. That is not our criticism. We are 100% for the building of a revolutionary party as an alternative to Labour.

What we insist is that the SWP have not done that and, crucially, cannot do it. Workers Power can. Join us and help to build it.

 


What is to be done? - The question economism can’t answer

 

Many members of the Socialist Workers Party have heard their organisation accused of “economism”. But what does it mean exactly? In this article from 1990 Clare Heath looks at the origin of this term in Lenin’s polemics at the turn of the century and nds that it is an accurate label for the SWP’s approach to struggles as diverse as the strike against Heath’s Tory government in the 1970s to the Poll Tax battle of the late 1980s.

Most of the SWP’s left wing critics level the charge of economism at them. But the failure of these self same critics to orient themselves in the largest mass workers’ organisations—the trade unions—has discredited this correct charge. When the student vanguardists, the feminists and the Trotskyist-Bennites demonstrate, in words and deeds, their aversion for the “backward, white male skilled working class” they completely undermine their criticism of the SWP.

Indeed their “politics” are simply the obverse side of the coin of the SWP. In different ways both represent a “slavish bowing to spontaneity”. Lenin’s charge against the economist trend in the Russian Social Democracy.

The SWP theoreticians have a holy terror of Lenin’s pamphlet What Is To Be Done?. In the SWP “Economism” is caricatured as “opposition to building a revolutionary party” or the ignoring of political questions.

Since the SWP is not guilty of either of these they insist they cannot be accused of economism. Cliff attempts to discredit What Is To Be Done? by claiming that Lenin “overemphasised the difference between spontaneity and consciousness”, that Lenin’s supposed “complete separation of spontaneity and consciousness is mechanical and non-dialectical” and that Lenin later admitted this to be the case.

Cliff wishes to hold fast to the proposition that “an economic demand, if it is sectional, is dened as ‘economic’ in Marx’s terms. But if the same demand is made of the state, it is political”. Cliff asserts the internal evolutionary logic of the economic struggle:

“In many cases economic (sectional) struggles do not give rise to political (class wide) struggles, but there is no Chinese wall between the two, and many economic struggles do spill over into political ones.” (Tony Cliff, Lenin vol 1, p80-82)

Duncan Hallas, writing in 1973 explains this with respect to the events of 1972:

“Thus the builders’ strike was an economic movement: the strike to free the Pentonville Five, a political movement, a successful non-sectional struggle to coerce the ruling class. But the origin of the Pentonville struggle was the Midland Cold Store dispute; a very economic, very sectional dispute—an attempt to protect the jobs of registered dockers against cheaper labour. The economic struggle led, in this case, to a political struggle and generally speaking this is usually how political, class wide actions—other than purely electoral ones—develop.” (International Socialism, No 56, rst series)

From this supposed law of development Hallas asks and answers the question:

“How do revolutionary socialists get into positions, gain the authority, that commands a hearing? By serious, active and persistent struggle on these issues that actually concern their fellow workers, maintained consistently over time. And these issues will be economic issues, sectional issues, issues of conditions, bonuses, gradings, wage rates and, at one remove, union politics.”

For Hallas this means concentrating on giving a “better, more successful, lead on the concrete day to day, bread and butter issues, than their non-revolutionary fellows.” There is no fear that this will make revolutionaries indistinguishable from pure and simple trade union militants because of an inherent logic propelling economic struggles into political ones; a logic provided by government intervention into the economic sphere (via “incomes policy”, police on the picket line, anti-union laws etc, etc). Thus Hallas concludes:

“This political struggle can be carried through only on the basis, in the rst place, of economic struggles, of sectional struggles. No magic general slogans can replace clear, realistic and concrete leadership in these sectional struggles. The central slogans have to arise from these and generalise them.”

Now economism is not the “absence of politics”. Lenin makes this clear in What Is To Be Done? The economist “. . . does not altogether repudiate the political struggle.” Lenin cites economist writings that talk about “combating the government”. Lenin however points out that the economist believes that “politics always obediently follows economics”. He continues:

“If by politics is meant Social Democratic politics [i.e. socialist or communist politics] then the theses of [the economists] are utterly incorrect. The economic struggle of the workers is very often connected with bourgeois politics, clerical politics etc. [The economists] theses are correct, if by politics is meant trade union politics, viz the common striving of all workers to secure from the government measures for alleviating the distress to which their conditions give rise, but which do not abolish that condition, i.e. which do not remove the subjugation of labour to capital.”

Lenin concludes:

“There is politics and and politics. Thus we see that [the economists’ position] does not so much deny the political struggle as it bows to its spontaneity, to its unconsciousness. While fully recognising the political struggle, which arises spontaneously from the working class movement itself, it absolutely refuses independently to work out a specifically Social Democratic politics . . .”

Spontaneity and consciousness

Lenin notes the economists’ charges against the Iskra tendency of “setting up their programme against the movement.” Against this he replies that it is the task of Marxists to:

“. . . raise the (spontaneous) movement to the level of ‘its programme’. Surely it is not its function to drag at the tail of the movement.”

Lenin in no way denies that the working class’ “spontaneity”—i.e. the militancy that grows out of the very conditions and struggles that arise from its exploited position under capitalism—develops class consciousness. Nor does he deny that the economic struggle has a “spontaneous” tendency towards politics. What he does say in the famous and wilfully misunderstood quotation is that:

“Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers.” (our emphasis)

This quotation, along with Lenin’s observation that “there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement”, draws attention to the fact that the creation of a workers’ movement with socialist consciousness, and a socialist programme is a conscious, active task, not a “spontaneous” one.

The raising of spontaneous class struggle, whether “economic” or “political”, into socialist consciousness is an indispensable task and one which only a vanguard party can undertake.

None of this is in contradiction with a correct appreciation of the revolutionary creativity of the masses. But if workers spontaneously engage in epic class struggles, spontaneously create soviets and spontaneously erupt into insurrection they also—and necessarily for longer periods—spontaneously succumb to bourgeois ideology. Lenin’s attack is on those who tail the economic struggle and who, in the name of “spontaneity”, denigrate socialist class consciousness. He attacks those who will not develop a specifically socialist programme, strategy and tactics and will not struggle to win the “mass movement” to it, to raise the struggle from the “day-to-day bread and butter issues” (Hallas).

Cliff likes to pretend that Lenin left all the immature nonsense of What Is To Be Done? behind once he had seen the mass movement of 1905. These words from that year refute him:

“We cannot be be content to have our tactical slogans limp behind events and to their being adapted to events after their occurrence. We must have slogans that lead us forward, light up the path before us, and raise us above the immediate tasks of the movement. To wage a consistent and sustained struggle the party of the proletariat cannot determine its tactics from occasion to occasion. In its tactical decisions it must combine delity to the principles of Marxism with due regard for the progressive tasks of the proletariat.” (“Revolution teaches”, 1905)

The SWP’s objection to What Is To Be Done? is, in essence, their objection to Leninism itself. Once (before 1968) this was overt and consistent. The IS objected to the democratic centralist party structure which was the organised expression of the Leninist method of theoretical, political and economic struggle. Yet Cliff’s later acceptance of the formalities and terminology of Leninism hides a deep hostility to its programme and method.

Of a piece with this is the SWP’s rejection of Trotsky’s and the Communist International’s utilisation of transitional demands. Thus Duncan Hallas objects to the Transitional Programme. He quotes Trotsky’s famous statement that:

“It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to nd the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one nal conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

And then he goes on with condescending irony:

“Whether or not it is possible to nd slogans or ‘demands’ that meet these exacting specications depends, very obviously on circumstances. If at a given time ‘today’s consciousness of wide layers’ is decidedly non-revolutionary, then it will not be transformed by slogans. Changes in actual conditions are needed. The problem at each stage is to nd and advance those slogans which not only strike a chord in at least some sections of the class (ideally of course, the whole of it) but which are also capable of leading to working class actions. Often they will not be transitional in terms of Trotsky’s very restricted denition:

“Of course Trotsky cannot be held responsible for the tendency of most of his followers to fetishize the notion of transitional demands, and even the specic demands of the 1938 programme—most obviously the ‘sliding scale of wages’. The emphasis he gave to this matter was, however, excessive and encouraged the belief that ‘demands’ have some value independently of revolutionary organisation of the working class.” (Trotsky’s Marxism, p104)

Behind the SWP’s hostility to “slogans and demands”, especially transitional ones, lies their total inability to see beyond the horizon of the immediate economic or trade union political struggles. Thus they present themselves as specialist advisers on action (invariably militant trade union tactics), on generalisation, (solidarity action between sectional struggles up to, but no further than “mass strike action”) and on organisation (where they advocate joining the party to link together the rank and le militants.)

Agitation and propaganda

Traditionally the SWP therefore attempts to avoid political issues that are not immediately posed in working class economic struggle. Either they try to ignore questions such as Ireland, women and race altogether, or if that will not work then they trim their positions to keep them in line with prevalent consciousness.

They did this on Ireland for example, when they refused to call for the withdrawal of British troops when Labour originally sent them in. They denounced the 1972 Aldershot bombings as “individual terrorism” despite their formal position of unconditional but critical support for the IRA. The alternative to this in the SWP leaders’ book is to set up a “separate” campaign or paper on the issue to keep in with those concerned about. That is what happened with Women’s Voice and the Anti-Nazi League, for example.

The agitation of the SWP consists of “calls to action” to continue and step up existing struggles with realistic, i.e. immediately realisable, goals. Alongside this the SWP maintains a separate diet of propaganda aimed at exposing the evils of capitalism and presenting necessarily abstract arguments for socialism and workers’ control.

Agitation and propaganda occupy the distinct and separate terrains of “action now” and passive education for the “Great day a’commin” precisely because the SWP rejects the method and tradition represented by the Transitional Programme. It has no programme to take the working class from its present struggles to the creation of workers’ power. They once produced a draft programme but it never got beyond the internal bulletin.

In reality their programme is split into a maximum/minimum one, as much as that of the traditional social democracy. There is only one major difference; the Social Democratic minimum programme glorifies the terrain of electoral politics and leaves economic struggle as the exclusive business of the unions.

The SWP does the exact reverse. The SWP loyalists will object that they stress the “self-activity”, the direct action, the do-it-yourself approach. This is true but when sectional trade union militancy, or even mass direct action for trade union political ends, develops to the fullest extent it indeed poses questions such as the political general strike, who rules in society, and how to really deprive the bosses of political and economic power.

Only the socialist programme contains the answer to these questions. This answer is not an abstract one of “socialism”, but a series of demands, methods of organisation, and goals of struggle, which go further than the existing everyday demands and slogans of the movement. Communist propaganda has to prepare the ground for the ght for these demands and slogans. If these answers are not given, if these slogans are not raised, if a new leadership does not emerge on the basis of a strategy and tactics which are a leap forward for the class, then bourgeois answers will be given by the existing union and Labour leaders.

That this is the case is shown by the fact that the “spontaneous” continuation of the militant struggles of the early 1970s was the Labour Government of 1974. In this period of militant trade union struggles, both political and economic, the International Socialists (IS) were unable and unwilling to offer an independent action programme which led from these remarkable struggles (the Kill the Bill strikes and demonstrations, the builders’, postal workers’, and two miners’ strikes and the mass political strike over the Pentonville jailings) to the question of working class power. Instead they tailed every one of these struggles claiming each would “bring down the Tories”.

Thus after the miners’ stirring victory over the Tories in early 1972, after mass pickets and widespread solidarity action had demonstrated a mass class hostility to the Tories, the IS were still trying to keep the struggle at its existing economic level and even at its existing sectional level. True they “lent the struggle itself a political character”. They said that the struggle had a political character, but offered no more this that comforting description.

Rejection of transitional demands

A typical front page of Socialist Worker in the 1972 miners’ strike—under the bold headline “Demand the TUC calls a general strike”—said:

“If the miners do not win their full claim, demand that the TUC calls a one day general strike of all affiliated unions against the Tory lockout.” (Socialist Worker No 259, 19.2.72)

When, after the 1972 victory, the miners were in the ring line again the SWP was still tailing, and indeed advocating tailism for most of the working class:

“The powerful battalions of the trade unions can organise to smash Phase Three. They can blast a hole through which every other section can march. It is a defeat which this Tory government of riches for the few and misery for the many could not survive.”

During the Pentonville jailings in mid-1972 the IS did not manage to call for a general strike until after the TUC had threatened to call one. And even then, true to form they avoided like the plague the “political” and “too advanced” slogan of a general strike to smash the Industrial Relations Act.

Faced with rampant double gure ination in this period Socialist Worker could not get beyond “Pay: use your muscle for more!”. It again renounced, cursing with bell, book and candle, the sliding scale of wages because such a slogan, if granted (a big if indeed!), might put a stop to the wages’ struggle.

In fact if the working class, or even substantial sections, took up and fought for this generalised, class wide slogan on wages, it would have been a clearly political slogan. Even if—in exceptional circumstances—it had been conceded it would have been a ceaseless bone of contention with a government and an employing class determined to lower wages and bring down ination at the workers’ expense.

Forms of the sliding scale have been fought for, won and fought over in massive struggles in Italy, Belgium and the USA. Even Heath’s indexation fraud linked to the last phase of his incomes policy, and preserved by Labour, when triggered by ination rates far in excess of the threshold Heath had thought safe, led to a rash of strikes by poorly organised, often women, workers. Here again the actual spontaneity of the workers proved to be more advanced than the tailism of the IS.

Above all what the Clifte economist schema fails to realise is that the vacuum it leaves, where there should be the ght for a communist action programme—including as well as transitional demands, immediate economic and political (democratic) ones—is lled in life by reformism. Thus the SWP has no alternative, even at the pinnacle of struggle, except to grind its teeth and “Vote Labour with no illusions”.

Economism is helpless when faced with bourgeois politics in the working class, which in Britain takes the form of Labourism. The SWP hates it, curses it, wishes it dead and develops theories to prove that it is. Yet each time the SWP thinks that the Hercules of working class self-activity has hurled it to the ground (the early 1970s) it rises up again with renewed force, even temporarily subduing the economic struggle.

The SWP cannot comprehend that this is because political reformism is the true born son of the trade union struggle. It renews its strength constantly from it. The miners’ militancy put Wilson and Benn into ofce in 1974.They then turned on the miners and did all they could to ensure that never again would they nd themselves returned to ofce in such an extra-parliamentary fashion.

But it is also true that illusions in Labour and electoralism are not just a product of trade union victories. It also occurs as a result of serious defeats. Witness the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. The Labour Party leadership in its majority ran away for the duration of the dispute. They were embarrassed by it; they worked behind the scenes to get it called off.

But once the miners were defeated then the vanguard gradually became infected with “new realism” and disillusion set in about the possibilities of victories against the Tories on the industrial/trade union front of the class war. In turn, working for a Labour victory, even with much reduced expectations in what it will do in ofce, became the order of the day. It was, and is more and more, accepted that only a Labour victory at elections will stand a chance of unseating Thatcher.

The Downturn

In order to justify their economism the SWP have constructed a theoretical and perspectival alibi; the downturn theory. A report from a party council in May 1990 summarised its essence. It stated that there was an upturn of struggle from 1970 to 1974:

“Then from 1975 onwards there was a downturn both in the industrial struggle and in left wing politics.”

To use one of Cliff’s favourite phrases, the downturn theory was “bloody rubbish”. It bore no relation to the reality of the 1970s and 1980s. How is it possible for people who have lived through those years to describe them as ones of “industrial downturn”?

We witnessed mass struggles under Labour (notably the strikes of car workers, lorry drivers and whole swathes of the public sector in 1978 and 1979). Under the Tories some of the most momentous strikes in British labour movement history took place. Engineers, steel workers, health workers, civil servants, miners, printers, seafarers and dockers have all done battle in this period. The miners’ one year struggle was a milestone of working class militancy.

Yet the SWP insist that because of the downturn these strikes were doomed to defeat. We are clear that the key battles did go down to defeat. This has produced periods in which militancy has been considerably subdued. But none of this was inevitable. The struggle itself threw up the possibility of victory. The reformist misleadership consistently squandered that opportunity. Correct and vigorous revolutionary politics, intersecting with the rank and le militancy of these disputes, could, on various occasions, have prevented defeat. Such is the dialectic of the living struggle. Its outcome is not predetermined by the arbitrary perspectival schema of a left group.

Faced with this reality the SWP stretched the downturn theory to the point of incredulity. During the miners’ strike Tony Cliff argued:

“The miners’ strike is an extreme example of what we in the Socialist Workers Party have called the ‘downturn’ in the movement.”

This absurd position was justified by the fact that the strike was a defensive one—it was defending jobs. Yet the occupation of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilding yard, which according to Cliff “radically turned the tide of the Tory attack” in 1971, was equally defensive. It came just after the defeat of two national groups of workers—power workers and postal workers. Why was this not an extreme example of a “downturn”?

Many strikes in many periods are defensive, yet they can rally the forces for a ghtback, turn the tide from retreat to advance, alter the balance of class forces. There was nothing inherent in the struggle of the UCS workers, led as they were by treacherous Stalinists who tried to turn it into a popular frontist jamboree, that made it an “upturn” strike. Nor was there anything inherent in the miners’ strike that meant defeat was the inevitable outcome.

What was a problem was that, as a result of their false perspective, the SWP argued vigorously that it was impossible to organise the rank and le in the disputes of the later 1970s and 1980s. They had decided to wind up every one of their rank and le organisations and vowed not to get involved in any other ones—such as the National Rank and File Miners’ Movement that emerged from the Great Strike. This meant that the misleadership of the reformists went unchallenged by an organisation that had, at least in the past, developed extensive roots inside the working class. The SWP in 1984 insisted that:

“What is clear is that the idea that you could create an alternative leadership in the downturn by revolutionaries coming together in some kind of rank and le organisation did not work.”

In place of this the SWP retreated in on itself. It structured its organisation around branch meetings with a high educational content to steel members against the corrosive effects of the downturn.All of this avoided the real problem of both the class struggle in the 1980s and the SWP’s politics within the rank and le organisations that they were winding up. The problem was not an absence of class struggle nor an unwillingness of rank and le workers—who were not yet revolutionaries—to organise themselves against the bureaucracy.The strikes of the 1980s demonstrate both the extent of rank and le militancy and the preparedness of workers to organise themselves. No, the real problem is that the crisis of leadership amongst rank and le workers required a revolutionary socialist answer translated into the aims and objectives of particular struggles.

In the steel strike this meant linking the pay ght to the issue of jobs and posing the need for workers’ control. The SWP would have none of this. After the steel strike there was a jobs massacre. In the miners’ strike it was necessary to consciously ght for the generalisation of the struggle and the organised defence of pickets to make them effective. Once again the SWP simply argued for a trade unionist response to a political attack. Faced with mass arrests and physical harassment, workers’ defence squads were not only needed, they began to be built by the most militant miners. We argued consistently for them to be built and extended. The SWP instead stressed:

“The way to stop arrests like this is to spread mass pickets as far as is possible and stretch the police operation.”

At Wapping in 1986 the same refusal by the SWP to advance demands and forms of organisation that could challenge the reformists was evident. Every time the problem is not the “upturn” or “downturn” context, it is the SWP’s deliberate refusal to advance a revolutionary solution to the struggle.

The claim that the downturn was also characterised by a lack of interest in left wing politics doesn’t bear a moment’s serious inspection. It merely reveals the economism of the SWP at its worst. In the early 1980s significant numbers of workers did move left. To be sure this movement was not towards the revolutionary left, but towards the Bennite left.

The Bennites were promising the working class that “never again” would “their” government act as Callaghan did in the 1970s. Benn was addressing massive meetings of workers all over the country. The movement in support of him became a powerful force inside the Labour Party, to the point of coming within a whisker of defeating Healy for the position of deputy leader in 1981.

This was of course a reformist movement. But it offered a very good opportunity for revolutionaries. The illusions of militant workers in left reformism could be put to a sharp test through a revolutionary intervention into the Bennite movement. A political struggle occupied the attention of thousands of worker militants. The SWP turned their back on it. They elevated their refusal to enter the Labour Party into a principle and effectively abstained from attempting to win workers away from left reformism.

They had dened politics narrowly as the politics of the workplace. When the centre of gravity shifted to the Labour Party they had nothing to say. And throughout the 1980s this abstentionism was their hallmark. They were afraid to compromise their “hard” politics for the simple reason that those politics were abstract and had no relevance to the central political struggle taking place.

Moreover, like all abstract and inoperable “hard” politics, they were no protection from the effects of opportunism. They were not operable against opportunism. Underlying the SWP’s abstentionism was their fear of losing people to the Bennite movement.

This did not stop them proposing unity with Militant, despite the fact that Militant espouse the peaceful road to socialism via the Labour Party. But then like so much of the SWP’s practice this manoeuvre, devoid of political principle, was merely a means of stemming their losses.

All of these deciencies remain in evidence despite the SWP’s new perspective of a new mood in the class struggle. One single example demonstrates this clearly—the Poll Tax. Here we have a generalised attack on the whole working class. It requires a general, political answer. The SWP themselves believe that it holds the possibility of being the means to drive Thatcher from ofce. Even leaving aside their previous hostility to non-payment—which kept them on the sidelines in the rst phase of the campaign—their answers are just as inadequate in this “new mood” struggle.Nowhere do we nd the SWP arguing now for strike action against the tax itself by the working class. Nowhere do we nd them advancing the call for a general strike. Nowhere do we nd them arguing for workers’ defence squads against the bailiffs.

Instead, despite the new situation, we get the same old solutions. All we need to do is wage a militant trade union struggle. The Poll Tax, Socialist Worker informs us, is not really anything different from other economic attacks:

“The government’s assault on our living standards through the Poll Tax, welfare cuts and rent and mortgage rise is no different from the employers’ attacks on wages, conditions and jobs.”

This downplays precisely the generalised and political attack represented by the Poll Tax. It is a crude attempt to reduce this attack to the level of a wage dispute with a single boss. Far from enabling us to make the links between workers in struggle over pay, or Poll Tax workers in struggle over pay and conditions, with the mass of non-payers and trade unionists in general, it makes the job much harder.

For if economic demands are met, even though only partially, a sectional struggle will end. If Poll Tax workers on strike are given better pay and conditions they will go back to work and the tax itself will still be in place. The same goes for sectional wages’ struggles by other workers.

The SWP are running away from the task of politically arming rank and le workers with the weapons—the demands, the action and the organisation, especially delegate based action councils in every area to link the struggles and ght the tax on a class wide basis—necessary to defeat the Tories. And this is excused by the SWP by their ravings about Thatcher ruining herself and getting into problems from which she cannot extricate herself from.

The Poll Tax positions of the SWP are merely the latest attempt to turn a political struggle into a bread and butter issue that the SWP feels at home with. But whether we are facing wage struggles, resistance to sackings or the imposition of a hated tax, political struggles do not begin only at the ultimate limit of the bread and butter struggle.

They begin with revolutionaries transforming those struggles—not by slogans alone—by winning leadership on the basis of policies and tactics, encapsulated in revolutionary slogans, which can transform spontaneous action into a conscious political struggle for working class power.

 


The SWP and Trotskyism: Would Trotsky have joined the SWP?

 

The Socialist Workers Party has always made a point of distancing itself from "orthodox Trotskyism". Rather than describe itself as a Trotskyist organisation it claims merely to stand in the tradition of Trotsky or to "stem from" Trotskyism . Arthur Merton examines this claim.

The reasons for the SWP’s attitude to Trotsky are not hard to find. When, in the late 1940s, Tony Cliff’s grouping embraced a state capitalist analysis of the USSR, it began a process of rejecting all the essentials of Trotskyism. Permanent revolution was revised by Cliff in a manner that afforded the petit bourgeoisie of certain semi-colonies (India was his favourite example) a historic role in the struggle for “democracy”.

The Transitional Programme (TP), and its entire method were rejected in favour of a strictly militant trade-unionist practice in the class struggle. Trotsky’s struggle for a new international party was dismissed as a futile adventure which itself disoriented post-war Trotskyism.

The Cliffites justified their rejection of Trotskyism by pointing to the gross opportunism of the post-war Trotskyists. The International Secretariat of the Fourth International, led by Pablo and Mandel, and its rival, the International Committee (of Gerry Healy fame), committed a whole series of political errors. These errors, though, stemmed not from the Trotskyism of these groupings, but from their definitive break from it. Unwilling to recognise this, the Cliffites threw out the baby with the bathwater; the writings of the revolutionary leader with the writings of his confused imitators.

Of course the Cliffite groupings (Socialist Review Group/International Socialists/SWP) have always paid tribute to selected aspects of Trotsky’s politics, his grasp of tactics such as the united front, his understanding of fascism, his analysis of the popular front etc. These elements of Trotsky’s heritage will, rightly, be praised during the SWP’s lectures on the fiftieth anniversary of the FI’s foundation. However, the question SWP members must face up to is whether the party’s break from the essentials of Trotskyism--in particular the TP and its method--has been compensated for by a superior revolutionary practice.

Workers Power, having once been a faction inside the IS, is convinced that the SWP are as guilty of trampling on the revolutionary programme as are the degenerate centrist fragments of the Fourth International.

We base this on our experience of the SWP’s practice in a whole range of major struggles--steel 1980, health 1982, Warrington 1983, miners 1984-5, printers 1986 and health 1988. In each case the SWP has steadfastly refused to raise demands that the workers themselves were not already raising. The SWP refused to give a lead to those workers when they came up against the limitations of both their spontaneous demands (their existing consciousness in other words) and their limited and sectional forms of organisation. In particular in the 1988 health dispute the SWP opposed steps towards a solidly based, national rank and file steward’s organisation.

The reasons the SWP give for their refusal to fight for the class to take up transitional demands vary. Recently it was because of the “downturn”. In the early 1970s it was because the “upturn” was automatically transforming workers' consciousness. At root, however, the reason lies in their rejection of Trotsky’s programmatic method.

This shows through clearly in the major books that SWP leaders have written on Trotsky. John Molyneux has written the most serious and extended critique of Trotsky from the point of view of the SWP. He argues that while Trotsky, especially through the experience of 1917, transcended many of the weaknesses of the Second International tradition (as well as incorporating its strengths), there were important residues of this method which left key aspects of Trotsky’s politics fatally flawed.

Trotsky’s failure to understand the need for a combat party of revolution before 1917, his "brilliant failure" to grasp the social nature of the USSR under Stalin, his over mechanical attempt to map out all the stages of revolutionary strategy in the TP and his inflated view of the prospects for the Fourth International in the 1930s, are all "rooted in the deterministic interpretation that Trotsky inherited from the leading authorities of the Second International".

While he was evidently "permanently inocculated" from fatalism with regard to revolutionary policy after 1917, this "did not lead to a reassessment of his basic philosophical position which remained determinist and positivist".

Molyneux, not surprisingly, singles out the TP for attack. It is, he writes, "to a far greater extent than many of Trotsky’s other works . . . both profoundly flawed and historically limited". The criticisms he raises are themselves "profoundly flawed". In the first place he criticises Trotsky’s conception of productive forces in which he states that the economic prerequisites for revolution had already "achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate". The SWP argue that this was only ever at best half true for the 1930s, that the whole edifice of transitional demands are tied to this view and thus only applicable in a period like the 1930s which was one "of revolutionary or near revolutionary situations".

Whilst Trotsky’s perspectives were based on the idea that capitalism had now placed absolute limits on the productive forces, there was nothing fatalistic about his conclusions. He correctly identified the national limitations on the international economy as the source of World War I and its ensuing revolutionary possibilities, and pinpointed the very same contradiction as the source of two decades of stagnation and the drive to the Second World War. He wrote:

"Each nation tried to repulse all the others and to seize the world market for its own purposes. They could not succeed and now we see that capitalist society enters a new stage."

On the basis of this he postulated only "socialism or barbarism" as immediate perspectives. Given that one nation, the USA, actually succeeded in "seizing the world market" there is clearly an error. But it is an error of analysis--the underestimation of the untapped economic potential of the USA--entirely similar to the one committed by Marx and Engels who saw capitalism as exhausted in 1848.

Only once did Trotsky refer to a third possibility of a potential respite for the bourgeoisie. In March, 1938 he argued, "'that is not excluded, but then we will be obliged to realise a strategic retreat".

The implication of Molyneux’s argument is that this "strategic retreat" would have to involve abandoning the transitional method for the old maximum/minimum programme, tailored for a period of extended social peace.

This ignores the whole history of the development of transitional demands and action programmes. It was precisely in a period of strategic retreat--after the First World War and the ebb of the revolutionary tide--that the Comintern elaborated transitional demands. After the Second World War and its thwarted revolutionary aftermath it was necessary to outline a new perspective, and refocus the TP to that perspective.

The new situation did not destroy the validity of the TP as a whole. This was because despite the "long boom", imperialism could not escape and throw into reverse all the features of the imperialist epoch. It remained one of wars and revolutions, in which the uneven and combined development of world capitalism produced a whole series of crises in a whole series of countries--China, Korea, Algeria, Hungary, Indo-China, Indonesia, etc.

In each case transitional action programmes focused on the immediate crisis facing the workers and peasants of those countries, and directing their struggles towards the establishment of working class power, was essential.

Even in the imperialist west during that period of long boom, transitional demands and method did not lose their validity. The SWP claim that transitional demands do not strike "at the foundations of the bourgeois regime", as Trotsky’s programme envisaged, if the situation is stable. For the SWP the alternative, as expressed by Molyneux, is:

"In struggles in non-revolutionary situations (for example, a strike) it is more important for revolutionaries to find demands that fit the situation, and therefore actually carry the struggle forward, than it is to search for demands which, in words, lead to the conquest of power, and in reality lead to irrelevance."

It is true that the TP was written for a period in which the convulsive crises of the 1930s and the imminence of world war raised the possibility that partial struggles would rapidly lead to a situation of generalised working class action and to the question of poltical power being posed repeatedly in a number of countries. In these situations the whole range of demands from the factory committee right up to the workers' militia and workers' government could be expected to become a key question of agitation by the revolutionaries.

But outside of these situations the demands that need to be advanced agitationally still need to include ones that are imbued with the central method of the TP, namely, workers' control. This is what Trotsky meant in the TP when he says:

"The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution."

The SWP caricature this statement from Trotsky. Not infrequently they accuse us of raising the dictatorship of the proletariat at a time when an all out strike is necessary. This caricature betrays a very dangerous short-sightedness on the part of the SWP. It fails to grasp that the fight, even for partial elements of workers' control in a particular struggle, serves as a bridge between the struggle for reforms and a revolutionary struggle against capital.

Nor does Trotsky, as the SWP imply, counterpose partial demands and transitional demands. For Trotsky immediate demands fought for by revolutionary tactics could become the starting point for winning the masses to broader transitional demands:

"Every local, partial, economic demand must be an approach to a general demand in our transitional programme."

And the fight for that demand can take forward the political and organisational struggle of the working class, even if it does not lead to mass revolutionary consciousness at once.

Take the example of nationalisation in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. We know it was not socialism, we know it was undertaken to rescue ailing capitalist industries. Revolutionaries would have emphasised agitationally the question of workers' control over all aspects of the job (hiring and firing, safety, speed of work etc) and no compensation to the bosses. In other words it was possible, through encroaching on the rule of capital, to use workers' control and the demand to make the bosses pay (by refusing them handouts) to prepare for future battles when renewed crisis made concessions and compromises less and less tenable for the bosses.

The SWP’s refusal to adopt such a measure actually leads them, not Trotsky or ourselves, to counterpose partial and transitional demands. Trotsky wrote:

"The Fourth International does not discard the programme of the old 'minimal' demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct, actual, that is, revolutionary perspective."

This is what the SWP will not do. They never connect the struggle for partial demands with a revolutionary perspective based on the fight for workers' control. Rather they limit their demands to ones aimed at generalising working class support for the existing level of struggle and the spontaneously arising demands. It is implied in the SWP’s critique of the TP that they see some use for transitional demands in revolutionary or near revolutionary situations. But in fact they do not. Why? Because as Molyneux indicates, in quoting Gramsci favourably, it is possible "to foresee only the struggle, but not the concrete moments of the struggle".

This is nothing less than a rejection of the scientific nature of the Marxist programme and the leading role of the party in drawing it up. If the party is the memory of the class then the programme codifies the general experience of the class internationally and applies it in any situation.

The TP’s historic merit was that it outlined the major tactics that the working class will have to deploy on the road to power. It did not and could not detail every minor conjunctural demand or concrete expression of these general tactics.

In rejecting the whole programmatic method of Trotskyism it is the SWP who lapse back into a form of "Second Internationalism". They fall back into the rigid separation of minimum and maximum demands. At the moment this takes the form of combining a purely trade unionist practice with general propaganda for socialist ideas. The SWP are well known for devoting time and energy to providing organisational solidarity for workers who are in struggle.

The SWP see it as the key task of the revolutionary party to generalise support for that struggle on the basis of the existing level of demands. In the Great Strike of 1984-85 they argued that the way forward was primarily to build bigger and better pickets to fight for the demands of the strike. The limited nature of these demands--limited by the NUM leadership--was never questioned. Only the leadership’s failure to build bigger pickets was attacked.

The SWP justify such an approach by arguing that there is an inherent logic in the class struggle which turns economic struggles into political ones through the intervention of the state into economic battles (use of police, courts, laws etc). Duncan Hallas, another SWP leader who has written a book on Trotsky, has said:

"This political struggle can be carried through only on the basis, in the first place, of economic struggles, of sectional struggles. No magic general slogans can replace clear, realisitic and concrete leadership in these sectional struggles."

The SWP are right to suggest that workers' struggles can and do give rise to “spontaneous” political consciousness and are a key point of departure for revolutionaries seeking to win worker militants to a revolutionary party.

They are dead wrong to suggest that the political struggle emanating from this will be automatically revolutionary. As the miners' strike showed only too well, the spontaneous political class consciousness of the majority never raised itself above that of the miltiant sectional trade unionism of Scargill. The strike was defeated for that reason.

The SWP did nothing to raise demands which were politically in advance of that consciousness. Even on the question of pickets they refused to call for their organised defence--despite the obvious need for such defence in the face of a militarised police force--on the grounds that such a demand was too advanced. In fact miners, who organised, albeit in a haphazard way, their own defence groups, were in advance of the SWP.

Inevitably the SWP’s attitude to programme has implications for their attitude towards the building of an international revolutionary tendency. In a nutshell the SWP reject the idea that an International can be built at present and go on to say that the Fourth International (FI) itself was a tragic mistake, that it should never have been built.

The whole evolution of the Cliffites since their split with the FI in the late 1940s has been more and more towards a national-centred view of how to build an International. Their starting point is to question whether or not Trotsky should have founded the FI given the weakness of the groupings that constituted it in 1938.

In explaining Trosky’s insistence after 1936 that his followers found an International as soon as possible Molyneux declares that it was because "he needed an apocalyptic view of the future to sustain his revolutionary will" (p185).

A "now-or-never" outlook took hold of him and impaired his judgement. This is a rejection of Trotsky’s own justification; namely, that the struggle of the Left Opposition since the late 1920s had produced a wealth of analyses and documents that codified and welded together a coherent revolutionary pole of attraction.

In addition the imminence of world war required the creation of a democratic-centralist organisation and leadership capable of guiding the sections of the FI in immensely difficult situations. And an International was vital if sections were to take advantage of the revolutionary crises as well as survive the repression that was expected to come with the war.

Duncan Hallas does concede some of these points but argues that Trotsky’s supposed “messianism” was a "necessary deviation from his mature view"--necessary to hold his followers together, but ultimately doomed to failure.

This ignores completely the gain--in terms of maintenance of a revolutionary banner in the midst of the carnage and reaction of the war--that the foundation of the FI represented.

The SWP insist that an International can only be founded when it is rooted in strong national parties. The defeats of the 1930s had isolated the Trotskyists and according to Hallas the events of 1936 in Spain "had demonstrated the indispensability of parties rooted in their national working classes through a long period of struggle for partial demands" before launching an International.

Hallas turns cause and effect on its head. The events in Spain and particularly the regionalist and nationalist deviations that underlay the opportunism of the POUM testified to the need for an international party. As Trotsky said in the TP:

"A revolutionary proletarian tendency . . . cannot thrive and develop in one isolated country; on the very next day after its formation it must seek or create international ties, an international platform, because a guarantee of the correctness of the national road can only be found along this road. A tendency which remains shut in nationally over a stretch of years condemns itself irrevocably to degeneration."

The SWP itself is evidence of this. Real internationalism begins with the "international platform" (i.e. programme) and a leadership which can intervene to correct the tendencies towards an adaptation to the prejudices and preoccupations of the national working class.

The SWP, with its persistent adaptation to the spontaneous trade union consciousness of the powerful British trade union movement, has degenerated along national lines. It is a degeneration that has led it on a variety of occasions (from Korea, through Cuba to the Malvinas) into abstentionism or neutralism in relation to struggles between the USSR and imperialism and between the imperialists and semi-colonies.

The project of building big national parties first is a guarantee that a genuine international programme cannot be constructed at all.

The cost of such a project will inevitably be a view of international class struggles from the distorted lenses of the national terrain leading to an over or under-estimation of the weight and centrality of certain questions.

At best what is arrived at is a mutual admiration society in which a polite agreement is reached that the national groups know best about their own national class struggles and should be left to get on with them.

This bore fruit for the SWP in its disastrous mid-1970s attempt to unite "nationally rooted" groups as diverse as the Maoist Avanguardia Operaia (Italy), the guerillarist PRB-BR (Portugal) and the abstract propagandist Lutte Ouvriere (France).

From the point of view of this fiasco the SWP have nothing to teach Trotskyists or those struggling to refound a revolutionary International.

The SWP is not a Trotskyist group. In effect they want to have their cake and eat it. Duncan Hallas concludes that Trotsky’s lifelong struggle was "an indispensable contribution" to the synthesis of theory and practice.

Yet of the four main areas of Trotsky’s thought he identifies--permanent revolution, Stalinism, strategy and tactics, party and class--the SWP’s theory and practice is seriously at odds with all of them.

We only have to consider the contradiction between Trotsky’s support for the USSR against Germany in the Second World War and the SWP’s understanding of it as an inter-imperialist war to see the fragility of their veneration for the FI’s founder.

Given their position on the USSR should they not brand Trotsky as a social chauvinist defending Russian imperialism--despite his previous contribution to Marxism?

By attacking Trotsky’s programmatic method, and hence his international strategy for working class power, the SWP’s defence of certain of his conjunctural analyses and tactics is rendered shallow and inconsistent.

It is possible and necessary to be sharply critical of Trotsky’s weaknesses as long as we know how to correct them on the basis of his method. But it is the method of Trotsky that the SWP critics find most objectionable.

Trotskyism needs to be re-elaborated certainly, but that can only be done by understanding the full importance of Trotsky’s contribution.

The crowning point of that contribution was the completion of the TP and the founding of the FI, which Trotsky himself judged to be "the most important work of my life".

 


SWP and women’s liberation - Economism versus feminism?

 

Over the past few years the SWP leaders have been arguing over whether working class men benefit from women’s oppression. The answer seems fairly straight forward. Yes. They have higher wages than women, are more unionised, have more valued skills, they don’t have to do much housework, and don’t face problems of sexual harassment and assault.

Indeed, one of the leading contributors to the debate, Lindsey German, points out: 'The appeal of the argument that men benefit from women’s oppression is a real one, and highly understandable. It appears to reflect reality.'

Yet she, along with Chris Harman, Sheila McGregor and in the background Tony Cliff, argue that to hold to such a view is non-Marxist, automatically leading to theories of patriarchy and separatism. Waging a battle on this powerful group is John Molyneux, arguing that it would be absurd to deny the benefits male workers receive.

The context of the debate

An important aspect of the economism that characterises the politics of the SWP is the tendency to deny the existence of privilege within the working class itself. While the SWP acknowledges the existence of oppression, it fails to fully understand the consequences of this within the working class.

In the early 1980s a sharp debate took place within the SWP. In the previous period the SWP had organised amongst women with a special paper Women’s Voice and had organised Women’s Voice groups. This was in response to the pressure from the Women’s Liberation Movement in the mid 1970s. Subject to this continuing pressure, Women’s Voice (WV) became a vehicle for bringing feminist theories and practice into the SWP.

A revolutionary leadership, committed to a thoroughly Marxist programme should have fought to turn this situation round, making WV a vehicle for taking revolutionary ideas to working class women and combating feminism. There were enormous possibilities in that period for building a militant working class women’s movement, with revolutionaries in the leadership. But instead, the SWP leadership fought to shut down Women’s Voice.

Cliff, who had led the attack, convinced the majority of the leadership that separate organisations for women were dangerous, but doubts remained. The subsequent debate focused on trying to find a theoretical justification for the SWP’s about turn on the question of work amongst women. In particular, they sought to deny that male workers benefited in any way from the existence of women’s oppression.

First came an article by Lindsay German "Theories of Patriarchy" in 1981 (ISJ 2,12). German correctly argued against the feminist idea that men are the cause of women’s oppression. But she went further:

"I would argue . . . that not only do men not benefit from women’s work in the family (rather the capitalist system as a whole benefits) but also that it is not true that men and capital are conspiring to stop women having access to economic production."

Of course part of this is true. There is no “conspiracy” by all men, ranged alongside the capitalists in a class war against women. But what about the attempts by generations of craft workers to exclude women from the workforce to “protect” their trades? This needs a proper analysis and understanding rather than simple denial.

Similarly in trying to show that working class men do not have any real interest in perpetuating women’s oppression, German ends up denying the inequalities that exist between men and women in the family

Just an hour or two a day?

To bolster the SWP leadership’s arguments Chris Harman repeated German’s position in an article in 1984 . He outlines a general understanding of women’s oppression, within which he once again tackles the problem of the role of male workers. He does it in the form of answers to an imagined argument against the Marxist position--that 'working class men are involved in maintaining the oppression of women and benefit from it, so they can’t be involved in the struggle to end it '. Against this Harman states:

'In fact, however, the benefits working class men get from the oppression of women are marginal indeed. They do not benefit from the low pay women get--this only serves to exert a downward pressure on their own pay...The benefits really come down to the question of housework. The question becomes the extent to which working class men benefit from women’s unpaid labour.'

Harman goes on to try and measure the benefits men receive from housework:

'It is the amount of labour he would have to exert if he had to clean and cook for himself. This could not be more than an hour or two a day, a burden for the woman who has to do this work for two people after a day’s paid labour, but not a huge gain for the male worker.'

In this argument he says he is excluding the labour involved in bringing up children, an invalid, formal division since for most women housework is done for the whole family, whether there are children around, older relatives or anyone else she is expected to care for. But even if we take Harman’s category of a couple with no dependents, the idea that 'an hour or two a day' less work for the man is not much of a gain is patently absurd. How many workers would accept one to two hours on their working day without a struggle? The fight for the eight hour day has been one of the working class’s most determined battles, and now Harman happily adds two hours onto this for women when they get home, saying it makes little difference!

Harman lapses into idealism in assessing the relative importance of the marginal gain that he concedes men do get as a result of women’s oppression. He argues:

'...It cannot be said that the working class man has any stake in the oppression of women. Whatever advantages he might have within the present set-up compared with his wife, they are nothing to what he would gain if the set up was revolutionised.'

Socialism will be better for all of us. But the whole point is that outside of the context of major class battles that place class wide struggle and socialism on the agenda, advantages gained within the status quo by sections of the working class are very important to people. If the prospect for the dramatic change referred to by Harman seems a dim and distant one, with closures and unemployment the more immediate prospect then, hanging on to existing benefits becomes a real motivating force for many working class men.

How else can we explain the popularity of 'women out first' solutions? This reveals that, while working class men do not have a significant stake in defending the existing society, they are motivated, in real life, by the desire to cling to marginal and transient gains they have received courtesy of this society. Only if the prospect of the revolutionary alternative becomes real and immediate--and here the building of a mass revolutionary communist party is decisive--can the defence of sectional, or in this case sexual, advantages be really transcended and replaced by the fight for the historic, common interests of working class men and women.

Men oppressing women

It was this particular aspect of Harman’s article that drew fire from John Molyneux. He wrote:

'The problem with the Harman/Cliff/German position is that in minimising or denying the material roots of the sexual division in the working class it underestimates the obstacle to achieving class unity and therefore underestimates the conscious intervention required by the revolutionary party to overcome that obstacle.'

Molyneux himself puts forward a position which recognises the benefits male workers gain from women’s oppression. He points to this as the material root of the strength of sexism within the class. Hence it is necessary for the revolutionary party to take special measures to counter this pressure. But from saying this Molyneux slips into arguing that men oppress women within the family.

The fault with Molyneux’s position (despite it being much more sophisticated than that of his opponents) is that he does embrace tenets of feminist theory. He bases his argument exclusively on the relationship between men and women in the family. He fails to take the relationship of social forces as his first premise. Materialists must start from an understanding of oppression within the context of the dominant determining features of society, namely class antagonisms. All oppression is subordinate to, though stemming from, this fundamental contradiction in class society. The family is an integral part of capitalist society, but it is impossible to understand its role and the relationship of individuals within it if you do not start from its function for capitalism. Molyneux starts, not from the role of the family, but from the unequal division of labour within it. He asks how this is maintained:

'To a considerable extent of course it is maintained directly by the system through its socialisation of women into the housewife role, and, even more importantly, through its payment of higher wages to male workers...But it is also maintained by the system through male workers who refuse to do an equal share of the housework or, worse, insist that their wives do all of it.'

By simply looking at the family Molyneux cannot see that the key is not really who does what housework, but the actual existence of a privatised sphere of domestic labour. He concludes that men are actually the oppressors within the working class family. His paraphrase of Engels' analogy that 'within the working class family he (the male worker) is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat' does not save him from lapsing into feminism. The key question is what social conditions give rise to this oppressive relationship and how can they be overcome. For Engels, the systematic exclusion of women from social production was decisive in explaining why women were oppressed, not the division of labour within the family itself. This was in fact the result of capitalism’s exculsion of women from the factories.

Women have to lose their chains to the household if they are to aquire the strength and solidarity to be fully liberated. Marx and Engels recognised this:

'We can already see...that to emancipate woman and make her the equal of the man is and remains an impossibility so long as the woman is shut out from social productive labour. The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time.'

The theoretical questions answered

To understand the role working class men do play in the oppression of women it is necessary to look at the material roots of that oppression. It is wrong to look at the division of labour within the home, with women doing more than men, and simply conclude that therefore men oppress women. In this instance Sheila McGregor is actually partially correct in her reply to Molyneux when she says: 'Women’s oppression does not consist in an unequal division of labour in the home but in a division of labour between the point of production and the home.' But McGregor herself then proceeds to make the equal and opposite error of denying the important role that the unequal divisions within the family have on determining consciousness.

The oppression of working class women is rooted in the existence of the family as the place where people live, are fed and clothed, and children are brought up to become the next generation of workers. The whole process, the reproduction of labour power, actually results in workers, both the existing generation and the next one, being presented to the bosses ready for work. That special commodity, labour power, without which capitalism would perish, is produced not by a factory or in a socialised sphere of production, but in the private household of each family.

The role of women in this process is very specific. Women are the prime domestic workers who labour, unpaid, to bring up children, keep the house and care for any other dependent relatives. This occurs whether or not women have jobs outside the home. The primary role of the vast majority of working class women remains that of mother/wife. The centrality of this to capitalism is clear. Without the labour of these women in the home workers could be reared, fed and kept alive, but only at the cost of massive investment in the socialised places that would take the place of the family. Capitalism is incapable of completely socialising housework in this fashion even when women are needed to work in the factories and offices.

The role women have in the family is the very basis of their oppression. It is not a matter of a technical 'division of labour' such as exists in the class generally between different trades, because it actually condemns women to a sphere of work which is isolated, where the work itself is tedious, the pressures of feeding and maintaining the family are enormous--in short as Lenin described it:

'...She continues to be a domestic slave because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-wracking, stultifying and crushing drudgery.'

This work, not only tedious and unproductive in itself, also means that women are denied social contact with others of their class outside their immediate family. This is of central importance in preventing women from becoming organised, politically active and rebellious--they never have the solidarity and support of socialised production.

So McGregor is correct to say that the root of women’s oppression lies in the distinct area of domestic labour in the family. Where she is wrong is that in concluding that since 'wives perform their duties on behalf of capital' she can reject the idea that working class men receive any benefit from that oppression. She argues that the division of labour is imposed on men and women, and that neither can escape their respective roles under capitalism. She notes that this division is reflected in wage bargaining, yet appears to be saying there is nothing that can be done about this under capitalism. The problem with her approach is that in trying to show that this is a class not a gender issue, McGregor ends up saying both sides suffer the same, thereby almost denying the fact that it is women, not men who are oppressed. This leads to a capitulation to the backward and conservative prejudices of men in the labour movement.

Working class men do benefit from the oppression of women, not because they are the cause of women’s oppression, or that they are in some sort of unholy alliance with the bourgeoisie to keep women downtrodden, but by the very fact that they themselves are not specially oppressed as a result of their gender. The institution of the family is of greater material benefit to them than it is to women. This simple fact of life has enormous implications for the class and its consciousness both as individuals and collectively. Working class organisations are not automatically or spontaneously opposed to women’s oppression, just as in fact they are not spontaneously socialist, contrary to the economist views of the SWP which see socialist consciousness stemming purely from struggle and not from the fight for communist leadership.

The struggle of revolutionaries to win the class to a conscious opposition to woman’s oppression, which we know to be in the overall interests of the class, will be precisely that. A struggle. There are many examples of the problems women have had in attempting to get their own struggles taken seriously by the labour movement. Recent examples such as the Grunwick women and the Trico strikers only add to the list. The resistance men have is certainly partially based on their own position, whereby they fear loss of wages if women are brought into their jobs, and fear lack of a stable family or not having their tea on the table when they get in from work. When this happens--for example men opposing their wives' involvement in the miners' wives movement, something that was, unfortunately, common--then it must be fought.

Oppression and sectionalism

Understanding the roots of women’s oppression in the family provides the clearest answer to the problem being debated. Do working class men benefit from women’s oppression? The question must be answered dialectically, something neither side in the SWP debate manage. When looked at in terms of the relationship between social forces, classes, as historical materialism must, then clearly the answer is no. Oppression weakens and divides the class. It creates an obstacle to the unity of the workers against the common class enemy. Women’s oppression and the existence of the family also deny the working class, men, women and particularly youth, many rights and freedoms. It imprisons them in relationships and commitments which are often unhappy and oppressive.

But this answer is not enough. Oppression serves to divide and weaken the class precisely because it does create different interests between groups. The clearest examples are perhaps of oppressed nations, where imperialist powers plunder the land, the natural resources and the labour power of the indigenous people. The super-exploitation of workers in imperialised countries undoubtedly weakens the world working class and drives up the overall level of exploitation. But more than that, the acceptance by sections of the working classes in the oppressor nations that 'their' country is doing the right thing, weakens the world proletariat even more, as Marx explained with regard to British workers over the question of Ireland. But the reason why British workers fail to challenge the imperialist banditry of their rulers is not just based on excellent bourgeois propaganda, powerful as that may be. Relative to the workers in the oppressed nations, the workers in the imperialist country are better off. Indeed the superprofits from imperialism are in part used to grant improved living conditions to the working class of the 'home' country in order to try and maintain social peace. This is the material basis of the labour aristocracy.

The SWP’s economism means for them that any and every economic struggle can--from within itself--generate socialist consciousness. The sectional and sexual divisions in the working class are down played. Yet, this ignores the fact that many struggles are conducted on a sectional, not a class-wide basis. Divisions in the class, between men and women, skilled and unskilled, black and white, cannot be wished away or overcome by exhortation. The SWP have no scientific understanding of these divisions. This was clear in Cliff’s analysis of the labour aristocracy quoted approvingly by John Molyneux to back up his case. Cliff basically attacks Lenin for suggesting that imperialist capitalism divided the working class, by bribery, into an aristocracy and a mass, and that the aristocracy was the social base of reformism and the bureaucracy. Not so, says Cliff.

Capitalist prosperity allows the whole working class to gain and is thus the root of reformism; capitalist crisis sounds its death knell. This jimcrack 'Marxism' led Cliff to declare that reformism was as good as dead in the early 1970's. Yet, like Lazarus, it rose from the dead and later ushered in the 'downturn'. Cliff’s theory did not equip the SWP to understand reformism’s 1974 triumph at the polls. For them, no labour aristocracy existed; therefore, in an economic crisis reformism would collapse, having no social base.

This theory in fact reflects the sectionalism that exists in the working class. It suggests that not only are workers' historical interests identical but so are their immediate interests; hence, ever more sectional struggles would eventually add up to revolution. This ignored the reality of differentials, demarcation disputes, racist strikes, opposition to women’s strikes. All of these testified to the fact that as capitalism did go into crisis and as the leadership of the unions failed to defend the interests of their members on a class wide basis , the real existing divisions in the class did not always disappear.

Sometimes they sharpened. Certainly, the divisions in the class are more complex--and Lenin was well aware of this--than simply between an aristocracy and 'the masses', but that division does exist and does have a material basis.

Chris Harman, Sheila McGregor and Lindsey German deny that the working class can ever have contradictory interests. To accept that contradictions do actually exist within the working class leads to revolutionaries having to argue with certain sections of the class that they support others in struggle for the solidarity and strength it gives to the whole class. The SWP would find such political arguments hard. They prefer therefore to opt for an analysis which says all workers have identical immediate interests.

McGregor poses it most clearly when she takes up the analogy used by Molyneux about the relative privileges of protestant workers in Northern Ireland. Molyneux argues, correctly, that these material privileges, in terms of jobs, housing and pay, although nothing in comparison to the privileges of the ruling class, nevertheless have an important effect on the protestant workers. They form the material roots of Orangeism and of the powerful cross class alliance between these workers and their exploiters. Whilst it is certainly true that the oppression of the Catholics is not in the overall interests of the working class, to the Protestant workers it appears that the defence of their own jobs and privileges is of more immediate importance than the civil rights of other workers.

Against Molyneux, McGregor argues:

'If, however, you separate off the immediate from the long term interests of Protestant workers, as John does in his article, then you end up arguing not only that it is in the immediate interests of Protestant workers to preserve their privileges over Catholics, but that unity is not in the immediate interests of the Protestant working class and therefore that Protestant workers realising their revolutionary potential is not in their immediate interests.'

This is a shoddy piece of polemic. McGregor hopes to show that Molyneux is ditching revolutionary Marxism. Having pointed out to us already that revolution is already on the agenda, McGregor, using chop logic, believes she has disproved Molyneux’s argument. Molyneux clearly uses the example of the Protestants to show why revolutionaries must understand conflicting sectional interests in order to try and consciously overcome them, not pander to them as, McGregor suggests.

McGregor uses the example of the Nottinghamshire scabs to try and show how false it is to believe that one section of the class can have different interests. In an amazing feat of logic she points out:

'The majority of miners in Nottinghamshire thought it was in their immediate interest not to join the national miners strike but scab instead. Do we therefore postulate that their deeply held backward views somehow coincided with their immediate interests? Is it true they got 52 wage packets striking miners did not receive, so did they immediately benefit from working? Does that mean it was in their immediate interests to scab?'

Yes! That in fact would be a good definition of a scab: someone who puts their own immediate, short term gain before that of the class or his or her workmates. But you cannot deny that they did get 52 wage packets and a better wage deal as a result of scabbing. Of course revolutionaries must point out that in fact the Notts scabs have severely damaged their own interests by their actions. Their 52 wage packets will seem little compensation when their pits are closed, when management impose stricter working conditions and pay restraint. They are left weakened by having lost their collective strength as trade unionists, committed as they are now to company unionism and class collaboration. It was on this basis that militants had to argue against the scabs, not just on money or immediate gain. In fact the whole basis of that Great Strike was the class conscious understanding of 'us now, you next'. Arguing these points with any section of workers can be difficult, especially in conditions where so few struggles are victorious. The SWP with its method of tailing the most advanced militants rather than offering revolutionary leadership, are left unable to argue for anything other than consolation to workers that little or nothing can be done, however, because of the 'downturn'. When that is over we can get back to good old basic (sectional) trade unionism.

The examples of the Nottinghamshire scabs and the Protestant workers in Ireland points to another important factor in the argument. The bourgeoisie are well aware of the sectional divisions within the class. They consciously exploit these. They like nothing more than to see workers in pitched battle with each other. They are prepared to fund and fuel these divisions, hence the payment of scabs during strikes even when they are unable to actually produce anything because no-one else is at work. By offering higher wages to certain sections, and by encouraging prejudices they hope to weaken the class.

Women's oppression and working class men

To return to the original debate, the position of working class men is similar to other sections of the class with particular benefits or advantages. Working class men do not cause the oppression of women, either generally or in their own families and relationships. However, they certainly do perpetuate that oppression, all too often in brutal ways. When men deny their wives rights to go out, to decide when to have kids, when to go to work, they are oppressing them. But similarly, when mothers deny their daughters rights to go out, wear what they want, do what they want, they too are perpetuating oppression.

But this is not way really the point. Relations between individuals are not of the same scale in determining roots and causes of oppression as class antagonisms. It would be false to conclude that since women often oppress their daughters that they are therefore the oppressors or that they have any real interest in maintaining that oppression. But what has to be understood is that the existence of the family, the ties that women, men and children have to it in terms of the necessary functions it performs (which capitalism fails to provide in any other way), affect behaviour and consciousness.

Perhaps the best way to explain the difference between working class women and men is to understand that they are not social equals. And if a man enjoys greater opportunities relative to a woman then clearly he has certain benefits over a woman and these benefits are sanctified by an edifice of sexist ideology. Far from this edifice crumbling as a result of common struggle alone, as Harman, McGregor and German assert, the Bolsheviks--in the shape of Trotsky--had a different view. After the conquest of state power Trotsky argued that social inequality still existed and found its reflection in the oppressive relations that prevailed in the family. His standpoint is a million miles from that of German et al:

'But to achieve the actual equality of man and woman within the family is an infinitely more arduous problem. All our domestic habits must be revolutionised before that can happen. And yet it is quite obvious that unless there is actual equality of husband and wife in the family, in the normal sense as well as in the conditions of life, we cannot speak seriously of their equality in social work or even in politics. As long as the woman is chained to her housework, the care of the family, the cooking and sewing, all her chances of participation in social and political life are cut down in the extreme.'

A rather different perspective on the one or two hours Harman so complacently writes of. The real world of household drudgery that millions of working class women endure every day is seemingly a mere trifle to him. Real communists recognise the weight of these chains and fight to smash them.

Ideas do not fall from the sky. Peoples' consciousness is based on material conditions, which themselves are extremely complex. Bourgeois ideology is very important, but does not in itself explain why, for example men are sexist to the extent that they are. Such sexism is based at least in part on the fact that men would prefer to keep their dominant position which has led to certain apparent advantages. Of course women themselves are often the most vigorous defenders of the family and in many societies, the church. They defend those things which most reinforce their own oppression. It is clear that women are often backward in their ideas due to their isolation in the home and their lack of contact with other workers.

However, it is also true that it is women (a militant minority of women) who understand and struggle against their oppression. This is where the difference between the sexism of men and the 'sexism' of women lies. It is women workers, not male workers, who will lead the struggle against that oppression, and most rapidly ditch their prejudiced ideas. For men it will always be more of a struggle because it challenges so much and yet does not appear to immediately benefit them, not that is until they fully understand the liberatory potential of women’s emancipation and its inseparable links with the achievement of proletarian power.

When it comes down to the question of how revolutionaries relate to women workers the purposes of the debate in the SWP becomes apparent. If male workers gain nothing but actually suffer as a result of women’s oppression, then it should be no problem to convince them of the need to support women’s liberation. This is the argument of Harman/McGregor/German who say that in periods of struggle, like the miners' strike, the Russian Revolution and other examples, it becomes apparent to all that women’s oppression weakens them and it is thus in the interests of all workers to fight it. McGregor points out that: 'The role of miners' wives during the strike is, in fact, a powerful illustration of the fact that it is in the immediate interests of working class men for women to fight their oppression and for men to support them in doing so.'

This is in fact a gross oversimplification of what happened. In the first place, the women were struggling in support of the men, not against their own oppression. As the strike developed a small (but very militant and prominent!) minority of miners wives broke out of the confinement to soup kitchens and welfare, and began going out to pickets, to speak to other workers and build solidarity. These women necessarily came into conflict with their own and their husbands' ideas about 'women’s roles'. And it was often not easy. Many women would tell of the problems they had getting the men to agree to stay at home and look after the children whilst the women went out to picket. Obviously as a result of these battles the consciousness of many miners and their wives changed. But it was by no means automatic. The fact that the wives' organisation was denied associate membership status of the NUM soon after the strike shows the remaining prejudice of many of the men, not just to women, but to the militancy they represented.

Attitudes do change in the course of struggles, and this is why revolutionaries can be confident of winning millions of workers away from their prejudices in such situations. But it requires the conscious intervention of revolutionaries and class fighters to achieve this. The Russian Revolution--the other example used to show how anti-sexist the class is--demonstrates the potential. But the battles which women, in the Bolshevik Party as well as outside, waged in order to get their interests taken seriously, deserve study. The Bolsheviks were not themselves perfect; it took Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Nikolaeva and others to pressure them into setting up Women’s Departments.

A communist conclusion to this debate would understand that women themselves are central to the struggle against their own oppression. Not all women are, however, because this is not primarily a sex question; but working class women, who have most to gain in overcoming oppression and exploitation, and from liberation and working class power. Recognising the central part women will play in their own liberation is not a concession to feminism as the SWP old guard would say:

'We say that the emancipation of the workers must be effected by the workers themselves, and in exactly the same way the emancipation of working women is a matter for the working women themselves.'

And what rabid feminist said that? Lenin, in a speech to a conference of non-party women in September 1919. What Lenin also said which contradicts the SWP line of being opposed to special forms of work and organisation for women inside the party and outside, was:

'The Party must have organs--working groups, commissions, committees, sections or whatever else they may be called--with the specific purpose of rousing the broad masses of women, bringing them into contact with the Party and keeping them under its influence. This naturally requires that we carry on systematic work among women...We must have our own groups to work among them, special methods of agitation, and special forms of organisation. This is not bourgeois 'feminism', it is a practical revolutionary expediency.'

The members of the SWP who are confused by the debate over benefits would perhaps do better to spend their time studying the real history of revolutionary parties and their work on women. Cliff’s distorted histories of Zetkin and Kollontai, followed by these shrouded excuses for a failure to take the woman question seriously, will teach them little of value. Study of the Bolsheviks, and of the German Socialist Women’s Movement under Zetkin will be far more use.

Then perhaps the SWP would have more to offer the heroic miners' wives at the end of the strike than the patronising--"well join the SWP if you want to remain active". Women from the mining communities, just like other working class women who are thrown into militant struggle need to organise themselves, build a mass working class women’s movement, fight not for feminism but for class unity including their own demands as women.

Within such a movement communists will fight for their own programme and their own leadership. Such a mass movement is not counterposed to the party, but an arena within which it can fight and grow. The SWP refuse to sanction or build such a movement. They fear too much their own weakness They cannot stand the possibility of contamination with feminism again. So rather than fight such ideas in practice, they retreat into their journals to conduct their debates in private.

 


SWP and the unions: Syndicalism’s fear of the bureaucracy

 

It might at rst sight seem curious to accuse the Socialist Workers Party of syndicalism. After all is it not a party? But Colin Lloyd argues that in fact the SWP has a thoroughly syndicalist notion of the rank and le movement and the struggle for union democracy.

The SWP is certainly not a classically anarcho-syndicalist formation. Does it not openly proclaim its goal to be state power for the working class—even insisting that without soviets and workers’ control of production there can be no workers’ state? The classic anarcho-syndicalists denied the need for either political action or the proletarian dictatorship. Yet the pre-1914 French CGT, or American IWW were by no means the only syndicalist formations.

English “industrial syndicalism” and the De Leonite Socialist Labour parties on both sides of the Atlantic eclectically combined a syndicalist practice in the unions with parties devoted to making propaganda, including electoral propaganda.

In essence the SWP has no clear or consistent commitment to the struggle to oust the trade union bureaucracy and to replace the present reformist leaders with revolutionary ones. Instead the SWP looks to the de-centralising syndicalist idea of a system of democratic checks over leaders.

In the (unpublished) International Socialists' (IS) programme we nd the slogan of “workers’ control over the unions”. Workers’ control over production, a system as Trotsky said of dual power in the factory, of control over management is possible in a period of pre-revolutionary crisis and may extend for some period after the seizure of power as a school for workers’ management under a centrally planned economy.

Certainly we seek to check, control, limit the sell outs and betrayals of the trade union bureaucrats, but a system of checks and balances over them is not our goal. Our goal is a communist leadership in transformed ghting industrial unions. Communists ght for a structure of workplace union branches and factory committees which are capable of creating action councils in heightened periods of class struggle and can develop in a revolutionary situation into workers councils (soviets).

Communist do not hide their party label from the mass of workers but openly form fractions in the existing unions. They willingly form united fronts with non-communist rank and le workers who wish to ght for militant policies and trade union democracy. This united front may be episodic and local or long lasting and national.

The best example in Britain was the National Minority Movement in its earliest years and the various reform movements, vigilance committees and rank and le groups which preceded it. Democracy and openness about party afliation and party policy is, however, a jealously guarded right for communists even when, or rather especially when, it is the leading tendency in such a movement, for these formations remain united fronts and not parties.

Freedom of criticism alone enables the workers to select and reselect the leaders and the policies proven correct in struggle. The history of the IS/SWP’s attempts at rank and le organisation indicate the foreignness of this tradition to them.

Tailing the Struggles of the Class

In 1966 the IS focused its attention on the relationship between shop stewards—whose numbers had increased enormously during and after the war—and the trade union bureaucracy. The IS recognised that the Labour government’s attempts to impose incomes policies and anti-union laws was causing stewards to move into action against a reformist government. In response to this rift the IS published a book by Tony Cliff and Colin Barker called Incomes policy, legislation and shop stewards.

Despite their current insistence that in the 1960s they were not calling for a rank and le movement (see Alex Callinicos’ mendacious account in ISJ Autumn 1982 "The Rank and File Movement Today") this book did put forward an early version of the rank and le movement slogan. It argued that the principal problem with the militant shop stewards was the fragmentation of their struggles and the consequent narrow horizons. Their reformist consciousness was recognised but not regarded as a major problem by Cliff. Ever the optimist he said that it was fortunately being whittled away:

“The importance of state sponsored, central reforms has been declining; today the workers have less to gain and less to hope for from national reforms. And thus the role of their national representatives, the Labour MPs, has been declining too.” (op cit. p126)

Workers were turning instead to the shop oor and the shop stewards to get “do-it-yourself reforms”—better piece work rates, bonuses, holidays and so on. While admitting that the consciousness revealed by this process remained reformist, Cliff argued that since it was reformism located in the shop oor and based on self-activity it was thereby spontaneously “destroying the tradition of reformism from above” (ibid, p135) i.e. the Labour Party.

The tasks that owed from this analysis were of course to encourage shop oor “reformism”, but at the same time to overcome the fragmentation of the stewards’ movement and thereby nish the working class’ lingering belief in reformism from above:

“The principal tasks of socialists are to do what we can to unify the working class and to encourage the movement from below.” (ibid, p135)

This unity was to take the form of a national shop stewards’ movement.

This whole analysis was short sighted and impressionistic. It was certainly true that workers looked to shop oor organisation and bargaining as the main means of achieving economic gains in the 1950s and 1960s. It was not true that this shifting locus of reformism, as IS called it, sounded the death knell of the Labour Party.

Indeed when economic crisis, mass unemployment and ination, on the one hand, and statutory wage freezes, cuts in social services and attacks by the law on hitherto established trade union rights replaced the boom conditions of the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s the need for state wide, governmental answers would come to the fore.

Before this situation became critical there lay ve years in which the shop oor militants of the 1960s were able to utilise their stewards’ organisation for an effective ghtback. These were the halcyon days for Cliff’s prognosis and practice. But the problem of the Labour Party—reformism from above—was not, indeed could not be, resolved by reformism from below.

Yet IS blithely continued to keep politics to a minimum in its trade union work. In 1970 a second major book by Cliff was launched. In 230 pages Cliff described in detail the nature of productivity deals and spelt out a trade union programme on how to ght them. In one and a half pages at the end in a section entitled “Politics” it was asserted that “We need a revolutionary socialist movement” (p232). No connection between this asserted need and the struggle against productivity deals was made in practice.

Trade unionism and politics were presented as separate entities. In their practice in this period the IS followed Cliff’s cue. In the struggle to free the jailed Pentonville Five dockers the IS refused to demand that the TUC call a general strike despite the mass strike movement that was erupting to free the dockers. Symptomatically they refused out of the fear of TUC misleadership! Mass sympathy strikes by the rank and le were in their view safer.

Only when the TUC itself called a one day general strike did the IS shamefacedly see t to raise the call. Thus they tailed not only the working class, but inevitably, the bureaucracy. Morbid fear of the bureaucrats, attempts to avoid rather than challenge and break their inuence led to capitulation to it. Also in the miners’ strike of 1972 despite extensive rank and le self-organisation and strength, and despite the existence of a right wing leadership the IS refused to call for or build a rank and le movement during the strike. They cheered on Scargill’s militancy but would not attempt to organise the rank and le during the strike. They claimed that after the strike, that is outside of the context of struggle, they would call a conference around their paper, The Collier.

During the early 1970s the IS did gain recruits amongst workers, thanks to their energetic intervention in workers’ struggles and because they voiced these workers’ views. Generally they did not hold onto those recruits for very long and the dream of IS lling the vacuum on the left as a mass alternative to Labour did not materialise.

To overcome this failure to become a mass alternative, the IS increasingly turned towards the building of rank and le movements, around newspapers, in particular industries—the mines, London Transport, amongst teachers, amongst car workers and others. Encouraged by the winding down of the Communist Party’s “rank and le” movement, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Union, consequent to their capture of a number of unions, IS in 1974 decided to launch a National Rank and File Movement (NRFM).

This was conceived as a bridge to the party for advanced militants, and a means whereby a tiny party could play a big role. Tony Cliff described the relationship between the party, the rank and le movement and the mass of workers as a series of cog wheels—a small one, the party, setting in motion a larger one, the NRFM, setting in motion a larger one again, the mass of workers. The mechanical analogy was apt because the relationship was conceived of as mechanical rather than political. The party was simply one element of the “unifying” process, not the political leadership of the NRFM.

Cliff forgot that the big cog wheel turned under the motive force of economic and political crisis. When in 1974 a very powerful crisis rolled the working class in the direction of a Labour Government, the great cog-wheel tore the teeth of the other two in sequence. The rank and leists fell back under the inuence of the new left leaders. The IS “members” passed back over the bridge to staff the rank and le groups.

In the Callinicos article referred to earlier, the author described the NRFM as stillborn. He is right, but whereas he blames this on the objective state of the class struggle at the time (the beginning of the downturn) we blame the politics of the IS/SWP. The organisation built the NRFM on a syndicalist basis. The refusal to direct workers into a conscious conict with “reformism from above”—the Labour Party—was justied on the grounds that it was already discredited in the eyes of the workers.

On the eve of Labour’s election victory in early 1974 Andreas Nagliati, the IS industrial organiser at the time, wrote:

“The traditional party of the working class, the Labour Party, is an empty shell organisationally and in terms of active involvement. Politically it is so discredited that even the Tories’ vicious anti-working class measures have not really restored it to working class favour.” (ISJ, February 1974)

The conference called by the rank and le papers—the Carworker, Collier, Platform, NUT Rank and File etc—in March 1974 downgraded any discussion of the political situation facing the working class under. Resolutions put forward by the Workers Fight group on racism and workers’ control and nationalisation, were all opposed by IS and given short shrift at the stage managed conference.

The programme adopted at the conference was one of militant trade union demands. The IS itself decided in advance that it would not ght openly for its own socialist policies, for fear of scaring away militants. At some stage in the unspecied future, IS claimed it would raise its politics. The logic of this syndicalist approach was explained by Nagliati. Writing of the non-aligned militants he argued:

“What can bind them together is a programme of ghting around certain minimal demands—against wage freeze and incomes policy, for an end to the Industrial Relations Act and laws against picketing, for democratisation of the unions, for a ghting policy on wages. In this lies the rationale for the rank and le organisation.” (ISJ February 1974)

The 1974 conference gave birth to the NRFM. It was as “united front” controlled by supposed revolutionaries who were boycotting their own politics within it and suppressing anybody else’s! They simply joined in with the militants at the conference in relating particular experiences from their workplace. The meeting was more of a rally than a working conference to discuss strategy and tactics for militants in the light of the fall of Heath and the election of a Labour government.

Fear of reformism and the political incapacity to ght it prevented IS from raising and discussing the question of strategy and tactics in relation to the Labour Government. Realism, or rather a deep feeling of their own impotence, stopped IS from posing itself as “the alternative leadership”. Of course at the end of the day an IS speaker stood up and sang the praises of socialism (much as Cliff did at the end of his productivity deals book), but it had little bearing on the strategy of the NRFM.

The second conference of the NRFM took place later in the same year. In the meantime Wilson had been re-elected. Yet again, however, these developments did little to affect the nature of the conference. It followed the same recipe as the rst and with the same results. The IS leadership were eager to avoid a discussion in the NRFM of what they often scornfully referred to as “big politics”.

The modest success of the two conferences—approximately 500 delegates to each—reinforced the political modesty of IS. An internal bulletin in April 1975 recognised that the NRFM was not “strong enough to launch independent action” but argued that a serious campaign to root the NRFM in the localities would overcome this in the short term. The IS rmly believed that the “honeymoon” with Labour was merely the prelude to a “big bang” and the resumption of militant struggle.

This perspective was rooted in IS’s false understanding of the nature of the trade union bureaucracy and its hold over the workers’ movement. IS hates the bureaucracy. Its vivid expression of this hatred gains it the sympathy of those workers sold out and betrayed by the bureaucrats. But the IS/SWP does not understand how to defeat the bureaucrats—its hatred is based on fear and fear leads them to seek a way around or behind the backs of the union leaders.

This incomprehension dates back to Cliff’s “Economic roots of reformism”, an article written for Socialist Review in June 1957. Here Lenin’s theory of the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy is grotesquely caricatured and smugly rejected:

“A small thin crust of conservatism hides the revolutionary urges of the mass of workers. Any break through this would reveal a surging revolutionary lava. The role of the revolutionary party is simply to show the mass of the workers that their interests are betrayed by the ‘innitesimal minority’ of ‘aristocracy of labour’.” (Neither Washington Nor Moscow, 109)

Cliff then mobilised the apparently knock down argument that the mass of workers are in fact reformist in their consciousness. Brushing aside, with a few inconsequential statistics, the very idea that the skilled workers benefit differentially from imperialist super-exploitation he alights on the much simpler argument:

“The expansion of capitalism through imperialism made it possible for the trade unions and Labour Parties to wrest concessions for the workers from capitalism without overthrowing it. This gives rise to a large reformist bureaucracy which in its turn becomes a brake on the revolutionary development of the working class. The major function of this bureaucracy is to serve as a go-between between the workers and the bosses, to mediate, negotiate agreements between them, and ‘keep the peace’ between the classes. . .

“But the trade union and the Labour Party bureaucracy are effective in disciplining the working class in the long run only to the extent that the economic conditions of the workers themselves are tolerable. In the nal analysis the base of reforms is in capitalist prosperity.” (ibid, p115-6, emphasis in original)

The conclusion then ows:

“When capitalism however, decays to the extent that any serious demands of the working class reach beyond its limits, the bell will toll for reformism.” (ibid, p117)

This theory is false on all counts. As a critique of Lenin it is nonsense. Lenin did not hold that the working class was a constant “revolutionary class”, spontaneously ready to erupt but held back by a thin layer. He did hold—with Marx—that the proletariat had no objective and intrinsic ties to capitalist private property and that the demands of the prot system constantly led (though obviously not continuously) to collisions between the workers and the capitalists.

Obviously there are periods of boom and slump of expansion and contradiction which affect the frequency, scope and direction of the class struggle. But what Lenin was asserting was that under imperialism a sizeable stratum of skilled workers had emerged, well paid, with the conditions of life of a comfortable petit-bourgeoisie which had made its peace with capitalism.

Disproportionately represented in the unions they were a conservative force on which the union ofcialdom could erect a bureaucratic structure. This frustrated the democracy of the mass of the members and often excluded the mass of non-unionised or unemployed workers. This theory explains how it is possible for the union bureaucracy to maintain its hold even in periods of crisis when capitalism manifestly cannot meet the “serious demands” of the working class—indeed when it claws back previous concessions. Such clawback periods—1920-23, 1929-33, since 1979—do not in any sense automatically undermine the bureaucracy because the workers as a whole are no longer prosperous.

The Nature of the Union Bureaucracy

Cliff’s theory tends to obscure the communists’ concentration on the mass of the proletariat, our concern for the interests of the class as a whole. This includes relating to its most oppressed and exploited sections the unskilled, the unorganised, the unemployed, women, immigrants—regarded not as “minorities” but as part of the majority of the proletariat with nothing to lose but their chains. Of course, the well organised, militant sections provide invaluable cadre for the labour movement but without taking up and fusing with the majority of the class this minority remains a base for the bureaucracy.

For Alex Callinicos the bureaucracy is not based on any really existing social forces. Rather it is the natural result of the bargaining process. This is because the bargaining process necessitates organisation and organisation breeds bureaucratism:

“A division of labour naturally and spontaneously emerges between the mass of workers and their representatives, whose time is increasingly spent in bargaining with the employers.” (ISJ autumn 1982, our emphasis)

And:

“The trade unions even if they are born out of elemental struggles between labour and capital, inevitably produce a layer of full time ofcials whose task it is to negotiate a compromise between the two classes” (Callinicos, The revolutionary road to socialism, our emphasis)

This analysis, which owes more to the bourgeois sociologist Michel, and his iron law of oligarchy, or the Webbs, than it does to Marx and Lenin, leads to a shallow, contingent hostility to the bureaucrats. It leads to a self-defeating attempt to bypass the ofcial leadership, and a completely one-sided stress on self-activity and self-organisation, not as means to challenge and replace the bureaucrats, but to offset or control them.

Thus Cliff in an article written in July 1971, “The bureaucracy today” (ISJ 48, rst series) concludes:

“The struggle for democracy in the unions—regular elections of all ofcials, the right to recall them, giving them the average pay of the workers they represent get, the decision on the conduct of all strikes to be taken by mass meetings of workers, etc—will become of cardinal importance. A vacillating bureaucracy needs the steady, controlling hand of the rank and le.”

These formulations, and other like them in the pages of SWP publications, are based on the Clyde Workers’ Committee declaration:

“We will support the ofcials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them.”

Now while this stress on the independence of the rank and le is ne so far as it goes, it does not go far enough. It leaves out—and given the Clyde Workers’ Committee was dominated by industrial syndicalists this is not surprising—an organised political challenge to the ofcials with the objective of wresting the national unions from their control and replacing them with a revolutionary leadership subject to rank and le democracy.

From a communist standpoint, i.e. from that of the need for a political struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie and its state power—Cliff’s position is hopeless. Union democracy is necessary not merely to prevent sell-outs now, but to bind the bureaucracy’s hands. Workers need the full use of that centralised national union apparatus to make their struggles more effective. They need a “general staff of labour” that leads, mobilises and ghts, instead of today’s tame cat TUC.

Therefore the bureaucracy must be dissolved and replaced with a militant communist leadership. Such leaders would both guard and promote the democracy which alone really makes the unions schools of struggle, schools of socialism. But they would also have a positive duty.

The rank and le also vacillates. The job of communist leadership is to answer the fears of the rank and le, overcome their vacillations and mobilise them for struggle. To blather about “self-activity” or spontaneity is to cover up one’s total lack of direction . The working class will not thank, and more importantly will not choose, “advisers” who just atter their “self-activity” or “spontaneity”.

The IS, because it feared, and had no tactics to defeat and replace, the bureaucrats, effectively put a sign-board up on their rank and le groups:“No bureaucrats need apply”, “Ofcials keep out!”. This is what the IS/SWP propaganda about the fat salaries and perks of ofce amounted to. The method of the united front and of demands placed upon bureaucrats like Scargill was absolutely beyond them.

It might “sow illusions”, “reduce self-reliance and self-activity”. So it left these bureaucrats free to cultivate their (enormous) inuence over the rank and le whilst the IS contented itself with the tiny handful who would break with them as a rst step.

Fear of Opportunism

Like their argument about Labour Party membership—to go in is to be deled, it leads to capitulation—in the rank and le movement the IS exclude the “leaders” because it feared the reection or shadow of its own opportunism. Their horror of contamination masks a deep inner feeling that they have no strategy distinct from or inconsistent with that of the left bureaucrats.

In the struggle with the ofcials, revolutionary politics as a guide to action are absolutely decisive. An action programme for the unions can rally the membership and defend its interests against the bosses and the ofcials who try to sell these interests short. It can mobilise the forces to oust the reformist bureaucracy and clear the way for the transformation of the trade unions into organs of revolutionary struggle, instead of being organs for domesticating the workers. In the course of doing this, revolutionaries strive to win the leadership of the rank and le movement and the trade unions as a whole.

The SWP’s syndicalism has always prevented them from beginning such a struggle. Their conception of the NRFM as a body of militants grouped on a self-limiting trade union programme, always meant that they had to conceal their politics within the NRFM, ne words about the socialist millennium notwithstanding.

They could not connect these ne words with the policies of Labour. Every rank and le programme that ever emerged from the IS/SWP stable was based on minimum demands, while those willing to subscribe to socialism (always posed in an abstract and maximalist manner) could join the party. This concept of the NRFM was increasingly untenable under Labour.

It was usless in equipping militants to ght Jones (TGWU) and Scanlon (AUEW) in the unions and Wilson and Callaghan in the government. Militant shop-oor reformism was redundant under these circumstances. Not surprisingly, the SWP turned away from the NFRM and towards the Right to Work Campaign. This was launched by the NRFM, but by the SWP’s admission, the child gobbled up the parent.

It was a campaign of isolated actions and marches which mobilised the angry jobless youth and unleashed them at TUC congresses. The youth obliged by kicking the shins of the despicable time-servers. While one can sympathise with the sentiments of the youth who did the kicking, what this whole RTWC period reected was the SWP’s turn away from building rank and le organisations on the shop oor. Nor did it represent a real ght to get the unions to organise the unemployed. It was an expression of their inability to answer the problems of militants.

Thus from 1974 to 1977 the NRFM faded into obscurity. Then in 1977 it was wheeled out for a conference in November during the reghter’s strike. The SWP hoped, opportunistically, to cash in on this strike by relaunching the NRFM. However, the daily bulletin produced by the SWP in the name of a mythical reghter’s rank and le group repeated all the errors of the early 1970s. More and more militancy, bigger and bigger pickets were urged, but the problems of mobilising other sections of the public sector and ghting the TUC which engineered a sell-out, were not answered.

The last gasp of the NRFM came in 1979, in June after the Tories had won the election. This was conceived by Tony Cliff as an anti-Tory rally, not a serious revival of the NRFM. He was opposed in this conception by the industrial organiser, Steve Jeffreys. However the conference, as a rally, was a great success. Over a thousand attended it (double the attendance at previous gatherings).

But its political content marked the low point of the SWP’s economism. It launched a campaign around a “Code of Practice”. This called on workers not to cross picket lines, not to break the closed shop, and to observe trade union norms. Yes, it was the old refrain, basic trade unionism.

The Code of Practice was, when measured against the tasks of ghting a Tory government committed to a whole series of anti-union laws, pathetic. As the bosses limbered up to launch their most ruthless offensive for years, Tony Cliff, John Deason and the SWP could only call for a return to basics. After 1979 and the failure of an anti-Tory movement to emerge from the conference, the shrouds were prepared for Steve Jeffreys and the NRFM.

Both disappeared in the subsequent years. They were followed by the various rank and le papers—Carworker, Redder Tape, Engineers Charter etc, all of whose sales had been steadily dwindling.

The Steel Strike and the Rank and File

This disappearing act was for a time ofcially unacknowledged. It even went into partial reverse during the 1980 steel strike when the SWP re-launched their bulletin Real Steel News (RSN). Having learned nothing and forgotten nothing, the SWP Bourbons set about pursuing an identical course to that followed by the IS in the 1972 miners’ strike.

With the rank and le mobilised on a huge scale and acting independently of the ofcials, the opportunity for forging a real rank and le movement was there. To be realised it would have to take up issues like jobs, the transformation of the notoriously undemocratic ISTC, and so on. RSN eschewed these tasks and refused to organise the rank and le during the strike, against the ofcials. It concentrated solely on mobilising workers around the pay claim. At some unspecied future date the time would be ripe for a rank and le movement, but not while the rank and le were actually in motion on a mass strike.

Socialist Worker reported an RSN meeting as concluding:

“After the strike Real Steel News will have to take up issues like the reform of the ISTC and the ght against redundancy as well as the general political arguments” (our emphasis).

After the strike has been sold out by the unreformed ISTC and after the Tories massacred jobs in the steel industry, and after the militants had once again sunk into apathy, it was too late to take up these issues. Not surprisingly, RSN has not been heard of since.

By 1981 it was obvious to the SWP leadership that their rank and le perspective had collapsed. They were forced to come up with an explanation. Cliff as usual shifted the blame onto his members and the objective situation. The members, it seems, were guilty of doing what he had told them. They had built the rank and le groups as militant trade union bodies, and had themselves acted as militant trade unionists within them.

Lo and behold, they had actually liquidated themselves into these bodies and in so doing, turned them from being a supposed bride into a series of routes out of the party. According to Cliff:

“Instead of recruiting people from rank and le groups into the party, the comrades disappear into the rank and le groups.” (Socialist Review, May/June 1982)

Earlier a rank and le activist—no doubt put up to it by Cliff—had shamefacedly admitted:

“Our rank and le paper was devoted almost exclusively to what was happening in our own corner of the world and this determined our priorities.” (Socialist Review, November/December 1981)

The SWP’s ofcial historian, Ian Birchall, describes the members of this period as having got lost “in the minutiae of trade union routinism” (The Smallest Mass Party in the World, p24). All of these charges are undoubtedly true, but they beg the question, why did this happen to members of a supposedly revolutionary organisation? The answer is quite straightforward—the SWP leadership ensured that it happened because they designed the rank and le groups as bodies concerned purely with trade union matters.

The second reason cited by Cliff for the collapse of the NRFM perspective is the “downturn” in the class struggle. Since 1974 there has been a gradual collapse of militancy and condence inside the working class. Combined with high unemployment, this makes the building of a rank and le movement impossible, goes Cliff’s argument.

While at one time this would have meant at least keeping alive the notion of rank and le organisation, now it means dropping the idea altogether and, in the case of the health strike, actively opposing the formation of a national shop stewards’ organisation. All that can be done, says Cliff, is to be at the picket lines but “to play it low key—until the upturn comes” (Socialist Review, April 1983). This is classic. In the upturn (1972-74) the SWP played it “low key” so as not to frighten away militants from the IS or the NRFM. In the downturn they play it “low key” until the upturn! By “low key” they mean not pushing “big politics”, but concentrating on organising pickets and taking collections in order to win over the “ones and twos”.

Back to Basics

In any and every situation, all the SWP can shout is “back to trade unionism”. Sometimes it’s on a big scale (upturn), sometimes it’s on a small scale (the downturn). So now, despite the doubly treacherous role of the ofcials, and the ferocity of the bosses’ offensive, the SWP have wound up their rank and le groups, have retreated into their own geographical branches, where “politics” are to be discussed.

Of course, they continue to intervene in disputes, but here they must only raise small things:

“In locating the ones and twos by collecting money for strikes, we are locating the ones and twos who are prepared to ght and are prepared to identify with our politics. It is out of such small scale activities that a leadership is built for the struggles of the future.” (Cliff, Socialist Review, June 1983)

Cliff and the SWP turned away from the real problems posed by the bosses’ offensive. Like it or not, that offensive raised big, that is national, political issues like privatisation, union rights, the welfare state, war and peace—which class shall rule. To concentrate only on “little things” and hope that the big ones will go away until the SWP and the working class are ready to handle them, is sheer folly. They won’t go away.

In the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 the same tailing of the existing leadership of the left bureaucracy was revealed. In their publications the SWP certainly criticised the bureaucrats—including lefts like Scargill—and posed as the defenders of the interest of the rank and le miners. They argued that picketing should have been in their hands.

But they had no perspective or programme for transforming the unions and breaking the grip of the bureaucracy. They warned militants not to trust the ofcials but advanced no programme by which the NUM rank and le could have organised to transform the NUM during the dispute.

But the miners’ strike unleashed the energy of thousands of new militants. In the Midlands it led to the formation of a determined, militant, organised minority. This was the stuff of which a rank and le movement could have been built. Tony Cliff once stumbled into the potential of the militant minority when he said:

“The key problem in Nottinghamshire is how to mobilise the minority of miners, the 7,000 who voted for a strike. If they had been organised from the beginning and had picketed their own pits then the police operation would have been paralysed.” (SW, 14.4.84)

But Cliff had no answer to his own problem. The effect of raising no call for a rank and le movement was to offer no alternative to Scargill that militants could actually ght for. All the SWP could say was:

“There is only one way rank and le activists can protect themselves from this danger [Scargill’s weakness]. It is by making sure that as much of the strike as possible is organised from below, by strike committees in each pit, and with co-ordinating committees between pits to organise the picketing.” (SW, 7.4.84)

The SWP’s only answer was for the rank and le to somehow by-pass the weakness or treachery of the union ofcials. They offered no way of putting the leaders to the test and, behind their hot anti-bureaucratic talk, they let the left leaders off the hook. In the Health dispute of 1988 we were to see the same thing happen again.

Despite the often tireless activity of SWP members in support of particular strikes, as an organisation the SWP is turning away from the problems that confront the militant minority inside the working class. The SWP’s hostility to questions of leadership and politics, and their faith that an upturn will spontaneously rekindle a ghting spirit are condemning it to sectarian irrelevance.

We believe that, despite the defeats that have been suffered by the working class during the 1980s, the building of a rank and le movement is a necessary task. But it will only be of use to the militant minority in the class if it addresses the ideological and organisational crisis that has facilitated recent defeats. It must challenge and defeat the reformist bureaucracy.

To do this, it will require a political strategy, a revolutionary action programme. Revolutionaries do not have programmes for self-education circles alone. A programme is a set of policies, tactics and goals capable of mobilising workers in action. For us, therefore, intervention in the trade unions must be communist intervention. We seek to win, by democratic means, leadership of a genuine rank and le movement.

To do this we need to be absolutely open about, and ght for, our revolutionary politics, and not hide them for fear of frightening people away. This does not mean we present these politics as an ultimatum. On the contrary, we are prepared to take any step, however minimal, that takes the workers forward, alongside reformist workers. However, unless we ght for our own politics at the same time, we cannot expect the working class to break with reformism and march with us along the road of revolutionary struggle.

The SWP’s failure to inject politics into the NRFM left the militants of the 1970’s to be duped by Jones, Scanlon and the Labour Government. In the 1980’s, their “low key approach” left the militants at the mercy of Evans, Duffy, Kinnock and Scargill.

In the 1990s we must seize the opportunity of new struggles to forge a revolutionary communist vanguard in the trade unions. If the SWP comrades want to be part of this then they will need to turn their back decisively on their syndicalist past and present.

 


1984 and 1992 - Revolutionaries and the general strike

 

In 1984, in the midst of the greatest strike in Britain since 1926, the SWP refused to raise the call for a general strike. Eight years on the call suddenly appeared in the pages of Socialist Worker. This article, from October 1992, examines why.

The wave of anger that greeted the announcement of the pit closure programme led the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) to demand the TUC call a general strike.

Through petitions, lobbies, placards and resolutions the SWP, the largest organisation on the British left, have placed themselves to the fore in agitating for the general strike. Workers Power welcomes this development and we hope that joint work between our organisations can bring the practical realisation of a slogan we both agree on a step closer.

To achieve this, however, the serious weaknesses in the SWP’s application of the call for a general strike need to be recognised. In the first place, the SWP have offered little in the way of a strategy to actually get a general strike. Their call doesn’t go beyond a demand upon the TUC. In itself this is correct. But it is not enough.

In a major article in the SWP’s theoretical journal, International Socialism, Tony Cliff explains that the last time the TUC called a general strike, in 1972 to free the striking dockers in Pentonville prison, it was against the background of intensive militancy and widespread rank and file action. The TUC’s call was a deliberate attempt to contain and head off this militancy.

Today we do not have such an outbreak of militant action. The mood of anger is undeniably great. But unless it is matched by action the 250,000 signatories of the SWP’s petition calling for a general strike will count for nothing. Indeed, one of our own supporters found that virtually everyone in his workplace would sign the petition. But when he put a motion calling for a strike in support of the Miners on 21 October, he couldn’t get a seconder.

This shows the danger of the SWP’s belief that the current mood of generalised hostility to the Tories will be sufficient pressure to push the TUC into action. It also shows that work has to be done to build action and organisation in the workplaces that can prevent the TUC bureaucratically strangling a general strike wave.

Yet the SWP are not seriously addressing this problem. They are not consistently building for the sort of action that can get a general strike. In a resolution put by the SWP-controlled NALGO Broad Left, for example, the only demand they raise, in addition to the call on the TUC for a general strike, is for support to be given to demonstrations and protests by other sections of workers under attack. There is no mention of the need to build strikes. No perspective for linking the various NALGO strikes across the country to other sections in struggle is contained in the resolution.

In the special edition of Socialist Worker, the same failure to map out a strategy of building strike action now amongst the rank and file is evident. Workers are told:

"Demonstrate on Wednesday. Get everyone you know to show their support for the miners. Join the protests called by the TUC next Sunday. But on top of that insist the union leaders take up the call for a general strike."

You can insist all you like, but unless your insistence assumes the threatening form of strike action the union leaders will remain deaf to your petitions and resolutions.

By keeping their call for the general strike as a demand on the TUC not linked to building rank and file action between workers who are actually under attack in the here and now, the SWP are guilty of indulging in abstract propaganda. They are calling for a general strike they will not get, in order to appear as the militant wing of the mass movement that has erupted. That way they hope to grow. But they are not taking the actual fight to get a general strike forward, nor are they preparing the rank and file to defeat the TUC traitors.

Worse, the SWP are against organising the sort of rank and file bodies that are necessary to fight for a general strike and run such a strike. If the rank and file are to use the current situation to get a general strike they need to unite their struggles. The best way of doing this is through councils of action: councils that bring together workers in struggle and enable them to coordinate their action. Such councils will be vital to running every aspect of a general strike if we get one. The whole history of the British General Strike in 1926 shows this clearly.

Through such councils of action we will be able to organise the working class to run society through the experience of running a general strike--organising the distribution of supplies, administering communications, etc. Alongside such councils we will build the military power of the working class through workers' defence corps to defend pickets, resist police attack etc. The general strike requires such organisations.

Yet everywhere the SWP opposes the setting up of such bodies. When Workers Power proposed such organisations, in a health workers' rank and file conference and in the Leicester labour trades council, for example, the SWP voted against us. This is not only wrong, it is in flat contradiction to what the SWP said back in January 1985.

Then, in an article in Socialist Worker Review an SWP leader, Chris Harman explained:

"And once the point is reached where the slogan of the general strike is correct, you have to be ready to supplement it with other slogans that begin to cope with the question of power--demands about how the strike is organised (strike committees, workers' councils), with how the strike defends itself (flying pickets, mass pickets, workers' defence guards) and with how it takes the offensive against the state (organising within the army and the police)."

Not only are the SWP not raising these demands that Harman claims are essential, they are voting against us when we raise them. This reinforces our view that for the SWP the general strike call is really just a piece of propaganda designed to make themselves sound militant.

After all, the SWP have a poor record of fighting for the general strike at previous points in the British class struggle in the past. In 1972 they refused to call for a general strike around the Pentonville dockers until after the TUC itself called for one. Worse still, in 1984/85, when the miners' strike posed both the need and possibility for a general strike, the SWP vigorously opposed the fight to get one.

Their argument then was that the slogan "does not fit at the moment because of the way the Labour Party leadership and the TUC general council have sabotaged the movement in solidarity with the miners". (Harman, in Socialist Worker Review, quoted above). Yet today, despite the fact that there is no miners' strike, no solidarity action, and a TUC and Labour Party leadership vigorously committed to sabotage, the SWP say a general strike does fit!

In reality, in both cases, the slogan “fitted” because the issues at stake superseded sectional struggles and posed general questions. In both cases the objective situation posed the need for a general strike. The Tories in 1984 knew they had to break the miners so as to be able to carry out a series of attacks on other sections of workers, prove that their anti-union laws could stick and "break trade union power" in Britain.

The general strike was as necessary then as it is now. But fighting for the general strike meant fighting to break the sectionalism that prevented solidarity being delivered to the miners.

It meant fighting to win support for the struggle despite the divisions in the miners' own ranks that led to the creation of the scab UDM. It meant fighting to forge real links between the miners and the dockers, who struck twice and who were twice betrayed by the leaders of the TGWU.

In the face of all of these difficulties the SWP capitulated. The “mood” wasn’t there, they said. It was easier to “support” the miners through collections and raffles than to win action from other workers in solidarity with them. So the SWP took the soft option and in the crucial months of the strike counterposed collecting money and food to fighting for a general strike.

Today, the SWP believe that despite the absence of actual action, the “mood” is there for a general strike. As Socialist Worker puts it:

"No one can remember a wave of anger like the present one. No one can remember a time when a general strike was not just necessary to defeat a government, but when the mood of vast numbers of people was so in favour of one."

The SWP often remind people that "the party is the memory of the class". Clearly the SWP is not that party, for it has a very short memory.

Thousands of miners can remember when a general strike was necessary. Thousands of miners can remember the mood in every striking pit village and amongst thousands of dockers in favour of a general strike in July 1984. True the mood of sympathy wasn’t as widespread. But the necessity for the strike was there and there was an immediate focus for realising it because two key sections of workers were actually out on strike.

The SWP forget this because they are not a serious revolutionary party. They are revolutionary in word only. They tailor their politics to fit what they perceive to be the “mood” of the masses. If the mood is angry, let’s call a general strike so that we are the left wing expression of that mood. If the mood is more sombre then let’s forget what is necessary and argue against the general strike.

This is not revolutionary politics. It is crude “tailism”. To determine their slogans the SWP leaders lick their forefingers and hold them up to the wind. They do not make a revolutionary assessment of what the working class needs. And this is not just an academic argument. If the SWP, the biggest left organisation in Britain, had thrown its weight behind the general strike agitation, instead of throwing its weight against it, perhaps the slogan would have taken off. Perhaps the miners' strike would have sparked a general strike and the defeat could have been avoided.

 


Irish peace talks - Give peace a chance?

 

The war in Northern Ireland has always been the acid test for British revolutionary socialists. Faced with the prospect of an imperialist sponsored peae deal, the SWP has once again failed that test

The peace being prepared in the talks between Major and Albert Reynolds, as well as those between John Hume and Gerry Adams, is a reactionary settlement. It is the latest in a long line of capitulations by armed middle class nationalist movements, where a place at the bosses' negotiating table is exchanged for a ceasefire in an armed struggle that seems to be going nowhere.

The one “concession” British imperialism has made to the Republican movement--the denial of any "economic or strategic interest in Northern Ireland"--does not mean that Britain has any intention of quitting Ireland. It merely shovels the whole responsibility for legitimising Britain’s presence onto the will of the Protestant population to maintain the union.

It is the duty of revolutionary socialists, both in Britain and Ireland, to warn those with any illusions in the proposed peace deal, especially the war-weary working class of Northern Ireland, that no good can come of it. It will maintain imperialist domination of Northern Ireland. It will cement the privileges of the Protestants, with the added bonus of the Republican leadership playing the role of a Mandela or an Arafat in selling the surrender to the masses.

Britain’s two main left organisations, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Militant Labour, have failed in this duty.

On 6 November Socialist Worker castigated John Major for not responding positively to the Hume-Adams' peace initiative. Attacking Major because he had "snubbed the one real chance of peace", it suggested:

"The one thing Major could do is immediately meet representatives of all sides."

Proposals

The Hume-Adams proposals, still not published, are clearly a formula worked out between the Republican leadership and the pro-imperialist SDLP for a face-saving ceasefire. Instead of focusing their fire on this, the SWP criticise Major for failing to take up Sinn Fein’s offer of surrender!

When Major responded with his own formula, the Downing Street declaration, the SWP’s tune changed slightly. The January issue of Socialist Review states:

"Socialists welcome the possibility of peace. But we remain sceptical about the [Downing Street] deal and critical of the Republican politics which have carried Gerry Adams down this road."

Why welcome the "possibility of peace" if that peace is going to mean outright defeat for a just struggle? In reality the SWP’s scepticism about the deal is because of its inability to bring a ceasefire, not because it is a betrayal of the struggle for national self-determination:

"Of course [Major and Reynolds] would like the war in Ireland finished. It is an enormous drain on the resources of both governments. But neither will be distraught if Sinn Fein and the IRA reject the declaration. They hope such a rejection will cost Sinn Fein support. Then they will blame Gerry Adams for the war . . . This is clearly no recipe for peace. But it could help raise the standing of Major and Reynolds themselves."

Certainly the Republican leadership--which has placed all its hopes on "bombing Britain to the negotiating table"--faces the threat of renewed repression and loss of mass support . But the proposed talks are not just a cynical attempt by Major to expose the Sinn Fein leadership. They are a genuine attempt to stitch up a reactionary deal.

If socialists are to be consistent in their criticism of the politics which have brought Gerry Adams so close to this sell out, then they must draw the logical conclusion and demand the rejection of the deal offered by Major.

But the SWPcould not bring themselves to do this..

On the contrary, they regard any “peace” as the best possible condition for taking the fight for socialism forward. Even a peace deal dictated by British imperialism is preferable for the SWP.

In order to pose itself as the best fighter for “peace”, the SWM, the SWP’s sister organisation in Ireland, lumped the justified and progressive anti-unionist struggle in with the reactionary activities of the loyalist paramilitaries under the general heading of “sectarianism”.

Its leaflet to the 3 November peace demo in Derry proclaimed:

"Today must be the start, though not the end, of a strike movement throughout the country against sectarianism, for peace . . . The loyalist campaign of sectarian murder and the IRA massacre on the Shankill Road have united most working class people in terror and grief."

This is rubbish. Far from uniting working class people, the upsurge in violence and the “concession” to the Republicans contained in the Downing Street statement have, if anything, hardened support for the loyalist paramilitaries amongst the Protestant working and urban middle classes.

Sceptical

If the SWP is “sceptical” about the Major-Reynolds' declaration, how does it see “peace” being achieved? SW tells us:

"Permanent peace can only come from a fight against [the Irish and British Tory governments] that unites Protestant and Catholic workers north and south of the border."

Workers' unity is a worthy goal, but socialists have the responsibility to ask on what basis this unity can be achieved if it is going to take the struggle of the working class forward rather than to lead it into another dead end.

Unity of workers, Protestant and Catholic, north and south, is vital to the success of the Irish revolution. But workers need to be united against not only economic oppression and attacks on the welfare state, but against the very existence of the sectarian northern state.

Border

It is the border and the British presence that maintains the relative privileges of the unionists of the North. It is Britain and the border that tie Protestant workers to the Orange bosses. The imperialist presence is what divides the working class, and the road to unity must come through a struggle against the sectarian state led by the working class.

The SWP’s economism blinds them to this fact. Economism is a deviation from Marxism which suggests that the day to day economic struggle of the working class has the power on its own to generate revolutionary consciousness and to overcome all forms of oppression: racial, sexual and national. Socialist Review says:

"It is up to socialists to argue that Irish workers, whether Protestant or Catholic, whether living in the north or south, can expect nothing from Reynolds and Major. Together they can fight to create a new Ireland free from poverty, repression and discrimination."

True, but unless socialists also argue that the new Ireland will have to be united, will have to be created by throwing out British troops and smashing the Orange state, and by eliminating all the anti-Catholic discrimination in employment, housing etc, the much vaunted "workers' unity" will disintegrate every time the national question is posed.

In 1990 SWM leader Kieran Allen wrote:

"The type of unity built by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has depended on ignoring the reality of discrimination . . . it has never targeted the British army and the RUC as the source of the violence. As a result, this 'unity of the working class' amounts to nothing when sectarian tensions rise."

But now Socialist Review tells us:

"A working class fightback against low pay, unemployment and hospital closures could be a major start in breaking down sectarianism."

What will happen when "sectarian tensions rise"? The SWP has to pin all its hopes on the imperialist peace deal in the vain hope that “peace” will mean an end to sectarian tensions.

Far from seeing the Irish national question as a key component of the class struggle, the SWP sees it as a diversion from that struggle. Because of their economism they have no strategy for resolving it. They wish that this decisive political question would quietly disappear, letting workers get on with the task of fighting Major and Reynolds on wages and jobs.

This is why we find Socialist Worker “welcoming” not only the prospect of peace but the reactionary peace process itself.

Amid this vague, confused and, at root, opportunist reaction to the peace talks, what has happened to the SWP’s much vaunted anti-imperialist position on the Irish war?

Every week in Socialist Worker’s "Where we Stand" column they tell us that they "support all genuine national liberation struggles".

Now all trace of support for the Republican struggle against the British state has disappeared from the SWP’s publications. Even the call for Troops Out of Ireland Now, the formal position of the SWP, appears less frequently, and it certainly is not part of the SWP’s strategy for achieving “peace”.

If socialists support all "genuine national liberation struggles" then we should support the IRA’s struggle against the British occupation forces, even though we criticise its wrong strategy and methods of struggle. It is not simply a question of supporting the IRA’s right to defend the anti-unionist population from sectarian killings. Revolutionary socialists in Britain--from Karl Marx onwards--have always supported, unconditionally but critically, the armed struggle of Irish Republicans against the British state.

The SWP has consistently flinched from supporting this fight openly. Despite its anti-imperialist “principles” it has discovered that you cannot just throw membership cards at workers and students if your paper stands against the stream and takes the side of Britain’s enemy in the Irish war.

Militant Labour commits all the errors of the SWP but openly and unashamedly. It has never supported the armed struggle against the British state, even critically; it has consistently equated republican and loyalist violence; it has peddled the abstract formula of "workers' unity" around economic issues as a fig leaf for its refusal to take the anti-imperialist side in the Irish war.

Little wonder that faced with the prospect of a reactionary peace deal Militant has even fewer qualms than the SWP about accepting it with open arms, in order to get on with the economic struggle alone. As Militant’s editorial (17 December 1993) states:

"Should an agreement be reached it will only represent the first stage of a complicated process fraught with tremendous obstacles. Peace however would be seen as a great step forward throughout Ireland and Britain."

Process

By the ruling class, yes, but why should socialists welcome the "complicated process" of selling out the national struggle?

"An agreement is still possible and with it a reduction in the intensity of the violence. This would give the chance to the trade unions to unite Catholic and Protestant workers in common struggle."

Militant Labour--in a classically economistic manner--has always argued that if only the “sectarian” national struggle would go away then workers could “unite” on the bread and butter issues. It is only logical--albeit a total betrayal of the anti-imperialist struggle--for Militant to welcome British imperialism’s attempts to "get rid" of the national struggle for them. Militant Labour’s economism is distinguished from the SWP’s merely by its more blatant pro-imperialism.

The SWP and Militant Labour, faced with British imperialism’s latest manoeuvre against the anti-unionist revolt in Northern Ireland, have jumped aboard the peace bandwagon. Whether they realise it or not, they are sharing seats on this wagon with imperialism itself. They are betraying the anti-unionist revolt. And this marks them down as centrists--revolutionary in their rhetoric and reformist in their deeds--not revolutionary socialists.

Harsh words. But the 25 year old revolt against the Orange state and British occupation has been too bitter too allow for any diplomacy. The British state has hurled everything it could against the anti-unionist population--its troops, its assassination squads, its non-jury courts, its bouts of internment with out trial, its daily raids on the nationalist community. Still that revolt continues.

It is unworthy of any socialist, let alone a socialist in Britain, to reward that spirit of resistance, to repay the sacrifices made in that revolt--prison, torture and death--with calls for peace on Britain’s terms. The struggle against Britain’s occupation of Northern Ireland deserves much more than the counsels for surrender being offered by the centrists of the SWP and Militant Labour.

 


The Poll Tax struggle: No strategy to win

 

 “We live in exciting times” Socialist Worker told its members in it’s party column in May 1990. True enough. But in exciting times it is the duty of revolutionary Marxists to give a sober assessment of the situation and point the way forward for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party, argues Arthur Merton, has once again proved it can do neither.

The Poll tax struggle has been at the centre of the new mood of resistance to Thatcherism. We agree with the SWP when they say that it marks a new stage in the Tory offensive because it is a generalised attack:

“Now their generalised attacks have provoked a generalised response.” (Socialist Worker Review, April 1990)

But the whole question boils down to this—how can we transform a generalised response into a conscious, generalised struggle against the Tories? It is a question the SWP ignores because it believes this transformation will happen spontaneously.

So at the same time as it spreads the message “We can win” Socialist Worker (SW) consistently fails to answer the question: how?

Within the anti-Poll Tax campaign the SWP has long been aware of the limitations of a passive mass non-payment campaign. It has fought correctly for non-implementation by council workers.

But neither mass non-payment nor non-collection on their own have the power to beat the Poll Tax. If successful they will immediately come up against the courts, the police, the bailiffs.

Faced with this the workers involved will need to generalise the action by calling for mass political strike action.

But instead of a strategy to overcome the limitations of non-payment and non-collection the SWP only emphasises one over the other.

It emphasises non-collection on the basis that workers are strongest in the workplace. Correct. That means that the workplace is the place where we must aim to generalise the struggle, with demands aimed at the biggest possible mass strike action against the tax.

But the SWP’s focus on the workplace leads in the opposite direction. In place of the general strike we get a call for non-implementation by NALGO members. Instead of a generalising demand the SWP put forward the idea that a relatively small section of council workers are the key to sinking Thatcher’s agship.

“The workers who collect the Poll Tax have the power to smash it.” (SW 19.5.90)

The SWP has wrongly treated council workers’ action against new working conditions created by the tax as if they were struggles against the tax itself.

The Greenwich strike for better pay and conditions by Poll Tax collectors offers an excellent opportunity to argue that the workers involved should refuse to collect the tax, even if they win on pay and conditions. Instead the SWP has insisted that the strike is in fact already an anti-Poll Tax strike. But whatever the support workers are receiving from non-payers, however much the strikers hate the tax individually the strike could be settled if managers give in to the limited demands of the Greenwich workers.

But you will nd nothing in the pages of Socialist Worker warning of this danger, arguing for a strategy to turn Greenwich and other strikes into strikes against the tax itself. Instead it simply cheers on the workers: “Greenwich shows the way”.

To link the anger that exists against the Poll Tax with workers’ struggles for better wages, stimulated by big mortgage and Poll Tax bills, we need to overcome the sectional, economic limits lodged within all of these spheres of struggle.

We need to focus the anger of each into a conscious campaign against the Poll Tax itself. The SWP thinks so too:

“The coming wages struggles must be turned into a generalised political ghtback against the Tories.” (SW, 7.4.90)

“Take every opportunity to link wage demands with the Poll Tax, rent and mortgage rate rises.” (SW, 14.4.90)

The problem is that they consistently refuse to ght for a strategy that can bring this about.

In workplaces and union branches the spontaneous way many workers “link” these attacks is to say: “I’m paying my Poll Tax, my rent/mortgage has gone up so I need a pay rise”. Up and down the country the SWP has been echoing these arguments, rather than trying to replace them with revolutionary arguments and tactics.

Concretely the way to link pay and Poll Tax struggles is to build organisations that can link workers in the workplace with those on the estates.

We need to ght for councils of action, as the means of co-ordinating and linking the separate struggles. We need to build defence squads to protect the non-payers and workers’ demonstrations from the state. We need to fuse the struggles around the demand for a general strike against the Poll Tax itself.

The SWP clearly realises the potential for a generalised counter-offensive to drive the Tories from ofce:

“If the anger over the Poll Tax is linked with the rising determination to ght over wages and conditions not only will workers win decent pay rises but they can sweep the Tories away.”

How? By winning decent pay rises all at once? Clearly not. The answer, as any revolutionary socialist should know, is by launching a general strike which links pay, conditions, Poll Tax, benefit cuts, unemployment together. and which brings into being delegate councils of action representing every section of the working class.

But for economism this is much too far in advance of the workers’ present consciousness. So for all the SWP’s excitement we are never told just how the potential to drive the Tories from ofce can be realised.

The deliberate pay off workers have been given by whole number of employers, with settlements above the rate of ination, shoots a hole through the entire argument that ghting hard on every sectional front of struggle spontaneously leads to generalisation. And the SWP, in the face of such settlements, is left with nothing to say to power workers, rail workers, engineers, retail workers and construction workers who have all recently settled.

Finally the SWP’s economism has led them to a hopelessly one-sided view of the Tory crisis. Just as in the “downturn” they thought it was impossible for workers to win major class battles, now it seems impossible for them to lose. The Tories have “no obvious way out of their immediate difficulties” claims the May issue of Socialist Worker Review.

The Tories certainly do face a severe crisis. But to suggest that it is inescapable leaves workers disoriented when the limitations of the spontaneous struggles against the Tories lead to partial retreats and reverses.

On the eve of the council elections Socialist Worker told its readers:

“This week was Thatcher’s worst ever, but next week will be worse. After the local elections comes the likelihood of ofcial ination topping 10%.”

One week later Thatcher had limited the electoral damage with big Tory swings in London, staved off an immediate leadership challenge, quieted Tory calls to scrap the tax and gone on the offensive against high spending Labour councils. And ination failed to reach 10%.

Socialist Worker urged workers “Don’t let her off the hook”. But for the moment, because of the inadequacy of the spontaneously generated tactics the misleadership of the Labour and trade union leaders struggle, they already had.

Buoyed by the certainty that Thatcher’s days are numbered, the SWP has refused to advocate a strategy that could really generalise the ghtback. Its revolutionary sounding calls to “Get the Tories out” become empty rhetoric for the benet of the SWP members, not a ghting strategy for millions of workers.

“Thatcher’s policies are in ruins, her government in disarray. We don’t need to wait for Kinnock to replace her. We can do that right away.” (SW, 5.5.90)

But still this begs the question—how? Socialist Worker has no coherent answer.

 

Militant's peaceful parliamentary road (Critique of CWI and the tradition of Ted Grant, Peter Taaffe & Alan Woods)

Published by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency) in 1989, www.thecommunist.net

 

 

“We have proclaimed hundreds, if not thousands of times that we believe that, armed with a clear programme and perspective, the labour movement in Britain could effect a peaceful socialist transformation.” Peter Taaffe, editor of the Militant

 

“The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.” V I Lenin

 

The Militant newspaper in Britain organises its supporters into what it calls the “Marxist wing” of the Labour Party. Moreover, it describes itself and its supporters as Trotskyist. The Militant’s supporters have co-thinkers in a number of countries, all espousing broadly similar politics. The defining feature of Militant’s politics is the elevation of Trotsky’s tactic of entrism into mass reformist workers’ parties into an immutable strategy.

 

Entry is carried out in the belief that the contradictions of class struggle will inevitably propel the reformist and Stalinist mass parties to overthrow capitalism. Whether the resulting workers’ states will be “deformed” or healthy depends upon the outcome of the struggle between the conscious Marxist wing and the reformist and Stalinist leaders. Evolved by Michel Pablo in the early 1950s, this strategy has long been applied towards the British Labour Party by Militant and its predecessors.

 

For Militant the task of the Marxist wing prior to the moment when the mass parties are transformed is clear. Always, and whatever the cost in terms of compromising political principles, the “Marxist wing” must stay inside the mass reformist parties. As a result the “Marxism” of Militant takes on the camouflage of whatever national reformist or Stalinist party becomes the target of the entry strategy.

 

Leaving aside Militant’s schema for transforming the Labour Party, we want to challenge here its claim to represent any form of Marxism within the labour movement. Its politics are thoroughly right-centrist, its Trotskyism degenerate in the extreme, its direction inexorably towards reformism.

 

Its centrism, like Kautsky’s in the period after the First World War, excuses and conceals reformist politics by using the language of orthodox Marxism as a cloak. It does this most clearly on the most fundamental question facing Marxists—the capitalist state.

 

For genuine Marxists the transition to socialism can only begin once the proletariat has seized political power from the bourgeoisie and smashed the capitalist state. The transition can only be taken forward if capitalist counter-revolution is destroyed, workers’ democracy developed and extended and the revolution itself internationalised. These are bedrock principles of Marxism. Yet Militant tramples on every one of them.

 

In place of the strategy of the proletarian seizure of power Militant puts forward the schema of a Labour government with a parliamentary majority and a socialist programme, implementing the transformation of society by legislative means. Peter Taaffe argues:

 

“. . . in the pages of Militant, in pamphlets, and in speeches, we have shown that the struggle to establish a socialist Britain can be carried through in Parliament backed up by the colossal power of the labour movement outside. This, however, will only be possible on one condition: that the trade unions and Labour Party are won to a clear Marxist programme, and the full power of the movement is used to effect the rapid and complete socialist transformation of society.” 1

 

At the level of strategy this amounts to a parliamentary road to socialism via an established reformist party—that is a bourgeois workers’ party. Nowhere in the pages of Militant or its associated journals do we find any references to the need (in Britain) for workers’ councils as the organs of struggle and of proletarian power in order to effect the revolution. Nowhere do we find the argument for a workers’ militia as an alternative to the capitalists’ military machine. Nowhere do we find the call for a revolutionary party, distinct from all shades of reformism and centrism, as the necessary leadership for the proletariat in the revolution. Parliament and the existing organisations of the working class are deemed sufficient. Indeed, the job of workers’ organisations is merely to supplement and enhance the work of the left parliamentarians. Even these existing reformist led organisations are not cited as an alternative form of political power to Parliament. As Taaffe explains:

 

“The struggle to enhance the position of Labour in Parliament has always been supplemented by the struggle outside Parliament, both of the trade unions and the Labour Party.” 2

 

This parliamentary strategy leads to a crucial error; the down-playing of the role of the working class, of its self-organisation as the key to its self-emancipation in the course of revolution. If anyone, particularly the reformist leadership of the Labour Party, were in any doubt about the Militant’s commitment to Parliament, Rob Sewell repeated the essence of their position in an indignant reply to the reformist Geoff Hodgson:

 

“The idea put forward by Hodgson that we want to ‘smash parliamentary democracy’ is completely untrue. Unlike the sectarian grouplets on the fringe of the labour movement we have stressed that a socialist Britain can be accomplished through Parliament, backed up by the mobilised power of the labour movement outside.” 3

 

The swipe against the left in order to appease the right is a classic characteristic of centrism.

 

The real Marxist road to socialism

 

Revolutionary Marxists utilise an altogether different strategy for the seizure of power to the one outlined by Sewell and Taaffe. We reject the parliamentary road to socialism and we hold that the self-organisation of the masses into organs of struggle is pivotal to the victory of the revolution. Parliament is part and parcel of the British bourgeois state machine. Its bourgeois democratic aspects mean that we do not reject the use of parliamentary tactics, including the standing of revolutionary candidates in elections or critical support for the mass reformist workers’ party. But we subordinate such tactics to the requirements of the revolutionary class struggle, to the overall strategy of proletarian revolution.

 

We use parliamentary tactics not in order to strengthen workers’ illusions in Parliament as a potential agent of fundamental change, but to destroy those illusions. We use Parliament as a platform from which we can denounce every aspect of capitalism, not as the vehicle for a peaceful transition to socialism. There is nothing sectarian about this despite Sewell’s claim. It is entirely in accord with everything that Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky ever wrote about parliamentarism. Arguing against the opportunist leaders of the Second International, who also claimed that any criticism of parliamentarism was sectarian, Lenin stated:

 

“Marx knew how to break with anarchism ruthlessly for its inability to make use even of the ‘pigsty’ of bourgeois parliamentarism, especially when the situation was obviously not revolutionary; but at the same time he knew how to subject parliamentarism to genuinely proletarian criticism.

 

To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush people through Parliament—that is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.” 4

 

What is at stake, therefore, in our argument with Militant is not whether Parliament can be used by revolutionaries—it can—but what it has to be used for. Under Lenin and Trotsky the Communist International (Comintern) developed Lenin’s theme of rejecting Parliament as a road to socialism, while using it as a means of advancing the position of the proletariat. The Comintern started from the need for an insurrection against the bourgeois state and then allocated a place for parliamentary activity as a subordinate tactic in the march towards insurrection:

 

“The mass struggle is a whole network of activities which increasingly intensify and logically culminate in an insurrection against the capitalist state. As the mass struggle develops into civil war the leading party of the proletariat must, as a general rule, secure each and every legal position using them as auxiliary centres of its revolutionary work and subordinating them to its plan for the overall campaign of mass struggle.

 

The platform of bourgeois Parliament is one such auxiliary centre . . . The Communist Party enters this institution not to function within it as an integral part of the parliamentary system, but to take action inside Parliament that helps smash the bourgeois state machine and Parliament itself . . .” 5

 

In sharp contrast to Militant’s protestations to Hodgson that they are loyal to parliamentary democracy and in no way wish to destroy it, the Comintern declared:

 

“[Communism] sets itself the task of destroying parliamentarism. It follows from this that bourgeois state institutions can be used only with the object of destroying them. This is the one and only way the question of their utilisation can be posed.” 6

 

The Comintern asserted, categorically, that the rejection of the parliamentary road flowed from the centrality of mass proletarian action and organisation within the revolution. Where Militant argues for a schema in which mass action “supplements” or “enhances” parliamentarism, the Comintern argued for the opposite:

 

“Since the focal point of the struggle for state power lies outside Parliament the questions of proletarian dictatorship and the mass struggle for its realisation are, obviously, immeasurably more important than the question of how to use the parliamentary system.” 7

 

And:

 

“The most important form of proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie and its state power is, first and foremost, mass action, which is organised and directed by the revolutionary mass organisations of the proletariat (unions, parties, soviets) under the general leadership of a united, disciplined, centralised Communist Party.” 8

 

Militant’s parliamentarism is at odds with Marxism. It is a strategy that substitutes bourgeois forms of democracy and a bourgeois party (the Labour Party) in office, for the independent organisation of the masses and for the leadership of a revolutionary party.

 

Parliamentary cretinism

 

How on earth, then, does Militant defend its position and still claim to be Marxist? How does it distinguish itself from the left-reformists who advocate a similar parliamentary road?

 

It does so in two ways. First, it argues that a Marxist majority will utilise Parliament in a new way by passing an “Enabling Bill” so that socialism can be legislated for very quickly. Secondly, it argues that the British labour movement is so strong as it is and so committed to parliamentary democracy, that it has little need for soviets, a workers’ militia and all of the other, specifically proletarian, forms of democracy. All that is needed is a massive quantitative extension of existing democracy.

 

The “Enabling Bill” is the centrepiece of Militant’s strategy. It is the fig-leaf covering its opportunism. Taaffe explains the purpose of the enabling legislation in these terms:

 

“It is for this reason that Militant, in opposition to the programme of piecemeal reforms of the supporters of the Alternative Economic Strategy, have demanded that a Labour government introduce enabling legislation into the House of Commons to nationalise the 200 monopolies, with minimum compensation on the basis of proven need.” 9

 

Explicitly rejecting the accusation of “parliamentary cretinism” Militant points to what is supposed to be the fundamental difference between the parliamentary cretinism of the reformists and the revolutionary decisiveness of the “Marxist” parliamentarians—speed:

 

“The Labour Party education sheet states: ‘The first few months of a Labour Government can be decisive. It is the time when essential legislation can be enacted’. We would say the first few days are decisive.” 10

 

In other words it is not so much a question of the nature or even purpose of such legislation which is crucial, but rather the period of time over which it is enacted. The possibility of success, or otherwise, of a fundamental socialist change is reduced to whether or not a future Labour government legislates quickly enough! With parliamentary nationalisation being equated with socialism, and rapid nationalisation being seen as crucial for success, the central role allotted to Parliament follows logically.

 

A revolutionary workers’ government—based upon workers organised in factory committees, workers’ councils and a militia—to actually expropriate the banks, factories and offices is accorded no place within this schema. This is not surprising given the precedents Militant uses to lend credence to its strategy. Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister in the 1945 Labour government, was the pioneer of the enabling strategy and Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath later fine-tuned it:

 

“Many others, including Attlee called for a new Labour government to introduce emergency or enabling legislation to dispense with parliamentary etiquette. Ironically the Heath government in February 1971 used enabling legislation to nationalise the bankrupt Rolls Royce in less than 24 hours.” 11

 

The only thing ironic about these historical parallels is that a paper calling itself Marxist can suggest that the way to achieve the most far reaching social transformation history has seen is to follow the example of a reformist leader who betrayed the socialist aspirations of the masses in 1945, and a Tory doing the bosses’ bidding by bailing out an ailing company.

 

The truth is that the bosses had no fundamental objections to the nationalisations carried out by Attlee nor to Heath’s rescue operation. It is unlikely in the extreme that the ruling class would sit back and allow parliamentary action, no matter how speedily it is carried out, to threaten their economic system, their wealth and their power, indeed, their very existence as a class. Violent and uncompromising opposition to such action would be launched by the bourgeoisie, and parliamentary niceties, including all the “Enabling Bills” in the world, would not deter them in the slightest. It is the task of real Marxists to tirelessly warn the working class of this prospect now. Militant does not.

 

It shies away from the key task of the socialist revolution’s earliest stage, the need to smash the bourgeois state—of which Parliament is one, important, constituent part—and replace it with a state of a new type, a state based on the direct organs of proletarian power. Instead the capitalist state is to be used to implement socialism on behalf of the working class. Of course, Militant talk about the mobilised power of the working class as a means of defending this brand of parliamentary socialism. All this means is that the working class bears the same relationship to the “Marxist” parliamentary cretins as football supporters do to their team. They cheer them on, but do not take part in the match.

 

Smashing the state

 

Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky all vigorously fought against strategies for socialism that avoided the need to smash the capitalist state, and for reasons that hold good today. The capitalist state, including Parliament, is not class neutral. It exists as a direct consequence of class antagonisms. Its function is to regulate those antagonisms by defending the property, the economic system and the political power of the ruling class. It does this by coercing and oppressing the exploited. In the aftermath of the Paris Commune of 1871, when the working class had seized and briefiy held onto political power in Paris, Marx recognised the significance of the event for proletarian strategy:

 

“The proletariat cannot, as the ruling classes and their various factions have done after their victory, simply take possession of the existing machinery and employ this ready made machinery for its own purposes.” 12

 

Marx went on to explain that it was necessary to smash the bureaucratic-military apparatus of the state. This led Lenin to conclude:

 

“The words ‘to smash the bureaucratic-military machine’ briefly express the principal lesson of Marxism regarding the tasks of the proletariat during a revolution in relation to the state.” 13

 

Engels argued that Marx once concluded that “at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means”.14 This is a well thumbed quote often used by Militant speakers against “ultra-left sects” who argue that Britain needs a revolution.

 

Marx argued this in the mid-nineteenth century because in Britain the modern imperialist state, with its executive armed apparatus towering above Parliament, was underdeveloped. But the development of imperialism as a world system changed this. It was that famous “ultra-left sectarian”, Lenin, who pointed out in 1917:

 

“Today, in Britain and America too ‘the precondition for every real people’s revolution’ is the smashing, the destruction of the ‘ready-made state machinery’ (made and brought up to ‘European’, general imperialist, perfection in those countries in the years 1914-17).” 15

 

And as Engels reminded us, Marx himself:

 

“. . . certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a ‘pro-slavery rebellion’, to this peaceful and legal revolution”.16

 

Marx, in other words, expected the British bosses to mount the equivalent of the American Civil War of 1861-65 if faced with an attempt to legislate socialism. Unlike Marx, Militant always “forget to add” this. Given the existence of ruthless and highly trained agents of repression in modern Britain, to forget it now is criminal folly.

 

Parliament, even one of a high bourgeois democratic standard, which Britain’s Parliament is not, cannot be a vehicle for socialist revolution. The reason is straightforward. Its bourgeois nature flows, not simply from its historical development as one of the instruments of capitalist rule, but from its function within capitalist society. It exists to deliberate upon and to pass laws. It does not carry those laws out, nor does it interpret and enforce those laws. It is, in a nutshell, a talking-shop. Real power, in Britain as in every capitalist society, lies outside of Parliament.

 

At the level of the state it lies with the executive, the military general staff, the unelected judges and police chiefs and the top levels of the state bureaucracy, the unelected civil servants. At the level of the economy real power lies with the bankers and captains of industry, with the big corporations and finance houses. A law making body comprised of 650 individuals cannot, under any circumstances, break the hold of these centres of real power. Even if a left majority in Parliament began the process it could take hardly any steps along the road to socialism without recognising that the alternative to these centres of power lie with the revolutionary organisations of the proletariat.

 

Only an entirely new form of state, one based on the directly elected and permanently accountable councils of the working class, one based on a workers’ militia and on those sections of the armed forces won to the side of the revolution, can square up to and defeat the combined power of the bourgeois state (which Engels observed was, in the last analysis, “bodies of armed men”17) and the capitalists whose property and economy it defends. Only organs that combine legislative and executive tasks, ones that do not seal off democratic deliberation and decision making from implementation, can provide the basis for this state of a new type. Lenin, who understood parliamentary democracy for the sham it was, explained:

 

“The way out of parliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from talking shops into ‘working bodies’. ‘The Commune was to be a working not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time’ (Marx).

 

‘A working not a parliamentary body’—this is a blow straight from the shoulder at the present-day parliamentarians and parliamentary ‘lap dogs’ of Social Democracy! Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to Britain, Norway and so forth—in these countries, the real business of ‘state’ is performed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and general staffs. Parliament is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the ‘common people’.” 18

 

Proletarian institutions of power

 

And Lenin did not believe that the representative institutions of the proletariat could be parliamentary ones, even if they were stuffed full of “Marxist MPs”. He recognised that a new, and specifically proletarian, representative institution had emerged. It was foreshadowed in the Commune and then erupted in the Russian Revolution. It was the Soviet:

 

“The proletariat cannot ‘lay hold’ of the ‘state apparatus and set it in motion’. But it can smash everything that is oppressive, routine, incorrigibly bourgeois in the old state apparatus and substitute its own, new apparatus. The Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies are exactly this apparatus.” 19

 

How far Militant has travelled away from genuine Marxism is testified to by its refusal, in any publication, to explain the need to smash the state and replace it with a state of a new type, one based on soviets. In relation to the state its programme goes no further than reforming the judiciary and the civil service. Thus, in place of people’s courts it calls for elected judges. In place of soviets as administrative bodies it calls for an elected civil service. Militant correctly demands the abolition of the House of Lords and the monarchy, but says nothing about the House of Commons itself, other than that MPs should receive a “workers’ wage”. With regard to capitalism’s most trusted guardians, the officer caste, Militant foolishly encourages the illusion that these reactionaries can be won over to the proletariat:

 

“It is not by attempting to influence one or two isolated figures, but by offering the perspective of a new society, that the officer caste can be neutralised, or sections—even a majority—won over to the side of working people.” 20

 

In essence the Militant programme in relation to the state is for the creation of a democratic republic, not a soviet one. And this democratic republic will be able to usher in socialism peacefully by nationalising the top 200 monopolies. This centrist recipe for social change is a utopia, a fantasy. It panders to the democratic illusions of the British labour movement while simultaneously giving a garbled expression of its socialist aspirations. Taaffe leaves us in no doubt about Militant’s commitment to democracy. He leaves out of consideration the Marxist dictum on the need to smash the state and create a new proletarian democracy, and urges instead a mere extension of already existing, bourgeois, democracy:

 

“Democracy is not some kind of optional extra for Marxism. Without the massive extension of democratic rights, which is only possible on the basis of a socialist plan, there can be no movement towards socialism.” 21

 

Evaded, in this bowdlerisation of Marxism, is the fact that the precondition for a socialist plan is the destruction of the capitalist state and the supersession of bourgeois democracy—its negation—by a qualitatively different and new form of democracy, proletarian democracy.

 

Having ditched the Marxist position on the state and revolution, having paraded parliamentary democracy as the key weapon for the British working class, Militant is obliged to sink ever further into the revisionist mire. It renounce, explicitly, the Marxist strategic goal of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Quoting Trotsky in 1940 on the prospects for a peaceful American revolution (prospects which he did not consider very likely) Militant argues:

 

“The only amendment we need to make to Trotsky’s statement, because the events of the last forty years have indelibly stained the term, is to change ‘proletarian dictatorship’ to ‘proletarian democracy’. It was Marx who first raised the question of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to characterise the new workers’ state based upon the involvement and consent of the majority—as opposed to the ‘dictatorship of capital’. However, given the monstrous totalitarianism of dictatorships that have arisen in Germany, Italy, Spain and also the Stalinist regimes, the connotations of totalitarian repression associated with the word ‘dictatorship’ have blotted out the meaning intended by Marx: ‘predominant rule’. Today the correct term to capture the true meaning is ‘workers’ democracy’.” 22

 

As if it will make the slightest difference to the rapacious and brutal capitalist class, Militant tendency tries to prove its rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat by promising the bosses, in advance of the revolution, full democratic rights under socialism.23

 

Lenin in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky described Kautsky’s outpourings against the dictatorship of the proletariat in Bolshevik Russia as “twaddle”. The same epithet applies to Militant’s explanation for its rejection of this basic principle of Marxism. Like Kautsky these comrades rely on sleights of hand and what they hope is the reader’s ignorance of real Marxism, in order to get away with its opportunism.

 

At the time Trotsky used the term in relation to America, fascism was almost two decades old in Italy, seven years old in Germany and had just triumphed in Spain. The Stalinist dictatorship had existed since 1928 and its brutality had become ever more apparent throughout the 1930s. Yet terminological embarrassment—the “staining” of the word “dictatorship”—did not prevent him from sticking steadfastly to the need for a revolutionary proletarian dictatorship. After all, according to this logic the bad press that certain terms get at the hands of bourgeois public opinion makers, should have led Trotsky to abandon calling himself a Bolshevik and a communist. He did not, nor do we. The pretended pedagogy in Militant’s revisionism is mere cover.

 

The real meaning of its rejection of the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” is its refusal to accept that the workers’ state is not simply a democratic society. Socialist tasks can, and do, contradict the extension of democracy to the enemy class. The weapons of proletarian terror against that class will have to be used. The workers’ state is a society in which the proletariat imposes—dictates—its will on the whole of society, suppressing democracy for the class enemy as and when the tasks of the revolution make that necessary. Dictatorship does not simply mean “predominant rule”, therefore. It does not simply mean “workers’ democracy”. It also, and inevitably, means coercion, by force of arms, of all those who attempt to undermine the workers’ state economically, politically or militarily.

 

To merely equate the dictatorship with workers’ democracy is to lull the masses to sleep, to blunt the need to make them recognise that force and, if necessary, revolutionary violence up to and including civil war and the “red terror”, are in all probability going to be required to preserve the existence of the workers’ state. It is to lie to the working class about the tasks that are ahead of them.

 

Marx explained that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a historically necessary and inevitable stage in the advance towards a society in which classes and class exploitation are abolished altogether, a society in which the need to regulate class antagonisms will disappear as will the state itself. Lenin gave the dictatorship of the proletariat a concrete meaning and form on the basis of the experience of the Russian Revolution. As against Kautsky’s liberal whining about the suppression of bourgeois democracy in Russia, Lenin insisted:

 

“. . . dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition (or very material restriction, which is also a form of abolition) of democracy for the class over which or against which, the dictatorship is exercised.” 24

 

The proletarian dictatorship is a negation, to one degree or another, of democracy, precisely because democracy itself is not an abstraction. The question has to be asked, democracy for which class, and for what ends?

 

We say, in advance, that we will force the capitalists to accept the rule of the proletariat. We will imprison them and their representatives if, as we expect they will, they take up arms against the workers’ state or engage in economic sabotage against it. We will pay no heed to any law in our repression against the capitalists except the supreme law of the defence of the revolution. As Lenin put it:

 

“The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.” 25

 

Bourgeois or workers’ democracy?

 

This “simple truth as plain as a pikestaff”, as Lenin calls it, is rejected by Militant supporters because they fear the bourgeoisie will stigmatise them as anti-democratic. They think that the term “proletarian dictatorship” will be misunderstood by workers with democratic illusions. Worse, they think the term has been “indelibly stained”. By whom? The Communards, the revolutionary Bolsheviks, the Fourth International of Trotsky? No, by “public opinion”. The bourgeoisie have a long history of stigmatising revolutionaries as anti-democratic. In the current epoch they have been helped in this by the monstrous bureaucratic dictatorship of Stalinism in the degenerate(d) workers’ states.

 

In normal times capitalist control of the media and education means they can get many workers to buy the big lie that revolutionaries are anti-democratic and that the bourgeoisie are democracy’s guardians. But, even on a strike picket line, communists can prove to workers in practice the need for the dictatorship. What else is the picket line but an attempt to dictate the will of the strikers to the bosses, their scabs and their police thugs? Through the mass meeting we reach a democratic decision, through the picket line we impose that decision.

 

We therefore defend the picket line as a means of coercion, and we argue for its military defence, even at the most elementary level of picket defence squads. This type of workers’ action is central for the development of a revolutionary class consciousness inside the working class, far more central than the use of the “mobilised power of the labour movement” to serve as an adjunct to the doings of a socialist MP.

 

We show in practice the way in which such action gives a glimpse of the needs of the class struggle at a more general level, a glimpse of the tasks confronting the class in society as a whole if it is to end the struggle for survival and replace it with an economy based on the fulfilment of human need. We break down the suspicions of workers about the supposed anti-democratic nature of revolutionaries and rouse them from their “democratic” servility before the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

 

We defend proletarian democracy absolutely. But we give no pledges, in advance, to the bourgeoisie, except that we will smash their rule with all the weapons at our disposal. Does this sound dictatorial and authoritarian? Yes! Does it require the destruction of the British working class’ faith in bourgeois democracy? Yes! But then revolution, unlike Militant’s parliamentary road, is an authoritarian business which requires a break from all illusions in the neutrality of bourgeois democracy. Engels, anticipating Lenin, noted:

 

“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other by means of rifies, bayonets and cannon—all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” 26

 

The “orthodox Marxists” of Militant may pay private homage to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, but their public positions—the ones they peddle to the working class—are a million miles from the revolutionary essence of these great teachers, an essence voiced by Lenin’s and Engels’ pronouncements on the need for a forcible dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie.

 

Peaceful schemas and revolutionary violence

 

The inexorable logic of Militant’s parliamentarism and rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to disarm the working class on the question of revolutionary violence. The road to power is, it is fond of repeating, peaceful. Rob Sewell informs us:

 

“The truth is Marxists stand for a peaceful transformation of society. We no more want violence than we want to catch the plague.” 27

 

Put another way Sewell fears revolutionary violence like the plague. He fears it for the same reason he fears the term “proletarian dictatorship”. It offends public opinion, more precisely, it offends the reformist leadership of the Labour Party.

 

In accordance with their desire to appear “orthodox” Militant attempts to prove that, like it, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were fully committed to a peaceful road to socialism. Sewell tries to draw a parallel between Militant’s conception of a peaceful road and Lenin and Trotsky’s arguments about the possibility of peaceful change in Russia in 1917:

 

“[The] aim of the Bolsheviks in 1917 was to secure peaceful change in society. As late as 9 October 1917, Lenin was offering ‘to help to do everything possible to secure the last chance for a peaceful development of the revolution’. And later in the article he says ‘Having seized power, the Soviets could still at present—and this is probably their last chance—secure a peaceful development of the revolution, peaceful elections of the deputies by the people, a peaceful struggle of parties inside the Soviets, a testing of the programmes of various parties in practice, a peaceful passing of power from one party to another’.” 28

 

Throughout this entire quote from Lenin Sewell emphasises the word “peaceful” which is repeatedly used. This, he believes, conclusively points to the totally “peaceful” conception of the development of the revolution held by Lenin and thereby the Bolshevik leadership. By using this one quote out of context and ignoring some vital facts, however, Sewell is misleading his readers.

 

Consider the context in which for a short time Lenin believed it possible to develop the revolution peacefully. First, an insurrection had already taken place, in February 1917. The revolution’s first phase was violent, a fact overlooked by Sewell. Secondly the situation was abnormal in the sense that dual power existed. The soviets and factory committees were the real power in Russia, but they were tied by their Menshevik leaders to supporting the bourgeois Provisional Government. The balance of forces within the framework of dual power made the peaceful transfer of all power to the soviets a slim but realisable possibility:

 

“At that time state power was unstable. It was shared by voluntary agreement between the Provisional Government and the soviets. The soviets were delegations from the mass of free—i.e. not subject to external coercion—and armed workers and soldiers. What really mattered was that arms were in the hands of the people and that there was no coercion from without. That is what opened up and ensured a peaceful path for the progress of the revolution.” 29

 

In other words, prior to the July Days and then again briefly after the Kornilov Coup, the fact of a dual power situation in which the workers had arms made a peaceful development possible. Precisely because Marxists do not advocate violence for its own sake Lenin tried to seize the momentary opportunity for peaceful development.

 

However, more important than such speculations on possibilities, the fact is that an insurrection proved necessary. Lenin fought for, and eventually won the Party to, the insurrectionary course and an uprising was staged. Militant gets around this fact by claiming that the Bolshevik government came to power through peaceful elections at the Congress of Soviets. Do the Militant theoreticians not know that the uprising was carried through by the Military Revolutionary Committee? On the basis of a Bolshevik majority in the Soviet Congress, this organisation led by the Bolsheviks forcibly overthrew the Provisional Government. We think they do know this, but will go to any lengths to try and disguise it from their supporters and from the British working class.

 

Of course, Taaffe and Sewell et al accept as a possibility the need to use force against a bourgeoisie that attacks the left Labour government of their schema. But by refusing to make clear to workers in advance the inevitability of such an attack they are doing a grave disservice to the cause of the revolution. Trotsky, writing on Britain, anticipated such dangerous nonsense and warned:

 

“However, heroic promises to hurl thunderbolts of resistance if the Conservatives should ‘dare’, etc, are not worth a single bad penny. It is futile to lull the masses to sleep from day to day with prattling about peaceful, painless, parliamentary, democratic transitions to socialism and then, at the first serious punch delivered at one’s nose, to call upon the masses for armed resistance. This is the best method for facilitating the destruction of the proletariat by the powers of reaction. In order to be capable of offering serious resistance, the masses must be prepared for such action mentally, materially and by organisation. They must understand the inevitability of a more and more savage class struggle, and its transformation, at a certain stage, into civil war.” 30

 

These words—every one of them—apply to Militant today. Instead of preparing for civil war its propagandists prattle about Parliament. And a graphic example of the practical consequences of this prattling was revealed in the miners’ strike when Militant argued that the scab-herding, truncheon wielding police thugs were “workers in uniform”. On a strike picket Militant’s line of march is to the right. How much more will this be the case when the task of insurrection is the order of the day?

 

As it is they play on an understandable desire by all civilised people to minimise violence, and transform it into a utopian schema for the peaceful road. Thus they constantly down-play the likelihood of vicious counter-revolutionary terror by the army, police, secret service and other agents of the bourgeoisie. In doing so they again abandon some central aspects of the Marxist tradition.

 

Certainly we are concerned to disorganise and paralyse the forces at the disposal of the bourgeoisie. That is, we want to smash the bourgeois state forces, and in the process win to our side the maximum number of rank and file soldiers. Marxists have developed tactics to be used to achieve just this. Trotsky in particular emphasised the necessity for such activity:

 

“A revolutionary uprising can hold on to victory only where it succeeds in cracking the firmest, most resolute and reliable detachments of reaction and attracting the remaining armed forces of the regime over to its side . . . [This] can only be achieved in a situation where the wavering government forces are convinced that the working masses are not simply demonstrating their discontent but have this time firmly made their mind up to overthrow the government at all costs, not baulking at the most ruthless means of struggle. Only this sort of impression will be capable of swinging the wavering forces over to the side of the people.” 31

 

Compare this to Militant’s schema whereby revolutionary activity to break the resistance of counter-revolutionary forces is restricted to the dissemination of abstract propaganda:

 

“Only by opening up new possibilities for the further development of society is it possible to exercise a powerful influence on the ranks of the army.” 32

 

Taaffe appears to have overlooked the fact that, as Trotsky pointed out, organised detachments of workers armed with rifles, guns and bombs can have a pretty “powerful influence” too! But then having rejected the road of revolutionary violence the problem of breaking up the army recedes in importance. After all, getting more “socialist” MPs elected is the real business of the British revolution.

 

Adapting to national pressures

 

Militant consistently refers to the Iranian revolution as the vindication of its position:

 

“If in Iran a much more powerful army was shattered by a movement of the working class how much more so would the hands of reactionary army generals be tied by a similar movement of the British working class?” 33

 

But what shattered the Iranian army was not an unspecific “movement of the working class”. It was the combination of mass resistance with an armed insurrection. Far from having their hands “tied” by the mass movement of the Iranian workers, Iran’s generals unleashed the Imperial Guard against the garrison of the left wing Air Force Cadets. With the assistance of the left wing guerrillas of the Fedayeen and Mojahedin the Cadets defeated the Guards. They then proceeded to distribute arms to the workers and urban poor of Tehran.

 

This was the decisive moment in the breaking of the Shah’s army. Perhaps this explains why Militant’s South African co-thinkers refer to the event as “a brilliant—though quite exceptional—example of a victorious insurrection”.34 But then in South Africa Militant is not engaged in tailoring Marxism to reformist pacifism—rather to the popular frontist ANC and its armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe.

 

Not only does Militant retrospectively bless the armed insurrection for Iran. It has generously supplied those fighting in El Salvador’s civil war with an orthodox prescription for the “seizure of power by the proletariat” organised in “workers’ councils and soviets”. Such revolutionary verbiage, however, does not signify a “healthy” aspect to British Militant. It is the biggest and most ideologically influential component of an international network of groups. Its politics predominate.

 

While Militant’s editors may tolerate revolutionary schemas for other countries this tells us nothing other than that they are subject to profound national pressures within Britain. They have evolved a British road to socialism, one that excuses them from revolutionary responsibilities. This national pressure is working against their claims to be internationalist. Already, at the time of the Falkland/Malvinas War, they caved in to national pressure and called for a Labour government to continue the war against semi-colonial Argentina on a socialist basis—whatever that might mean. They will impose “British roads” on their co-thinkers. They will pave the way for defeats with potentially tragic results for the working class.

 

So total is Militant’s capitulation to British Labourism, so completely does it equate political power with bourgeois democracy, that Taaffe even wants to reclaim the outworn name adopted by Marxist parties before the First World War:

 

“A one stage the Marxists went under the name ‘Social Democrats’. This term has now been stolen by the Liberals and Tories in disguise, the traitors who have split the Labour Party and formed the Social Democratic Party in Britain. The term ‘Social Democrat’ implied that the Marxists stood for socialism and democracy: they stood for the extension of democracy to the economy and society as a whole.” 35

 

Marx, Engels and Lenin took a different view of the name Social Democrat. As Engels explained, they refused to call themselves Social Democrats in 1848:

 

“. . . For Marx and myself it was therefore absolutely impossible to use such a loose term to characterise our special point of view. Today things are different, and the word [Social Democrat] may perhaps pass muster, inexact though it still is for a party whose economic programme is not merely socialist in general, but downright communist, and whose ultimate political aim is to overcome the whole state and, consequently democracy as well.” 36

 

After the betrayal of Social Democracy in 1914 Lenin argued that real Marxists had to “cast off the soiled shirt” of Social Democracy and call themselves communists.37 Marx called “Social Democracy” “a pig of a name, but quite good enough for this movement”.38

 

If Militant wants to reclaim the name Social Democrat it is entitled to it. Militant has revised Marx and Lenin on the state, on Parliament, on insurrection, on the proletarian dictatorship. The name Social Democrat suits Militant’s right-centrist politics far better than the label Marxist.

 

Therefore, to those supporters of Militant in Britain and to their co-thinkers internationally who are committed to a revolutionary solution to the crisis of leadership we say do not wait for right-centrism to fail the test of revolution, do not wait for its inevitable passage into the camp of reformism—turn to the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International, authentic Trotskyists who, when it comes to the class struggle and revolution, in James P Cannon’s words, “mean business”.

 

Endnotes

1 Militant International Review (MIR) No22, p28 (our emphasis)

2 Ibid, p28

3 MIR No33, (our emphasis) p9

4 V I Lenin, The State and Revolution, Selected Works (SW) Vol 2, (Moscow 1975) p270

5 Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International, (London 1980) pp100-101

6 Ibid, p100 (original emphasis)

7 Ibid, p103 (original emphasis)

8 Ibid, p100 (our emphasis)

9 MIR No22, p28

10 MIR No33, p10 (original emphasis)

11 Ibid, p10

12 Marx and Engels, On the Paris Commune, p202

13 V I Lenin, op cit, p264

14 F Engels, Preface to the first English edition of Capital, Vol 1, November 1886, (Harmondsworth 1976) p113

15 V I Lenin, op cit, p265 (original emphasis)

16 F Engels, op cit, p113

17 F Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (1 volume, London 1968) p577

18 V I Lenin, op cit, p271

19 V I Lenin, “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?”, SW Vol 2, (Moscow 1975) p362

20 P Taaffe, The State, Militant Pamphlet, p42

21 MIR No22 p32

22 MIR No33, p11

23 MIR No22 p32

24 V I Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, SW Vol 3, (Moscow 1975) p22

25 Ibid, p23

26 Quoted in ibid p26

27 MIR No33, p10 (original emphasis)

28 Ibid p11

29 V I Lenin, “On Slogans”, Collected Works 25, pp183-84

30 L Trotsky, Trotsky on Britain (New York 1973) p103

31 Ibid

32 P Taaffe, op cit, p41

33 Ibid, p32

34 Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No 16/17, Supplement (May 1985) p36

35 P Taaffe, op cit, p16

36 Quoted in V I Lenin, State and Revolution, SW, Vol 2 (Moscow 1967) p328

37 V I Lenin, SW, Vol 2 (Moscow 1975) p50

38 K Marx quoted in W Blumenberg, Karl Marx (London 1972) p142

 

 

 

Militant after Grant: the unbroken thread? (Critique of CWI and the tradition of Ted Grant, Peter Taaffe & Alan Woods)

Published by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency) in 1994, www.thecommunist.net

 

An analysis of the claims to orthodox Trotskyism by the Militant Tendency and Ted Grant, by Colin Lloyd and Richard Brenner

 

“No other tendency of the right or the left has had the same honest, earnest and open approach to discussion. In contrast to the Stalinists and the ultra left sects, all of whom have made an industry out of hiding their previous mistakes and theoretical somersaults, there are none of the writings or speeches of Ted Grant that the author would not be prepared to re-issue and debate”

John Pickard, Introduction to Ted Grant’s The Unbroken Thread 1989

 

The leaders of Militant used to boast that only their tendency could reprint its past positions with pride.

 

Today Militant is careful to avoid such claims. Small wonder. Since 1989 Militant has undergone a profound re-orientation. The Militant Tendency in Britain has split. This, in turn, led to a split in their international current, the Committee for a Workers’ International. The expulsion of Militant’s founder and chief theoretician Ted Grant signalled the abandonment of a key tenet of their political strategy.

 

The current that had insisted on the need for socialists to undertake long term participation in the Labour Party is today committed to constructing an alternative party to Labour, taking every available opportunity to stand against Labour in elections.

 

Other changes have accompanied this shift. The current which once regarded the struggles of lesbians and gay men with unconcealed contempt is now forthright in its expressions of solidarity with their fight against discrimination, bigotry and oppression. Whilst in the 1980s Militant opposed attempts to establish a Black Section within the Labour Party on the grounds that it would “divide the working class”, today it promotes its own black front organisation, replete with the slogans and symbolism of the Black Panther movement of the 1960s.

 

The current which once justly regarded the idea of a separate Scottish or Welsh revolutionary organisation as a concession to bourgeois nationalism today has its own, nominally separate, Scottish section.

 

How has the current Militant leadership explained these changes in political orientation? Quite simply it has not.

 

The editorial in Militant which announced the expulsion of Ted Grant and his supporters depicted the split as a semi-political “parting of the ways” with an out-of-touch old guard.1 It is not surprising that the leadership of Militant have failed to account satisfactorily for their break with Grant. Any such analysis would demonstrate that while a particular tactical consequence of Grant’s method has been adjusted to meet the circumstances facing the tendency in the 1990s, the source of Militant’s problems lies not in this or that tactic but in the essence of Grant’s method itself. It is this that remains unexamined, unchallenged and uncorrected.

 

In this article we aim to examine the fundamentals of Grant’s method. We argue that it represented a direct break with Trotskyism, not an application or development of Trotskyism to meet post-war conditions.

 

While Grant’s method was elaborated to justify the distinctive attitude of the Militant tendency to British Labourism, it has led to a revision of the Marxist understanding of the relationship between revolutionary socialists and the working class, with grave consequences for programme and practice. Finally, we demonstrate how the core errors of Grantism remain deeply lodged within the politics of Militant, ensuring not only that the tendency is unable to free itself from the legacy of opportunism, but that further instability and crises are guaranteed.

 

The Trotskyist entry tactic

 

Militant’s strategy for achieving mass influence through the construction of a tendency within the Labour Party achieved notoriety in the late 1970s, and resulted in a highly publicised purge and expulsions from the party throughout the 1980s. This is commonly referred to as entrism, a term used by the Trotskyists in the 1930s.

 

After 1934 Trotsky developed a tactic involving the total entry of his supporters into social democratic and centrist parties.2 Faced with an influx of radicalised workers into these parties the Trotskyists entered them, fought for their programme, created open tendencies and factions, and grew significantly. Inevitably, within one or two years of uncompromising opposition, the Trotskyists were subject to bureaucratic measures and expulsions. Faced with the choice between diluting their programme or expulsion, those who followed Trotsky’s advice chose the open road, recognising entrism as a necessarily temporary tactic.

 

As Trotsky wrote in the French Trotskyists’ internal bulletin:

 

“We say openly to our friends: Defend your place in the SFIO zealously, but be prepared for independent struggle if it is forced upon us—and it looks as though that will be the case. How can we avoid saying that openly?

 

The Spartacists’ [a centrist faction in the SFIO] notion that it is necessary to remain inside the SFIO at any cost is treachery. The reformists say, we will do everything within the framework of bourgeois legality. But bourgeois legality allows ‘everything’ except the most important things. Blum’s legality is nothing but a reflection of bourgeois legality. It allows you to do, or rather to say, ‘everything’ except those things that would effectively oppose imperialist patriotism. . . Those who say ‘we will forego telling the masses the truth about the latest social-democratic treachery so as not to be expelled from the party led by the social patriots’ become the witting accomplices of these traitors.”3

 

The failure of the French Trotskyists to follow this advice promptly, and the vacillation of sections of the their leadership, greatly weakened their ability to intervene as an independent force in the mass workers’ struggles of 1936.4

 

The key lesson Trotsky drew from this experience was that entry involved an open fight for revolutionary ideas, and could not be expected to last indefinitely:

 

“Entry into a reformist centrist party in itself does not include a long term perspective. It is only a stage which, under certain conditions, can be limited to an episode. . . To recognise in time the bureaucracy’s decisive attack against the left wing and defend ourselves from it, not by making concessions, adapting or playing hide and seek, but by a revolutionary offensive.”5

 

Ted Grant and the entry tactic

 

The Militant Tendency was to reproduce many of Trotsky’s most important writings on entrism in a pamphlet entitled Problems of Entrism.6 In developing his attitude towards entrism in the British Labour Party, Grant found it necessary to distinguish his approach from that adopted by his principal rival on the post-war far left—Gerry Healy. Although Healy’s group later evolved into the Workers Revolutionary Party, it spent the 1950s engaged in entry work within the Labour Party.

 

Grant’s opposition to Healy went back a long way. Together with Jock Haston, Grant had led the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in the 1940s. With support from the leadership of the post-war Fourth International, Healy had split the RCP with the aim of carrying out entry into the Labour Party. But Healy’s brand of entrism was not guided by the principled approach that had been developed and fought for by Trotsky during the “French Turn”. Quite the contrary. As Grant was to write in May 1970:

 

“At no time did [the post war Trotskyists] maintain the clear programme of Marxism, but on the contrary adopted the programme of adaptation to reformist individuals who represented no-one but themselves. They adopted what they called a policy of ‘deep entrism’ . . . The attempt (partially successful) to paint themselves as left reformists (in adaptation to the milieu) did result in their becoming to a large extent ‘left reformists’.”7

 

Grant correctly pinpointed Healy’s error. Since 1949 the Healy faction had taken a deeply opportunist course. Secretly constituted, “The Club” as Healy’s group called itself, established a joint organisation with left reformists known as the Socialist Fellowship. It produced a paper which was deliberately “non-Trotskyist”, Socialist Outlook.

 

Deep entrism involved abandoning the fight for a revolutionary programme in order not to “obstruct” the task of organising the left reformist current around Aneurin Bevan. Thus Healy could write that the strikebreaking and Cold War-mongering Labour Government of 1945-51 gave “glimpses of what a Labour regime could accomplish and even more, what a socialist future could bring.” For the Healyites, the Labour Party became not a bourgeois party based on the support of the working masses, but a potential instrument for achieving socialism. The lesson drawn from the experience of the Attlee government was to “use that instrument to fulfil its socialist purposes.”8

 

Grant was able to level justified criticism at Healy’s entry project. But his critique was partial and incomplete. It did not identify and overcome the essential errors of method that lay at the heart of Healy’s opportunist approach. This was to have grave consequences for Grant’s own experience with the Labour Party over the decades to come.

 

Grant rejected “deep entry”, by which he meant Healy’s practice of covert organisation and a formal merging of banners with the reformist left wing in a common organisation. But Grant’s approach nevertheless differed sharply from Trotsky’s. He did not deny this. He insisted that, unlike the situation facing the French Trotskyists in the 1930s, in post-war war Britain “the classic conditions for entry work do not exist.”

 

In his opposition document of 1991, The New Turn—A Threat to Forty Years’ Work, Grant explicitly reaffirmed this view. He wrote:

 

“For 40 years we have worked in the Labour Party. For the whole of that time the classical conditions for entrism, laid down by Trotsky, have been absent.”9

 

He always maintained that entrism was applicable for different reasons.

 

Writing in 1970 of his political enemies’ attempts at entrism, Grant declared:

 

“Not only in Britain, where they never assimilated the lessons from their experiences, but wherever they have operated the tactics, they have failed dismally in the objectives they set themselves.

 

This was because of the long economic upswing of the major capitalist countries which led during the quarter century to a renewal of social democracy in such countries as Germany and Britain, and of Stalinism in such countries as France and Italy. Due to their theoretical impasse, and the objective situation itself, the US [United Secretariat] tendency evolved a theory of general entry into the Social Democratic and the Communist Parties, whichever was stronger. This was the correct tactic under the conditions. But unfortunately, as in Britain, they operated an opportunist tactic . . . Entrism was imposed by the objective situation and the weakness of the revolutionary forces, but they operated it in a purely opportunist fashion.”10

 

For Trotsky a swing to the left on the part of the masses and an influx of radicalised workers and youth into the social democracy was a condition for an entry tactic that would be “only a stage which, under certain conditions, can be limited to an episode”.

 

For Grant, entry would be based on the unfavourable conditions of economic upswing and expansion in the major European capitalist countries which had stabilised the mass reformist parties. There was one obvious conclusion to draw from this, and Grant drew it. Instead of the “classical” entry tactic designed to win forces to a new revolutionary party on a short time scale, the “general” entry tactic envisaged a protracted period of work within the mass party.

 

This in turn led to the conclusion that far from recognising the decisive attack of the reformist bureaucracy in time and preparing for a split and independence, the Marxists should remain within the party at all costs until conditions had “matured”. From a tactic to be applied under specific conditions and with strictly circumscribed goals, entrism had been converted into a universally applicable strategy.

 

The masses “inevitably” turn to Labour

 

Grant developed a “theoretical” justification for the policy of general entry. This is best expressed in Problems of Entrism, where Grant wrote:

 

“All history demonstrates that, at the first stages of revolutionary upsurge, the masses turn to the mass organisations to try and find a solution for their problems, especially the young generation, entering politics for the first time”.11

 

This schema found its way, time and again, into the documents of the Grant-led Militant Tendency. The following, from the Tendency’s 1979 British Perspectives, is typical:

 

“In the course of [the coming] struggles the working class will find that industrial action is not enough to solve their problems, and that political action is necessary. Once they take the road of political action, there is only one way in which they can go, and that is to try to change the organisation that was built up by the Trade Unions, to move into the Labour Party with the purpose of transforming it to meet their needs.”12

 

This perspective, which Grant maintained had all the force of a historical law, was a mechanical schema.

 

When the workers take to the road of political action there is more than “one way in which they can go”. Under certain conditions the masses will exert pressure on existing reformist parties and occasionally join them in large numbers in search of political solutions. But in other circumstances they can look to political alternatives, provided such alternatives are made available to them.

 

For a short period in the 1980s it appeared to many that Grant’s schema had paid off. Grant’s tendency stood at the head of an active Labour Party Young Socialists numbering thousands, and at the head of Liverpool City Council’s struggle against Tory ratecapping—a struggle which mobilised tens of thousands of working class people.

 

But in both cases Militant’s commitment to the entry strategy led to serious tactical errors and ultimately a failure to utilise the struggle to strengthen their own organisation.

 

Grant’s schema was responsible for squandering these opportunities, eventually culminating in the Tendency’s split in 1991.

 

According to Grant, if it was necessary to stay in the Labour Party at all costs, unnecessary conflicts with the Labour bureaucracy had be avoided, their “provocations” declined.

 

The reason given was always the same. In 1959 Grant had answered the notion that the tendency might be able to win gains through independent work with the words “any such gains would be disproportionate to the future possibilities in the Labour Party”.14 In the 1980s, on every occasion that the bureaucracy provoked a conflict, a Militant counter-offensive was postponed until a supposedly more propitious occasion.

 

This became clear as the Labour leadership moved to break Militant’s influence over the Labour Party Young Socialists. On the grounds that the large and active LPYS was “moribund”, the Labour leaders proposed demolishing the independent organisational structure of the LPYS, scrapping regional conferences and lowering the age limit for the organisation, thereby removing its established leaders and organisers.

 

Clearly this attack demanded total and uncompromising opposition from the left. But Militant, whose main source of recruitment and sole representative on the NEC were attributable to their majority control of the LPYS, equivocated.

 

On the oft-repeated grounds that “whatever action is taken by the right-wing they will fail. If they do not witch hunt us we will gain influence. If they do witch-hunt us we will grow in influence”, they convinced themselves that the threat was insubstantial.

 

At the LPYS Conference in 1987, Militant argued that the Sawyer proposals, far from being a serious assault designed to wreck the LPYS, provided “an opportunity to have a full discussion on building a mass socialist youth movement.”

 

Sadly a “discussion” was not what Sawyer and Kinnock had in mind. The 12,000 strong youth organisation was smashed. In its place the annual Militant-sponsored Youth Trade Union Rights Campaign conference could muster only a fraction of the LPYS’s former strength. The result of strategic entrism was not the extension of the tendency’s influence among the youth, but its dissipation.15

 

Still more devastating was the Militant leadership’s squandering of their influence in Liverpool, an influence that they had painstakingly established over years of persistent work.

 

Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhearn of Militant provide all the evidence for this in their self-serving account Liverpool: The City that Dared to Fight.

 

In 1985, at the height of the struggle, the Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council, Derek Hatton, was openly considering the possibility of leading a split in the Labour Party based on Militant’s tremendous influence in the Liverpool District Labour Party. Hatton estimated that around 10,000 could be broken from the official party if a firm lead was given. But, as Taaffe and Mulhearn explain:

 

“An ‘independent’ DLP would undoubtedly meet with initial success, [the Militant Editorial Board argued], in the short term, but would have undermined the long term struggle to transform the Labour Party in a leftward direction . . . They argued that for one worker who had supported the ‘independent’ DLP, there would be another five, ten and perhaps one hundred at a later stage who would move into the official Labour Party. These workers would be denied contact with the best fighters who would have constituted themselves into an ‘independent’ DLP.”18

 

Could the Liverpool events have led to a mass working class leftward split from Labour? It was certainly possible. But one thing is certain. Today, over two years after breaking from the Labour Party,. Militant’s leadership must be wishing they had taken with them even a fraction of the 10,000 gains they dismissed so lightly in 1985.

 

For then a split would have been on their terms, when they still controlled the LPYS, when the party ranks were still alive with political discussion and debate, when Kinnock had not yet completed his destruction of the left and the democratic gains of the rank and file. Instead, when the split came, its results were to demonstrate only too clearly that it was a result of weakness, not of strength.

 

In both Liverpool and the LPYS Militant clung to Labour’s bureaucratic structures, missing key tactical opportunities to make real advances in the creation of independent, subjectively revolutionary, workers’ organisations. In both cases their politics led them to preside over needless defeats. In the case of Liverpool the defeat lay not just in the missing of an opportunity to lead a split from Labour. Militant’s fear of splitting the Liverpool working class led them to kow-tow to labour movement and bourgeois legality at the crucial moment when generalised strike action could have been launched.

 

The objective process replaces the revolutionary subject

 

What led Grant and his supporters to mis-apply the entry tactic so systematically?

 

The whole schema of strategic entrism was itself based on a deeper methodological error. Grant’s conviction that the masses would flood into the Labour Party at the onset of any major upsurge, and that the task of Marxists was to remain in the party at all costs, was integrally linked to his understanding of the development of class consciousness.

 

For Grant, the development of class consciousness is a mainly automatic process, carried out by objective developments themselves. This viewpoint is clearly summed-up in Militant’s 1979 British Perspectives:

 

“Now in every field . . . Mrs Thatcher has sown the seeds of Marxism, sown the seeds of socialist revolution. The ground has been ploughed for the ideas of Marxism. The broad consciousness of the masses has been changed; as Marxism has always explained it is conditions which determine consciousness. But even given all these factors, as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky explained, due to the process of struggle itself, the broad consciousness of the masses moves in the direction of socialism.”19

 

This is a one sided generalisation. Marxism teaches that social being—the “conditions” Grant refers to—determine consciousness. But this determination does not occur in a direct, unmediated fashion.

 

The objective situation—the emerging contradictions of the world capitalist system and sharpening class struggle—present the working class with tremendous opportunities; yet these opportunities do not automatically resolve themselves in revolutionary victories. In conditions of the breakdown of social order and intense class struggle, the mass of the working class will often spontaneously gravitate towards socialist ideas. But they will not necessarily or inevitably do so.

 

Other ideologies can appear to offer a way out, for example fundamentalism in Iran, bourgeois democracy and nationalism in Eastern Europe. Contrary to Grant’s claim, Marx, Lenin and Trotsky all recognised that the process of the class struggle alone would be insufficient to raise the consciousness and action of the workers to their historic tasks.

 

Unless a revolutionary party, founded on scientific socialist principles and with deep roots in the masses, is able to wrest leadership of the movement from the reformist misleaders such struggles will go down to defeat. The objective conditions provide the terrain on which the working class fight. The party provides the leadership capable of bringing such a fight to victory.

 

Marx revealed why the working class, despite its historic role as the gravedigger of capitalism, should nevertheless be receptive to the ideology of reformism. He understood why the working class is often prepared to limit even exceptionally bitter, protracted and violent struggles to the aim of achieving justice and restitution for its wrongs within the capitalist system. He explained in Capital that the exploitative essence of the relation between the worker and capitalist is masked by the supposed equality between the “partners” in the work process—the bourgeois who supplies the capital, tools etc, and the proletarian who supplies the labour:.

 

It was no accident that while working class resistance developed spontaneously, in the form of the trade union struggle to win better terms for the sale of the workers’ labour power to the capitalists, revolutionary communist ideas did not emerge spontaneously. They were developed by subjective, revolutionary socialist leaders of the emerging workers’ movement, in a struggle with the bourgeoisie’s most radical ideas in the sphere of economics, politics and philosophy.

 

It was this that led Lenin to declare:

 

“. . . the spontaneous development of the working class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology . . . for the spontaneous working class movement is trade unionism . . . and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.”21

 

These views have always been an offence to centrists such as Grant. Far from Grant’s view that the process of struggle itself would develop the consciousness of the masses alone, Lenin insisted again and again that revolutionaries, while never cutting themselves off from the mass movement, would need to combat the spontaneous tendency to reformism and infuse the movement with an appreciation of its historic tasks.

 

In place of the dialectical approach of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, Grant introduced an exceptionally crude model for the development of the class consciousness of the workers. Under British conditions he predicted that, as the capitalist crisis unfolded and sharpened, the Labour Party, as the political expression of the workers’ struggle for reforms, would simply be pressured to move ever further to the left. The right wing would be obliterated by the very contradictions of capitalism.

 

Thus in 1983, just prior to the onset of Kinnock’s eight year march to the right, he wrote in Militant’s British Perspectives that:

 

“The old Labour right is finished because, in a historical sense, their role is played out.”23

 

The inability of British capitalism to guarantee reforms was therefore taken to mean that the entire role of the right was exhausted.

 

But the Labour right do not exist simply to obtain reforms in periods of capitalist expansion. They exist to discipline the working class, to subordinate its struggle to the interests of the capitalists. It is this that Grant “overlooked” in his analysis.

 

When the old right were replaced by the new right under Kinnock and Hattersley, Grant failed to appreciate what was happening. Instead of preparing his supporters for a struggle that could culminate in a split, he insisted that nothing would go wrong, because nothing could go wrong:

 

“The objective situation is moving in the direction of Marxism and the subjective situation as well . . . If the Tories win [the election] . . . Marxism will gain. But if Labour wins Marxism will gain even more.”24

 

Where did Grant get this fatalistic view of the development of class consciousness from, if not from Marx, Lenin or Trotsky? It was derived from the chief theoretician of the centrist Fourth International in the post-war years, Michel Pablo.

 

What Grant adopted from Pablo

 

Ted Grant was the victim of the early bureaucratic degeneration of the FI’s leadership, which allowed Gerry Healy to split the British RCP over the question of Labour Party entry work and to emerge, at the head of the clandestine Trotskyist “Club” inside the Labour Party as the authoritative leader of British Trotskyism in the early 1950s.

 

But when the FI split in 1953 Healy found himself on the wrong side of the same international leadership which had fostered his rise. Michel Pablo, the International Secretary of the FI, found himself without a British section. Grant, who had been in a political wilderness since the split with Healy, formed the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) group which became the British affiliate to the Pablo-led International Secretariat of the FI, carrying out entry work in the Labour Party.

 

Throughout the 1950s Grant’s RSL maintained an uneasy co-existence with another group of Pablo’s supporters, the so-called International Group whose leaders were the fore-runners of the IMG, Socialist Challenge, Socialist Outlook tradition in later decades. Twice during this period Grant’s group attempted fusion into a single British section of the ISFI. These attempts came to an end in 1964 when Grant definitively broke with the USFI, both internationally and with its British section, over the order to begin work independent of the Labour Party.

 

Thus it is no accident to find Grant’s politics stamped with the hallmark of Pablo’s developing centrism, even if Grant was to give Pablo’s method an added centrist twist of his own devising.

 

The essentials of Pablo’s position were based on a misreading of the objective situation after the war: namely that World War Three was imminent, that it would be a “war-revolution” with the Stalinist bureaucracies inevitably playing a revolutionary role, and that the inevitable victory of the Stalinist camp condemned humanity to “centuries of deformed workers’ states”. Grant was critical of this perspective from the beginning. As far as can be seen he remained critical of this perspective even though he came to accept Pablo’s tactical conclusions.

 

Pablo’s catastrophism about the world situation certainly did not lead him, initially, in the direction of a policy of general entry into mass workers’ parties. He believed, wrongly, that in certain countries the Fourth International’s sections no longer faced the obstacle of mass reformist parties and could grow directly from the expected mass radicalisation. Amazingly he included Britain in this judgement as late as 1951.25

 

However, where conditions did necessitate entry, Pablo insisted that the classic Trotskyist entry tactic was not appropriate. Outlining a new tactic—“entrism of a special type”—Pablo made it clear that the purpose of revolutionaries was neither to split the mass reformist parties in the short term, nor to fight for a distinct revolutionary programme, nor even, despite the “coming war”, to fight for an international programme.

 

Pablo’s starting point was that with the onset of crisis the reformist mass parties,

 

“whether they wish it or not, will be obliged to give a leftward turn to the policy of the whole or at least a part of their leadership”.

 

Generalising from the British experience Pablo concluded that:

 

“Bevanism, varying in scale from one country to another, is an inevitable phenomenon for the present conjuncture for all these Socialist parties.”26

 

Left reformism, which Pablo incorrectly described as centrism, was regarded as an inevitable stage of the development of mass revolutionary consciousness. Thus Pablo concluded:

 

“What is certain is that it will first be necessary to go through the experience of penetrating [Bevanism] and helping it from the inside to develop to its last resources and consequences.”27

 

Pablo brazenly explained what this meant for the application of the entry tactic:

 

“We are not entering these parties in order to come out of them soon. We are entering them in order to remain there for a long time, banking on the great possibility which exists of seeing these parties placed under new conditions, develop centrist tendencies which will lead a whole stage of radicalisation of the masses and of the objective revolutionary processes in their respective countries . . . Every manoeuvre and every policy which runs the risk of prematurely cutting us off from the great mass of these parties must be considered false . . . the great danger is to advance too fast, to mistake the movements of a limited vanguard for the radicalisation and revolt of the great mass”.28

 

This had implications not just for tactics, but for programme. According to Pablo:

 

“[Our] platform can be summarized in the formula: THE SOCIALIST PARTY ALONE TO POWER IN ORDER TO APPLY A SOCIALIST POLICY. Starting from the demands formulated by the reformist leaders for ‘a more equitable division of the re-armament costs’ our organisations in the SP must elaborate a platform of concrete measures (confiscation of the profits of rearmament and of war, nationalisation without compensation of the war industries; sliding scale of wages; workers’ control of production; price control through housewives’ committees, the nationalisation of the banks and basic industries; a plan for the welfare of the people) . . . which corresponds with the preoccupation of the large masses.”

 

Despite Pablo’s entire premise being the onset of war between the West and the USSR he advised the entrist FI sections not to make key Marxist positions on the coming war the centre of their agitation. Instead of “Defend the USSR”, he wrote:

 

“our platform on international issues must be summarised as follows: LET US STRUGGLE FOR A SOCIALIST ENGLAND, FOR A SOCIALIST GERMANY etc.”

 

Pablo’s rationale for this systematic opportunism was that getting the masses to take a concrete step forward was a task “to which the general propaganda work must be subordinated”. The movement became everything, the goal nothing.

 

In summary, Pablo introduced a political schema in which crisis leads inevitably to a leftward shift by the Labour leaders; the masses embrace, as an inevitable stage, a centrist programme and leadership; the Trotskyists have to “develop” this process, tailoring the transitional programme around the strategic objective not of soviet power but of a Labour government committed to socialist policies; revolutionary defeatism in war is hidden behind a nationally centred programme.

 

This should by now be familiar. The essence of this centrist approach was adopted wholesale by Grant.

 

Grant’s “transitional” programme

 

We have seen how Grant rejected Trotsky’s approach to entrism, adopting instead the notion of remaining in the mass parties at all costs. We have seen too that Grant was highly critical of Healy’s abandonment of an independent programme.

 

Militant, throughout its decades in the Labour Party, presented its own distinct programme, identifying itself clearly with certain central demands such as the nationalisation under workers’ control of the top 200 monopolies.

 

But while Grant avoided adopting a common programme with left reformists, he nevertheless engaged in a systematic programmatic compromise with reformism and with the existing consciousness of the masses. This took place not by refraining from advancing a programme at all, but by modifying his programme so that it embodied a compromise between Marxism and reformism.

 

Militant’s programme, hammered into shape in numerous Where We Stand documents and re-affirmed time and again at LPYS Conferences throughout the 1970s and 1980s, was nothing more than a list of demands on the Labour Party. Militant’s strategic slogan was, and remained for nearly 40 years, “Labour to Power on a Socialist Programme”.

 

What is striking about Pablo’s outline of a programme for “entry of a special type” is the absence of the revolutionary mainspring of the method of the transitional programme.

 

Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Programme was a series of demands designed to lead the masses from their daily struggles against exploitation and oppression towards the struggle for power. 29 Starting from the tactics and methods of struggle necessary to advance the fight for even the most partial demands, it leads on to the questions of soviets, the workers’ militia and workers’ control of production. While Trotsky never ruled out raising any of the slogans in the programme as demands on the reformist leaders, the programme was never designed solely or primarily for this purpose. It was conceived as a manual of action for millions of workers, not just for the struggle to impose “Marxist policies” via resolutions to the conferences of the reformist parties.

 

Both Pablo and Grant turned the programme into precisely such a series of demands on reformist parties. But in the process they were obliged to lop off the crowning point of the transitional programme—soviets and the workers’ militia. Likewise, Pablo and Grant abandoned the practical fight for workers to take the first steps towards the achievement of these demands, through attempts to build embryonic workers’ defence organisations, factory committees and committees of action in concrete struggles.

 

This was explained away by Grant as a necessary adaptation of the programme to the consciousness of the masses as it existed in non-revolutionary conditions in the West. Instead of counterposing revolutionary methods and goals of struggle to those of the reformists, the transitional programme was regarded as a means of obscuring “difficult” questions which the workers’ existing reformist consciousness was not ready to accept.

 

This completely misconstrued the method of Trotsky’s programme. Trotsky explained to an American audience, in one commentary on the programme, that the US workers had not attained a high level of political consciousness:

 

“What can a revolutionary party do in this situation? In the first place give a clear, honest picture of the objective situation, of the historic tasks which flow from this situation, irrespective of whether or not the workers are today ready for this. Our tasks don’t depend on the mentality of the workers. The task is to develop the mentality of the workers. Some will say: good, the programme is a scientiflc program; it corresponds to the objective situation—but if the workers won’t accept the programme, it will be sterile. Possibly. But this signifies only that the workers will be crushed, since the crisis can’t be solved any other way but by the socialist revolution. If the American worker will not accept the programme in time, he will be forced to accept the programme of fascism.”30

 

Trotsky was insistent that the consciousness of the masses could be changed, provided only that the revolutionaries did not adapt their programme to the masses’ existing prejudices and political backwardness:

 

“That is why all the arguments that we cannot present such a programme because the programme doesn’t correspond to the mentality of the workers are false . . . The class consciousness of the proletariat is backward, but consciousness is not such a substance as the factories, the mines, the railroads; it is more mobile, and under the blows of the objective crisis, the millions of unemployed, it can change rapidly.”31

 

Militant’s version of the “transitional” programme was systematically adapted to reformist ideas. In every sphere–from workers’ control of production, through to the questions of war, state and government–Militant’s leaders altered Trotsky’s transitional demands in order to obscure the distinction between reform and revolution.

 

Theory of the state

 

Pablo, in the early days at least, expected some form of revolutionary struggle, indeed an international revolutionary war. Grant, whose support for entrism flowed from the absence of such struggles, had to make the programmatic adaptation theoretically consistent. So he developed his supposed major contribution to Marxism: the idea that, in Britain, the road to socialism could be peaceful as long as the working class was mobilised and vigilant in defence of a socialist Labour government.

 

It is enough here to give only one citation to prove the point. In the 1985 version of What We Stand For, under the chapter heading “Peaceful Transformation” Militant’s programme stated:

 

“All the scheming and conspiracies of the capitalists can come to nothing on the basis of a bold socialist policy backed by mass mobilisation of the labour movement. An entirely peaceful transformation of society is possible in Britain, but only on condition that the full power of the labour movement is boldly used to effect this change.”32

 

This theoretical revision of Marxism, backed up with a number of spurious arguments, came to be the programmatic hallmark of the Militant Tendency. It allowed the Militant tendency to clothe itself as merely a left wing version of Clause Four reformism, distinguished by its commitment only to an undefined “mass mobilisation”.

 

A fuller treatment of this question, dealing with the tortuous justifications of Militant’s leadership for this reformist utopia, has been presented in a previous issue of Permanent Revolution .33

 

As to the question of government, Militant’s adaptation to reformism expressed itself through the slogan, derived directly from Pablo, of “Labour to power on a socialist programme”.

 

This was born as an opportunist variant of the Communist International’s slogan for a “workers’ government”.

 

The Comintern recognised that under all conditions it would be necessary for communists to make propaganda against the fraud of bourgeois parliaments, and for a government based on democratic workers’ councils and a workers’ militia. But they did not rest content with this alone. They also recognised that under certain conditions, namely those of heightened revolutionary struggle, it could be necessary for communists to demand of a reformist government that it break with the capitalist class and form a government accountable to the organisations of the workers in struggle.

 

Reformist parties in power establish themselves at the head of capitalist governments. All historical experience testifies to this. Yet where they claim to represent the workers during a revolutionary crisis, the demand for a workers’ government can be used as a call for them to:

 

“. . . arm the proletariat, to disarm bourgeois, counter-revolutionary organisations, to introduce the control of production, to transfer the main burden of taxation to the rich, and to break the resistance of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.

 

Such a workers’ government is only possible if it is born out of the struggle of the masses, is supported by workers’ bodies that are capable of fighting, bodies created by the most oppressed sections of the working masses.”34

 

To demand “Labour to power on a socialist programme” under present conditions, for example, is wrong on two counts. First, Labour does not have a socialist programme. And—as Militant have discovered—due to the regime and the absence of a new or radical milieu among the party membership there are no means for altering this.

 

Secondly there is no pre-revolutionary situation, no soviets, militia or even the embryos of them, which could become an alternative power base for the workers’ government.

 

Far from being an application of the workers’ government tactic, which is designed to expose the bourgeois character of the reformist government and mobilise the masses in the fight for working class power, the Pablo/Grant approach systematically confuses the bourgeois Labour government with a workers’ government. It is correct for Trotskyists to campaign to return the Labour Party to power in elections and formulate demands on them to act in the interests of the masses. But to encourage the notion that a Labour government would be anything other than a bosses’ government, unless it disarmed the capitalists and transferred power to workers’ councils, is a massive adaptation to reformism.

 

Effects of Militant’s adaptation

 

Militant’s adaptation to reformism on governmental slogans reverberated throughout the rest of its programme.

 

Even the demand for workers’ control had its revolutionary mainspring removed by Militant, being posed as a left wing version of workers’ participation under the formula:

 

“The management and control of [nationalised industries] to be vested in democratically elected boards with one-third of the places coming from the unions in the industry, one-third from the TUC representing the working class as a whole and one-third coming from the government.”35

 

As a transitional demand the call for workers’ control should be aimed at building factory level committees to exercise, in the first place, a workers’ veto over management decisions, to develop the independent organisation and activity of the working class and to give rise, in Trotsky’s words, to “dual power in the factory”.

 

It is applicable not only to big nationalised companies but also to the smallest, least unionised sweatshop. Militant’s distortion of this key demand is a good example of the effect of tailoring transitional demands to the “Labour to power” strategy. It was designed to give the impression that the British working class could take key steps—not just along the road to power but to the achievement of socialism—with its reformist institutions intact.

 

Another abiding feature of Militant’s politics under Grant was its failure to address itself to the struggles of the socially oppressed, their specific concerns and organisations.

 

It is a fact that the first 267 issues of Militant, up to 1975, contained only four articles on women. When Militant did produce material on the woman question, it did so in the form of a pamphlet issued by the Labour Students’ South West Region.36 This pamphlet reeks of a musty economism learned from the Labour and Stalinist organisations of the 1950s.

 

While correctly demanding free childcare, abortion on demand and the abolition of domestic labour, the whole focus, once the pamphlet turns from economic issues, shies away from challenging the sexist ideology which results from social oppression and manifests itself in the workers’ movement:

 

“. . . whilst socialists should certainly adopt a sensitive and conscious attitude to all expressions of discrimination and prejudice, it would be a mistake to be drawn into a campaign against the superficial manifestations of sexual inequality to the detriment (sic) of explaining and fighting against the conditions from which they arise.

 

Campaigns against ‘sexism’ and ‘male chauvinism’ inevitably reflect, albeit unconsciously, the assumption that women’s greatest enemy is “man” . . . [human prejudice] cannot be eradicated by preaching and denunciation, which if anything, will tend to reinforce them . . . as soon as the workers are involved in class action all the apparently indelible prejudices of the past begin to be washed off very rapidly.”37

 

This was a reactionary approach hiding behind a one-sided argument. There is no reason why a fight against every manifestation of prejudice should take place at the expense of fighting their root causes in the capitalist system—unless Marxists leave the whole question for the reformists to take the initiative, in which case such an outcome is guaranteed.

 

Nor is it true that the struggle against sexism inevitably leads to the idea that men are the enemy, any more than the fight against racism leads to the same conclusions about white workers. The revolutionary socialist vanguard has to take the fight against oppression into the working class organisations, whether or not that in the short term “reinforces” the prejudice of some.

 

Nor is it true that the prejudices “wash off very rapidly” simply as a result of unity in action. Unity in action provides the basis for this, but the conscious, subjective struggle—which Grant always left to the developing objective conditions—is also essential.

 

This same pamphlet also reveals Militant’s formerly disdainful attitude to the struggle against lesbian and gay oppression:

 

“Because ‘gay rights’ have been made an issue in some student circles, it is necessary to comment in passing on Gay Liberation . . . Beyond [the struggle against legal discrimination] ‘gay liberation’ belongs to the sphere of personal relations. It is necessary to maintain a sense of proportion . . . Serious socialists will recognise that ‘gay liberation’ cannot provide the slightest social basis for an independent contribution to the labour movement.”38

 

Another sphere of adaptation to the existing consciousness of the working class can be seen in Militant’s attitude to war and the threat of war. In Britain’s colonial wars of intervention it adopted utterly reactionary positions. On the bogus grounds of rejecting the accommodation to the nationalist movements in the colonial and semi-colonial world that had been demonstrated by much of the international left, they went on to renege on their elementary duty to offer solidarity with those fighting British imperialism.

 

On the question of Ireland, Militant peddled the reactionary myth that the Republican forces were nothing more than individual terrorists and gangsters. When mass mobilisations in support of the hunger strikes in 1981 made such a position untenable, Militant argued that the violence of Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries was equally reactionary. Ignoring the justified national grievances of the Northern Irish anti-unionists and playing down the reality of discrimination against Catholics in favour of Protestants, they argued that class unity could be achieved around economic questions alone. Grant’s view that the objective process of economic struggle would produce revolutionary consciousness led him to treat the IRA’s just struggle for national liberation with unconcealed hostility.

 

Never once did Militant fight for, or mobilise its supporters around, the demand for Troops Out of Ireland Now, or the self-determination of the Irish nation as a whole. Indeed, Militant rejected these revolutionary democratic demands on the grounds that they could only lead to the “Lebanonisation” of Northern Ireland:

 

“Only on a socialist basis can partition be overcome. The reunification of the country is only possible through the unity of the working class and their organisations, Protestant and Catholic, in the north and south.”39

 

The unification of Ireland was seen as a function and consequence of the achievement of socialism in both states, rather than the struggle for national and democratic rights being the starting point for a strategy of working class revolution—a kind of stages theory in reverse. And by condemning the anti-unionist revolt out of hand, Militant were able to avoid “difficult” questions which might antagonise reformist workers. The job of building a truly internationalist movement in Britain would be left to the objective process of historical development.

 

When British imperialism went to war with Argentina in 1982, Militant’s Marxist “orthodoxy” led it to an outright social chauvinist position.

 

Militant refused to demand the withdrawal of British troops from the South Atlantic on the grounds that it was “impractical” and “a pacifist gesture”. They wrote:

 

“Marxists have to explain that the wringing of hands and pious declarations of ‘bring back the fleet’ cannot change anything”.40

 

Militant’s activity during that crucial imperialist adventure—an adventure which was decisive in preparing the way for the defeat of the Labour Party in 1983 and which contributed considerably to the reversal of gains in class consciousness made by the working class—was little more than propaganda. Militant supporters were not present on any of the important demonstrations called against the intervention.

 

Failing to understand the true nature of the conflict as a clash between a semi-colonial country and an imperialist power aiming to assert its rights in the South Atlantic and Latin America, Militant fell in with the imperialists’ propaganda and decided the real issue was the dictatorial nature of the Argentine regime. Britain’s war against Argentina was wrong, Grant claimed, because it was not carried out by a “socialist” government:

 

“If necessary the British workers and the Marxists will be able to wage a war against the Argentine junta to help the Argentine workers to take power into their own hands. But only a democratic socialist Britain would have clean hands. A Labour government committed to socialist policies would probably not need to wage war, but could issue a socialist appeal to the Argentine workers to overthrow the monstrous junta, take power and then organise a socialist federation of Britain and the Argentine, in conjunction with the Falkland Islands.”41

 

Militant International Review finally spelled out the logic of this:

 

“A Labour government could not just abandon the Falklanders and let Galtieri get on with it. But it would continue the war on socialist lines”.42

 

Thus Militant were only a change of government away from giving actual support to an imperialist military adventure. The entire “theory” was the logical outcome of a systematic adaptation to the existing consciousness of the masses, and the deliberate confusion of a Labour government with a “workers government”. The result was tantamount to class treason.

Why did Militant split?

 

Militant’s break with the Labour Party was not the outcome of any serious re-examination of Grant’s theory and the programmatic consequences outlined above.

 

Rather it was an empirical response to the changing circumstances of the British class struggle in the 1980s. When the march of history invalidated the strategy of general entrism—not in the abstract, but as a practical policy that could no longer be expected to yield results in the immediate future—Militant abandoned it.

 

But Militant never abandoned the opportunist method that lay at the heart of Grant’s politics, as we shall see when we come to examine their adaptation to the ideologies that have replaced or supplemented left Labourism for thousands of radicalised youth in the last five years.

 

First however it is necessary to account for the split in the Militant Tendency in 1991.

 

Grant’s schema for the transformation of the Labour Party had assumed that the British working class could take significant steps towards socialism with its present reformist institutions intact.

 

The 1980s were to blow this schema apart. The most important event was the defeat of the miners strike of 1984-85. The defeat of the miners unleashed two linked but separate processes:

 

• A rapid shift to the right of the Labour leadership, reversing all the gains made by the left in the early 1980s and destroying, step by step, the rank and file structures of the party as arenas for any kind of effective entrism

 

• A steady decline in trade union density and numbers, with a corresponding decline in union recognition and the role and militancy of the shop stewards as a distinct layer of industrial activists.

 

Emboldened by victory, Thatcher made a serious miscalculation. She moved onto an offensive against the whole working class. The Poll Tax was a class-wide attack which affected all workers and significant sectors of the middle class.

 

Thus the rightward shift in the Labour Party, the decline of the reformist left and the retreat in confidence and militancy of the trade unions thus took place alongside a mass radicalisation and wave of anger against the Poll Tax. With the official movement unprepared to take the lead, a golden opportunity opened up for the far left to fill the vacuum. Militant, by far the stronger of the two main British left wing groups in 1989, seized this opportunity. But instead of allowing the Tendency to capitalise on their advantage, the contradiction between the objective situation and the constraints of Grant’s schema would swiftly blow it apart.

 

By March 1990, through an energetic campaign directed at large working class estates and housing schemes across Britain, Militant stood at the head of a mass movement of up to eight million people committed to non-payment of the tax. Though the movement was condemned by Labour and TUC leaders alike, and was given only the most half hearted support by the Labour Left and Communist Party, it was able to organise Anti-Poll Tax Unions in every major town and city. It mobilised 250,000 people to demonstrate in central London on 31 March 1990.

 

At a local level the anti-Poll Tax movement had thrown up primarily estate-based rather than workplace-based committees, enabling the left, and Militant in particular, to penetrate deeper into the fabric of working class life and struggle than at any time since the miners’ strike.

 

Two features of Militant’s politics were primarily responsible for the fact that this opportunity to build a revolutionary party with genuine roots in the masses and with significant influence on British political life was utterly squandered.

 

The first was “general entrism”. As Labour opposed any active resistance to the Poll Tax, mass anger in Scotland, where the tax was introduced a year earlier than in England and Wales, was reflected in a growth of support for the Scottish National Party, the rise of a pseudo-socialist leadership in the SNP and some notable by-election victories over Labour.

 

In the main the new layer of activists coming forward in the anti-Poll Tax movement showed no inclination whatsoever to join Labour, and Labour was indeed keen to actively prevent it. Efforts were made, such as the attempt to join up 500 anti-Poll Tax activists to Pollock Labour Party en masse, which the Labour party simply refused to countenance, rejecting every membership application point blank.

 

The idea that the masses would “inevitably turn to the mass reformist party” was simply unsustainable. The unavoidable conclusion was to strike out for a new, independent, fighting workers’ party. But Militant missed the boat.

 

It was the largest independent grouping—the Socialist Workers Party—that benefitted most in terms of recruitment, despite their initial blunder in opposing the non-payment strategy altogether. The sight of their rivals in the SNP and SWP reaping where Militant had sown was simply too much, particularly for those Scottish branches that had won a high profile in their campaign against the tax.

 

As the Militant majority resolution on Scotland pointed out:

 

“If the SNP or SWP had led this mass movement they would have pressed home at every opportunity to urge non-payers to join their party . . . In the absence of a recognised Marxist organisation we have been left in an invidious position. Although we have made important gains in the last three years at least in certain areas some of these gains have been cancelled out, partly as a result of the complicated national and international situation. Moreover the gains we have made are as nothing compared to the potential gains to be achieved on the basis of an open banner.”43

 

The second feature was a result of Militant’s adaptation to the reformist pacifism of the Labourite milieu. On the 31 March 1990 Anti Poll Tax Demonstration Militant discredited themselves in the eyes of thousands of the most determined young activists. The police launched a vicious assault on the mass demonstration—an assault that was resolutely and successfully resisted by thousands of working class youth. The immediate response of Militant’s stewards was to abandon the demonstration to its own fate, thus avoiding responsibility for the “riot” that ensued. In the aftermath leading representatives of the All-Britain Federation of Anti-Poll Tax Unions condemned the demonstrators in terms that directly echoed the response of the Tory media. Tommy Sheridan, the key national spokesperson for the Federation, even went so far as to declare that the Federation would be investigating who was behind the militant resistance, and that “names will be named.” Though many Militant supporters subsequently sought to explain this away as an isolated error, the statement was never publicly repudiated by Militant. Nevertheless it caused them extreme embarrassment. Here was one speech by a leader of Militant that they would not be “prepared to re-issue and debate”.

 

Of course, this was no isolated error of judgement. If the programme of the Tendency had not been equivocal on the need for working class violence against the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state; if it had not sought to conceal the distinction between the utopia of peaceful reform and the necessity of violent revolution, then Sheridan’s infamous declaration would have amounted to an open renunciation of Militant’s programme.

 

For such an act he would have had to be expelled from Militant, or at least removed from the limelight. Instead he was elevated ever further in the organisation, becoming the figurehead and leader of Militant’s subsequent high-profile electoral campaign in Scotland.

 

From then on tens of thousands of youth, particularly the growing numbers infiuenced by anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, would regard Militant with nothing short of contempt. The debacle was a direct result of Militant’s concessions to reformism on the question of the state.

 

Militant’s failure to recruit large numbers from their campaign against the Poll Tax was without doubt the principal circumstance that set their leadership searching for new tactics. But even then the spur to a radical departure from general entrism was to come not from within the Tendency, but from outside it.

 

The first steps along the road to independent electoral campaigning and a new open organisation came as a response to the actions of a layer of left reformist activists in Liverpool District Labour Party who had lost patience with the right-wing Labour leadership and its undemocratic party regime. Expelled members who were committed to a fighting policy for the Labour Group on Liverpool City Council found that the climate of witch-hunting and the gerrymandering of selection procedures by the right made inner-party struggle impossible.

 

Organised in the Liverpool Broad Left they took the step of standing candidates against the official Labour nominees in the May 1991 local elections. In five wards they actually won, demonstrating that such a policy could yield results.

 

Militant were initially cautious, but soon saw a way of recovering influence in what had once been their stronghold. In the Walton constituency, which had been the site of Militant involvement since the 1950s, the right wing had carried through a successful coup after the death of left wing MP Eric Heffer. Though Militant had never formally secured the nomination of the Constituency for a candidate of their own, they could justifiably point to the wholesale expulsion of left-wing activists from the local party as having been the precondition for the selection of hard-right candidate Peter Kilfoyle.

 

In a sudden break with forty years of general entrism, they put forward Militant member Lesley Mahmood as a “Real Labour” candidate and launched a high-profile campaign against both the Liberals and Kinnock’s new model Labour party.

 

Though this campaign was unsuccessful it marked a turning point. In response to Walton the Labour leadership de-selected Militant MPs Dave Nellist and Terry Fields. This led Militant to stand their sitting MPs as “Real Labour” candidates in the April 1992 General Election, and to put up Tommy Sheridan as a “Scottish Militant Labour” candidate in Pollock. It was on this question that Grant himself launched a faction which was driven out of the organisation in a public split in January 1992.

 

Militant Labour – a break with Grant’s method?

 

To what extent did the turn to challenging Labour electorally constitute a break with Ted Grant’s political method? Obviously in breaking with general entrism Militant had publicly slaughtered one of its most sacred cows. But in two respects—tactical and programmatic—there was a continuity of method.

 

On the tactical level the launch of an open electoral organisation had taken place under far less propitious circumstances than had existed on several occasions in the 1980s. Already for years Labour Party membership had been plummeting as activists disgusted with Kinnock’s inaction over the Poll Tax and support for the Gulf War resigned from the party. The Socialist Workers Party claimed hundreds of recruits from among former Labour members. Yet Militant took next to no forces with them in their turn away from Labour.

 

Whereas in 1985 the Militant leadership had rejected Hatton’s proposal to split away with up to 10,000 members of the Liverpool District Labour Party, when the break finally came the gains were pitiful. Nevertheless the Tendency refrained from making any honest accounting or explanation of this. No mistakes were admitted. On the contrary, Militant attempted to maintain its adherence to Grant’s schema, claiming that the open turn was merely a;

 

“detour through which we can strengthen the forces which in the future will lead the transformation of the Labour Party and the trade unions.”

 

On the programmatic level, the break from the organisational structures of the Labour Party did not lead to a revision of Militant’s disingenuous alloying of Marxism and Labourism.

 

This was acutely visible in the electoral platforms advanced by the new independent candidates. Mahmood’s campaign in Walton was a case in point. Instead of taking the opportunity to make broad propaganda for socialist revolution and the need for a new party, Militant’s “Real Labour” campaign spoke of the need to return Labour to its (mythical) socialist past.

 

Thus despite their formal break with the structures of the Labour Party, Militant were still advocating a parliamentary road to socialism. What is more, in one crucial respect Mahmood observed the division between “politics” and “trade unionism” that has always allowed left reformists to refrain from criticising the role of the trade union bureaucracy.

 

Massive attacks on the council workforce coincided with Mahmood’s campaign. Although she spoke to mass rallies of council workers and got an enthusiastic reception, she failed to use her campaign to agitate for the strike action that was necessary to resist the employers’ offensive.

 

Her leaflet addressed to the City’s refuse workers declared, “They are trying to provoke us into an all out strike”, a dangerously ambiguous formula. Mahmood should have used the attention that her election campaign had attracted to call directly for strike action as soon as possible. But Militant announced support for such action only after the election was safely out of the way.

 

Finally, Militant demonstrated quite how far they were prepared to go in sacrificing political principle for the sake of electoral expediency in their response to the attacks on Mahmood from the pulpits of Liverpool’s many Catholic churches. When the Real Labour campaign produced a leaflet directed specifically at women voters, it refrained from making any mention of the struggle for abortion rights.

 

Thus tactically, programmatically and in the unprincipled conduct of the campaign, there was nothing to distinguish Militant’s “open” candidature from left reformist electoralism—a point Grant himself was to make in his post mortem on the Walton campaign:

 

“Even the programme that we stood on was not a revolutionary one. There was no explanation of the capitalist crisis and the need for a socialist planned economy etc. The programme we offered the workers of Walton was in effect a left reformist one.”44

 

In the midst of the internal strife generated by Walton, Militant was then confronted with the small but revealing development of the Liverpool Independent Labour Party (LILP). The left reformist allies to whom it had tailored much of its programme and practice in the Walton campaign, not capable of remaining in Kilfoyle and Kinnock’s party or of waiting for Militant’s “turn” to open work, launched their own organisation.

 

Militant’s response to this must have driven the nail in the coffin of any spontaneous left movement created by the Mahmood campaign. It opposed the setting up of LILP—not on the grounds of its left reformist politics but because it negated the strategic task of transforming the Labour Party.

 

As Militant leader Tony Mulhearn wrote:

 

“To temporarily organise as we have done . . . . because of bureaucratic expulsions and disbandments is one thing. But to set up an alternative party, to turn their backs on Labour and to encourage others to leave the Labour Party is a completely different question. Socialists should not surrender control to the right wing by splitting from the Labour Party. They should stay and fight for every inch of ground.”45

 

Clive Heemskerk, writing in the aftermath of Walton, reaffirmed Grant’s essential view:

 

“The historical law formulated by Marxism, that workers will move to reclaim their traditional organisations, is a process in which a complex interplay of different factors are involved.”46

 

Even as events negated the rationale for strategic entrism, and forced them to abandon it in practice, the Militant leaders clung to Grant’s method like drowning people to a life raft. But it didn’t save them.

 

Opportunism: then and now

 

In breaking from Grant’s practice of general entrism, Militant have nevertheless maintained the core of Grant’s methodological error. His breach with revolutionary Marxism on the relationship between spontaneity and consciousness—his fatalistic view that the existing ideology of the working class develops automatically towards revolutionary socialist conclusions—remains unchallenged.

 

This is essential for understanding Militant’s political evolution after the split of January 1992.

 

The legacy of the Tendency’s programmatic accommodation to Labourism remains intact. But Militant is now attempting to orient towards working class youth whose illusions lie elsewhere. Militant has simply tried to adapt the Marxist programme to other, non-proletarian ideologies that hold sway over hundreds of thousands of radicalised young people. This, they believe, will give them a path to the masses.

 

History will perform the rest of the task by pushing those youth steadily to left. The “process” remains central to Militant’s perspective. It’s “complex interplay” requires simply that the road of programmatic adaptation takes a “detour” through Scottish nationalism and black separatism.

 

Tailing Scottish Nationalism

 

Militant’s 1979 British Perspectives correctly argued that whilst socialists must defend the right of the Scottish people to self-determination, up to and including separation if they wish, this is not a step that Marxists actively advocate. It would divide the Scottish, Welsh and English workers, who face a common enemy in the British ruling class and who share common traditions of struggle and solidarity. The Perspectives concluded from this that:

 

“It would be utterly reactionary to form ‘Scottish Marxism or ‘Welsh Marxism’.” 47

 

This was absolutely correct. To organise Scottish socialists in a separate party from the English and Welsh can mean one thing only—that they face different tasks, different states and different revolutionary struggles.

 

But in the course of the Poll Tax revolt Militant had had to tackle the growth of the Scottish National Party, and the fact that it was cynically taking advantage of Labour’s right wing stance to pose as a radical alternative. Agitation for independence mounted apace. As a result Militant abandoned its former intransigence and launched Scottish Militant Labour as an independent party.

 

The initial rationale for SML was the different tempo of class struggle in Scotland. Once the formation of the independent Militant Labour organisation was declared in the rest of Britain, there should have been no possible justification for a separate Scottish group. But SML did not disappear once Militant Labour was formed. It maintains a formally separate identity to this day.

 

Furthermore, this departure only paved the way for deeper political accommodation to Scottish nationalism. Militant (13 December 1991) declared that if the Tories won the 1992 election then:

 

“the call must go out to make Scotland ungovernable . . . It should be linked to a boycott of Westminster by Labour and SNP MPs”.

 

The article then declared agreement with the words of the leader of Strathclyde regional council that:

 

“‘They must be prepared to break away from Westminster and form a breakaway parliament.”

 

Thus Militant were prepared to go so far as advocate a step that would in every practical sense be indistinguishable from a declaration of independence by Scotland.

 

Scottish Militant Labour was launched in response to a specific, national, variation in the terrain of class struggle in Britain. Not only was the anti-poll tax struggle longer and stronger in Scotland, but specific events gave temporary ascendancy to a left talking petit-bourgeois nationalist leadership inside the SNP.

 

As Militant’s Scottish perspectives document for 1991 pointed out:

 

“The SNP manifesto will be well to the left of Labour’s. Their programme for an independent Scotland includes the writing off of the capital housing debt of £3.5 billion, full employment, the re-nationalisation of steel and other privatised industries . . . “48

 

This left movement within Scottish Nationalism was a result of the left movement in the Scottish working class, Militant’s majority argued. On the basis of this they predicted that the masses’ spontaneous anger would lead them in the direction of the SNP if the Tories won the 1992 election:

 

“If the Tories were to scrape home at the next election, nationalism would rise up with a vengeance”.49

 

In response Militant adopted the demand for a Scottish Assembly, not one with only partial powers which the Liberal and Labour establishments advocated, but one with “full powers”.

 

If the SNP with its economic nationalist programme was now to replace Labour as the “mass organisation” to which the Scottish workers would “inevitably turn”, then the Scottish Assembly was to take the place of the all-Britain Labour government as the method of posing the workers government:

 

“Such an assembly (in which genuine Socialists have a majority) would in effect be a workers’ government acting with the backing of the one million organised workers and millions of unorganised women and young people in Scotland”50

 

After the Tory election victory Militant focused the demand for the Scottish Assembly around the demand for a referendum which the Scottish local authorities should organise “from below” if it were not granted by the government.

 

Militant’s demand for a Scottish Assembly pandered to both nationalism and reformism. How would a Scottish Assembly advance the class struggle of the whole British working class? The answer was, it was not designed to. How would the Militant-controlled assembly deal with the repressive apparatus of the British state when it attempted to enact its socialist programme? Again, only the vague answers of yesteryear: the “backing of the Scottish workers” would save the day.

 

Militant’s “Scottish Turn” was a break from Grant, but not from the essential method of tailing the spontaneous consciousness of the masses.

 

Tailing black separatism

 

The same sorry tale must be told of Militant’s attempt to address black separatism. The rise of racism in Britain and the radicalisation of black youth led Militant to take the initiative in establishing Panther UK, an organisation for African-Caribbean and Asian members. This represented a break with the Tendency’s former wholesale rejection of the idea of black self-organisation within the working class movement. In the 1980s Militant had attracted justified criticism by opposing the democratic right of black members of the Labour Party to their own sections—a right to which other oppressed groups such as women and youth were entitled. There was no accounting for this anomaly except through political adaptation to the bourgeois integrationist consciousness of Labourism. Significantly, for all the posters of Bobby Seale on sale at Militant bookstalls, Militant Labour retains a formal position of opposing black self-organisation within the labour movement. 51

 

At the same time the politics of Panther UK represented an unprincipled mixture of Marxism and black nationalism.

 

In perfect concord with the entire method of adapting the programme to the existing consciousness of the masses, Panther’s programme, set out on a leaflet under the heading What we Want, What we Believe, declared:

 

“We believe black people, or any other people, will not be free until they determine their own destiny.”

 

It went on to state:

 

“We believe that the black struggle is part of wider movement for change within society and that our liberation is tied up with changing the whole society. Panther stands for the breaking of the stranglehold of the rich minority over society and to construct a democratic socialist society run by workers and youth.”

 

This was the only declaration within the programme of Panther’s socialist goals. It failed to mention the crucial point–a point which cuts directly against the prejudices of nationalism and separatism–that the black minority of the working class in Britain cannot hope to achieve emancipation without building a joint revolutionary struggle with white workers.

 

Of course this unity must be constructed through a systematic campaign against racism within the white working class, not by ignoring the discrimination and oppression that face the black population. But the need for unity with white workers is not an optional extra for the programme of a black socialist organisation. It must be given particular emphasis, as must the need for any black socialist organisation to be committed to the construction of a revolutionary political party uniting the action of all workers, black and white, male and female.

 

Amidst all their uncritical praise for black nationalist figures from the past, this crucial element was missing from Panther’s programme. Indeed, so keen were Militant to adapt to the understandable suspicions felt by many black youth toward the white working class, that they failed even to declare honestly and openly that any formal link existed between Panther UK and Militant.

 

But it wasn’t hard to work out that such a link existed. Panther’s programme was exactly modelled on Militant’s “transitional” type programme. The crowning, governmental slogans were missing, and the transitional demands turned into a dead series of “maximum—minimum” demands. The socialist goal was divorced from the everyday agitational demands.

 

This method, bad enough when applied to the whole class struggle, proved even more disastrous when applied to one sphere of the class struggle.

 

As a programme for black liberation Panther’s programme was inadequate primarily because it failed to explain how the precondition for black liberation was the victory of workers, black and white, in the struggle for socialism.

 

In the old days of Ted Grant workers were meant to get the impression that Militant was a loyal, historically organic part of the British Labour Party and its milieu. The same method, consciously applied in the pages of Panther, produced the impression that Panther was simply the latest in a series of socialist black separatist organisations going back to the “reformism with a gun” of Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton.

 

Whereas Militant’s accommodation to Labourism took four decades to backfire, the Panther project blew up within two years. Many black members of Militant chose not to have anything to do with it. These were largely young black workers and students whose everyday struggles and culture led them towards some form of socialist integrationist strategy. Then a group of Panther members—including some long-standing Militant supporters—went over to separatism to such an extent that they split the organisation in 1993 in order to be “free” from Militant “domination”. The exclusion from active involvement—either through design or ineptitude—of many of Militant’s working class black members left Panther open to those developing in the direction of open black separatism.

 

The first issue of the newspaper of the new Independent Panther UK contains a programme even more adapted to separatism than that of the original organisation. Replete with separatist rhetoric, the front page article announces the formation of the new group under the headline “Declaration of Independence: Free at Last!”.52 The insinuation is that black people must liberate themselves from any organisational ties to integrated political parties before they can fight for their emancipation.

 

In the 1950s the Labour entrists who dressed themselves up as left reformists, to use Grant’s phrase, became left reformists. In the 1990s a section of those who dressed themselves up as black separatists became black separatists.

 

Gulf War – ghosts of the Malvinas

 

On the question of war again Militant’s break with Grant’s position has been only partial, flawed and dishonest.

 

The Gulf war came in the middle of the growing internal battle inside Militant. Differences over Militant’s line on the war were aired in the time honoured form of an editorial reply to a “reader’s letter”. The reader in question pointed out the difficulty in arguing against the war in the workplace and suggested Militant argue for a “socialist task force” against Saddam, and for “workers’ sanctions” against Iraq.

 

Peter Taaffe, Militant’s editor, rejected this. But the line would have been consistent with the method applied to the Malvinas war.

 

Instead of publicly addressing the disparity Militant chose to hide it.

 

Taaffe claimed spuriously that the Malvinas war had been an “inter-imperialist” war, ie that Argentina was an imperialist country, whereas Iraq was not. Any serious Marxist analysis of the two economies would show them to be semi-colonial countries, relatively economically developed, but held back from transformation into imperialist powers (economically and politically) by the existing world system of imperialism, against which the national bourgeoisie was forced to declare a temporary struggle.

 

In 1990/91, Militant adopted the slogan Troops out of the Gulf. Was this a “pacifist gesture”, as Militant had characterised it in 1982? Taaffe could only justify the difference by referring to the fact that in 1982 the demand “found no echo among working class people”. That is, for our great “swimmers-against-the-stream” in Militant, it was far easier to raise opposition to the war against Iraq than it was against Argentina.

 

As against 1982 Taaffe openly scorned the idea of a socialist task force against Iraq:

 

“It is the task of the Iraqi workers and peasants themselves to deal with the Saddam dictatorship . . . any suggestion of a task force, even with the qualification that it would be ‘socialist’ would be completely opposed by the masses of the Middle East. They have had enough of interventions from the west which have divided the Arab nation, super exploited its wealth . . .”53

 

And what about the workers and peasants of Latin America? Hadn’t they had enough of imperialist military intervention in 1982? Wouldn’t they—didn’t they—greet all talk of a socialist task force with derision?

 

Militant attempted to make this self-correction without an ounce of self-criticism. What is more, Militant’s habitual opportunism meant that, despite assembling all the elements of an Iraqi-defencist position it was never prepared to put this into practice during the war itself.

 

Taaffe declared:

 

“It would be a mistake to suggest that Militant can assume a neutral position on the Gulf”.54

 

So which side was Militant on? Not a single issue of Militant contained the answer, during or after the war. The closest Militant got to defending Iraq was this:

 

“The imperialists must be forced to retreat and leave the peoples of the whole Middle East to fight for the socialist federation.”55

 

The same Militant editorial declared “we can give no support to an imperialist war to topple Saddam”, but it refrained from spelling out the logical conclusion of Militant’s position—support for Iraq, despite its right-wing dictatorial government—as the best way to create conditions for the progressive overthrow of the Saddam regime.

 

In practice, as before, once the shooting started, Militant quickly disappeared from most of the regular demonstrations against the war. Instead of the defence of Iraq—to borrow a phrase from Pablo—they were busy once again fighting for a “socialist Britain”.

 

The state – covering Grant’s tracks

 

In the realms of theory Militant Labour has attempted to cover Ted Grant’s tracks on Marxism and the state.

 

After the disaster of the Anti-Poll Tax Demo Militant found themselves having to defend themselves against the growing influence of anarchism amongst the youth. Militant was obliged to mount a defence of the Marxist analysis of the state against anarchism’s rejection of all state forms—including a workers’ state—as fundamentally oppressive.

 

In an article by Nick Wrack in Militant International Review 46, they explained that, after the Paris Commune, Marx and Engels concluded that;

 

“the working class could not simply take hold of the ready made state apparatus of the bourgeoisie but would have to completely replace it with a different form of state, one to serve the interests of the majority in society and to lay the basis for the building of a socialist society.”56

 

Wrack goes on to explain that a stateless and classless society “could only be achieved by the socialist revolution, that is by the working class conquering state power, by the political destruction of the capitalist state and its replacement by a democratic workers’ state.”57

 

This apparently represents a qualitative break with Militant’s “parliamentary road”. Or does it? Firstly, they chose to use the term “political destruction”, which could be taken to mean the political transferral of power rather than physical break up of the state—armed forces, police, judiciary and upper layers of the civil service.

 

Secondly, for any Marxist the next step in the argument would be the explanation of the role of the self-organisation of the masses, of the creation of workers’ councils in both the carrying out and the consolidation of the revolution, and the insistence that it is on the basis of this new, qualitatively different power, that the foundations of a truly stateless society will be laid.

 

But Wrack says nothing about this. Having deliberately obscured the nature of the revolution, he then jumps over a historic period to concentrate on Marxism’s argument with anarchism over the role of the workers’ state. On such distant terrain, Militant can allow itself a moment of orthodoxy. But on the concrete questions of today’s class struggle Militant remains unprepared to spell out the how and why of smashing the capitalist state.

 

The current version of Militant’s programme remains firmly on the parliamentary terrain of the 1970s and 1980s, with not one word to say about workers’ power and workers’ democracy, not one word of criticism of parliamentary democracy, or even the slightest nod in the direction of “Marxism” except for the call for “democratic workers’ control and management” in nationalised industries. Militant’s objective of “a democratic, socialist planned economy” is entirely within the scope of their strategic position of “Labour to power on a socialist programme”.58

 

Recently, Militant have argued that:

 

“having destroyed the capitalist state it will be necessary for the victorious working class to constitute themselves as a new state, to prevent the defeated bourgeoisie from organising counter-revolution. The capitalists will do everything possible to destroy the gains of the revolution. Unless the working class takes the practical step of organising its own state, that is an instrument of its own class rule, then the working class will be defeated by the violent action of the capitalists and capitalism will be restored.”59

 

This is absolutely true. But this brief moment of wisdom has no effect whatsoever on Militant’s politics. Far from disproving their centrism, it only demonstrates the proof of it.

 

Militant are incapable of maintaining a coherent Marxist position, either theoretical or programmatic, with regard to the state. Even when they embrace orthodoxy in the pages of their theoretical journal, the content of their practical intervention remains unchanged. Were the working class to entrust Militant with leadership, the consequences would be disastrous.

 

Despite its new-found organisational independence from Labour, Militant Labour has been unable to rid itself of the misapplication of the workers’ government tactic. Its local and parliamentary election campaigns have been fought on a programme which is undeniably left reformist.

 

In local council elections Militant Labour has argued for a “people’s budget”, but suggested no means of imposing that budget in the face of illegality. It has campaigned on the basis that its candidates are “working class”, that they will only take a workers’ wage, that they will help tenants deal with housing problems. But nowhere has it availed itself of the opportunity to explain to tens of thousands of voters that what we need is a revolution, that we need a different kind of government, or that we need a revolutionary combat party to get it.

 

Even when it is standing independently of Labour, Militant Labour retains the strategic adaptation to the Labourite, reformist consciousness that has shaped its programme and practice for over 40 years.

 

In the 1920s Trotsky attacked the Labour lefts for their reformism. His words strike home against Militant Labour, even in its renewed, independent, left-talking form:

 

“Heroic promises to hurl thunderbolts of resistance if the Conservatives should ‘dare’, etc, are not worth a single bad penny. It is futile to lull the masses to sleep from day to day with prattling about peaceful, painless, parliamentary, democratic transitions to socialism and then, at the first serious punch delivered at ones nose, to call upon the masses for armed resistance. This is the best method for facilitating the destruction of the proletariat by the powers of reaction. In order to be capable of offering serious resistance, the masses must be prepared for such action mentally, materially and by organisation. they must understand the inevitability of a more and more savage class struggle, and its transformation, at a certain stage into civil war.”60

 

Conclusion

 

How can we characterise Militant’s evolution? The Taaffe leadership seemed to have a purpose when it removed Grant and the obstacle he placed in the way of exploiting the possibility of independent work. But that has not cured the decline of the tendency.

 

Replacing the central orientation to labour with an orientation to movements of the socially oppressed and to Scottish nationalism has, if anything, accelerated the decline in influence everywhere except Scotland. Today the tendency’s leadership seems uncertain of the way forward but unwilling to retrace its steps and attempt a systematic accounting of Grant’s politics.

 

Militant’s centrist political past haunts it. Whilst it has certainly moved left on a variety of individual issues, on the essential questions it has only seemed to move.

 

Schematic, dishonest politics necessitate the construction of a tiny, really sectarian, world where reality does not penetrate. The electoral successes of Scottish Militant Labour, bought at an enormous cost in political opportunism, are today cited as excuses for avoiding the trouble it would cause to really draw up a full account with Grant’s politics.

 

The change in the global situation in the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism has shaken the international left to the core. In Britain as elsewhere, the conditions of the class struggle that took shape in the long years of the post-war boom are changing at an ever accelerating rate. Those political organisations on the far left whose programme and practice was adapted not to the needs of the class struggle, but to the two great apparatuses of reaction within the working class movement—Social-Democracy and Stalinism—have been thrown into crisis.

 

The opening years of this new period in world history have seen important reverses in class consciousness and organisation on a world scale. But at the same time, and integrally linked to this process, the great reformist safety valves for channeling and controlling class discontent are themselves being undermined. It is this historic process that has torn the Militant Tendency apart.

 

The strategic accommodation of Militant to Labourism could not last. The dates engraved on the tombstone of strategic entrism are the dates which encompass the establishment and decline of the period of the post-war order: 1951—1991.

 

Without a stable formation like Labourism to which it can adapt, Militant is now chasing after more ephemeral, unstable political formations.

 

In the years to come, as all manner of maverick and non-proletarian forces endeavour to fill the ideological vacuum, the centrifugal forces acting in Militant will increase. Further instability, further crises and splits, are guaranteed.

 

There is a way out of this situation. It involves settling accounts not merely with the best known of Ted Grant’s political errors, but with its theoretical foundations. The leadership of Militant Labour are determined not to follow this path, for they sense in the marrow of their bones that it leads to the exposure of the sum total of their aggregated errors, to their own political destruction.

 

We are convinced that there are hundreds of members of Militant Labour and its sister organisations in other countries who feel a mounting sense of disquiet. They are loyal comrades, hard working activists and cadre who have dedicated their lives to the struggle on which the future of humanity depends. They do not wish to squander their lives in a spiral of ever more demoralised and fruitless manoeuvres. It is to them that this article is addressed. The condition of their future success is that they draw the necessary conclusion—turn to the politics of the LRCI.

 

Footnotes

1 Militant, 24.1.92

2 By centrist we mean political tendencies that “stand between reformism and revolutionary communism, often borrowing from both or vacillating between the two, or confining its revolutionism to theory and its reformism to practice. It is also essentially a transitional phenomenon, moving either towards or away from Marxism. Paradoxically, its transition can be swift or it can take the form of years of ossified, motionless centrism.” Trotskyist Discussion Bulletin No.1, “What is Centrism?”, Workers Power (May 1986)

3 Trotsky The Crisis of the French Section

4 A detailed and illuminating account of this episode, the first of many subsequent attempts by would-be Trotskyists to establish a centrist current and publication, is given in The Mass Paper a pamphlet by Erwin Wolf) in Trotsky, The Crisis of the French Section

5 ibid

6 Problems of Entrism (1959)

7 The Programme of the International, International Bureau for the Fourth International, London 1970

8 See “The Rise and Fall of the SLL” Workers Power, (February 1986)

9 The New Turn - A Threat to Forty Years’ Work (1991)

10 The Programme of the International, (May 1970) emphasis added

11 Problems of Entrism

12 Militant British Perspectives 1979

14 Problems of Entrism

15 Workers Power was the only tendency in the LPYS that saw the need to prepare for independence.

Our candidate for the leading committee of the LPYS, Gary O’Donnell, argued in his electoral address that a counter-offensive was necessary and that: “such a movement would not co-exist for long in the party of Kinnock and Whitty.”

He urged the LPYS to defy the Sawyer proposals when they were imposed and keep its structures intact. This was a perspective for an independent youth movement. He argued that the movement should adopt unambiguously revolutionary policies.

Workers Power predicted the need for such a course of action well in advance. In 1984 we argued that “a fighting perspective will draw upon us the wrath of Kinnock and Hattersley. This is because it will involve a break with their rotten politics. As they control the bureaucratic apparatus of the Labour Party it may well mean a break with the Labour Party.”

We went on to warn that: “The Militant would never consider this and as a result they help defeat the struggle of youth in advance.”

We were right: the LPYS was surrendered without a fight.

18 Taaffe, P and Mulhearn, T Liverpool: The City that Dared to Fight (London 1988) See also review of this in Workers Power 103

19 Militant British Perspectives 1979

21 What is to be Done?, Moscow 1978

23 Militant British Perspectives 1983

24 ibid

25 Pablo Where are we Going? (1951)

26 Pablo The Building of the Revolutionary Party February 1952

27 ibid

28 ibid

29 Trotsky, The Death Agony of capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, New York 1977

30 “The political backwardness of the American workers” in ibid

31 ibid

32 Militant What we stand for , (London 1985)

33 Foster,S and Hoskisson, M “Militant’s peaceful parliamentary road”, Permanent Revolution 8, (London 1989)

34 Degras, J (ed), The Communist International: Documents (London 1971) Vol 1

35 Militant What we stand for, op cit

36 Working Women and the Struggle for Socialism, Labour Students South West Region, Bristol (undated). First published by the Minority on the National Committee of the National Organisation of Labour Students under the title Women, Sexism and the Labour Movement, 1976.

37 ibid

38 ibid The implication in the first sentence is clear: lesbian and gay liberation is not a class issue and Marxists wouldn’t mention such a “distasteful“ subject were it not for its popularity in the student movement.

39 Militant Northern Ireland - A Marxist Analysis (1984)

40 Militant April 1982, See also Communism and the Test of War Workers Power 33 (May 1982)

41 ibid

42 Militant International Review June 1982

43 Scotland: Perspectives and Tasks (1991)

44 Minority resolution on Walton, July (1991)

45 Militant 30 August 1991

46 Heemskerk, C “After Walton” Militant International Review 46 (Summer 1991)

44 Militant British Perspectives 1979

48 Scotland: Perspectives and Tasks 1991

49 ibid

50 Militant 20 August 1991

51 As recently as December 1993 at the national conference of Youth against Racism in Europe, Militant Labour supporters, without offering a single word of explanation, voted against the right for black trade unionists to organise their own caucuses to identify and combat racism in industry and the labour movement.

52 Panther Winter 1993/4 NB This is the so called “independent” Panther. At time of writing the Militant Labour-controlled Panther has not re-appeared.

53 Militant October 1990

54 ibid

55 Militant 25 January 1991

56 “Marxism, Anarchism and the State”, Nick Wrack, Militant International Review 46, (1991)

57 ibid

58 Militant 2 April 1993

59 ibid

60 Trotsky On Britain

 

 

 

 

 

 

An ongoing history: the LRCI ten years on

Published by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency) in 1999, www.thecommunist.net

 

The LRCI was founded ten years ago. Richard Brenner draws a balance sheet of our fight for a re-elaborated Trotskyist programme and a new democratic centralist international

"Revolutionary Marxists find ourselves thrown back into a position of a small and persecuted minority, almost as at the beginning of the imperialist war. As all of history demonstrates, beginning, say, with the First International, such regressions are unavoidable ... today we are once again only an international propaganda society. I do not see in this the slightest reason for pessimism Do we need a platform of transitional demands? We do. Do we need correct tactics in the trade unions? Unquestionably. But it is possible to discuss these questions only with those who have clearly and firmly decided for what ends we need all this ... We must first entrench ourselves on principled positions, take a correct starting point, and then proceed to move along tactical lines. We are now in the period of principled self-clarification and merciless demarcation from opportunists and muddlers. This is the only avenue to the highway of revolution."1

These are the words of Leon Trotsky, writing in 1929, at the beginning of a ten year struggle to recreate a revolutionary international. Ten years ago the League for a Revolutionary Communist International was founded to continue that fight.2

The assembled delegates had drawn, both from their own political experiences and the history of the class struggle in the twentieth century, certain firm conclusions that shaped the organisation they launched.

The first was that the decline of the Soviet Union into Stalinist dictatorship and economic stagnation proved that the construction of a socialist society could only be assured if working class revolution succeeds in several advanced countries.

The second was that, for this task to have a chance of being realised, the revolutionary communists must be organised internationally to fight for a new world party of social revolution.

The third - and this was the idea that distinguished the Congress delegates from other tendencies on the far left - was that nationally-based revolutionary groups should establish the highest level of international organisation from the outset. The Leninist method of organisation - democratic centralism - should be applied at the international level in the new organisation.3

To be effective, an international tendency would have to shun a loose federal relationship between autonomous national groups. Equally, it should also safeguard against an undemocratic structure in which one national group dominates through setting up satellite or franchise groups in other countries.

Finally, the delegates were convinced that such an organisation would only succeed in taking forward the struggle to build a new world party of socialist revolution if it could overcome the failure of the surviving fragments of the post world war two Fourth International to re-develop a revolutionary programme.

The process of founding the LRCI involved the democratic discussion, amendment and adoption of an international programme, a common set of tasks, and the election of an authoritative and accountable international leadership.

Ten years on, how has the LRCI fared? Today it is larger, both in the number of its national sections and of its militants, than at its first congress in 1989. The organisation embodies greater experience of struggle, expresses a higher level of common campaigning action and has further developed Marxist theory to address a range of new and complex problems. New organisations, in New Zealand, Australia and Sweden, have joined its ranks; it fully expects to add a section in the Czech Republic this year. Its German and Swedish groups have grown significantly through fusion with other groups of revolutionary communists.

The LRCI also suffered reverses. A sustained intervention into Russia in the early 1990s failed to establish a section. The League lost both its sections in Latin America - the Bolivian and Peruvian groups - in a damaging split in 1995. Efforts to reach a principled agreement for fusion with the PTS of Argentina and its fraternal groups in Brazil, Chile and Mexico have not produced any significant progress after four years of exchanges.

The end of the twentieth century should be a time when the idea of a centralised and disciplined international organisation is widely accepted on the left. The globalisation of capital, the emergence of European, American and Asian trading blocs, increased co-ordination of trade union struggles across national borders (Liverpool Dockers, Renault), the horrors of nationalism manifest in brutal regional wars, the complete and humiliating defeat of the Stalinist project of “Socialism in One Country"; all of these factors should make the urgency of achieving the highest possible level of international working class organisation obvious.

And yet, perversely, for the far left the opposite appears to be the case. The SWP (GB), despite a large network of groups around the world which support its ideas, persistently refuses to organise its international current on democratic centralist lines. The consequence is that affiliates of its International Socialist tendency must toe the line of the “parent” (i.e. British) section or relinquish their international ties.

The justification for this approach is that it is “first” necessary to build strong national parties. But if consistently applied, the same logic would block efforts to set up a democratic centralist organisation at the national level too.

Strong organisations would first have to be built in each of the main regions of the country. A simple comparison of these two arguments, and the fact that only one of them is advanced by the SWP (GB), reveals the deep seated national centredness that really underlies the argument against international democratic centralism as a necessary method of revolutionary organisation.

None of this is to suggest that a democratic centralist international tendency can simply be called into being or declared without years of struggle to create the real political and organisational conditions for its existence.

This article will examine the history of LRCI to draw out the way in which the political and organisational foundations of a principled international tendency were laid down. A combination of ongoing refinement of programme and agreement over tasks - each involving sharp internal struggle at times - has helped the LRCI build successfully on these foundations and orient its cadre to the new millennium with revolutionary confidence.

The pre-history of the LRCI

Five years before the foundation of the LRCI, four organisations set up its precursor - the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International (MRCI). Established at a meeting in Conway Hall, London, during 21-23 April 1984, around twenty delegates from the British Workers Power group, the Irish Workers Group (IWG), the Gruppe Arbeitermacht of West Germany and Pouvoir Ouvrier of France agreed a statement of common aims. The MRCI Declaration of Fraternal Relations stated:

"The building of a revolutionary international cannot be put off until national parties have been built. The international must be built by revolutionaries simultaneously with the building of national parties. It must be founded on the basis of an international programme guiding and informing the work of the national sections. On this basis it can and must be organised as a democratic centralist international."4

The organisations had no illusions that they had already developed such a programme. All traced their origins to splits from organisations like the Socialist Workers Party in Britain or the Spartacusbund in Germany which they believed had failed to meet the revolutionary challenges of the 1970s - a period of mass anti-war movements, militant strike activities, in which throughout Europe, organisations openly describing themselves as revolutionary or Trotskyist had won tens of thousands of workers, students and other youth to their ranks.

But in the late 1970s and early 1980s all these organisations came up against the limitations of their politics. They suffered decline or splits because of either their sectarianism or opportunism towards the trade unions or the mass reformist parties, which despite waves of rank and file militancy maintained their grip on the great majority of workers.

At the same time far left organisations which had grown during the same period in the semi-colonial countries revealed similar defects in relation to bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism, in particular in the face of the Nicaraguan and Iranian revolutions of 1979.

Between 1979 and 1982 there was a series of attempted unifications and further splits among the fragments of the Fourth International. This experience convinced the four groups of the MRCI of tthat the existing international tendencies lacked both the political capacity for self-reform and the democratic structures to enable others to join them and help refound a Trotskyist international on the basis of a newly elaborated transitional programme.

Of the four founding groups, only one - the French - had been formed by former members of the British organisation. From the foundation of Workers Power and the IWG in the mid-1970s, the two groups had worked together on all our major political projects.

In the early 1980s they participated together in the international conferences organised in Britain by the Workers Socialist League (WSL). There they made contact with the Austrian IKL and the German Spartacusbund.

The WSL’s initiative produced the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee (TILC). This organisation proved short-lived, replicating as it did the loose federal structure of the larger “Trotskyist” organisations. Differences between its constituent parts plunged it into internal crises, its British section undergoing several splits before eventually merging with the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI).

Among some members of the groups who attended the WSL sponsored conferences the attempt to discuss and reach agreement on aspects of an international programme had a significant effect. Militants had come into contact with each other. Discussions had been started, experiences exchanged. The effect of this was to rally together those serious about building an international tendency. In Germany a split in the Spartacusbund gave rise to a small group of militants in Frankfurt and northern Germany who quickly entered into organised discussions and then fraternal relations with Workers Power.

They formed the Gruppe Arbeitermacht (GAM) in 1983. Within the Austrian IKL certain comrades developed a strong commitment to forcing their organisation to take international collaboration and discussion with Workers Power/ IWG/GAM seriously.

At the same time a former member of Workers Power living in France, who had been translating and publishing its material, began to make contact with and win over some young French militants, founding Pouvoir Ouvrier.

In 1984 the four groups decided that what was needed was an international tendency able to fight simultaneously in several countries, seeking out like-minded groups and individuals around the world. To achieve this would require a series of steps to establish clear political demarcation, discussion and common work.

The declaration said:

"prior to [the] foundation of a New International there must exist a more embryonic organisation whose purpose is to develop [a revolutionary] programme. We call such an organisation an international tendency. Such a tendency would be characterised by:

(i) the recognition of the need to elaborate a world programme on the basis of the 1938 Transitional Programme.

(ii) proven agreement between the component sections with regard to the fundamental tenets and tactics of Marxism and therefore agreement on how to proceed with the necessary programmatic work.

(iii) proven agreement with regard to the application of such principles to conjunctural crises of proletarian leadership both historical and contemporary.

(iv) an established and recognised democratic centralist leadership - necessary organisational structures."5

Theoretical foundations

The nascent organisation turned to major programmatic and tactical questions. Foremost among them were the nature of Stalinism, the meaning of its post-war expansion and the political collapse and organisational disintegration of the Fourth International.

In 1982 Workers Power and the Irish Workers Group had published The Degenerated Revolution - a book that analysed the rise and nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the 1920s and 1930s and then the expansion of Stalinism after the Second World War, in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba and the Indo-Chinese revolutions.

It showed that the Stalinist bureaucratic caste had not somehow thrown off its counterrevolutionary character by “making socialist revolutions". Although the Stalinists overthrew capitalism in these countries, the working class was totally excluded from power in these states from the outset.

The Stalinists blocked an essential prerequisite for socialism: the political rule of the working class itself through a semi-state based on the soviet form. Democratic planning never emerged - the planned economies of Eastern Europe had profound bureaucratic deformations built into them from their creation during the period 1947-51.

Nor could Stalinism be “structurally reformed". Unless the workers carried through a violent political revolution to drive the bureaucracy from power, eventually the ruling caste would lead the bureaucratically planned economies to stagnation and collapse.

At the same time, the book predicted, they would bring further political disasters down on these states (wars, brutal repression, national hatreds, even genocide) and lead those sections of the working class movement influenced by them to further defeats around the world.

The IWG and Workers Power had also analysed the collapse of the Fourth International (FI) in their 1983 book, The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today. The FI, increasingly disoriented by Stalinist-led overturns of capitalism (Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, China) decided at its Third Congress in 1951 that sections of Stalinism had ceased to be counterrevolutionary, and were becoming centrist again “under the pressure of the masses". In turn, these centrist parties could be pressured to reform as could the states they set up. Trotsky’s programme of political revolution was abandoned.

In the subsequent years a general accommodation to Stalinism, the left-wing of social democracy and to petit-bourgeois nationalism swept the FI. First Tito, then Mao, then Castro, then Ho Chi Minh, were to play the role of “blunt instruments” or “unconscious Trotskyists".

The need to accommodate to specific Stalinist or petit-bourgeois reformist or nationalist tendencies in different countries and continents - whilst still retaining whichever isolated elements of Trotskyist orthodoxy that did not directly impede this adaptation - had the effect of fragmenting and splitting the FI.

In the 1960s and 1970s an upsurge in class struggle around the world saw many of these fragments grow from organisations of dozens to hundreds or thousands. Yet while they tried to reunite “the Fourth International” they did so only on the basis of their accumulated errors and their common methodological collapse into centrism in 1948-1951.

The MRCI discussed and assimilated the theoretical insights of these two books. But the first collective work of the four MRCI groups was the elaboration and adoption of theses on the nature of modern Social Democracy and on the tactics which could be adopted to break its hold on the working class, and a variety of forms of the united front, including critical electoral support. Related to this was the adoption of theses on the anti-imperialist united front in the semi-colonial countries.

Over the next five years these organisations held quarterly meetings at which they adopted a series of resolutions on the major events in the international class struggle of the period: Poland 1980-82, the Nicaraguan Revolution 1979, the Iranian Revolution 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war 1980-82, the US invasion of Grenada 1982, the Malvinas War between Britain and Argentina in 1982, the upsurge of the South African workers’ struggle against Apartheid. In April 1989 the MRCI adopted Theses on Women’s Oppression.

The purpose of these common resolutions was to establish - and develop - a common programmatic method. Only by submitting our programme to the test of the major class struggles of the both the recent past and the present, could we ascertain whether we were really in agreement.

Too many organisations had been cobbled together on a hastily written abstract programme, only to then split as a result of sharp differences when that programme was applied to the class struggle - the USFI over Nicaragua, the TILC over the Malvinas war, the Morenoite/Lambert organisation over reformism in power.

We were determined to guard against this fate, as far as possible, by assessing whether we could reach programmatic agreement based on the application of Marxist demands and tactics in particular class struggle situations.

A major preoccupation of the MRCI during its brief existence was analysing the significance of Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union after 1985. In a series of resolutions the MRCI rejected the pro-Gorbachev stance of the large “Trotskyist” currents: the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the Lambertists and the Morenoites.

We warned of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s rapidly evolving tendency to surrender the remaining gains of the working class - the planned and statified non-capitalist economy - to imperialism. But we rejected the tendency, most crudely expressed by the Spartacists, to turn to the hardline Stalinists and back their brutal repression of the working class wherever it fought for democratic gains.

Instead the MRCI re-elaborated a programme for political revolution which understood the importance of fighting for the democratic freedoms of the working class; freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and press, trade union rights and national self-determination. Such demands, the MRCI was sure, would stand in the forefront of the struggle once the crisis broke in the Stalinist states.

The workers would inevitably fight for such freedoms, and securing them was inseparable from the fight to recreate workers’ councils and a revolutionary party. The validity of the MRCI’s conclusions were put to the test when Stalinism entered its death agony in the convulsions of 1989-91.

The growth of the MRCI

In 1985, as part of the discussion on Social Democracy, delegates from the MRCI were invited to a conference of the Austrian IKL. The outcome of the conference was a split in that organisation by a group of comrades who agreed with the fundamental line of the theses on social democratic reformism. This nucleus went on to form a group, Arbeiterstandpunkt, which became the first new section of the MRCI since its foundation.

In the same year, as a result of articles in Workers Power on the significance of the revolutions in Bolivia in 1952 and 1971, the MRCI made contact with José Villa, an expelled member of the Bolivian POR led by Guillermo Lora.

A revolutionary period existed in Bolivia from 1982-86, which culminated in the occupation of La Paz by the country’s tin miners in mid-1985; however, it was tragically betrayed an ended in defeat.

Several visits by MRCI members to Bolivia, and Peru and visits by Bolivian comrades to Europe eventually led to Villa joining the MRCI. But political and party-building differences, plus the demoralisation of the post-1986 mass closures of the mines and factories, meant that the Bolivian comrades did not join at this time.

From the late 1980s the comrades were never persuaded of the strategic defeat that the Bolivian miners had suffered in 1986 - so similar to that suffered by the British miners one year previously. Nor could the MRCI and later LRCI persuade them of the need to re-orient tactically in such conditions.

The most that was conceded was that this was an “interrevolutionary period"; to concede more, namely that a revolutionary period had ended, it was wrongly suggested would condone propagandistic passivity.

But all this revealed was an inability to distinguish the face of a revolution from its back - a fatal weakness for a propaganda group that needed to steer its militants away from a diet of agitation and mass activity towards serious propaganda to a more restricted audience.

Their failure to undertake this reorientation would lead to persistent low grade agitation and difficulty in distinguishing themselves from their much larger centrist rivals, especially Lora’s POR.

At this time Peru too was undergoing a deep economic crisis under the presidency of Alan Garcia and the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group was growing. José Villa returned to his native Peru and formed a small group of MRCI members there - Poder Obrero (POP). The experience of this work with POP, the discussion of their opportunities and difficulties, was of great value to the hitherto entirely European-based MRCI.

The sudden explosion of Gerry Healy’s International Committee in late 1985 caused ferment in “Trotskyist” groupings around the world. For two years there was endless talk of an open conference of all Trotskyists to discuss the question of international regroupment.

In this period the MRCI entered into discussions with the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT) of the USA. We renewed our discussions with the IKL and the Italian GOR as well as with former TILC affiliates such as the RWL in the USA. We attended the US Trotskyist Open conference held in San Francisco in 1988.

The very existence of the MRCI enabled us to intervene collectively and effectively in this ferment. Our assessment of the major issues and trends in the “world Trotskyist movement” was embodied in a set of Theses in Defence of Trotskyism (May 1987).6

However, most of the groups involved in this process rejected the idea of serious programmatic clarification and steps towards a disciplined democratic centralist international organisation. Filled with impatience and philistinism, they regarded such a painstaking approach as “sectarian". Instead they proposed a broad, open, all-inclusive discussion process, without decisions or commitment.

The end result was a series of manoeuvres, exclusions and splits. The open conference never happened. The initially sizeable forces of the Workers Revolutionary Party were frittered away and organisations like the IKL (later RKL) and the GOR underwent a process of rapid political degeneration; neither now consider themselves Trotskyist.

To intervene in this flux in 1986, the MRCI set up a permanent secretariat and decided to draft a programmatic manifesto which would form the political basis for the MRCI to move to a democratic centralist structure.

In this period - a period of intense class struggles compared to most of the 1990s - sections such as WPB and the group of comrades around José Villa in Bolivia gained invaluable experience of fighting alongside workers - particularly miners - in major class battles which decided the direction of national workers movements for long periods to come.

There were rich lessons to learn - in terms of militant organisation, courage and self-sacrifice - from the miners of Oruro and South Yorkshire. But also there was the lesson to learn of maintaining in the heat of these struggles an unsparing criticism of the leaderships; of the FSTMB (Bolivian Miners Federation) or the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) of the TUC or the COB (the Bolivian trade union federation).

Latin American comrades participated in the entire heroic “March for Life and Peace” where ten thousand miners marched towards the capital La Paz, only to be turned back by government tanks and troops. They won a hearing for a strategy that could have overcome these obstacles and enabled the miners to return to the offensive.

Likewise in Britain in 1984-85 Workers Power in Britain was shoulder to shoulder with the miners on the picket lines, in the front rank at major battles such as the miners’ attempts to close the Orgreave coking plant. In France, Austria, Ireland and Germany the MRCI organised solidarity with the British miners, collecting money, organising meetings of workers and students addressed by miners and representatives of the women’s movement, mainly made up of miners’ wives and partners, that had grown enormously during the strike.

Visits to pit villages became part of the “holiday itinerary” of European MRCI (and IKL) members. WP began to recruit striking miners and won a significant hearing amongst a militant minority in some pits in South Yorkshire, Warwickshire and North Derbyshire, laying the basis for the launch of a long running miners’ paper, The Red Miner.

Most of the groups in the MRCI grew rapidly during and immediately after this period. Workers Power more than doubled in size, the French group recruited new militants, the new Austrian organisation expanded rapidly.

The only partial exception to this was the German section. The dispersal of its small membership over a large country meant that it was not able to create a national leadership - a problem rectified by an international intervention into the crisis of East Germany after 1989.

The increasing activity and political homogeneity of the MRCI enormously helped the national sections. The MRCI ended this period with two new sections (Austria and Peru). The experience of these five years was invaluable; step by step we re-elaborated the building blocs of a revolutionary programme, we learnt to know and trust one another - not of course without conflicts or misunderstandings.

The MRCI was in Lenin’s phrase “a school of comradely feelings” in which national-centred prejudices were in large measure overcome. It remains a model of how to achieve programmatic agreement and democratic centralism and will - we are convinced - be repeated on a larger scale in the future.

The founding of the League

In the summer of 1989 a nine-day congress in Britain agreed to transform the six organisations of the MRCI into the League for Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI).

This Congress had as its main task to debate, amend and finally adopt a common programme - which was duly published as the Trotskyist Manifesto. On the basis of this achievement it was possible and necessary to elect the bodies for a functioning democratic centralist organisation - an International Executive Committee (IEC) on which members from each section sat (although not now narrowly representatives of them as before) and an International Secretariat (IS), responsible for administration and day to day political guidance.

The First Congress took place in the immediate aftermath of the June Tiananmen Square massacre and around the time of the first Polish “free elections". In September Solidarnosc formed Eastern Europe’s first “non-communist” government since 1947.

In November and December the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed like a pack of cards. Clearly, one of the decisive turning points of the twentieth century had begun, similar in magnitude to 1914-18 and 1945-48. Would its immediate effect be revolutionary or counterrevolutionary? What would be the longer term consequences, and what re-ordering of the world order would result?

The LRCI insisted that the years 1989-91 saw a series of political revolutionary crises; with the correct leadership they could have led to one or more successful political revolutions.

Unlike the sectarian and Stalinophile sects (such as the Spartacists and their offshoots) the LRCI did not view the loss of power by the Stalinist bureaucrats as constituting per se the end of the degenerate workers’ states and the restoration of capitalism; in short, a successful counterrevolution.

But, unlike the USFI, the Lambertists or the LIT (Morenoites) neither did we ignore the danger presented by the masses’ strong illusions in bourgeois democracy and the market. Above all, we were aware of the crippling effect of the near total absence of any sort of anti-capitalist leadership in the working class.

Faced with the downfall of Stalinism we neither sank into despairing passivity nor did we have a naive optimism that was shattered by the defeats that were inflicted on the workers of the region without a serious class-wide fightback over the next three years.

The LRCI was not surprised to see the USA and its European allies once more assume the role of world policeman and launch a brutal assault on Iraq in defence of “its” oil fields in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991. Instead it set to work to fight against imperialism.

The sections of the LRCI - working with organisations with which we were in political discussion in the USA (Revolutionary Trotskyist Tendency) and Italy (GOR) - campaigned vigorously in defence of Iraq in the long build-up to the short and devastating Gulf War, opposing the imperialists’ invasion and calling for an Iraqi victory in the war.

We were also in solidarity with the Kurds against Saddam’s genocidal revenge attack in the immediate aftermath of his defeat by the US-led coalition.

Imperialism, motivated entirely by the defence of its world order (the diktats of the IMF and the multinationals, privatisation and austerity worldwide) was coming into armed conflict not with genuine mass anti-imperialist movements as it had done in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (the Vietnamese NLF, the Sandinistas) but with its own Frankenstein’s monsters: reactionary dictatorships it had sponsored but which had now “got out of control".

Thus ethnic cleansing, brutal national oppression, attempted genocide were all played out by brutal regimes, from Iraqi Kurdistan and central Africa (Rwanda) to the Balkans, where a series of savage wars broke out in 1991.

Though these real crimes against humanity were invariably the result of the economic and political pressures of the neo-liberal world system, including the restoration of capitalism from 1988 onwards, their executioners were independent actors like Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic.

Moreover, “democratic imperialism” - once such crimes came to light - set out to use a humanitarian ideology to justify the assertion of their New World Order, in which the sovereignty of smaller states was entirely relative.

It was vital for revolutionaries to defend the oppressed nations against genocide by these regimes without giving an inch to imperialism’s claims to be acting out of humanitarian concern.

Generally speaking the “Trotskyist” centrists fell over in one direction or the other - either downplaying or ignoring imperialism’s role or treating the Saddams or Milosevics as bona fide anti-imperialists and regarding the victims of genocide as so much “collateral damage” in the struggle against imperialism.

This “anti-imperialism of fools” found a distant echo in the LRCI’s own ranks in the form of an unwillingness by a small minority to act in a united front with the oppressed against their oppressors, especially once imperialism began to show a self-serving and cynical interest in restraining the crimes of the oppressors.

Likewise, in the Soviet Union rapid economic breakdown led to national revolts in the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and later Chechnya) and in the Baltic states and the Ukraine. The LRCI defended the rights of these oppressed peoples to self-determination up to and including secession without preconditions.

In 1990, we were able to work with other leftward moving tendencies particularly the RTT. We sent a member of the British section at the time of the anti-Gulf war movement to assist them in effectively founding their organisation and launching its publication.

A member of the International Secretariat visited the RTT for discussions and we received several visits from them in return. Across Europe in late 1990 and early 1991 there was a large anti-war movement. In London over 200,000 marched on the last demonstration before the fighting started followed by weekly demonstrations of over 20,000.

In this period LRCI members also visited Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania and Russia. But we were only able to concentrate serious long-term resources in East Germany (DDR). Here we established a permanent presence in east Berlin and sold huge numbers of bulletins in the period from the collapse of the Berlin Wall, through the last DDR elections, to German re-unification in the summer of 1990.

Years later when the unification seems such an unalloyed triumph for German imperialism, people too easily forget that the masses of anti-Stalinist workers and youth who thronged the streets, who gathered in large conferences and forums to debate what to do after the fall of the Wall were by no means all supporters of capitalism and tens of thousands snapped up revolutionary socialist publications and newspapers.

The result of persistent work by a team of Austrian, West German and British activists was recruitment of East German comrades and the creation of first an East German section of the LRCI and then its fusion with the Gruppe Arbeitermacht.

Also during 1989-90, as the result of an extended visit to Bolivia by a leading member of the Austrian section, the comrades founded a group and in 1991 Poder Obrero Bolivia joined the LRCI.

The August 1991 coup in the USSR

In August 1991 the revolutionary situation in the Soviet Union came to a head. The coup attempt launched by Yanaev and Pugo rapidly collapsed in the face of mass resistance. Boris Yeltsin put himself at the head of this movement by raising the call for a general strike.

The LRCI immediately took the position of supporting resistance to the Yanaev/Pugo coup. Two LRCI members were actually in Moscow at the time and participated in mass actions in defence of democratic rights.

The International Secretariat of the LRCI responded to the events by calling for mass working class opposition to the attempted Yanaev coup - alongside pro-Yeltsinite forces such as the miners - though in no sense accepting Yeltsin’s leadership, let alone his ultimate goals. This was made clear in a declaration on 22 August 1991 - the day after the failure of the coup. The LRCI said:

"Our task is to get the working class to defend their post-capitalist property relations in the context of defending their democratic gains. The destruction of the democratic gains [by Pugo/Yanaev] would have made it impossible to raise the consciousness of the masses to a level adequate to this task".

Far from sowing any illusions in Yeltsin or seeking to help him attain his political objectives, we warned the Russian workers:

"The greatest danger to the working class now that the coup has collapsed is Yeltsin (...) Yeltsin is no friend of the working class. He represents all the elements in the former bureaucratic caste who have abandoned the prospect of bureaucratic parasitism on proletarian property relations in favour of becoming the new ruling class of a restored capitalist Russia.

"His pro-capitalist policies spell mass unemployment and the destruction of social welfare for millions of workers; he wants to open up the 120 million Soviet workers to unbridled imperialist exploitation the events of the past week, whilst they have blocked the road to a Stalinist bureaucratic counterrevolution, have acted as a catalyst to speed up the social counterrevolution; the cause of the democratic restorationists has been immeasurably advanced. The tempo of the demise of the nomenklatura has likewise been accelerated".

We went on to call for “workers’ councils elected in every workplace and region of the USSR” and “proletarian political revolution to smash the dictatorship of the Stalinists and prevent the restoration of Stalinism."7

Thus we resolutely opposed Yeltsin’s counter coup - from the dissolution of the CPSU to the dissolution of the USSR itself - which unleashed the process of capitalist counterrevolution.

In the same month the LRCI suffered a heavy loss. Dave Hughes, who had been seriously ill for over six months, died suddenly on 13 August. His funeral took place on the day after the Yanaev coup collapsed.

As a founder of Workers Power (Britain), the MRCI and the LRCI, and as a Russian speaker and writer on Russian history and politics, he had laid the foundations of our method and programmatic positions on this central question in the 1980s. This work provided the LRCI with a rich inheritance with which to address the many and varied political problems opened up by the seizure of power by the Yeltsin pro-imperialists.

Serious differences emerge inside the LRCI

The events in Russia led to the eruption of a major political struggle both within the LRCI and with two organisations in discussions with it with a view to joining: the Communist Left of New Zealand and the Revolutionary Trotskyist Tendency of the USA.

The RTT denounced the League’s position on the August events as centrist and asked to join “in order to fight this centrism” and “overthrow the leadership of the LRCI.” Earlier in the year the RTT had declined to join before its Second Congress, scheduled for late 1991. The LRCI wisely now declined this request from an organisation with whom it did not have programmatic unity.

We did however invite the CLNZ to observe the congress; despite the fact that they were also critical of our position on the Yanaev coup they did not consider either the LRCI or its leadership to be centrist.

Within the League it soon became clear that the Peruvian and Bolivian sections had also taken a sectarian attitude to the Yeltsin-led resistance to the Yanaev coup during 19-21 August. They rejected unity in action with the Yeltsin-mobilised workers and students in favour of what they called “independent” opposition to Yanaev and Yeltsin.

They insisted that our position somehow meant we had supported or been complicit in Yeltsin’s coup. In fact what this showed was their differential sensitivity towards the Stalinophile groupings, from the Spartacist tradition and from groupings like the GOR and the IKL.

The Second Congress of the League - held in Birmingham in December-January 1991-2 - was undoubtedly a congress of crisis. At the root of this crisis lay sharp disagreements between the two Latin American sections and the sections in Europe over the events in Russia.

They, together with the representatives of the CLNZ, recently renamed Worker Power (NZ), sought to persuade the League to admit the RTT and thus maximise the Stalinophile forces within the organisation. The congress refused. At the end of the congress, the WPNZ delegates announced that they wished to join the LRCI and a New Zealand section was recognised and one of their comrades was elected onto the IEC.

But superimposed on the disputes over Russia was the fact that the delegates from the Peruvian and Bolivian sections were discontented with the functioning of the League, and sought, by organisational measures, to magnify their influence within it.

Several times over the next few years they tried to weaken the central bodies of the League, especially the International Secretariat, proposing that it assume a semi-federal character. In reality this would have been a step back to the structure of the MRCI - an arrangement which would have given the Latin American comrades a permanent veto over positions agreed upon by a clear majority of the LRCI.

As it was the first congress of the LRCI had voluntarily created a system of deliberate over-representation of the smaller sections both in terms of votes at congresses and representation at the IEC.

The reason for this was to maximise the political influence of these sections, their experience and the contributions of their leaderships, and to diminish that of the British section, which made up nearly three quarters of the entire membership of the LRCI at this time.

We did not want to reproduce the “parent-child” relationship of many of the centrist tendencies calling themselves Trotskyist, especially those from the IC (Healy-Lambert-Spartacist) tradition.

At the second congress this “positive discrimination” was further increased with the aim of expressing as strongly as possible the political differences within the quarterly to six monthly meeting IEC, even though this meant over-representing even more the sectarian and Stalinophile tendencies.

Was this wise? Probably not. Its purpose was to maximise the exposure of comrades in disagreement and who at the same time had material difficulties in participating fully in the internal life of the LRCI through its discussion bulletins. However, the cost was high; it condemned the LRCI to several years of internal struggle, despite the fact that the disputants remained a tiny minority of the League’s membership.

But our overwhelming aim was to succeed in integrating our sections in Latin America into the democratic centralist functioning of the League. A large measure of the failure to understand what democratic centralism meant lay in the strong influence of the pre-existing political traditions of the members in Peru and Bolivia (those of Lora, Altamira, Moreno and Healy). This required us to lay a heavy emphasis on democracy and inclusivity at the expense of centralism and organisational efficiency.

The Congress thus elected four members of the Latin American sections onto the IEC. The leadership persuaded José Villa to become an LRCI full timer in London and member of the International Secretariat for a full year (1993) before the next congress.

In addition several members of the international leadership and militants from other sections visited Peru and Bolivia in the years 1991-94. One British militant spent an extended period with the Bolivian section helping it to regularise its publications and internal education.

The LRCI launched an irregular publication - Guia - which carried Theses on Latin America, a Latin American Action programme and a series of articles on the key political issues and events of the period, many of them of special relevance to Latin America. However, the long disputed issue of the character of the period in Bolivia and Peru after 1986 meant that we did not reach agreement with the comrades.

After many delays and much debate the IEC eventually passed positions recognising the strategic character of the setbacks suffered by the working class in Bolivia, even against the votes of the Latin American comrades. Worse, the Bolivian comrades refused, delayed and evaded publishing these documents. Indeed it was only a few months before they walked out of the League in October 1995 that they actually published our assessment of the seriousness of the miners’ defeat of 1986.

Unfinished business

In addition to the differences with our Latin American sections, several of the the documents submitted to the Second Congress aroused much wider oppostion than just the Latin American sections.

A new draft constitution and Theses on the Early Stages of Party Building aroused considerable oppostion in the British and German sections. The drafters -the International Secretariat - had thought that further steps towards international democratic centralism were urgently needed. But it became clear that a substantial section of the membership were scarcely ready for this.

In addition there were substantial differences over the International Perspectives put before the congress. These argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of a process of social counterevolution heralded what we called a “reactionary phase"- lastinga few years, perhaps.

But they also asserted that the instability which the downfall of Stalinism would cause meant that in the longer term a new revolutionary period would develop. This dual perspective met opposition from two sides. Those who could see only social counterevolution on the march and those who refused to see it at all .

This debate over perspectives was to continue- on and off- until the next congress. Amongst the “pessimists", passive propgandistic tendencies emerged which were to lead to losses in the Austrian section. No less were there losses from amongst the optimists when the level of class struggle in Europe and Latin America and the mass resistance to restoration failed to materialise.

Clearly a longer period was required during which the leaders of the sections worked collectively on the new areas of analysis and programmatic eleboration which the unfolding restoration process posed. Discussion on the methodology underlying key tactical questions was required, These took place on the on the International Executive Committee over the next three years.

Over the next two years the now six-monthly week-long IEC meetings of the League had to address a whole series of programmatic and tactical questions as well as attempting to integrate the Latin American sections.

The IEC also had to decide on our economic and political perspectives (the character of the new period which resulted from the world historic events of 1989-91), the theoretical analysis of the restoration process clearly underway in Eastern Europe, the USSR and China and of any re-elaboration or development of our programme which these events made necessary.

In the year after the Second Congress we tried to help the weaker sections by an input of members from the two strongest - the British and the Austrian sections. One comrade from each spent extended periods in Dublin helping the IWG. ASt members spent extended periods in Berlin helping the Gam to consolidate new East German recruits there. In early 1992 we renewed contact with a Swedish Trotskyist and within the year had a small nucleus of sympathisers within the Socialist Party - the Swedish section of the USFI.

Overall the years 1992 and 1993 were not ones of growth for the two larger sections. The British section declined, reflecting the slump in the British class struggle after the end of the poll tax mass movement. The full impact of the scale of the defeat inflicted upon the British trade union movement in the 1984-89 period (miners, printers, dockers) was now making itself fully felt.

Although there was a brief upsurge of mass street protest after the proposal for the final butchery of the mining industry was announced in late 1992, there was no hiding from the defeat and dispersal of a generation of trade union militants after two decades of militancy.

Understandably, given these problems, a sharp dispute erupted in the British section - and in the IEC - over whether the answer to this was a greater concentration on the workplaces and on young people involved in the anti-fascist movement or a strengthening of theoretical and propaganda circle work.

As it turned out the British section became more involved in youth work via the developments in the British Militant and the CWI who initiated two militant demonstrations against the BNP headquarters in south London.

In February 1992 we produced an action programme for the states of the former Soviet Union which were in the earliest stages of transition to capitalism. This programme was in a sense a combined one - including elements of the anti-bureaucratic political revolution and the tasks of opposing and reversing capitalist restoration.

Over the next three years we debated and adopted resolutions on the nature of restoration, published in a series of articles in Trotskyist International.

But our work on this was far from purely theoretical. From late 1991 to early 1993 a member of the Austrian section lived in Moscow. Several members of the Austrian, French, British and German sections visited Moscow too. Six issues of a small journal in Russian, Rabochaya Vlast, were produced and sold in large numbers. Discussions with the Russian left-anarchist and “Trotskyists” - took place.

We were able to witness at first hand the terrible effects of the neo-liberal shock therapy on the workers, pensioners and youth of Russia, and also the political paralysis of the working class and the reactionary bloc of the hard-line Stalinist and fascistic elements. We handed out thousands of leaflets on marches to celebrate the anniversary of the October revolution in 1992, and were forced to defend ourselves against physical attacks by Stalinists.

In December 1992 we organised a weekend school in Moscow on the politics and programme of the LRCI. It was attended by forty people including anarchists and members of other Trotskyist tendencies. The debate was lively but unfortunately we did not win over any co-thinkers.

In the years 1992-95, the period of the growing restoration of capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the LRCI made strides in other areas of its programmatic work adopting Theses on the early stages of Party Building (July 1992), Democratic Demands in the Political Revolution (January 1993), Theses on the United Front (July 1994) and Theses on the National Question (April 1995).

In this period we brought to a successful conclusion discussions with USFI members in Sweden. During 1992-3 they waged a tendency struggle in the Socialist Party and in October 1994 a Swedish section of the LRCI was founded, Arbetarmakt (AM).

Unfortunately, the conditions in Bolivia, after the defeat of the miners eight years before, were not propitious to building a section with activist appetites and abilities. Still less was this the case in Peru after Fujimori’s election in 1990.

But even with the handful of comrades that existed José Villa’s weakness as an organiser and an educator of cadres proved an insurmountable barrier to consolidation, collaborative work and growth. Consequently no other leaders of his talent and experience emerged within them.

Both sections suffered serious internal crises between 1992 and 1994, expelling members temporarily or permanently for serious lapses of discipline. Indeed the Peruvian group was decimated and ceased to be a section. It was only the interventions of the LRCI which gave them what stability they had and saved them in many crises.

Villa responded ever more often with attempts to boost his own standing by bluff and exaggeration. This was perhaps a gamble based on his belief that Bolivia- if not Peru- was always on the verge of a revolutionary upsurge which would make good his claims. When reality failed to come up trumps he increasingly sought to blame “the Europeans."

He was unable to develop loyal collaboration with any of the comrades in Europe (whatever their national origins) who were charged with helping with the work of “his” two sections, nor would he allow them to develop any independence. In this one could see all too much of the caudillismo (leader cult) he himself had accurately described as the bane of Latin American “Trotskyism".8

Between the Second and Third Congresses the LRCI suffered a protracted period of internal struggle. While this did not paralyse the organisation completely, it hampered its growth and restricted scope for outward intervention. But even such a problem strewn period is not without its positive aspects.

Internal struggle can strengthen an organisation and it can do so in different ways - comrades can learn how to fight loyally over their differences and they can learn why disloyal factional struggle obstructs, rather than facilitates the resolution of real differences.

Within the British section the dispute over perspectives was heated, but it was conducted by comrades who understood that they shared more than just a coincidental membership of a common organisation.

They were in fundamental agreement over the principal, epoch defining questions - the collapse of Stalinism, the role of imperialism, the character of the programme and the party needed to resolve the crisis of working class leadership.

Unity over these questions had been forged over a period of time in which the triumph of collective leadership over individual domination had been well and truly won.

A collective centralised leadership in the British section emerged out of a truly functioning democracy in which the strengths of individuals were recognised and utilised while their weaknesses were compensated for by the overall balance of the leading body. Common struggle - both theoretical and practical - collective work and discipline all bred a spirit of loyalty. This loyalty did not at all mean agreeing over everything.

That would reek of cliquism. But it did mean, above all, conducting debates over differences in an honest and fraternal way, without recourse to threats, abuse, manoeuvres or unprincipled factionalism.

This model of collective leadership was the goal the LRCI set itself. The proof that it was an inclusive model was the expansion of the IEC to represent oppositionists, the inclusion within the apparatus of the leading oppositionist and the repeated willingness of the sections of the League to allow oppositionists to canvass for their views.

The attempt to achieve this goal is testified to not simply by the number of discussion bulletin pages that flew from the duplicators of the sections in this period but by the investment of thousands of pounds of the LRCI’s money to help make it happen.

It was precisely this attempt to build a collective leadership that opened the overwhelming majority comrades’ eyes to the difference in character between the disputes that took place within the LRCI.

The arguments in the British section were had out, resolved at a conference, majority decisions were accepted and a leadership including different strands of opinion was elected to implement the agreed perspective.

The end result of this was that the gap between the two positions narrowed considerably over subsequent years. The same process did not take place with the opposition emanating from Latin America and New Zealand. Indeed, the comrades involved revealed themselves to be incapable of taking part in a collective leadership.

As the Third Congress approached one thing became apparent - regardless of the character of their political differences, regardless of what they upon among themselves or indeed with others, they would continue to resist the operation of a collective leadership and democratically agreed upon decisions.

They were united by something else altogether, something that flowed from their fundamental adherence to that debilitating aspect of the degenerate Trotskyist tradition, Stalinophile sectarianism: namely, unprincipled factionalism.

That is, regardless of disagreements among themselves, and regardless of agreements with other members of the LRCI not within their charmed circle, they would unite “against the leadership” no matter what.

In the eyes of many comrades this mode of operation militated against honest and loyal discussion since it turned every difference - major or minor - into a factional issue, yet, as the congress approached, without a faction being openly declared. It was time to openly face this trend within the LRCI and defeat it.

A settling of accounts: the Third Congress

At the Third Congress the LRCI, held near Vienna in July 1994, we faced a battle once again with the Stalinophile positions of its Bolivian and Peruvian sections and the majority of the New Zealand section over the events of 1991. The congress rejected them by an overwhelming majority.

The congress represented a major step forward for the League. Unlike the near-abortive Second Congress, all key documents and proposals were fully debated and decided on. Minority views were fully aired; majority views were to be implemented.

A really centralised democratic functioning now existed at an international level, overcoming the vestiges of an earlier federalism based on consensus between national groups.

Inevitably, perhaps, the period following the Third Congress and its decisive outcome, saw the defection of those unwilling and unable to implement its decisions. In Austria the majority of the section’s youth organisation, Internationalist Action, left the LRCI.

Its key leaders strongly objected to what they called the “over-optimistic” perspective of the congress - that despite a counterrevolutionary phase of some years following the downfall of Stalinism, in the medium term a new revolutionary period was opening.

In contrast they believed that a prolonged counterrevolutionary period had opened; one in which only a single-minded focus on theoretical work and the building of propaganda circles was really possible.

In particular they rejected the more active agitational attitude to youth work which was being developed by the LRCI at this time.

The leaders of Internationalist Action opposed every suggestion that their growing discussion groups should launch an active campaign against racism, despite clear signs that the CWI-led Youth against Racism in Europe was making gains in Austria at this time.

A more general trend to passive propagandism manifesting itself within the Austrian section was to lead to the loss of several other members in the coming years. Decades of a largely quiescent class struggle situation had left some comrades unprepared and even unsuited for pro-active tasks now demanded by the LRCI’s political perspectives.

This pessimistic approach to the downfall of Stalinism ("historic defeat” “forty years of reaction", “midnight in the century") became a common theme amongst the Trotskyist and non-Trotskyist left and has not disappeared to this day. It represents an over-reaction to the downfall of the Stalinist bureaucracy which it identifies with the near destruction of the socialist consciousness of the working class and the labour movement itself.

The historically low levels of the class struggle in several (but not all) European countries, the ideological triumphalism of the market, and bourgeois democracy, the rise of globalisation, convinced many that any serious revival of the class struggle and the building of revolutionary combat organisations was almost indefinitely postponed.

Given the small size and relative isolation of the LRCI, it was no surprise - indeed it was almost inevitable - that such passive and conservative moods should affect some of its members.

The denouement of undeclared factionalism

In 1995 two leaders of the New Zealand section and two other members together with José Villa began to undertake secret factional activity inside the LRCI. This clandestinity was unnecessary, because no restriction on the formation of tendencies and factions exists in the LRCI. But by a curious bungling on the part of Villa, the LRCI leadership became aware that they were discussing splitting from the League.

To our invitation to form a faction but to clarify their intentions over splitting, the New Zealanders, but not José Villa and the Bolivians, rapidly declared a “Proletarian Faction".

This pronounced the LRCI centrist, accused it of capitulating to democratic imperialism, failing to “root itself in the working class” and having a revisionist position on the state (curious, because at the Third Congress the position that they characterised as revisionist had been defeated - but the importance they attached to democratic decisions was slender given their split agenda).

The IS and the IEC replied to this platform and debated it, with its main proponent present at the IEC meeting in July 1995. At the end of the discussion he confirmed that he had no complaints whatsoever about way this had been discussed. He read and approved the minutes of the discussion.

In these minutes he explained (contrary to the myth that the faction was driven out of the LRCI) that he thought “there would be a rapid parting of the ways, within a few months” but that the discussion was a “frank exchange and I’m grateful for that". Even more curiously he made no attempt to debate and discuss this afterwards either with the other half of the New Zealand section or with the new Australian section with whom he had long established links. Then on 4 September they walked out of the New Zealand section and the LRCI.

In early October we learned of a cowardly walkout by the Bolivian section by means of an announcement at a WPB public meeting in London by José Villa. POB announced that “we do not recognise the resolutions of the last IEC nor the International Secretariat elected by it".

Another, entirely separate, pretext was the position taken by the LRCI on the NATO bombing of the Serb artillery emplacements bombarding Sarajevo. The LRCI had unambiguously opposed the bombing, but refused to seek the victory of the Bosnian Serbs armed forces in this specific conflict.

Villa and POB claimed the LRCI had “put themselves on the side of their own (sic) imperialism", despite an IS statement saying “Stop the air strikes! Stop the artillery bombardment! UN/Nato out of the Balkans!” What the comrades wanted us to say was that we supported the Serb bombarders of Sarajevo against the imperialist planes trying to knock them out.

But the three year long siege of Sarajevo, like the near genocide of the Bosnian ethnic Muslims by the Republic Srpska, was not a progressive anti-imperialist struggle. Nor was it a legitimate defence of a non-imperialist state.

The LRCI called for the bombing to stop and Nato to get out, but refused to call for the victory of the Serb besiegers of Sarajevo. In itself this issue was no more serious a political difference with the comrades than previous ones we had on defending the rights of nations to self-determination, from Lithuania in 1990 onwards.

Moreover since this statement dates from early September it could be no reason for rejecting as illegitimate an IEC held and an IS elected in mid-July. In reality José Villa was by now totally demoralised. Later he stitched back together an unprincipled bloc with the New Zealanders which has since then made no serious efforts to build a democratic centralist international tendency.

Nevertheless the loss of our Bolivian section and half the New Zealand section was a blow. It left the LRCI with only political lessons to draw from nine years of work in Latin America. However, the New Zealand section survived the desertion of two of its founding members, David and Janet Bedggood.

The remaining comrades were strengthened politically by the fight and newer comrades assumed leadership responsibilities. In addition the section received extended visits by an experienced British cadre to help stabilise and reorient the section at a time when the full force of the neo-liberal attacks on New Zealand workers after 1991 was being felt. In the same period, again largely as a result of the recruitment work of the New Zealand section in 1993-94 we saw the foundation of the Australian section and its rapid growth among students in 1996-98.

These serious, if not unexpected, losses were to be compounded over the next three years by the resignation or retirement of a number of older members in Europe. These losses were in part offset by the growth of the French section, recruiting students and youth. Pouvoir Ouvrier nearly tripled in size between 1994 and 1997.

The background was one of intensified class struggle in 1995 - most notably the public sectors workers’ strike and street demonstration movement of November-December. The other sections of the LRCI sent comrades to help with the massive increase of activity this demanded.

How do we explain the serious losses we suffered in this period? Certainly, in the case of the Latin American and New Zealand groups there were long term differences of method - broadly summed up in their sectarian-Stalinophilia which we had been unable to overcome. In the young Austrian comrades there was a distinct passive propagandist method that sought refuge and justification in a pessimistic perspective.

But for many of these comrades and for others who had no political differences, there was undoubtedly the long-term demoralising effects of the defeats suffered by the working class. What the Third Congress characterised as a counterrevolutionary phase (1990-1 onwards) was clear enough both in the former workers’ states, in the shift to the right of the entire world labour movement including the centrist “Trotskyists” under the impact of the victories in the Reagan-Thatcher 1980s, and in the relatively low level of the class struggle in many countries where it had been high in the 1970s and 1980s. In an important objective as well as subjective sense these were the LRCI’s “dog days", to use James Cannon’s expression.

The Fourth Congress

It was these problems that the Fourth Congress, again held near Vienna in summer of 1997, set out to overcome. The Australian section was represented for the first time; we also welcomed to the Congress three delegates of the Marxist Left of Sweden who were to fuse with Arbetarmakt the following year.

It also welcomed three representatives of the Argentine Partido de los Trabajadores por el Socialismo (PTS, which with its Mexican and other Latin American co-thinkers formed the Trotskyist Fraction). In the summer and autumn of 1995 we had entered into an organised series of discussions with London representatives of the PTS-FT.

These talks were continued in Buenos Aires in early 1996 and led to a joint declaration setting out a plan for further discussions with a view to possible fusion. Between the Third and Fourth Congresses of the LRCI, we produced six semi-public bulletins of discussion documents, political letters and translations of important FT materials.

This discussion reached an important impasse however at the Fourth Congress when no agreement was possible either on the form of a common intervention into the international Trotskyist left nor on the content of a political platform with which to do it.9

The Congress studied the significance of the temporary revival of militant class struggle in Europe in 1995-96 in Italy, France and Germany). It drew from an analysis of the world situation the conclusion that the counterrevolutionary phase was coming to an end, marked by rising class struggles and also by the election of Social Democratic governments across Europe.

Free of the serious differences that had dogged the previous two congresses - and of the unprincipled factionalism that had clouded the discussion of any real differences that did exist - the Fourth Congress was able to significantly develop the League’s democratic centralism.

This was achieved by formulating guidelines and instructions for key areas of practical intervention for the national sections and having these regularly checked and overseen by the IEC and not merely the leading bodies of the national sections. The uniformity of party-building priorities - where political conditions allowed for it - was already foreseen in the Theses on Party Building, but had never before been so actively pursued. This reflected the growing trust, borne of common experience, that the LRCI membership had in its leading bodies.

After a debate, the Congress also adopted a perspective of turning to youth and building autonomous youth organisations around the three major European sections - all with publications called Revolution. Opposition to this perspective continued and played a role in the development of a factional struggle inside the French section.10

Our work since the last congress has centred internationally on this youth work - including two successful international youth camps in France in 1998 and 1999, international contingents on the European Marches for Jobs in Amsterdam in 1997 and in Cologne in 1999 and the production of regular youth bulletins by the French, British and Austrian sections.

The Fourth Congress also adopted a resolution on the class character of the state machine in the former degenerate workers’ states which corrected some important mistakes in the original joint work of the IWG and Workers Power/Britain on the expansion of Stalinism after the second world war.11

The Congress passed a Manifesto setting out the key perspectives and programme of the LRCI for the remaining years of the century. Its conclusion is one that has underpinned the work of the MRCI and LRCI since their foundation and remains as valid today as ever:

"The old bureaucratic leaderships of the working class are directly responsible for the heavy defeats of the last decade or more. Their prestige, which in the boom years rested on solid gains for the working class in all sectors of the world, is now shattered. They could not defend these gains which they did not win but rather acted as parasites upon them.

They have abandoned all pretence of fighting to replace capitalism with an alternative world order - socialism. Yet the need to struggle, to fight back, is more urgent than ever. Spontaneity and improvisation will not be enough in the years ahead. The mounting struggles lack centralisation, lack consciousness of the fact that their common resolution resides in the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism.

Only a new world international party of socialist revolution can bring this centralisation and consciousness. The fear that all centralism must be bureaucratic will have to be set aside if effective co-ordinated combat parties are to be built. In the new millennium if these struggles are to attain lasting success - if partial gains are to endure, one victory not to be set against defeat elsewhere - today’s vanguard must become the steeled cadre of a new world party of revolution.

This new international will have to be built on the firm programmatic and organisational foundations laid down by Lenin and Trotsky. None of the events of the past eight years invalidate either the Transitional Programme or the Leninist Party. There is no need to confuse reform and revolution in sickly utopian rhetoric and limp pleadings.

Revolutionary communists have no need to conceal their aims nor to seek strategic blocs with reformist or petit bourgeois forces. They still stand for the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions - for the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only road to a classless and stateless world order."12

Towards the Fifth Congress

The founding organisations of the LRCI were born in the 1970s, the stormy period of class struggles in Europe and revolutionary upheavals in the semi-colonial and Stalinist world. The experience of political mass strikes, factory occupations, mass movements of students and youth, the recreating of a mass feminist movement, of revolutions in Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile and Portugal, Nicaragua and Iran taught us countless lessons.

In this period we made a basic critique of the inadequacy of the major leaders and organisations of the working class. At the same time we discovered the invaluable key to overcoming these inadequacies in the writings and actions of Lenin and Trotsky.

This period of revolutionary ascent gave way to a period of retreat in the 1980s - although this too was a period of massive class battles against neo-liberalism and the New Cold War of Reagan and Thatcher. In this period we built the MRCI and moved towards democratic centralism.

Then came the historic turning point of the downfall of Stalinism - once more presenting a real, if short-lived, revolutionary opportunity.

As we had feared, the “revolutionary” organisations which had failed the tests of the 1970s and 1980s failed this test too. But the programme and the democratic centralist structure which the LRCI had adopted in 1989, just as the storm was breaking, stood us in good stead to intervene with a militant revolutionary policy.

It prepared us too when the effects of the defeats of workers in China, Russia and Eastern Europe became manifest. The counterrevolutionary tide of the years 1992-5 swept most tendencies and countless individuals off their feet and out of politics.

It inevitably produced internal struggles in our own ranks. But such struggles are the necessary means of political clarification and demarcation. We strengthened and matured our attachment to democratic centralism, to Leninist norms of party membership.

The LRCI set about analysing new problems posed acutely in the 1990s - could planning overcome the apparently all-powerful market, what was the internationalist strategy in a world of erupting national struggles and genocide, what was the nature of modern imperialism and of its crises to come?

We have not solved all these questions but we are setting out to do so, just as we set out to deal with questions of similar importance in the early 1980s.

But just as in the 1980s we realised that such work could never be divorced from the living practice of the class struggle, so today we look to those in active struggle.

That means first and foremost to a new, younger generation not scarred by the scepticism and demoralisation of the defeats of the last decades.

The forthcoming Fifth Congress of the LRCI will have to draw a balance sheet of all this work and develop new tactics for growth. But one thing is certain: international democratic centralism works.

It is the only way to develop an effective international programme and to train a cadre that is internationalist in a practical rather than a Platonic sense.

International “permanent discussion forums", political post-restantes that are going nowhere, will play no role in creating the basis for the new revolutionary communist international the working class must build in the twenty first century.

Footnotes

1 L Trotsky, “Once More on Brandler and Thalheimer” Writings of Leon Trotsky ,1929, p159-60
2 The delegates at its first Congress, in Coventry, England, came from France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Britain and Peru.
3 For an exposition of the origins of democratic centralism in the revolutionary movement see D Stockton, “In Defence of Democratic Centralism", Trotskyist International 23
4 “Declaration of Fraternal Relations", Permanent Revolution No 2 p 45
5 ibid
6 Originally numbering 22 theses they were expanded to 30 and reissued in January 1992.
7 Trotskyist International 7 September 1991
8 For documents relating to the split with Poder Obrero Peru and Bolivia, see Trotskyist Bulletin 7, January 1996
9 See the separate article in this journal on the PTS/FT.
10 Eventually in 1999 this led to an unprincipled walk-out by eight comrades, ostensibly over our non-support of the LCR-LO slate in the June 1999 Euro-elections; in fact Pouvoir Ouvrier did support this slate, but not in the uncritical manner they advocated.
11 See Mark Abram and Helen Watson, “Stalinism and the Marxist Theory of the State". Trotskyist International 23
12 “Manifesto of the Fourth Congress", Workers Power 215 October 1997

 

The Road to Red October

The Bolsheviks and Working Class Power

 

 

 

Below we reprint a pamphlet which was originally published by Workers Power, a predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, in 1987.

 

 

 

Contents

 

 

 

1. When women set Russia ablaze

 

2. Lenin re-arms the party

 

3. All power to the Soviets

 

4. Dual power in the factories

 

5. The July Days

 

6. The Bolsheviks – mass party of the working class

 

7. Lenin’s struggle for the insurrection

 

8. The October insurrection

 

Appendix: ‘From words to deeds’ by Leon Trotsky

 

 

* * * * *

 

1. When women set Russia ablaze

 

 

 

In February 1917 (old-style calendar) women workers from the proletarian Vyborg district of Petrograd marched out of their factories demanding “Bread!” Five days later the workers and soldiers had led an insurrection which forced the Tsar to abdicate. The Petrograd women workers’ celebration of International Women’s Day had unleashed the February Revolution.

 

International Women’s Day was first adopted as a holiday for proletarian women by the leaders of the Second International’s Socialist Women’s Movement. Clara Zetkin proposed to the International Women’s meeting in 1910 that a day be declared for proletarian women, similar to the May Day workers’ holiday. The date eventually agreed was 8 March (new-style calendar) – commemorating a day on which thousands of women workers in New York had demonstrated against appalling conditions women workers endured in the needle industry.

 

The holiday was taken up in Russia from 1913 onwards. Because of the old calendar in pre-revolutionary Russia the equivalent date was 23 February. In 1913 planned demonstrations were cracked down on by the police and only leaflets and papers were issued in the end. The Bolsheviks, under the instigation of Konkordiya Samoilova and Inessa Annand, produced several articles in their paper Pravda in the weeks before 23 February culminating in a special issue to celebrate the day itself. The articles outlined the reality of life for working women in Russia and argued the need for them to be organised alongside men in fighting organisations of the class.

 

The response from working women to these Pravda articles was so overwhelming that there was not enough room in the paper for all the letters received. This prompted Samoilova to urge the exiled Lenin and Krupskaya to produce a special paper directed at working class women. Inessa Annand, who herself had been arrested and had fled to exile, was instrumental in persuading them to agree to this idea. Krupskaya raised it on the exiled Bolshevik Central Committee which agreed to the production of Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker) with the launch to be around International Women’s Day 1914.

 

These developments within the Bolshevik Party occurred in response to a renewed wave of militant class struggle in Russia between 1912 and 1914. Women workers were an increasingly important force in the Russian working class. After the 1905 Revolution the employers deliberately recruited women in preference to men in many industries. As the bosses’ own factory inspectorate noted in 1907:

 

“The reasons for this [recruitment of women] are as before: their greater industry, attentiveness and abstinence (they do not drink or smoke), their compliance and greater reasonableness m respect of pay.”

 

By 1914 women made up 25.7% of the industrial workforce in Russia and were becoming increasingly militant, making all political groups take notice of them. The bourgeois feminists, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks all made special efforts to organise working women in this period.

 

Foundations for the future

 

Despite all but one woman on the editorial board in Russia being arrested, Rabotnitsa was produced for 23 February. It quickly sold out as did the other five issues which were distributed. It was widely read in the factories and groups of women organised around it, many joining the party as a result. The outbreak of war in August halted the production of Rabotnitsa but the foundations laid then made future work by the Bolsheviks among women workers much easier to establish. The mobilisation of soldiers and production for the war effort led to enormous deprivation in the cities and villages of Russia.

 

As early as April 1915 there were riots by women demanding bread, and these continued sporadically right through to 1917. The specific role of women workers in the February revolution occurred because of the very acute way the war had affected them. Between 1914 and 1917 the number of women employed in the factories increased still further because of the conscription of men to the front line. In the country as a whole the percentage of women increased from 26.6% to 43.2%. These women workers were, on the whole, new to the cities and the working class. In Petrograd itself the number of women working in factories doubled, rising by 68,000 during the war to 129,800.

 

There were thousands of women workers concentrated in large factories-up to 10,000 women in one plant – with less than three years experience by 1917. Often their husbands, sons and brothers had been conscripted for the war. Minimal food rations were available only by queuing for up to four hours a day – sometimes even then the food ran out. Women earned about half the wages of men. They were concentrated in the textile and chemical industries, where hours were long and conditions poor. In addition they often suffered physical and sexual harassment from the bosses and their lackey foremen.

 

The intensity of the oppression of these women led to explosive rebellions. In general the strikes involving predominantly women workers had economic aims, whereas by late 1916 more of the strikes in the male dominated engineering and metalworking industries were for political ends. This reflected the longer tradition of organisation of the male workers, some with Bolshevik and Menshevik organisers long established within their ranks.

 

Women’s Day celebrations

 

By February 1917 the class struggle was intensifying. But although there were many strikes in Petrograd during January and February, none of them sparked the whole city in the way the women were to do. In preparation for the Women’s Day celebrations Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and the Mezhraiontsy group (an inter-district group of socialists committed to neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks) planned propaganda and educational meetings for the day.

 

In the Vyborg district on 20 February some workers called for a strike, but all the socialist organisations argued that the class was not ready for a mass strike because of inadequate political preparation or contact with the soldiers. V Kayurav, a local Bolshevik leader, met representatives from women workers on the eve of Women’s Day and urged them to “. . . Act exclusively according to the instruction of the party committee.”

 

The action was intended to be limited to factory meetings in order to make propaganda. The socialist groups all underestimated the mood of the women workers in the factories. However the lack of control by the political leaders over these women did not mean that the action was totally unprepared as some Bolsheviks seemed to think. One account of the lead up to the strikes records that:

 

“The largely female staff of the Vasilesky Island trolley park, sensing general unrest a few days before 23 February, sent a woman to the neighbouring encampment of the l50th Infantry Regiment to ask the soldiers whether they would shoot at them or not. The answer was no, and on the 23rd, the trolley-car workers joined the demonstration.”

 

On the morning of the 23rd several illegal meetings were held in textile factories in the Vyborg district around the theme “War, high prices and the situation of the woman worker!” Anger boiled over at these meetings. One by one they voted to strike, but did not leave their protest at that. Taking to the streets in their thousands, the women marched to nearby factories, shouting for the workers, women and men to join them. The flying picket was dramatically effective. By 10.00am ten factories were shut with 27,000 workers on strike. By noon it was 21 plants with 50,000 strikers! Many accounts report the women entering factories, banging on the gates, throwing snowballs at windows to get workers out. It seems that where factories did not immediately respond to the call to join the action, more direct methods were used. Flying rocks and pieces of iron were persuasively used at some plants. In the Vyborg district there were 59,800 men and women on strike by the end of the day - 61 % of all the factory workers.

 

Rank and file Bolsheviks played a leading role in pulling plants out alongside the women workers, but many of the leaders were far more reluctant. The Vyborg leader Kayurov wrote later:

 

“. . . to my surprise and indignation . . . we learned . . . of the strike in some textile factories and of the arrival of a number of delegates from the women workers who announced [that they were going on strike]. Iwas extremely indignant about the behaviour of the strikers, both because they had blatantly ignored the decision of the district committee of the party, and also because they had gone on strike after Ihad appealed to them only the night before to keep cool and disciplined.”

 

Despite such indignation the Bolsheviks were able to quickly overcome these feelings and seize the opportunity offered to them. Agreeing to build the strike they gave political leadership by raising the slogans “Down with the autocracy! Down with the war! Give us bread!”

 

In other districts of the city strikes that day were less extensive, but no less militant. Over the whole city between 20 and 30% of the workers struck, with over 80 factories shut. The demonstrators from the Vyborg district were determined to reach the governmental centre of Petrograd, but the police blocked their way at one of the bridges. Eventually the demonstrators began crossing the ice of the frozen River Neva. However the police still managed to contain them, albeit with difficulty. Apolice report of the day explained:

 

“At 4.40pm crowds of approximately 1,000 people, predominantly women and youths, approached Kazan Bridge on the Nevskii Prospekt from the direction of Mikhailovskaia Street, singing and shouting ‘give us bread!’”

 

Angerand desperation

 

The demonstrations were not confined to those who went on strike – women queuing for bread quickly joined in the action. One manager reported coming out from his bakery shop to announce that there was no more bread:

 

“No sooner had this announcement been made than the crowd smashed the windows, broke into the store and knocked down everything in sight.”

 

Such acts were widespread, reflecting the anger and desperation, mainly of women and youths. The Bolsheviks argued against “vandalism” and tried to direct the protests by organising meetings and by calling for a three day general strike plus intensified propaganda towards soldiers.

 

In the following days the number of workers on strike increased steadily. The government sent police and troops in to disperse the demonstrators by any means necessary, but the revolutionary wave was able to meet this challenge by winning Cossacks over and eventually whole regiments joined the insurgents. Workers were arming themselves in their militia, and it was women workers who played a vital role in breaking the troops from the regime. As Trotsky’s account reveals:

 

“Agreat role is played by women workers in the relation between workers and soldiers. They go up to the cordons more boldly than men, take hold of the rifles, beseech, almost command: ‘Put down your bayonets-join us!’ The soldiers are excited, ashamed, exchange anxious glances, waver; someone makes up his mind first, and the bayonets rise guiltily above the shoulders of the advancing crowd. The barrier is opened; a joyous ‘Hurrah!’ shakes the air.

 

The soldiers are surrounded. Everywhere arguments, reproaches, appeals – the revolution makes another forward step.”

 

The mass strike eventually won to its side the vast numbers of peasants-in-uniform, the soldiers. Exhausted by the deprivation caused by the war, sickened by its carnage, these soldiers were eager for change. The action of the working class ignited their rebellion and made the fall of the autocracy inevitable. Without its military power the mighty Romanov dynasty could not last a minute. The Tsar’s wife expressed the arrogant short-sightedness of the autocracy when she wrote to her husband:

 

“This is a hooligan movement, young people run and shout that there is no bread, simply to create excitement, along with workers who prevent others from working. If the weather were very cold they would probably stay at home. But all this will pass and become calm, if only the Duma will behave itself.”

 

The regime falls

 

These words, expressing hope that events would be settled by the weather and the tame parliamentarians of the Duma (its Bolshevik deputies were in prison or exile), were forced down the throat of the pampered Tsarina by the actions of the masses, by the revolution. Within the borders of the Russian empire modern capitalism coincided with a peasant economy that was staggering in its backwardness, and meant misery for some hundred million peasants and their families.

 

The combination of a land starved peasantry and a highly concentrated urban working class (some four million strong) obliged the autocracy to maintain a vicious political dictatorship. Only thus could the rule of the landlords and the interests of capital be guaranteed. But the existence of the autocracy merely intensified the contradictions of Russia’s combined and profoundly uneven social development. The war exacerbated those contradictions to the limit. When they exploded, the seemingly all-powerful Tsarist regime fell in only a matter of days. As Trotsky and Lenin both observed, the chain of world capitalism had broken at its weakest link.

 

The development of the revolution and the abdication of the Tsar opened up a whole new period for the Russian working class. The Provisional Government that emerged from the February Revolution was staffed by bourgeois politicians and in an unstable position, balanced as it was alongside the organs of a different kind of power, the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Within the factories workers were emboldened – the factory committees sprang up, control was demanded over pay and conditions. The workers’ militia conflicted with the weaker civil militias of the government.

 

Women workers continued to play an important role. They were among the most determined to win an eight hour day. They sought decent wages and supported demands for equal political rights including suffrage. Indeed the first major strike against the Provisional Government was of 3,000 women laundry workers who struck for the eight hour day, living wages and municipalisation of the laundries. The strike, in May 1917, lasted six weeks and Kollontai was sent in by the Bolsheviks to work alongside the women. The Bolsheviks had quickly responded to the militancy of women in 1917 and set up a Women’s Bureau led by Vera Slutskaya. This relaunched Rabotnitsa and built up support in the factories and among soldiers’ wives, and led large demonstrations against the war.

 

The role of women workers in the Russian Revolution was magnificent, and taught the revolutionary leadership much. But their very spontaneity meant that they were not always in the revolutionary vanguard throughout 1917.”

 

They struck, demonstrated and rioted because of the intensity of the oppression, but this also reflected their lack of organisation, their newness to political and trade union activities. This is often true of working class women. Their role within the workforce as a “peripheral” element, poorly paid, shifted in and out of work depending on the fortunes and needs of capitalism, leads to them being generally poorly organised in unions and political parties. Even where membership of unions is high, women are rarely active in the leadership because of their oppression, which denies them time, due to domestic commitments, and obstruction by male leaders.

 

This lack of traditional organisation has contradictory results – on the one hand women can be, as the February Revolution shows, the most militant fighters because they are unfettered by the conservatism which can so often take root inside the union organisations. But on the other hand it makes women easy targets for propaganda which may be anti-working class. In the weeks after the February Revolution thousands of working class women were mobilised by liberal bourgeois feminists to demonstrate for women’s suffrage and continuation of the war! The Bolsheviks were able to establish a mass base among women by mid-1917 which led them once again to demonstrate against the war, but this took special efforts at organisation and propaganda.

 

The lessons we can learn from the Bolsheviks and working women in this period are rich indeed. The revolution, as Lenin was to point out years later, would never have succeeded without the mobilisation of the women. Revolutionaries must never underestimate the centrality of relating to women workers. Special forms of propaganda and organisation are needed to win them to the side of the revolutionary party, but once won, they will be the most brave and militant fighters for they have so much to gain!

 

 

2 Lenin re-arms the party

 

 

 

The explosion of proletarian anger that swept aside the regime of Nicholas the Last led to a profoundly contradictory situation at the level of state power. Although they had not participated in, let alone led the uprising, conservative and liberal bourgeois politicians constituted themselves as a Provisional Government. They were deeply fearful of where the mass mobilisations and the workers’ and soldiers’ councils – the soviets that had multiplied since February – would lead.

 

In turn, those who formed the executive of the Petrograd Soviet were desperate for a return to order. The Menshevik (reformist) leadership of the executive – Chkheidze and Skobelev – together with the right wing Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and Kerensky, were all convinced that the Russian Revolution, as a bourgeois revolution, would logically find its expression in a bourgeois government. The executive actually urged the bourgeois parties to take power and pledged support to the Provisional Government.

 

While the mass of Soviet delegates agreed to support the Provisional Government they also resolved, independently of the executive, to establish an “observation committee” to watch over the Provisional Government on behalf of the Soviet This expressed both a profound proletarian mistrust of the Provisional Government and a belief that the Soviet’s job was to pressure and watch over that government to ensure it kept its promises. As a mass meeting of the Petrograd cable workers declared on 3 March:

 

“We consider the most essential issue of the current moment to be the establishment of strict control over the ministers who are appointed by the State Duma and who do not enjoy popular confidence. This control must be constituted by representatives of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”

 

The workers looked to the Soviet to exercise that control. Workers’ resolutions were automatically sent to the Soviet, not to the Provisional Government. What had emerged in Russia was a dual power situation. Power was divided between the representatives of two irreconcilable forces. The working masses saw the Soviet as the voice of their struggles. The bourgeoisie saw the Provisional Government as their bastion against those struggles. The arrangement, within which the Soviet supported yet watched over the Provisional Government, showed all too clearly that sovereignty in the state was in reality, split. Yet the willingness of the majority of Soviet delegates to consciously endorse such an arrangement reflected profound illusions on the part of the majority of workers in the feasibility of a partnership with the bourgeoisie. The leaders of the Soviet did not see dual power as an unstable moment in struggle, the outcome of which would be resolved on behalf of one or other of the contending classes. They saw it as a permanent agreement struck between partners. As Trotsky put it later:

 

“In the revolution of 1917, we see the official democracy consciously and intentionally creating a two power system, dodging with all its might the transfer of power into its own hands.”

 

In reality the dual power could only have been a prelude to either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat breaking the stalemate to their own final advantage. As Trotsky explained:

 

“Either the bourgeoisie will actually dominate the old state apparatus, altering it a little for its purpose, in which case the soviets will come to nothing, or the soviets will form the foundation of a new state, liquidating not only the old governmental apparatus, but also the domination of those classes which it served.”

 

The Bolsheviks unprepared

 

The momentous events of the Russian Revolution found the Bolshevik Party both organisationally and programmatically unprepared. Prior to Lenin’s return to Russia in April and the subsequent party conference, the Party was both confused and divided. In Petrograd the Party took four distinctly different positions on the dual power situation.

 

The Vyborg District Committee held to a programme of demands that combined both profound mistrust of the Provisional Government with a belief that the terms of the revolution were strictly democratic. On 1 March they called for the soviets to form a provisional revolutionary government in line with the Bolshevik demands of 1905. However the task of that government was to prepare the way for the convention of a democratic constituent assembly.

 

The Petersburg Committee was composed primarily of former political detainees, released by the February Revolution. They took a more conservative stance in line with the view that the tasks of the day were those of the democratic revolution. On 3 March they resolved to:

 

“. . . not oppose the power of the Provisional Government in so far as its activities correspond to the interests of the proletariat and of the broad democratic masses of the people.”

 

This position implied no immediate challenge to the dominant line within the Soviet executive. It was evasive as to how “far” the Provisional Government was actually serving the interests of the masses.

 

The Russian Bureau of the exiled Central Committee, comprising Shlyapnikov, Molotov and Zalutskj, veered in several directions. At first they called for a Provisional Revolutionary Government to be formed from above, by the parties represented on the Soviet executive. Its programmatic agenda was to be confined to implementing the “three whales” of the Social Democratic minimum programme: the eight-hour day, the democratic republic and the confiscation of landed estates and their transfer to the peasantry, as well as preparing a constituent assembly.

 

Once again the perspective was of a purely democratic stage beyond which the revolution could not go. Indeed initially this perspective led them to ban leaflets issued by the more “left” Vyborg district which were calling for the formation of a soviet-based government from below. However this perspective of a pact with the other Soviet parties hit the snag that the Mensheviks and SRs did not want to share in a government with the Bolsheviks. The rapid realisation of this actually pushed the Russian Bureau left, and by 22 March it was calling the Soviets embryos of a new state power.

 

It was the editorial board of Pravda that occupied the most right wing stance within Bolshevism. Edited by Stalin, Muranov and Kamenev, the paper declared on 7 March:

 

“As far as we are concerned, what matters now is not the overthrow of capitalism but the overthrow of autocracy and feudalism.”

 

Stalin followed this up with the reasoning that “The Provisional Government has, in fact, assumed the role of defender of the conquests of the revolutionary people . . . At present, it is not in our interest to force events by hastening the eviction of bourgeois strata who, inevitably, will one day detach themselves from us.”

 

Kamanev’s conditional support

 

On 15 March, Kamenev used Pravda’s pages to advocate conditional support for Russia’s war effort now that the autocracy had been overthrown. Small wonder then that by mid-March rank and file worker Bolshevik cells in the Vyborg district were voting for calls to expel the Pravda leadership from the party.

 

This confusion reflected the inherent weaknesses and contradictions of Bolshevism’s previously held programme for a thoroughgoing democratic revolution. It was to be made by the workers in alliance with the peasantry, yet it was to constitute a distinct and self-limited stage from the socialist revolution. February 1917 saw the logic of the mobilised masses’ demands going beyond the minimum programme of the democratic republic. The soviets, militia and factory committees were the embryo of a state of an entirely new sort whose proletarian democratic content transcended the forms and limits of bourgeois democracy.

 

In their own particular ways the contending factions were either attempting to limit the struggle to the terrain of democratic demands or they were striving to, but as yet programmatically incapable of, consistently going beyond it.

 

It was Lenin who was able to transcend the limitations of the old Bolshevik programme and perspective. And it is testimony to the vitality and strength of the historically constituted Bolshevik cadre that open debate in the company led to its programmatic re-armament at the crucial hour. Lenin’s writings during the war, especially Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, led him to see that Russia was one, albeit exceptionally weak, link in the chain of world imperialism. Of necessity therefore the programme of the coming Russian Revolution could no longer be conceived in the terms of a national and democratic revolution but instead as a component of the international revolution against capitalism itself.

 

This realisation, coupled with a sharp recognition of the nature and potential of the soviets in February and March 1917, made it possible for Lenin to re-elaborate and refocus the Bolshevik programme in the face of Russia’s social explosion. This was to pit him against each of the contending Bolshevik groupings in Petrograd and enable him to create a higher synthesis out of their most healthy reflexes, especially the reflexes of those closest to the rank and file insurgent workers.

 

Break with ‘old Bolshevism’

 

Lenin’s initial responses to the Russian Revolution were expressed in a series of articles submitted to Pravda, his “Letters from Afar”. Their political content was such a break with the “old Bolshevism” beloved of Stalin that only a curtailed version of one of them was published by the editors.

 

Lenin argued that the Soviet was “an organisation of workers, the embryo of a workers’ government”, and that the only guarantee of the destruction of Tsarism lay “in arming the proletariat, in strengthening, extending and developing the role, significance and power of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies”.

 

In these writings Lenin is now concretely posing the Soviet as an embryo of a workers’ government and not of a Provisional Revolutionary Government, as he had done in 1905 and 1906. While the Provisional Revolutionary Government had been ascribed the task of convening a constituent assembly the call for the latter does not appear in the “Letters” or in the codified “April Theses”. Lenin realised that what was now at stake was the smashing of the state machine of the exploiting classes and replacing it with a state of a new sort based on the workers’ councils.

 

Lenin opposed the Petrograd Soviet’s endorsement of the Provisional Government but saw real potential in the formation of the “observation committee”. As he put it: “Now, that’s something real! It is worthy of the workers who have shed their blood for freedom, peace, bread for the people.”

 

It was, however, only “a step along the right road” which must lead to the creation of a workers’ militia which would in turn make it possible to take the road to the “Socialist Republics of all Countries.”

 

In the formation of the militia and the soviets the Russian workers had undertaken a course in which “they themselves should constitute these organs of state power”. In his third letter Lenin announced: “Isaid that the workers had smashed the old state machine. Iwould be more correct to say have begun to smash it.”

 

The dual power outcome of the February Revolution necessitated either the transition to the workers’ council (soviet) state or the triumph of bourgeois reaction, There could be no purely democratic stage of the Russian Revolution.

 

Lenin’s return from exile to the Finland Station allowed him to both intervene directly in the Bolshevik Party and further sharpen his programmatic armoury. At the head of the Soviet’s official welcome party the leading Menshevik Chkheidze urged Lenin to play his part in “the closing of the democratic ranks”. Lenin promptly declined, declaring instead:

 

“The world-wide socialist revolution has already dawned . . . Any day now the whole of European capitalism may crash. The Russian Revolution accomplished by you has paved the way and opened a new epoch. Long live the world-wide socialist revolution.”

 

Lenin’s forthright declaration in favour of the socialist development of the revolution was a severe shock not only to Chkheidze and the Mensheviks. Many of the leading Bolsheviks, especially leading right wingers like Kamenev, thought he had taken leave of his senses. An eye witness account of his arrival in Russia captures the mood of initial bewilderment that greeted Lenin’s new line:

 

“It had been expected that Vladimir Illyich would arrive and call to order the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, and especially comrade Molotov, who occupied a particularly irreconcilable position in regard to the Provisional Government. It turned out, however, that it was Molotov who was nearest of all to Illyich.”

 

Forging an alliance

 

Now while it is necessary to avoid over-exaggerating Molotov’s closeness to Lenin, what was revealed in a matter of days was that Lenin did have allies amongst a whole layer of the party. He was not faced with the task of starting all over again. Rather he had to forge an alliance within the party of its largely proletarian left wing. Lenin then led these forces into a struggle for the triumph of his political line.

 

It was in order to programmatically re-arm the Bolshevik Party for the struggle that Lenin presented his “April Theses”, “The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution”.

 

The task the theses set themselves was to advance from a stage of the revolution within which the insufficiently class conscious workers had needlessly ceded power to the bourgeoisie (that is, it was not a necessary, self-limiting bourgeois democratic stage) to a second stage “which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.” The existing political regime in Russia made this possible not only because the masses were awakening to political life, but because the dual power regime, at least temporarily, was precluding repressive violence against the masses.

 

Of necessity this meant the Bolsheviks adopting a stance of no support for the Provisional Government and intransigent opposition to any talk of revolutionary defencism of the bourgeois government. But most importantly it meant recognising that the struggle had gone beyond the democratic programme, not because a democratic stage had been achieved and completed its useful life (as Stalinist historians have always claimed) but because the struggle for a parliamentary republic would be a backward step compared with the struggle to realise the potential of the workers’ council state that existed embryonically in the soviets.

 

Only this outcome of the unresolved dual power could benefit the working masses. As Lenin put it, “To return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step.” Instead the party must fight for the “abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy”, and for all these functions to be passed to the whole armed people.

 

Just as Lenin had rejected his previously held idea of a relatively distinct democratic stage in the revolution, he was also clear that his programme did not envisage the immediate “introduction” of socialism. In reality the revolution was to make the transition to socialism, as part of the international revolution, by establishing soviet control over a single national bank and bringing “social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.” At its very heart the “April Theses” contain a programme of transition from dual power (a state of affairs Lenin repeatedly cursed) to the proletarian dictatorship, the goal of the Marxist programme.

 

Schematism’s Bitter Resistance

 

Lenin’s struggle to re-arm the Bolsheviks met with bitter resistance from many of his comrades, still stuck in the rut of schematically expecting a democratic stage for the Russian Revolution and convinced that the task was to achieve one. While Pravda published the “April Theses”, Kamenev prefaced them with the remark:

 

“As for the general scheme of comrade Lenin, it seems to us unacceptable in that it starts from the assumption that the bourgeois democratic revolution is ended, and counts upon all immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution.”

 

Over a process of three weeks of argument and debate, Lenin won the party to his programmatic line of advance. After wavering and vacillating the party now set out to win the masses to recognition of the potential power of the soviets and the fast-growing workers’ militia, the Red Guards. After a period of confusion over the democratic character of the proletariat’s tasks the party now embraced a programme of transition to workers’ power. Breaking with a view of the Russian Revolution as an isolated national event the party now fought for the Russian workers to stand in the vanguard of the international revolution. As Lenin told the party conference that endorsed his line:

 

“The great honour of striking the first blow has fallen to the Russian proletariat but it should never forget that its progress and revolution are but part of a world-wide and growing revolutionary movement which is daily becoming more powerful . . . We cannot see our task in any other light.”

 

The role of Lenin in formulating a new strategic line for the party and in winning the bulk of the party to that line, cannot be underestimated. However, the role of the individual in history is conditioned by the circumstances he or she is obliged to work in and the instruments that he or she must work with. In Lenin’s case the objective circumstances he confronted on his return – the dual power situation – had propelled millions into revolutionary struggle against their former masters. He gave a conscious expression to their heartfelt aspiration.

 

And, in the Bolshevik Party Lenin had an instrument for revolution that had been tempered by years of struggle – both theoretical and practical. The party was, despite the waverings of some leaders, a revolutionary party, receptive to the needs of the revolution. The triumph of Lenin’s line reflected the strength of the party itself and not just Lenin’s genius. As Trotsky put it:

 

“The revolutionary tradition of the party, the pressure of the workers from below and Lenin’s criticism from above, compelled the upper stratum during the months of April and May employing the words of Stalin – ‘to come out on a new road’”.

 

 

 

 

3. All power to the Soviets

 

 

 

The October Revolution in Russia was carried through by the Bolshevik Party under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets.” In the course of the 1905 and, decisively, in the 1917 revolutions, Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks had come to understand the historic significance of the soviet form of organisation.

 

The soviet, a council representing all of the exploited and oppressed groups, basing itself on the principle of direct elections, recallability and the abolition of bureaucratic privilege, was rightly seen by the Bolsheviks as the best possible organisational expression of the power of the proletariat and its allies. It was the best possible basis for the dictatorship of the proletariat – the soviet state.

 

In 1938 Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Programme that, “The slogan of soviets, therefore, crowns the programme of transitional demands.” He explained that in the struggle for power soviets were the means for uniting all of the forces struggling against capitalism. In Lenin and Trotsky’s view there was no substitute for soviets as organs of working class power. What led them to this view was the actual nature of the soviets themselves.

 

Soviet representation

 

The soviet form of organisation – directly elected councils – arises at the point where the day-to-day struggles of the masses take place in the context of a revolutionary crisis. Soviets are an extraordinary form of organisation to deal with the extraordinary problems posed by a revolutionary situation. Precisely because of this, they are more immediately sensitive and responsive to the needs and wishes of the masses than the established, often bureaucratic, forms of organisation. They are representative of workers and their allies in struggle. Aparticipant in the local (Rajon) Soviet in Vyborg in 1917 gives a flavour of this truly representative characteristic of the soviet form:

 

“. . . the masses of the Rajon (Vyborg) brought all their needs and expectations to the Soviet; for them it was the meaningful and accessible organ of power. From morning to night workers, youth, soldiers, came with various problems. None went away without an answer.”

 

Compare this proximity of the soviet to the rank and file with the distance the TUC bureaucrats place between themselves and their nine million members!

 

By virtue of representing the masses in struggle the soviet develops another characteristic. It is uniquely suited to serve as an instrument for revolutionary struggle. Because it is truly representative of these masses it can, all the more easily and effectively, call them to arms. In 1905 and 1917 the Petrograd Soviet was able to mobilise tens of thousands across industries in strike action to secure the eight hour day. Its job was to coordinate and direct the struggle of those to whom it was accountable. Of the 1905 Soviet in Petrograd, Trotsky commented that it resembled a “council of war, more than a parliament.”

 

This very feature was what made Trotsky optimistic in 1917 that the soviets were susceptible to Bolshevik influence. The test of action could not be easily delayed by a cumbersome bureaucratic machine. Every passing hour posed a new problem for the soviets to resolve in practice. The programme of revolutionary action can, quickly and often dramatically, reveal its superiority to the masses. The programme of delay and compromise of reformism is not protected by the million-and-one delaying mechanisms of the parliamentary talking shop. Trotsky noted:

 

“Of all the forms of revolutionary representation, the soviet is the most flexible, immediate and transparent. But it is still only a form. It cannot give more than the masses are capable of putting into it at a given moment. Beyond that it can only assist the masses in understanding the mistakes they have made and correcting them. In this function of the soviets lay one of the most important guarantees of the development of the revolution.”

 

The third vital element of the soviet form that led Lenin and Trotsky to value it so highly for the purposes of revolution, was that it was an embryonic organ of power, of workers’ power. This was revealed in both 1905 and 1917. The soviets developed out of strikes but took on the functions of administration, of organising supplies and of organising a proletarian militia. In the strikes of 1905 the soviet was born in Russia. The first one developed in Ivanovo-Voznesenk, in May. During a strike by 40,000 workers in this textile town, 110 deputies elected by the strikers met on the river bank. The significance of this meeting was that it united all the workers of the district on a city-wide basis, irrespective of trade or skill.

 

The Petrograd proletariat – the vanguard in 1905 as it was in 1917 – was quick to emulate its brothers and sisters in Ivanovo-Voznesenk. During the October general strike forty delegates met in the Technological Institute and established a soviet to organise the strike, but also to do more. It declared:

 

“The assembly of deputies from all factories will form a general workers’ committee in St Petersburg. The committee will strengthen and unify our movement, represent the St Petersburg workers to the public, and decide actions during the strike as well as its termination.”

 

This was no mere strike committee. By November it had 562 delegates. It issued Izvestia as a daily bulletin occupying the printing presses of the bourgeois papers to ensure it was regularly and professionally produced. Under Trotsky’s leadership it advanced a programme of political demands aimed against the power of the Tsarist autocracy. It forbade the distribution of papers that were censored by the state. Only those bearing an “uncensored” stamp from the Soviet were distributed. Most significantly, it continued its existence and its struggles after the strike was terminated. The St Petersburg chief of police was so worried about the Soviet that he warned, prophetically, that it was threatening to become a “second government”. Its potential as an organ of workers’ power revealed itself in October 1905. This potential was realised in October 1917.

 

Initially in 1905 the Bolsheviks were suspicious of the Soviet. They saw it as a Menshevik ploy to set up a rival non-party body, through which they could then outmanoeuvre the Bolsheviks. This suspicion stemmed from the Soviet’s refusal to confine itself to purely trade union questions. Aleading Bolshevik agitator, P Mendelev, declared:

 

“The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies has no right to exist as a political organisation, and the Social Democrats must resign from it, since its existence damages the development of the Social Democratic movement. The Soviet may exist as a trade union organisation or it should not exist at all.”

 

Menshevik intentions

 

The suspicions that the Bolsheviks felt towards the Soviet, more precisely to the Mensheviks who they believed were behind the Soviet, were far from groundless. The Mensheviks were enthusiastic to build soviets as “workers’ congresses”.These congresses could, in Martynov’s words, serve as the means of “exerting revolutionary pressure on the will of the liberal and radical bourgeoisie.” The Mensheviks believed the role of the proletariat was to encourage the bourgeoisie forward during the democratic revolution. The soviet, as a form of local government and workers’ congress was seen, not as an organ of power, but a pressure point on the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the Mensheviks believed that it was within such a forum that a mass party of the working class, which would encompass multifarious political trends, could be built. Thus for Martynov the soviet was “abnormal”, but could be used to achieve the norm of international Social Democracy, a mass party:

 

“. . . that is wide enough to include or render superfluous organisations on the pattern of the soviets of workers’ deputies.”

 

Lenin perceived the real essence of the soviets – their representative nature, their capacity for revolutionary struggle and their potential as organs of power – despite the influence of Menshevism within them. By posing the soviets, not as an alternative to the Bolsheviks, but as the organisational means of fulfilling the Bolshevik’s governmental slogan – the Provisional Revolutionary Government – Lenin won the Party to the need for the struggle for leadership within the soviets. For him the soviets were both “instruments of insurrection” and “cells of the new revolutionary power”. In 1906 he wrote of the Petrograd Soviet: “That was the face of the new power – or rather its germinal form, since the victory of the old power destroyed the young shoots very early on.”

 

In February 1917, following the overthrow of the autocracy, the young shoots sprouted once again. This time the Bolsheviks, after Lenin’s return and the triumph of his “April Theses” which placed socialist revolution and the creation of a soviet government as a workers’ and peasants’ government in the immediate agenda, waged a struggle to make the soviets the sole organs of power throughout Russia. The Mensheviks, bound hand and foot to the bourgeoisie, sought to contain the soviets to a monitoring and advisory role over the capitalist Provisional Government. In fact, after February power was split between the bourgeoisie and the soviets, a situation of dual power prevailed.

 

In the afternoon of 27 February 1917, in the Tauride Palace, a group of Petrograd workers’ leaders set up the Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. It agreed to elect deputies on the basis of one per 1,000 workers. When it met in the evening there were between forty and fifty deputies present. At the meeting of the soviet, soldiers as well as workers were represented. Deputies elected from the army companies that had joined the revolution were instrumental in turning the Petrograd Soviet into an organisation of workers and soldiers.

 

The significance of this was immense. Not only did it bring military support and arms to the soviet, it brought the peasantry – for the soldiers were, for the most part, “peasants in greatcoats” – into contact with the proletariat. It helped forge the alliance that was eventually to be consummated in the revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ government after October.

 

After the evening meeting of 27 February the Soviet went from strength to strength. In Petrograd eleven major (local) soviets were set up by late March. The central Petrograd Soviet grew, through March, to a body of 3,000 delegates. Through out the length and breadth of the old empire, soviets sprang up. There were 400 by May, 900 by October. At the first All Russian Soviet Congress in June 1917 1,090 delegates representing twenty million workers, soldiers and peasants assembled in the capital.

 

The Soviets developed in more than just a numerical sense. To the consternation of their initial Menshevik leaders they constantly intruded into government business. In the naval base town of Kronstadt where the Bolsheviks and Left SRs were in a majority from the outset, the Soviet declared in May: “The sole power in the city of Kronstadt is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which acts with the Petrograd Soviet in government matters.”

 

The Soviet dismissed the Provisional Government’s representative in the city and even declared a republic.

 

This struck terror into the hearts of the compromisers in the Petrograd Executive Committee. Tsereteli and Skobelev were dispatched to persuade the Kronstadters to desist from such actions. But these compromisers were like Canute before the advancing tide – helpless to prevent it. Everywhere, the dynamic of the soviets was pushing them in a similar direction to Kronstadt in the Bolshevik stronghold of Vyborg in Petrograd, home of the major factories, the soviet oversaw workers’ control in the factories and took over the prison bakery at Kresty to ensure that the workers got bread.

 

The Vyborg factories were at the forefront of the struggle for soviet power from early on. In April, the bourgeois minister Miliukov was forced out of the Provisional Government following the publication of his note to the allies declaring Russian fidelity to the Tsar’s war aims. In response Vyborg issued the loudest calls for an end to dual power. The resolution of the Optico Machine Construction factory typified the Vyborg mood:

 

“. . . Therefore, we find the Milyukov-Guchkov Co. not corresponding to their appointment and recognise that the only power in the country must be the soviets of workers’ soldiers and peasant’ deputies, which we will defend with our lives.”

 

Until June Vyborg and Kronstadt were relatively isolated in calling for the resolution of the dual power. The bourgeoisie was well aware of the problem it faced, having to co-exist with the power of the soviets. Guchkov expressed his grasp of that problem as early as 9 March:

 

“The Provisional Government has no real power. Its orders are endorsed only by the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. . . stated bluntly, the Provisional Government exists only by the soviets’ permission.”

 

The point about the dual power situation was that until September the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet – looked to throughout Russia for leadership – granted that permission. The Executive concluded a deal with the bourgeois has-beens of the State Duma Committee and then told the workers and soldiers:

 

“As long as the agreement between the Petrograd Workers and Soldiers’ Soviet and the Provisional Government is not breached, the Provisional Government must be regarded as the sole legal government for all Russia.”

 

After the departure of Guchkov and Miliukov and the entry of Soviet representatives into the Provisional Government Tsereteli drew the logical conclusion from the Menshevik/Right SRpoint of view and argued:

 

“Now, all power would be yielded [by the soviet – PR] to the Provisional Government . . . [the soviet must] not meddle in administrative business. We should not hinder national government, but sound the alarm in case of mistakes.”

 

Fear of counter-revolution

 

Why were the compromisers able to instil into the mass of workers and peasants deference to the Provisional Government for so many months? In the first place, it was because the Mensheviks and Right SRs were stronger than the Bolsheviks within Russia at the outbreak of the February Revolution. They were better placed than the Bolsheviks to rapidly assume positions of leadership in the soviets. As such they were able to play on the genuine fears workers had of counter-revolution, to limit the role of the soviets to monitoring the government. Remembering the persecution that followed 1905, many workers were not prepared to assume sole responsibility for the fate of the revolution. The Menshevik thesis of leaving government to the bourgeoisie fitted in with such fears. As a delegate to the April City Conference of Bolsheviks ruefully put it:

 

“When the proletariat still feared to take power into its hands, at that time the bourgeoisie made its way to the Duma and began to issue proclamations and elect deputies. Our best workers, fearing counter-revolution, facilitated the accidental composition of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”

 

But it was not only fear that played a part. Until Lenin’s return no party of the revolution was, or had ever, advocated constructing soviet power as the immediate objective of the revolution. The Bolshevik formula was for a revolutionary provisional government. Even leading figures in the party like Kamenev, advocated critical support for the Provisional Government created in February. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mass of the working class and army saw their job as keeping the government on the democratic straight and narrow. Typical of this outlook was the resolution of the Baltic Shipbuilding Factory, which proclaimed

 

“. . . full confidence in the Soviet, and we are sure that the Soviet, basing itself upon our trust and the support of organised revolutionary democracy, will be able to force the Provisional Government to take into account the wishes of the revolutionary army and people.”

 

From the end of April to July the Bolsheviks, initially a weak fraction within most soviets (forty out of 3,000 deputies in Petrograd at the end of March), hammered away at the slogan “All Power to the Soviets”. Their aim was to escape the pro-bourgeois politics of the compromisers and win leadership in a soviet republic established, if possible, by peaceful means. By June they were beginning to make considerable headway.

 

The Provisional Government was incapable of solving the great problems of economic production, of the land question or of the war. More and more the workers came to blame the capitalists for obstructing the solution of these burning problems. More and more they looked to their own organisations to do the job for them. When, in June, the Soviet leadership banned a Bolshevik demonstration out of fear, they were obliged to call an official march to let off steam. The march was over 400,000 strong and was made up of workers and soldiers. The rest of “democracy” cowered in the cafes and salons. Despite the “official” character of this march, its moods and slogans reflected the fast growing influence of Bolshevism. Eyewitness to the march, Sukhanov, noted:

 

“And again, and again, as the insistent call from the very bowels of the revolutionary capital, as destiny itself, like the fateful Burnham Wood, they came toward us: ‘All power to the Soviets!’, ‘Down with the ten capitalist ministers !’”

 

The drive to counter-revolution after the July Days (see Chapter 5) caused the Bolsheviks to debate a change of slogans with regard to the soviets. The illegalisation of the Bolshevik Party, the arrest of many of its leaders and the repression against the most advanced workers and soldiers, all measures backed by the Soviet leadership, the SRs and the Mensheviks, led the Bolsheviks to drop the slogan “All power to the Soviets”. The Bolsheviks hopes for a peaceful development of the revolution evaporated.

 

Despite the repression which closed the Bolshevik paper Pravda and temporarily drove most of the party leaders underground, the Bolshevik Party survived the weeks of “German Agent” hysteria that swept the country after the July days. Lenin and Zinoviev – in hiding at Razliv, just across the Finnish border – were able to send letters and documents. As early as 13 July the Party was able to hold a two day strategy conference of the Military Organisation, the Central Committee and the committees of the Petrograd and Moscow districts.

 

Lenin prepared for this a document “The Political Situation”. It consisted of four theses. Thesis one proclaimed that “the counter-revolution has actually taken state power into its hands”, and that “Russia is virtually a military dictatorship” whose policy “is preparation for disbanding the soviets”. Thesis two stigmatised the Mensheviks and SRs for having completely “betrayed the cause of the revolution by putting it in the hands of the counter-revolution” for which they now act as “mere fig leaves”. Thesis three proclaimed that all hope of a peaceful transition had vanished for good and that now an armed workers’ uprising was necessary. Consequently Lenin argued that the slogan “All power to the Soviets” must be withdrawn. The reason Lenin gave was that a) “it was a slogan for the peaceful development of the revolution” and b) “power has changed hands” and the Mensheviks and SRs have “completely betrayed” the revolution. The fourth thesis explained that the Party must combine legal with illegal work aiming towards an insurrection the aim of which would be “to transfer power to the proletariat supported by the poor peasants, with a view to putting our party programme into effect.”

 

Lenin’s theses were the subject of fierce debate. Volodarsky, Nogin and Rykov attacked them and even Zinoviev, sharing Lenin’s exile, sent word that he disagreed. Sverdlov and Stalin supported Lenin’s views. The disputes centred on whether or not the counter-revolution was triumphant – that is, whether the dual power had been resolved in favour of the bourgeoisie, whether the Mensheviks and SRs were definitely exposed as counter-revolutionaries, whether a peaceful evolution within the soviets could still take place which would allow a soviet government to come to power and whether an insurrection was indeed needed. Were the soviets no longer to be the centre of Bolshevik activity? Ordzhonikidze later remembered that Lenin had argued in this period that the factory committees, not the soviets, would become organs of insurrection.

 

Lenin’s position

 

In essence Lenin’s position was strategically, i.e. programmatically, correct. But in terms of an assessment of the situation and in terms of tactics and slogans it was inadequate. Party debate corrected these inadequacies and the Bolshevik tactics during August and September overcame the problems the Party was facing. Lenin over-estimated the totality of the counter-revolution. In that it was a counter-revolution after July it remained a democratic counter-revolution and not the imposition of a military dictatorship. The army high command, the Cadets and the rival would-be Bonapartes (Kerensky and Kornilov) had not resolved the duality of power. Rather the reformist leaders led the workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets into allowing “emergency powers” against the proletarian vanguard. But to install a military dictatorship would necessitate the crushing of the soviets and soldiers’ committees and the complete disarming of the workers. To do this a further coup would be necessary. Lenin’s tactical error was the complete abandonment of the slogan”All power to the Soviets” as necessarily tied to “peaceful development”. Lenin at this time saw it solely as a slogan synonymous with ‘Mensheviks and SRs take the power”.

 

The two errors were linked. Lenin clearly thought that there would be no further period of “soviet legality” during which the Bolsheviks could continue to win ever more delegacies in the soviets and eventually a majority. But this was not the case and the Bolsheviks after only a few weeks continued their remorseless advance within the soviets. Certainly it was correct to withdraw the agitation for “All power to the Soviets” in the form hitherto used when the majority parties had exposed their total complicity with the counter-revolutionaries. But it still had meaning as the expression of the need for a workers’ state rather than bourgeois democracy, and when the Bolsheviks were in the process of becoming a majority it would take on a new concrete agitational meaning: “All power to the (Bolshevik) Soviets.”

 

Lenin was aware of the danger of separating the organisational form from its political leadership. Under a reformist leadership soviets can play a reactionary role, as indeed they did in July 1917 in Russia. However, with a revolutionary leadership the soviets would, once again, play a revolutionary role. The struggle for new soviets actually became, in August 1917, the struggle for Bolshevik leadership. The existing soviets were renovated and cleansed of their reactionary leadership. In the debate at the Bolshevik Congress in July, Buhkarin had perceptively warned:

 

“. . . the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater . . . We must not denounce the form of soviets because their composition has proved unsuitable.”

 

To a large extent, particularly in the local soviets, Bukharin’s advice was heeded. By September, across Russia the Bolsheviks began to win majority after majority in the soviets, leading Trotsky to comment:

 

“For this reason the slogan ‘Power to the Soviets’ was not removed from the agenda a second time, but it was given a new meaning: all power to the Bolshevik soviets. In this formulation the slogan formally ceased to be a call for peaceful development. The Party approaches armed uprising through the soviets and in the name of the soviets.”

 

At the Party’s Sixth Congress, starting on 26 July and continuing for eight days, Lenin’s position was developed and amended. The programmatically correct elements of Lenin’s theses were retained – namely that the Mensheviks and SRs had definitively proved themselves tools of the counter-revolution. In essence, and using terms developed later, these parties were not centrist but counter-revolutionary. No fusion or conciliation was permissible with them. July had proved this decisively. Only the Martovites, the Menshevik Internationalists and the left SRs were still vacillating elements (centrists). At this congress the Mezhraiontsy and Trotsky definitively fused with the Bolsheviks, so that all consistently revolutionary elements were now consolidated into one party [see appendix]. In addition, the congress recognised that whilst winning a majority in the soviets and defending them against counter-revolution would continue to be central, the Provisional Government, Kerensky and the generals could not be removed by peaceful means. The correctness of this line of march was vindicated in the aftermath of the Kornilov coup attempt.

 

On 9 September a debate on the composition of the Praesidium of the Petrograd Soviet took place. Trotsky, now a Bolshevik, led the attack on the compromisers. He spoke for the majority of Petrograd’s proletariat. The compromisers were defeated by 519 votes to 414. Bolshevik majorities in other soviets throughout the country began to be recorded at the same time. On 25 September Trotsky once again became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In 1905 in that capacity, he had been obliged to order the breaking of weapons and submission to the Tsarist police. In 1917 there was no such need to submit. On 25 October at the Second All Russian Congress of Soviets, following the rising of the night before, the first soviet republic in the world was established.

 

 

4. Dual power in the factories

 

 

 

In February 1917 we have seen that, at the level of state power, the Russian workers overthrew the Tsarist regime only to then accept a government of the bourgeoisie’s parties. The workers ceded state power to the bourgeoisie while maintaining their soviets, their councils, to oversee and pressure the government. Asimilar process took place in the factories and mines. The dual power that exist ed at state level was mirrored in the workplaces.

 

The Petrograd workers returned to work after the February Revolution, determined to destroy the old tyrannical regime in the factories. They insisted on imposing the eight-hour working day on the employers by leaving work once the eight hours were done. They demanded, and often secured, full pay for the work they had done of toppling the old regime. But most importantly they had accounts to settle with those who had bullied, exploited and humiliated them in the old days.

 

Large sections of Russian industry had been state run by government appointees. As the power of their chief patrons was broken so many of the directors and managers simply fled. Some workers, for example those at the Okhta explosives plant, returned to find themselves without a factory administration at all. Elsewhere the workers kicked out those with a record of brutality who dared to return.

 

Averitable workers’ festival of “carting out” hated bosses in wheel-barrows accompanied the return to work. The director of Putilov and his aide were dumped in a canal. At the Cartridge plant workers expelled 80% of the technical staff. In the Thornton textile mill the women workers chased out thirty factory police who had dared to show their faces once again. Mass meetings of the workforce discussed and decided on lists of undesirables. At the first power station, for example, workers voted to bar all the directors from the premises as “. . . Henchmen of the old regime and recognising their harmfulness from the economic point of view and their uselessness from the technical.”

 

In all the major industrial centres the workers elected factory committees to represent them in the new order. These factory committees should not be confused with shop stewards committees on the British model. They were elected by the entire workforce at general meetings. Where shop stewards did come into existence they only represented sections of shops within the workforce. In certain plants, factory committees existed alongside shop stewards committees with sharply differing tasks.

 

In many state run plants the factory committees initially had to take responsibility for running the factory. As at the state level the workers found themselves with power in their hands. In the factories just as at the state level they handed power back to bourgeois managers and directors. The parallels do not end there. While the factory committees in general reorganised the employers’ and managements’ technical and economic responsibilities, they reserved for themselves the right to oversee and observe these functions. This mirrored the soviets’ insistence they were overseeing the Provisional Government’s work.

 

Crucially the factory committees demanded and effected “control over internal order”. In plants throughout Russia the committees raised very similar demands that they should control the length of the working day, the level of the minimum wage, the times of rest and all hiring and firing. In a very fundamental way they challenged the right of the employers and their representatives to manage their factories and mines.

 

Workers’ control at this stage meant asserting factory committee authority over these matters of “internal order”. And it meant working class vigilance over the workings of management. It was a highly unstable and contradictory situation that the bosses had no alternative but to accept, albeit reluctantly, after the February upheaval.

 

In general the workers held back from taking actual responsibility for the administration of their plants. At the Patronnyi Works they did not constitute themselves as an alternative management. The factory committee purged the entire administration and then retained for itself an “observing” function. This method was codified at a conference of state sector worker representatives on 15 April which resolved that:

 

“Not desiring to take upon ourselves the responsibility for the technical and administrative organisation of production in the given conditions until the full socialisation of the economy, the representatives of the general factory committee enter the administration with a consultative voice.”

 

Asituation within which workers’ representatives daily transgressed rights that managements traditionally hold sacred could never have become permanent. As at the state level, so in the factory, one class or the other would have to prevail eventually. For the most advanced sections of the proletariat workers’ control was only a transitional phase on the road to socialism. As the Putilov workers declared of their workers’ control regime:

 

“The workers are preparing themselves for the time when private ownership of the factories and mills will be abolished and the means of production, along with the buildings erected by the workers’ hands, will be transferred to the working class. Therefore, in doing this small matter one must continually keep in mind the great and principal aim towards which the people are aspiring.”

 

For the employers this situation was viewed as a mere passing phase, a necessary but temporary concession, until they could establish their traditional prerogatives and unfettered role.

 

Danger of class collaboration

 

During April and May there was mounting evidence, of both a dramatic deterioration in the performance of Russian capitalism, and of the fact that the capitalist class looked to mounting economic chaos to break the strength of the working class. Often, for initially patriotic motives, workers were becoming increasingly suspicious that the employers and state managers were deliberately obstructing war production. With supplies running out, factory committees frequently took upon themselves the job of procurement, through workers’ delegations, to the coal, iron and timber producing areas. To this extent the factory committees were in danger of becoming an accomplice to a more effective capitalist management. Yet at the very same time they were proving that only the organisations of the working class could effectively avert an economic catastrophe.

 

Once again, however, the instability of dual power was demonstrated. Either the factory committees would become class collaborationist participation bodies or they would have to go beyond their “observing” role towards the socialist revolution.

 

As shortages mounted and management threatened closures so the concept of workers’ control did go beyond “overseeing” the bosses. Having seen what the bosses were doing it had to mean struggle against their plans for shut down. In Petrograd, the capital city and main centre of the revolutionary proletariat, this took an especially sharp form as the bosses prepared to “unload” production by moving their factories out of the city and thus disperse the vanguard of the Russian working class. Dual power had to be resolved one way or another.

 

Agood example of this reality was the Langezipn machine factory in Petrograd. At the end of April there were severe shortages and rumours of closure were rife. The factory committee posted guards at the factory entrance in order to prevent the administration leaving. As expected management announced plans to keep the plant going!

 

Asimilar pattern of further encroachment on management’s rights was being established throughout the major plants during May. As management gained in confidence it increasingly used the authority workers had ceded to it to shut down or run down the plants. The employers and managers were prepared to disorganise production in pursuit of their class goals. The struggle for control over production took on a sharper form.

 

Of the workers’ parties only the Bolshevik Party was prepared to take up and lead the fight for workers’ control. It did so because the party saw that fight as part of the struggle for proletarian revolution. The Mensheviks were strongly opposed to any such struggle against capitalism. As their paper Rabochaya Cazeta put it:

 

“Our revolution is a political one. We destroy the bastions of political authority, but the bases of capitalism remain in place. Abattle on two fronts – against the Tsar and against capital – is beyond the forces of the proletariat.”

 

In the face of mounting sabotage the struggle for workers’ control played a central role in the Bolsheviks’ programme for the transition to a socialist revolution. In his “Resolution on Economic Disorganisation” of late May Lenin argued:

 

“The only way to avert disaster is to establish effective workers’ control over the production and distribution of goods. For the purpose of such control it is necessary, first of all, that the workers should have a majority of not less than three quarters of all the votes in all the decisive institutions and that the owners who have not withdrawn from their business and the engineering staffs should be enlisted without fail.”

 

That control was to be exercised by the factory committees, the unions and the soviets. It was to be made possible by opening the books of the companies to workers’ inspection and it was to be extended to financial and banking operations. It was, however, not possible for workers to exercise effective control simply at the level of individual enterprises. For the system of control to “be developed into the full regulation of the production and distribution of goods by the workers” it had to embrace control over the economy exercised at a state level through a state responsible directly to the workers’ own organisations.

 

Lenin returned to this theme and placed it at the centre of his programme in “The impending catastrophe and how to combat it” produced in September. Again he argued:

 

“There is no way of effectively combating financial collapse except that of revolutionary rupture with the interests of capital and that of the organisation of really democratic control, i.e. control from ‘below’, control by the workers and the poor peasants over the capitalists.” (Lenin’s emphasis)

 

Given the clarity of the Bolsheviks’ call for workers’ control at plant and state level it was not surprising that their growing strength in the workers’ movement was first evident in the factory committees. The first conference of Petrograd factory committees, meeting in late May, endorsed the Bolshevik programme. So too did all subsequent factory committee conferences.

 

The factory committees maintained their own central council of committee delegates. As such they brought together the best organised plants in city-wide co-ordination. They were more immediately responsible for the day-to-day concerns of workers than were the soviets. They were responsible directly to general meetings. It was not surprising, therefore, that the mounting Bolshevik tide amongst the workers should be initially reflected in the committees rather than in the Soviet leadership. However, the strength of the committees, as proletarian organisations, meant they were not able to play the role of mobilisers of all the exploited and oppressed. By their nature, unlike the soviets, their co-ordination excluded the soldiers and beyond them, the mass of the peasantry. On 3 and 4 July the Soviet leadership did not lift a finger when troops loyal to the Provisional Government fired on workers and sailors opposing that government in Petrograd. In the aftermath Lenin temporarily dropped the slogan “All power to the Soviets” and urged his fellow Bolshevik, Ordzhonikidze:

 

“We must swing over the centre of gravity to the factory and shop committees. The factory and shop committees must become the organs of insurrection.”

 

Lenin argued that the soviets as then constituted and under the leadership of the right, had become organs of class collaboration and the accomplices of the regime and its savage repression. They were no longer organising the masses for struggle. In that context the call for all power to the soviets was wrong because military repression made a peaceful transfer of power to the soviets impossible. It was also wrong because, in Lenin’s words, “The revolution has in fact been completely betrayed by the SRs and Mensheviks.” For Lenin it followed that “The slogan calling for the transfer of state power to the soviets would now sound quixotic or mocking.”

 

However, the Bolsheviks were to raise the call “All power to the Soviets” again in September. But by then, with Bolshevik strength growing inside the soviets, it was raised as a call for insurrection. While Lenin may have turned his attention most sharply to the factory committees after July, he was also at pains to explain that this did not mean that the building of real soviets had ceased to be central to the Bolshevik programme. As Lenin put it in his article arguing for dropping the “All power to the Soviets” slogan:

 

“Soviets may appear in this new revolution, and indeed are bound to, but not the present soviets, not organs collaborating with the bourgeoisie, but organs of revolutionary struggle with the bourgeoisie. It is true that even then we shall be in favour of building the whole state on the model of the soviets. It is not a question of soviets in general but combating the present counter-revolution and the treachery of the present soviets.”

 

While factory committees kept proletarian democracy alive and maintained working class morale and combativity, they could not play the historical role of soviets as organisers of the mass of exploited and oppressed and as embryos of the proletarian state itself.

 

The employers stepped up their offensive amidst mounting economic chaos in the autumn. Their hopes for a military coup had been crushed when the Kornilov uprising was put down by the workers. Now they set out to stop factory committees meeting in work time, to stop their control of hiring and firing and also to ship plant out of Petrograd.

 

Under Bolshevik leadership the committees replied with determined resistance. Most committees had their own armed militia to defend the plant and the workers against counter-revolution. AMoscow worker, Postavshchik, described what happened when the Bolsheviks won leadership in his plant:

 

“On 1 June as soon as the new factory committee was elected with a Bolshevik majority . . . a detachment of eighty men was formed which, in the absence of weapons drilled with sticks, under the leadership of an old soldier, Comrade Levakov.”

 

At the time of Kornilov’s attempted coup it was the Central Council of Factory Committees that played a key role in distributing arms to the various plant militias. When the employers launched their autumn offensive they were taking on committees that were armed with guns and ammunition as well as with Bolshevik leadership.

 

The sharpening polarisation in the plants could not be resolved except at the level of state power. As more factory committees resisted management plans so more employers pulled out. Production became increasingly disorganised while the committees became the de facto power in the plants. Their power extended beyond the struggle to maintain production. Certain factory committees ran their own farms, canteens and shops and maintained procurement squads. As well as drilling young workers in the military arts the committees often maintained their own cultural commissions. The Putilov Committee, for example, took the latter task very seriously urging their fellow workers:

 

‘“Comrades do not let slip the opportunity of gaining scientific knowledge. Do not waste a single hour fruitlessly. Every hour is dear to us. We need not only to catch up with the classes with whom we are fighting, but to overtake them.”

 

Resolution of the crisis

 

The seizure of power in October resolved the crisis of dual power to the advantage of the working class. With the passing of undivided state power into the hands of the soviets, the state could now at last play its part as an executive organ of workers’ control of production and distribution. The factory committees could take their place as overseers of production with the full backing of state power. In turn that state power legalised the control of workers’ committees elected by all employees at general meetings. It gave them the right to inspect all books, documents and stocks. Their decisions were now to be binding on those owners who remained.

 

The struggle for workers’ control in the plants was an indispensable component of the Russian workers’ onslaught against “management’s right to manage”. They learnt to control industry and inspect accounts for themselves. And from that control and inspection came an immeasurably strengthened will and ability to resist the plans of the bosses. Such a situation could only have been transitory. Either the bosses could have rolled back the gains of the workers and reasserted their old authority, or the workers would have to break the power of the bosses in its entirety. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party the Russian workers ensured that the old regime of the bosses in the factories, as well as in the state, was smashed.

 

 

5. The July Days

 

 

 

Events in the Spring of 1917 moved rapidly to expose the incapacity of the Provisional Government to meet any of Russia’s crying needs – the urban population’s cry for bread, the peasants’ acute land hunger and the war weary soldiers’ yearning for peace. Agovernment of the imperialist bourgeoisie, mortgaged to Anglo-French imperialism and with its own designs on the Turkish Empire and Eastern Europe, could not seriously contemplate a separate peace.

 

The cabinet of Prince Lvov – which linked liberal aristocrats and landowners to the manufacturers and merchants of the Cadet (Constitutional Democrat) Party headed by Miliukov, and to the more conservative Octobrists led by Guchkov and whose most left wing member was Alexander Kerensky, could not be expected even to begin to distribute land to the peasants. Agovernment with men like Tereshenko, the Finance Minister, who possessed a private fortune of eighty million gold rubles, could not be expected to take the necessary measures to alleviate hunger when these would restrict the free market or hit the bourgeoisie’s swollen war profits.

 

The workers from the outset looked at these people with distrust bordering on hatred. The soldiers and peasants soon learned to do likewise. But their leaders – Tsereteli of the Mensheviks, Victor Chernov of the SRs – had installed and supported these people in power and insisted again and again that it must be so.

 

But despite the constant pressure and advice of the SRs and the Mensheviks the peasants, the soldiers and the workers could not be prevented from pressing their demands and from repeatedly, if at first only sporadically, taking action.

 

Petrograd witnessed almost ceaseless demonstrations often swelling to half a million strong. Inflation soared and real wages fell. Unemployment increased rapidly. All these attacks drove the workers to strike, to march, to create factory committees which took action to preserve jobs. The bourgeoisie’s reaction was summed up by the Cadet daily Rech: “Russia is being turned into a kind of lunatic asylum.”

 

The Menshevik leaders, who had, according to their long held political perspective, presented the bourgeoisie with “its” revolution, discovered that these gentlemen were not in the slightest bit grateful. Indeed almost from the outset they fomented economic chaos hoping to create the conditions for a restoration of “order”. The Moscow industrialist Riabushinsky said:

 

“The emaciated hand of hunger will seize the members of the different committees and soviets by the throat.”

 

In the countryside peasant soviets began to spring up and – slowly at first – the peasants began to take things into their own hands. In March disorders were reported in 34 districts, in April 174, in May 236, in June 280 and in July 325. The landowners’ manor houses went up in flames and the moujiks began to occupy the lands robbed from them by the great Emancipation swindle of 1861. The mir – the age-old village commune – took on a new life, and the rich peasants (kulaks), who had benefited from Tsarist land reforms and left their mir, were often obliged to return. Rent ceased to be paid. The news of this turmoil reached the young peasant conscripts at the front and magnified the wave of desertions. The deserters returning to their villages were different men to the boys who had left. They had military training. They had seen the brutality and incompetence of their upper class officers. They had lost their unreasoning faith in the priests. Some had read, or had read to them, the leaflets and papers of the Bolsheviks. As the year progressed this radicalising of the multi-millioned peasant masses went on apace.

 

The historic party of the peasantry, the SRs, still held the overwhelming allegiance of the peasants but events were to begin undermining this too. In early May a governmental crisis erupted. The Soviet had, under mass pressure, issued a pacifistic appeal for a peace “without annexations and indemnities” and had renounced imperialist war aims. Miliukov, in transmitting this declaration to the Allies, assured them that the government would “fully observe the obligations assumed towards our allies.” Mass demonstrations of soldiers and workers erupted under the slogans “Down with the Provisional Government!” and “Guchkov, Miliukov, Resign!” Clashes occurred with bourgeois demonstrators. General Kornilov, then commander of the Petrograd garrison, requested permission to fire on the anti-government demonstrators. This the government dared not do and the crisis was resolved only with Miliukov’s resignation and the bringing into the government of another four “socialist ministers”, including the SRleader Victor Chernov as Minister of Agriculture, and the promotion of Kerensky to the War Ministry. Chernov and the SRs were thus put in a position of having to hold back the peasantry on behalf of the landowners and capitalists. At an Allied military conference in January the Tsarist high command had rashly promised their Anglo-French paymasters a spring offensive against the Austrians in Galicia. The Allies had no expectation of a Russian victory but merely hoped that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of half-trained and badly armed peasants would hold up the Central Powers and deflect them from an offensive on the Western Front. Kerensky was determined to carry out this inheritance from the Romanovs. The ruling class saw the offensive as an opportunity to restore order at the front, in Petrograd and in the other major cities.

 

The seven million soldiers at the front greeted the news of the proposed offensive with trepidation. The huge Petrograd garrison, some 215,000 strong, heard it with outright hostility. The radicalisation of the soldiers was speeded up. In Petrograd the soldiers were represented in the Soviet. They had been guaranteed full civil rights when not on duty by the Petrograd Soviet’s famous “Order number one”. Normal discipline had broken down and committees counter-signed every officer’s order that was carried out.

 

The Bolsheviks, whose struggle for workers’ control was winning them ever stronger positions in the factories, now devoted a massive effort to increasing the party’s position in the barracks and in the trenches.

 

On 31 March the Bolshevik Military Organisation was founded. Acommission was appointed to direct its work. Its most prominent leaders were Podvoisky and Nevsky. Another key figure was the Kronstadt sailor Raskolnikov. The Military Organisation published a popular daily paper from mid-April onwards with a circulation of over 50,000 – half in Petrograd, half at the front. It described the wretched conditions of soldiers lives; printing hundreds of letters and resolutions from units the length and breadth of Russia, as well as agitating for the Bolsheviks’ key slogans.

 

In early June as the preparations for the offensive began – including attempts to transfer weapons and men to the front from Petrograd – the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened in the capitol. It sat from 3 to 24 June. Of its 822 delegates with voting rights the SRs had 285, the Mensheviks 248 and the Bolsheviks 105. The rest belonged to smaller tendencies like the Mezhraiontsy (Interdistricters or “United Social Democrats”) led by Trotsky and Lunacharsky, who had ten delegates.

 

The right wing governmental parties clearly had a very sizeable majority. The Bolsheviks stood out as the clearest anti-Provisional Government force. When Tsereteli, the most vigorous Menshevik leader (and a minister), addressed the congress Lenin made perhaps the most prophetic heckle in history:

 

Tsereteli: “At the present moment there is no political party which would say: ‘Give the power into our hands, go away, we will take your place.’ There is no such party in Russia.”

 

Lenin: (from his seat) “There is.”

 

The response of the majority of the delegates was laughter. In the next month however the attitude of the leaders of the majority soviet parties was to change first to fear and then to hatred as the Bolsheviks experienced a surge in their influence and an upsurge in the revolutionary workers and troops of Petrograd and the sailors of the northern fleet at Kronstadt and Helsingfors.

 

From early June Kerensky and the government were constantly trying to ship munitions, weaponry and units of the garrison to the front in preparation for the coming offensive. The All-Russian Soviet Congress on 8 June voted full support to Prince Lvov and the government, thereby effectively endorsing its plans for an offensive. The spontaneous pressure of the soldiers and sailors was for demonstrations against the renewed war and the attempts to disperse or disarm the revolutionary regiments who, with the workers, had made the February Revolution. The Bolshevik Military Organisation stood on the left of the Party. Podvoisky advocated a mass armed demonstration to act “as a battering ram that would effect a breach in the Congress.” This proposal caused a sharp disagreement between the left wing of the party led by Lenin and the right led by Kamenev. Lenin wished to undermine, and if possible prevent, the new offensive with a massive anti-war demonstration whose central slogan would be the call to transfer all power to the soviets. This was designed to try and force the majority SRand Menshevik parties to break with the Provisional Government, with its Cadets and Octobrists, and take power. Hence the Bolsheviks supplementary slogan which made this clear: “Down with the ten capitalist ministers!”

 

Armed counter-revolutionaries

 

Kamenev and the right were opposed to a demonstration at all but if it were called they insisted it must be disarmed. The Military Organisation insisted this was impossible. The central area of Petrograd around the famous boulevard the Nevskii Prospekt was the scene of mounting patriotic demonstrations by right wing bourgeois forces. The officer cadet schools of the capital were nests of armed counter-revolutionaries that the Provisional Government protected. The anti-semitic, proto-fascist Black Hundred organisation still existed in a scarcely underground form. Workers’ and soldiers’ demonstrations against the war and the government would undoubtedly be attacked. Lenin found himself opposed not only by Kamenev and the right but even by Zinoviev, his closest co-thinker during the war, and by Krupskaia. Nevertheless a joint conference of the Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee and the Military Organisation bureau voted for a demonstration on the 9th.

 

The Bolsheviks were not the only force urging a demonstration. The Petrograd Anarchist-Communist Federation were agitating fiercely for an armed demonstration. But they posed as its immediate objective the overthrow of the Provisional Government, the destruction of the state and the installation of a Petrograd Commune.

 

Clashes between the anarchists and the troops loyal to the Provisional Government provided the pretext for the Soviet Congress passing a resolution banning all demonstrations. Faced with a ban voted for by all the workers’ and peasants’ parties except the Bolsheviks and the Mezhraiontsy, the Central Committee conceded to the soviet legality of the ban and abandoned the demonstration. The Party and the Military Organisation, despite their anger at the ban and indeed their disagreement at the retreat, carried out the manoeuvre in a disciplined fashion.

 

Delighted at their “triumph” the Mensheviks over-reached themselves and proposed an official soviet demonstration on 18 June under the official slogans. This demonstration turned against its organisers intentions and the platforms of official soviet delegates from all over Russia were obliged to witness a massive parade almost totally under Bolshevik slogans. Maxim Gorky’s paper Novaya Zhizn conceded that it “revealed the complete triumph of Bolshevism” amongst the Petrograd proletariat. Bewildered provincial soviet delegates said to Bolshevik demonstrators: “In Petrograd you are the power but not in the provinces, not at the front. Petrograd cannot go against the whole country.” This was something that Lenin and the cooler heads on the left of the party realised. But in the Military Organisation the tremendous success of 18 June carried away what caution there was left. If April had seen the right of the Party nearly pull Bolshevism into the ditch of defencism and coalitionism, July was to see the left almost pull the party into the ditch of adventurism and putschism. Lenin, Zinoviev, Sverdlov and Stalin were to be obliged to bloc with the right to hold back the far left of the Party. They were to be aided in this difficult task by Trotsky whose closeness to, and solidarity with, the Bolsheviks during the “July Days” were to seal his final and irrevocable rallying to Bolshevism (see appendix).

 

By 19 July news of the offensive reached Petrograd further incensing the garrison. At first the news was of victories directed, as the offensive was, at war weary and demoralised Austrian troops in Galicia, many of whom belonged to the oppressed nations of the “fossil monarchy”. Yet by 24 June the desperate Kerensky was reporting to the Provisional Government:

 

“After the first days, sometimes after the first hours of battle, there was a change of heart and spirits dropped – units participating in the battle began drawing up resolutions with demands for immediate leave to the rear.”

 

The offensive ground to a halt and was followed by a massive German counter-attack on the northern front. By 3 July stories of the army’s headlong retreat and disintegration began to filter back to the capital.

 

On 16 June an all-Russian conference of Bolshevik military organisations, with 107 delegates representing upwards of 30,000 members, met in Petrograd. It was the scene of repeated calls from rank and file delegates for the organisation of an immediate armed uprising. On 20 June the First Machine Gun Regiment was ordered to provide 500 machine guns and two thirds of its strength for transfer to the front. This regiment, made up largely of working class soldiers, was a stronghold of the Bolsheviks. It refused the orders and turned to other regiments for support. This increased calls within the Military Organisation for an insurrection. At the session of the Military Organisation conference on the 20th Lenin came out sharply against such an idea:

 

“If we’re now able to seize power, it is naive to think that we would be able to hold it. We have said more than once that the only possible form of revolutionary government was a soviet of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies. What is the exact weight of our fraction in the Soviet? Even in the Soviets of both capitals, not to speak of others, we are an insignificant minority.”

 

A cold shower

 

Lenin concluded: “The proletarian party must fight for influence within the Soviet.” It must “patiently, explain” to the masses the errors and deception of the majority parties, “then they will come to the Bolsheviks.” Aparticipant later recalled that Lenin’s speech was like a cold shower and was received with disappointment and even with dissatisfaction.

 

In the Military Organisation a majority opposed Lenin’s position, as did a powerful faction of the Petrograd committee led by Latsis, Naumov and Stukov. Many of the people who had eagerly supported Lenin in April were now dismayed. Not only were they dismayed, they began to pursue a divergent policy. Pravda and Soldatskaya Pravda carried on a different agitation. The former stressed the need for the immediate calling of elections to a constituent assembly and a mass campaign to win control of the Petrograd Soviet, whilst the latter carried articles which urged immediate action against the government:

 

“The time has come not to sleep but to act. Comrades! Chase the bourgeoisie from power – All power must pass into the hands of the workers, soldiers and peasants! Remove from power the bourgeoisie and all its sympathisers.”

 

On 3 July the Machine Gun Regiment planned a mass demonstration to the Congress of Soviets meeting in the Tauride Palace. Involved in this decision were the anarchists whose attitude was summed up by their spokesman Bleikhman:

 

“Overthrow the Provisional Government, not in order to turn power over to the bourgeois soviet, but to take it into your own hands.”

 

The Bolshevik leaders Nevsky and Podvoisky, far from holding back the machine gunners, also urged them on but with a different objective. Their aim was to force the Soviet Congress to take the power.

 

“Into the streets! Move out!”

 

On 3 July a postal workers’ strike gripped the capital. Machine gunners went to all the major regiments, factories and to Kronstadt urging them to “come out”. Some regiments flatly refused and proclaimed neutrality between the government and the insurgents. But the Moskovsky, the Finlandsky, Pavlovsky and Grenadier regiments agreed to take part in mass meetings. All the factories on the Vyborg side, 30,000 workers from the giant Putilov works and 10,000 Kronstadt sailors enthusiastically responded to the call. In Putilov the Bolshevik chair of the factory committee announced the vote with the cry “Down with the Provisional Government! Into the streets! Move out!”

 

By now the Bolshevik Central Committee became aware of what was going on. Lenin was temporarily across the border in Finland taking a brief rest when events began to move rapidly. The Central Committee came out against an armed demonstration and instructed party militants to oppose the demonstration. Latsis angrily replied “Again we must be fire hoses. How long will this last!”

 

But by now it was too late to put out the fire and in any case the majority of militants were quite carried away with the surging quasi-insurrectionary mood of the soldiers, sailors and workers. In general however the Bolshevik slogans “Down with the ten capitalist ministers!”, “All power to the Soviets” and “Down with the offensive” massively predominated over the anarchist influenced ones. In Kshesinskaya’s mansion, the Bolshevik headquarters, there was momentary confusion. The Military Organisation, the Petrograd Committee and the Central Committee met in joint session. Messengers rushed in reporting that barrack after barrack, factory after factory could not be restrained. It was obvious that the party must participate actively now and try to give the inflamed masses leadership. But what was to be the objective and how far the movement should still be reigned in? The answers to such questions were far from clear. The target of the demonstrations was to be the All-Russian Soviet Congress meeting in the Tauride Palace. Obviously the demand was for them to take power. But if they would not? What then? No one had a clear answer to this question.

 

Seventy thousand demonstrators filled the centre of the city. In the bourgeois quarters around the Nevsky they were fired on by rightist elements, Black Hundreds or officer cadets eager to provoke the soldiers. Despite this, led by military bands, they reached and encircled the Tauride Palace. Delegations entered and pressed their demands upon the majority soviet leaders, Chkheidze, Tsereteli and Chernovo They were intransigent. The congress passed a resolution “indignantly opposing all attempts to influence their will by force.” Yet little force was being used beyond the huge numbers that filed past the palace and thunderously applauded speeches by Zinoviev, Trotsky and others.

 

The next day, 4 July, the demonstrations were far larger, reaching half a million or more. Significantly the numbers of soldiers were less and the proportion of workers much greater. Many regiments stayed in their barracks, refusing alike the calls of the Bolshevik agitators and the pleas for help of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Congress.

 

However at Kronstadt the sailors had commandeered eight tugboats, two barges, three trailers, three gun boats and several passenger ferries. Soon 20,000 sailors and Kronstadt workers were disembarking along the Neva embankments. They marched en masse to Kshesinskaya’s mansion to hear what the Bolshevik leaders had to say. Lenin had meanwhile hurried back from Finland. He was furious with the Military Organisation cadres. “You should be trashed for this!” he hissed as he stepped onto the balcony of the mansion to address the sailors.

 

The provocations against the demonstrators continued. On 4 July five were killed and 25 wounded. These treacherous attacks, plus the frustration of the refusal of the Menshevik and SRleaders to yield to their demands, led to ugly scenes outside the Tauride Palace. Victor Chernov was rescued from a crowd by Trotsky. Angry fist-shaking workers screamed at the terrified SRleader: “Take power when it’s given to you, you son-of-a-bitch!”

 

Here was encapsulated the contradictions of mass consciousness at this stage of the revolution. The masses had lost confidence in the Menshevik and SRpolicies and slogans. They had firmly espoused the Bolshevik slogan of a soviet government but they had not yet lost their faith in the existing Soviet leaders, or rather, only through precisely this experience were the workers and soldiers shedding these illusions.

 

Despite the excitement of the anarchists and the optimism of many rank and file Bolsheviks, even in Petrograd the majority of soldiers and workers would not have supported a Bolshevik seizure of power against the Soviet. In Russia as a whole and at the front, a Bolshevik overthrow of the government and the dissolution of the Soviet Congress would have thrown the working class into confusion, pitting its more backward majority against its revolutionary vanguard and turning the overwhelming mass of the peasant soldiers against it.

 

The Bolsheviks and the Mezhraiontsy thus had to act responsibly towards this mass upsurge of the workers and soldiers. Firstly Lenin and the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks – aided by Trotsky, Lunacharsky and other Interdistricters – tried to avoid a disorganised mass uprising that would undoubtedly be subject to provocations by the rightists and which could not in reality culminate in the overthrow of the government. When the masses refused to heed the party they put themselves at the head of the demonstrations, fighting to make sure that they were as disciplined, as well guarded and as restrained as possible. Lastly they utilized the July upsurge to put the maximum pressure on the right wing Menshevik and SRleaders to take the power, thus carrying to its culmination this tactic and exposing their unwillingness to do this to the whole of Petrograd.

 

However the fomenting of the mass insurgency by the left of the Party was a serious tactical blunder and the Party was soon to suffer for it. Yet even the repression that followed only helped to further expose the Mensheviks and SRs as wretched tools of the counter-revolution. If the first response of a section of workers and the majority of soldiers was disillusionment and suspicion of the Bolsheviks (had they tried to seize power? Were they put up to it by the Germans?), the second response to seeing Chernov, Tsereteli and co. raining blows on the Bolsheviks in common with Kerensky, Miliukov and Kornilov was revulsion and indignation.

 

A counter-revolutionary orgy

 

The collapse of the July insurgency was as sudden as its upheaval. On the 4/5 July the Soviet Congress sat through the night delaying any definitive reply to any of the workers’ demands. The worker and soldier demonstrators and delegations thinned and departed. Suddenly through the courtyard and corridors of the Tauride Palace the thunder of marching feet could be heard. Theodor Dan, a prominent Menshevik, mounted the rostrum in triumph to announce that, “Troops loyal to the Central Executive Committee have arrived!” To the accompaniment of a regimental band the majority delegates rose to bawl the Marseillaise, casting malicious and revengeful looks at the Bolsheviks, the Mezhraiontsy and at Martov’s “Menshevik Internationalists”. Martov himself bitterly exclaimed “Aclassic scene of the start of counter-revolution!” And so it was momentarily. On 5 and 6 July what a Menshevik witness described as a “counter-revolutionary orgy” reigned in central Petrograd. Workers and revolutionary soldiers were beaten up and thrown into the canals by Black Hundred elements. The garrison commander seized the opportunity to disarm the Machine Gun Regiment and to send a force of cadets to smash Pravda’s presses. Last of all the Bolshevik headquarters were seized and ransacked.

 

The Provisional Government had been able to win over some of the more backward regiments because of manufactured “evidence” that Lenin was a German spy, and that the Bolsheviks were being paid by the Germans to sabotage the offensive. Warrants were issued for the arrest of Lenin and Zinoviev. Other leaders like Kamenev were arrested. The party reeled momentarily under the hammer blows of counter-revolution.

 

 

6. The Bolsheviks – mass party of the working class

 

 

 

The Russian workers, particularly those in Petrograd, had suffered a very real setback after the defeats of the July Days. The Bolshevik leadership was arrested or forced into exile. Circulation of the party press was halved after July with the central organ having a circulation of only 50,000 in August. The mood in the factories was often despondent.

 

Yet by September and October the tide had turned decisively in favour of the Bolsheviks. After years in exile or underground, after months as the intransigent left minority in the soviets and after the persecution suffered in July the Bolsheviks at last proved themselves to be the party of the Russian working class. Their undisputed leadership enabled them to transform the spontaneous class consciousness of the working class into a conscious political force. Their methods of achieving that leadership, of defeating the reformist obstacles that stood in the way of victory, are a priceless legacy for revolutionaries today.

 

Under Kerensky’s premiership the forces of the bourgeois counter-revolution continued to mobilise. The pressure from the High Command became intense. Brusilov the Commander-in-Chief curtly demanded of Kerensky, “There cannot be dual authority in the army. The army must have one head and one authority.” He demanded the complete and total restoration of military discipline.

 

Kerensky, whose own role as would-be Bonaparte and “strongman” rested on a balancing act between the soviets and the counter-revolution, played for time by dismissing Brusilov and replacing him with Kornilov. Kerensky made this balancing act incarnate by summoning a “State Conference” in Moscow from 12 to 15 August. Here, appropriately in the Bolshoi Theatre, Kerensky pirouetted back and forth between the massed delegates of big business and the officer corps on his right and the Menshevik/SRsoviet delegates on his left, whose fear and hatred for each other burst forth repeatedly. Kerensky could only hysterically assert his own strength and authority and thereby fatally undermine it in the eyes of the bourgeoisie at least. And indeed it was an offensive by the counter-revolution that was to cut the ground from under its own feet. Looking at Kerensky, at Tsereteli and Chernov, the counter-revolution made an enormous mistake. It thought it saw in these exhausted bankrupts the exhaustion and bankruptcy of the working class and the revolution. It was a mistake for which they were to pay dearly and at short notice.

 

Before July the Bolsheviks had established themselves as the leadership in several key fighting units of the working class. In the August city council elections in Petrograd they chalked up majorities in the proletarian districts of Peterhof and Vyborg. Their influence in the factory committees had increased, with 82% of the delegates at the August All-Russian Factory Committee Conference endorsing their call for soviet power. The Bolsheviks led a general strike in Moscow against the State Conference. That self same strike had been opposed by the conciliator leadership of the Moscow Soviet.

 

Workers resolute

 

That the workers were not prepared to make their peace with the bourgeoisie or the Provisional Government was demonstrated by a resolution from the young workers of Putilov:

 

“We, the youths, having learnt from the experience of our fathers how dangerous it is to fraternise with the bourgeoisie, declare that it will be a fearful hour when we, the youth, for the salvation of the revolution take to the streets to destroy with our young hands those parasites who live off the blood and sweat of the toilers . . .

 

“[We express] our profound scorn for the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who continue to cohabit with the bourgeoisie and allow themselves to be led on a leash by Kerensky and Tsereteli.”

 

Further battles lay ahead and this was patently clear to the most class conscious workers. But after July the workers had learnt the need for discipline and organisation, the need to avoid premature and sporadic struggles.

 

counter-offensive against both the Provisional Government and the gains of the working class. The July Days had given them the confidence to press home the attack. On 22 July the right wing General Kornilov was appointed to the supreme command by Kerensky. He declared he would be answerable only to his “own conscience and the whole people”. He very quickly assumed the mantle of the messiah of the counter-revolution. At the Moscow State Conference he was fawned on by Kerensky and the bourgeois ministers as the “first soldier of the revolution”.

 

Kornilov’s rise coincided with increasing clamour from the bosses for the complete restoration of their right to hire and fire, which had been usurped by the factory committees. There were well hatched plans to establish a military dictatorship to establish the order that the Provisional Government had still evidently failed to achieve.

 

The weakness of Kerensky’s government was sharply exposed. He was trying to crack down on the organised workers. On 24 August he closed down the Bolshevik press once again. At the very same time the bourgeoisie were preparing to oust him and his government. Quite simply, after July the bosses felt they had no further use for the Provisional Government. In co-ordinated fashion, the bourgeois Cadets resigned from the government and General Kornilov announced a march to restore order in the capital on 27 August. The long depressed stock market soared as the capitalists looked forward to the counter-revolution’s victory.

 

Bolshevik predictions verified

 

Everything the Bolsheviks had been predicting about the role of the conciliator Mensheviks and Kerensky was being verified by the march of events. These traitors to the working class had been allowing the forces of counter-revolution the chance to re-gather their strength and strike back. The Party was now put to the test of fighting the counter-revolution.

 

Kornilov’s march on Petrograd shattered the post-July order in the factories. Meetings vowed to defend the city and demanded arms to do so from the Soviet Executive. The old Baranovskii Machine Construction factory resolved:

 

“We demand that the Central Executive Committee [TsIK], give arms to the workers, who not sparing their lives, will stand as one in defence of the just rights of revolutionary democracy, and together with our brethren soldiers, will erect an impassable barrier to the counter-revolution and will tear out the poisonous fangs from the snake that has dared to poison the great Russian Revolution with its lethal venom.”

 

Thousands of Petrograd workers threw themselves into the struggle to stop Kornilov. At least 25,000 enlisted for the Red Guards who were co-ordinated by the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee. At Putilov 8,000 of the workforce were sent to perform defence and agitation duties. Those who remained behind achieved three weeks output of cannon in three days so as to defend the revolution!

 

Kerensky cowered behind the proletarian wall defending Red Petrograd. In the short term he had no alternative. Bolshevik leaders were released from jail and Bolshevik propaganda and agitation was in free flow again. Bolshevik militants were prominent in all the mobilisations to halt Kornilov. The problem for the Bolsheviks was how to use these mobilisations to win the mass of the workers away from their trust in the Mensheviks and in the wretched Kerensky, how to intensify the contradictions between the rank and file Mensheviks and SRs and their compromised leaders?

 

For Lenin the key to this lay in “indirectly” campaigning against Kerensky “by demanding a more and more active, truly revolutionary war against Kornilov.” The aroused workers must be mobilised to press partial demands on Kerensky, which would develop the militant mood and reawakened confidence of the rank and file while exposing the weakness and vacillation of their leaders. Their demands were to include the arrest of the Cadet leader Miliukov and Duma President Rodzianko who were backing Kornilov. They included the legalisation of the transfer of the land to the peasants, and workers’ control over grain distribution and the factories.

 

The Bolsheviks also demanded the arming of the Petrograd workers and the summoning of the militant Kronstadt, Vyborg and Helsingfors garrisons to Petrograd. Involving the workers in the fight for their demands in the revolutionary defence of Petrograd was, for Lenin, the means of taking them forward politically. That is why he insisted that the demands be presented, “. . . not only to Kerensky, and not so much to Kerensky as to the workers, soldiers and peasants who have been carried away by the course of the struggle against Kornilov.”

 

In denying Kornilov the right to overthrow Kerensky Lenin was in fact digging Kerensky’s political grave and the graves of those who sought to compromise with him. As Lenin put it:

 

“We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without in the least relaxing our hostility towards him, without taking back a single word said against him, without renouncing the task of overthrowing him, we say that we must take into account the present situation. We shall not overthrow Kerensky right now. We shall approach the task of fighting against him in a different way.”

 

This means of waging the struggle against Kornilov and Kerensky proved a resounding success. Kornilov was stopped in his tracks as his army dissolved around him under the pressure of Bolshevik agitators and sabotage by militant railway workers. The political fortunes of the Bolshevik Party increased tremendously in the aftermath of Kornilov’s defeat and Kerensky’s humiliation. Its use of a united front, addressed to Kerensky and the Mensheviks, but carried into life by thousands of rank and file workers in the committees of struggle, was for the limited goal of defeating Kornilov. But by combining unity in action with a merciless critique of Kerensky and the conciliating leadership of the soviets, the Bolsheviks proved to thousands of workers that they were the only consistent revolutionaries. The united front was a bridge to the masses and a weapon against their reformist misleaders.

 

The final phase

 

General Kornilov’ s defeat at the hands of the Petrograd workers opened the final phase of the Russian Revolution. The workers had arms once again. The ranks of the Red Guards had grown dramatically. Anew confident tone was to be heard in factory meetings throughout the capital city. Factory after factory replaced their Menshevik or SRdelegates to the Soviet with Bolsheviks. Resolution after resolution passed at mass meetings in early September took up the Bolshevik call for all power to pass to the soviets and challenge the Soviet leadership’s collaboration with the Kerensky government. The workers of Langezipen typically told those leaders:

 

“. . . we suppose that the Kornilov rebellion has washed your sleepy eyes clear and enabled you to see the situation in its true light.

 

“We declare that you have long spoken for us, but not our views, and we demand that you begin to speak the language of the proletariat or else we reserve for ourselves freedom of action.”

 

In fact the Kornilov coup attempt had not washed clear the sleepy eyes of the Menshevik and SRleaders of the TsIK. It had clouded them even further. While Kerensky tried to strengthen his power by establishing a five person directorate, the TsIK still continued to support him in exchange for a promise to convene a Pre-Parliament. The tension between the aspirations of the proletarian mass and the intentions of those they had once delegated to represent them was increasing dramatically.

 

In September the Petrograd Soviet passed its first distinctively Bolshevik resolution calling for a government of “the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry”. In opposition, the Mensheviks could only muster 15 votes out of 1,000 delegates in support of the Provisional Government! The Moscow Soviet passed a Bolshevik resolution four days later.

 

The other contenders for proletarian leadership either withered and declined, as was the case with the Mensheviks, or they were gripped by splits and instability. The SRparty split, with the Left SRs supporting the calls for soviet power against their ex-leaders. The bulk of the Petrograd SRorganisation backed the Lefts, reflecting the mood of Red Petrograd.

 

It was the growing identification of the most active workers with the Bolshevik Party that marked the most important change in the mood of the working class. Tireless agitation and propaganda to expose the treachery of the Soviet leadership was now beginning to bear fruit. By October Bolshevik Party membership stood at 250,000 compared to around 30,000 at the beginning of the year. In Petrograd the Bolsheviks could count 43,000, members in their ranks of whom 28,250 were workers and 5,800 soldiers. The overwhelming majority of the party was proletarian.

 

The bulk of the intelligentsia inevitably abandoned the banner of the proletariat as the hour of decision drew close. Those intellectuals – the finest intellects in Russia and much of Europe – that stuck by the working class were party intellectuals. Their talents were at the service of the proletarian party.

 

Bolshevik’s meteoric rise

 

The party’s proletarian core was chosen by the majority of the workers to be their representatives in the soviets and the factory committees. In the Red Guard in October, for example, 44% were Bolshevik Party members. The vanguard party of Lenin now comprised the mass vanguard of the Russian working class. The meteoric rise of the Party was consolidated in September and October. In Moscow district council (duma) elections in September the Bolsheviks secured 52% of the vote and virtually wiped out the Mensheviks. During September and October the Bolsheviks could count on 68% support in the Moscow Soviet while the Mensheviks and SRs were receiving 16% and 4% respectively. The Party was truly becoming the national party of the Russian working class. In Saratov in the Volga it took leadership of the Soviet in September. It was to do the same in the majority of soviets across Russia’s far flung industrial centres as the month wore on.

 

These facts, stubborn facts that bourgeois historians have never yet been able to refute, show as a lie and a slander the charge that when the Bolsheviks took power they were a minority and their action was a coup. On the contrary, as a majority they led a mass revolution. Once the Bolsheviks comprised that layer of workers that the majority of the Russian working class looked to lead their struggles, the task was to use that position of leadership to mount a formal offensive against both the Provisional Government and the conciliator leadership ensconced in the Soviet Executives.

 

For those workers who had entered the ranks of the Bolsheviks there was no question but that the deepening crisis could only be solved by the seizure of power by the soviets. Yet, even after Kornilov, the TsIK refused Lenin’s offer of loyal opposition within the soviets if they were to take the power. The transfer of power to the soviets could now only take the form of a Bolshevik-led and organised seizure of power. Surveying the developing peasant land seizures, the paralysis of Kerensky’s government and the new mood in the soviets, the third Petrograd city conference of the Bolsheviks resolved in early October that the moment for decisive action was nigh. The assembled representatives of the leadership of Red Petrograd’s proletariat declared:

 

“All these circumstances say clearly that the moment of the last decisive battle, which must decide the fate not only of the Russian but of the world revolution, has arrived.”

 

Memories of July

 

One last difference existed between the Bolshevik vanguard and the majority of workers. The majority were for soviet power. In Petrograd only one factory mass meeting voted contrary to the call for the impending second All Russian Congress of Soviet Deputies to take the power. That argument had been clinched decisively. However, still only a minority of workers, mainly the younger ones, were prepared for an open “coming out” (vystuplenie in Russian) to achieve that end. The memory of July lingered on. Ared guard from the Petrograd Pipe Factory described his own foreboding as their detachment spent the last pre-October night in the factory:

 

“. . . But Idid not feel like sleeping. Many thoughts raged through my head, much was still not understood that is so clear now. The July Days stood out too vividly before my eyes. The hissing of the philistine crowd shook my certainty.”

 

But there had been a dramatic change in the balance of class forces since July which should have quelled such nerves. The other industrial centres were far nearer to the mood of Petrograd. The peasantry was in motion, and recognising this the Bolsheviks were prepared to lead the struggle for power. All the conditions existed for the seizure of power by the working class.

 

In this situation only a decisive move by the vanguard could provide the masses with the final confrontation that the majority wished for even though many of them shrank from it. As the Vyborg district organiser Latsis expressed it so well:

 

“In the coming out the organised apparatus must be to the fore, the masses will support. It is totally different from before.”

 

The Bolsheviks had learnt in July that the rising could not follow the pattern of the bourgeois revolution of 1789 in France in which the great mass of people rise as one against the old regime. In modem capitalist society the art of insurrection involved meticulous planning. Technical preparation had to follow on from political preparation. With the conquest of the masses the Bolsheviks were obliged to begin the secret work necessary for the victory of a rising. The Party was obliged to fashion the instruments of insurrection, As Trotsky observed:

 

“Just as a blacksmith cannot seize the red hot iron in his naked hand, so the proletariat cannot directly seize the power; it has to have an organisation accommodated to this task. The co-ordination of the mass insurrection with the conspiracy to the insurrection, the organisation of the insurrection through the conspiracy, constitutes that complex and responsible department of revolutionary politics which Marx and Engels called ‘the art of insurrection’, It pre-supposes a correct general leadership of the masses, a flexible orientation in changing conditions, a thought-out plan of attack, cautiousness in technical preparation, and a daring blow.”

 

Having won proletarian leadership, the Bolsheviks prepared to strike that “daring blow” and seize state power for the soviets. On 22 October the Petrograd workers were rallied in a series of meetings to celebrate the “Day of the Petrograd Soviet”. Party workers spoke to indoor meetings organised to avoid provocation and confrontation. At the Central People’s House 30,000 attended to hear Trotsky electrify his audience with a call to carry the revolution through to the very end. An SRdescribed that at factory meetings at this time: “our speeches seemed doomed to us.” The Menshevik commentator Sukhanov left the People’s House with his head in a swim:

 

“With an unusually heavy heart Iwatched this truly majestic scene. And all over Petrograd it was the same thing. Everywhere final reviews and formal oaths. Strictly speaking, this was already the insurrection. It had already begun.”

 

Those who were to seize the bridgeheads, the post office and railway stations, those who were to arrest the Provisional Government, knew that the mass of the workers stood behind them. That fact gave the Bolsheviks the confidence and the courage to act and the certainty that victory would be theirs.

 

 

7. Lenin’s struggle for the insurrection

 

The October insurrection, which took power into the hands of the workers and poorest sections of the peasantry, was no historical accident. It flowed from two factors decisive for the victory of any proletarian revolution.

On the one hand it arose inevitably from the deepening crisis that gripped Russian society in the autumn of 1917. The February Revolution, which overthrew the Tsar had ushered in an inherently unstable period of dual power.

The bourgeoisie, through the Provisional Government, held formal control over the state apparatus. But they did so only with the permission of the workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets – the embryo of another state power.

The bourgeoisie lived, breathed and tried to rule courtesy of the reformist leaders of the soviets, the Mensheviks and the right wing of the peasant based SRs.

As the months wore on the situation of dual power became less and less acceptable to both the bosses and the working masses. This created crisis after crisis. One way or the other it had to be resolved. Either the bourgeoisie would launch a second Kornilov into action to crush the revolution, or the workers would lead society out of its impasse by establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.

By the autumn of 1917 this was the stark choice facing the classes in Russia. It was the objective precondition for the insurrection. Trotsky later noted:

“Amass uprising is no isolated undertaking which can be conjured up at any time one pleases. It represents an objectively conditioned element in the development of a revolution, as a revolution represents an objectively conditioned process in the development of society.”

Subsequent history has shown all too often however those favourable objective conditions – an acute revolutionary crisis – do not on their own guarantee the victory of the proletariat. This was shown with tragic consequences in Chile, Portugal and Iran. To mobilise the proletariat for the direct struggle for power and weld it into a fighting force capable of destroying the bourgeoisie’s state, a conscious leadership is required – a subjective factor.

The October insurrection proved that the revolutionary party, armed with the correct programme, tactics and strategy, and prepared to arm itself and the class with rifles too, is the indispensable pre-requisite for victory.

Immediately after the Kornilov affair Lenin expressed the belief that a peaceful development of the revolution was once again possible. In his article “On Compromises” Lenin explained that if “All power to the Soviets” could be realised forthwith, that is, if the Menshevik and SRleaders in the soviets could be forced by the pressure of the masses to break from the bourgeoisie then:

“In all probability it could secure the peaceful advance of the whole Russian Revolution, and provide exceptionally good chances for great strides in the world movement towards peace and the victory of socialism.”

The slim chance for this compromise lay in the fact that workers were distrustful in the extreme of the bourgeoisie in the aftermath of Kornilov. Their pressure was a material factor. It could perhaps, be exerted to the point where the Mensheviks and SRs would be forced to make some sort of break – at least formally – with the chief capitalist party, the Cadets.

Loyal opposition refused

But before the ink was dry on the article he had written Lenin received news that Kerensky was planning to form a five person directory, and strengthen his drive to establish a Bonapartist dictatorship for the bourgeoisie. Even now the Mensheviks and SRs refused to consider the proposal for a “socialist” only government based on the soviets within which the Bolsheviks would accept the role of loyal opposition. Upon receipt of this news Lenin suggested re-titling his article “Belated Thoughts”. He wrote:

“Perhaps the few days in which a peaceful development was still possible have passed too. Yes, to all appearances, they have already passed.”

Henceforth Lenin concentrated his thoughts on how to take the revolution forward under Bolshevik leadership. In less than a fortnight he concluded that the rising was an immediate necessity. Over the following weeks Lenin fought a relentless struggle to win the Bolsheviks to this perspective. He quickly grasped that in a matter of weeks the objective situation had dramatically changed. He fought to change the party accordingly. He struggled to make the subjective factor equal to the tasks of the objective situation.

The crisis of the dual power situation intensified on every front during September and October. In the countryside, as the days of the harvest passed, the peasant masses renewed their ferocious war against the landowners. The agrarian question, which Trotsky called the “subsoil of the revolution” acquired decisive importance. Traditionally the peasants looked to the SRs as their representatives. Yet the SRs were openly collaborating with the landowners. The Provisional Government, of which the SRs were an integral part declared in September, as instances of violences against the landowners rose from 440 in August, to 958, that:

“. . . all must experience alarm over the disorders which were happening everywhere in the wildest forms.”

The pitchforks that pierced the overfed bellies of the landowners worried the SRs far more than the cruel land hunger that existed amongst the peasant masses. All the SRs could offer the peasants was that on an unspecified day a constituent assembly, which the bourgeoisie were successfully preventing from being convened, would solve the land question. Unimpressed, the peasants continued their land war. October saw 42.1% of all instances of land seizure since the fall of the Tsar.

Natural allies

The peasant land war, spurned by the SRs and opposed by the bourgeoisie, had found a natural ally in the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle. This in turn immeasurably strengthened the proletariat as the leader of all the oppressed and downtrodden in Russia. As Trotsky put it:

“In order that the peasant might clear and fence his land, the worker had to stand at the head of the state: that is the simplest formula for the October Revolution.”

The land war and the struggle of the proletariat were also increasingly enmeshed with a wave of struggles for autonomy by the nationalities imprisoned within the Tsarist empire. In the east, Bashkirs and Kazakhs fought for autonomy as a means of getting land. Throughout the lands of the empire national struggles erupted and were directed against Kerensky’s dithering Provisional Government. Moreover, the phenomenal spread of soviets throughout the nationalities increasingly meant that autonomy became identified with soviet power.

Amongst the soldiers, sailors and workers the continuation of the war and the threat of famine increased mass hostility to Kerensky.

The Baltic fleet was dominated by the Bolsheviks. Garrison after garrison followed them. The Soviets began to return ever more convincing Bolshevik majorities as the crisis deepened. This process of radicalisation was well underway by early September. Indeed when some Bolsheviks saw Lenin’s “On Compromises” they were indignant that a rightist course was being proposed. Slutsky, from the Petrograd Committee, argued on 7 September:

“As in the factories, so among the poverty stricken peasants we see movement leftwards . . . For us to consider compromises now is ludicrous. No compromises! . . . Our task is to clarify our position and to prepare unconditionally for a military clash.”

In fact Lenin himself was quickly moving towards the same conclusion. The crisis had matured. Delay would prove fatal. The Bolsheviks must launch the insurrection.

Lenin’s views were communicated to the Central Committee (CC) in a number of letters and discussed on 15 September. Lenin argued that the forthcoming Democratic Conference, to which the Bolsheviks were aiming to send a sizeable delegation, would not resolve the problem it was due to debate – the question of the government. He expressed his belief that the Mensheviks and SRs would weight the conference in favour of the petit bourgeoisie. It would deceive the peasants and the workers. At the same time the authority of Bolshevism was increasing all of the time. He wrote:

“We have the advantage of certain victory, for the people are already near to exhaustion and after showing them the importance of our leadership in the ‘Kornilov days’, and then offering the bloc members a compromise and having it refused by them amidst vacillation on their part which has continued ever since, we are giving the whole people a sure way out.”

That way out was a Bolshevik government which could only be installed by smashing the reformist leadership and the whole bourgeois state apparatus out of the way. All the efforts of the Bolsheviks should be directed towards the factories and barracks, not the Democratic Conference.

He argued that the Democratic Conference should be told that if it does not accept the Bolshevik programme in full then there will be an insurrection. And, anticipating opposition to this course of action from within Bolshevism Lenin opened the struggle with the vacillators by declaring that the waverers should be left “in the waverers camp.”

Lenin’s new course hit the CC like a bombshell. Copies of the letters were destroyed for fear that they might get beyond the CC. Nobody, at that stage, favoured an immediate rising. The Bolshevik plans for the Democratic Conference had been framed along the lines of the “On Compromises” policy. The declaration to the conference called on the conciliators to break with the bourgeoisie and transfer power into the hands of the soviets. It addressed a series of demands to the conciliators but not, as Lenin had favoured, in the form of an ultimatum.

Vote for coalition

The Democratic Conference, which opened on 14 September, was itself a factor in winning more Bolsheviks over to Lenin’s insurrectionary views. He proved right as to its composition. Delegations were carefully weighted and on the day the Bolsheviks – increasingly a majority in the soviets – were in a tiny minority at the conference. There were 532 SRs (of whom 71 were Lefts), 530 Mensheviks (only 56 Internationalists amongst them) and 134 Bolsheviks. The urban working class areas were grossly under-represented.

With such a composition the conference, not surprisingly, voted for yet another coalition between the Soviet parties and the Cadets who, only a few weeks before, had worked hand in glove with Kornilov. The conference went on to establish a council, a Pre-Parliament, which was there merely to advise the Provisional Government.

This experience convinced Trotsky and Sverdlov that “All power to the Soviets” could now only be achieved against the conciliators. It became for them a slogan for an uprising. By the middle of the conference they were moving visibly closer to Lenin’s position.

The dispute over the rising now took the form of a dispute over whether on not the Bolsheviks should boycott the Pre-Parliament. Trotsky favoured such a boycott and fought for it in the CC. He won 9-8 but the closeness of the vote prompted the CC to consult

the Bolshevik delegation at the Democratic Conference. The delegation very much represented the regional and city committee men rather than the party rank and file. They tended to lean to the right. To Trotsky and Lenin’s extreme annoyance they voted 77-50 in favour of participating in the Pre-Parliament. Lenin wrote:

“Trotsky was for the boycott. Bravo Comrade Trotsky! Boycottism was defeated in the Bolshevik group at the Democratic Conference. Long live the boycott. We cannot and must not under any circumstances reconcile ourselves to participation . . . There is not the slightest doubt that there are noticeable vacillations at the top of our party that may become ruinous.”

Nevertheless, the tide in the Bolshevik Party was turning in Lenin’s favour. His letters had become known about in wider circles of the Party. Fresh forces representing the proletarian rank and file of the Party were elbowing their way into the debate supporting Lenin’s line. His impatience – even his threat to resign from the CC – was slowly bearing fruit. The first victory came when, on 5 October, the CC formally decided to boycott the toothless Pre-Parliament. This act announced Bolshevism’s conviction that the future of the revolution now lay exclusively in the struggle for soviet power. As Trotsky wrote:

“We left in order to say that only soviet power can raise up the slogan of peace and toss it over the heads of the international bourgeoisie to the proletariat of the entire world Long live the direct and open struggle for revolutionary power in the country.”

That walk out received the virtually unanimous endorsement of factory resolutions from throughout Russia. It signalled that the proletariat had seen enough of their leaders’ wheeling and dealing with Kerensky and the bourgeoisie. Now was the time for something completely different.

A new dimension

On 10 October the CC met again to consider Lenin’s views. This time he had donned his disguise (according to Kollontai he looked like a Lutheran minister) and attended despite the risk of arrest by Kerensky’s police. Lenin’s resolution added a new dimension to his view of the situation – a rising in Russia could spark a European wide revolt

So important did Lenin regard news he had heard of disaffection in the German fleet that he began his resolution by noting “The international situation as it affects the Russian Revolution”. This aspect of Lenin’s strategy has been systematically downplayed by the Stalinists whose doctrine of “socialism in one country” contradicts a vital element of Lenin’s Marxism.

The meeting came to a vote on Lenin’s resolution. It was clear that the line of divide was between settling the fate of the revolution by staging a rising in the immediate future or the postponement of the rising and the acceptance of the role of “opposition” in a “democratic” capitalist Russia. The resolution was clear:

“Recognising that an armed uprising is inevitable, and the time fully ripe, the Central Committee instructs all party organisations to be guided accordingly and to decide all practical questions from this standpoint.”

The resolution was adopted ten to two. The two vacillators were close comrades of Lenin’s, Zinoviev and Kamenev. These two men opposed the rising from the day Lenin first argued for it to the fateful day itself. Kamenev in particular, was a consistent right winger in the party who had never really been reconciled to Lenin’s “April Theses”. As late as August Kamenev was still trying to build bridges to the Second International by speaking openly in favour of attendance at a proposed reformist peace conference at Stockholm. This was an open break with agreed Bolshevik policy which was against attendance. In the aftermath of Kornilov’ s attempted coup Kamanev leapt at Lenin’s “On Compromises” and proceeded to give it an extremely right wing and constitutionalist interpretation. Thus when Lenin changed tack and argued for a rising the CC minutes record that Kamenev proposed:

“After considering Lenin’s letters the CC rejects the practical proposals they contain, calls on all organisations to follow CC instructions alone and affirms once again that the CC regards any kind of demonstration in the streets as quite impermissible.”

This proposal was rejected by the CC, which did not yet want to write off Lenin’s proposals altogether.

Lingering fears

Kamenev was playing on the fear, “the convulsion of doubt” as Trotsky called it, that lingered in the party after the July defeat. In so doing he was able to enlist wider support than he had ever enjoyed prior to July. In particular he won over Zinoviev.

Zinoviev was wedded to the idea that, with the defeat of Kornilov, Lenin’s perspective of peaceful development via “All power to the Soviets” had become timeless. And, in the event – not at all certain – that the forthcoming Second National Congress of Soviets took place, then the influence of Bolshevism would grow and grow. Zinoviev’s gradualism, centred more on life in the soviets than Kamenev’s, expressed itself in an article he wrote on 27 September:

“In our view the all-powerful authority over the Russian land is the Congress of Soviets opening on 20 October. By the time the Congress convenes, if it is able to meet at all, the experience with this new coalition [under Kerensky] will have failed and wavering elements will at long last associate themselves with our slogan, ‘All power to the Soviets’. Each day will witness a growth in our force.”

In this perspective key decisions are left to chance and to fate.

Zinoviev and Kamenev, with support from other prominent Bolsheviks like Nogin, Rykov and Riazanov, argued that Lenin’s call for a rising was premature. The time was not ripe. The masses were supposedly not yet ready. In particular Kamenev harboured the belief that a coalition of soviet parties including the Bolsheviks (something Lenin vehemently opposed) might emerge from the Democratic Conference. Thus, while Trotsky was hammering away at the need for soviet power in every address he made to that conference, Kanlenev argued:

“The only possible course is for state power to be transferred to the democracy – not to the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, but to that democracy which is well enough represented here. We must establish a new government and an institution to which that government must be responsible.”

At a Presidium meeting he went on to assure the Mensheviks and SRs of Bolshevik support for a government that was a “homogeneous democratic ministry”. He stated:

“We will not overthrow such a government. We will support it insofar as it pursues a purely democratic policy and leads the country to the constituent assembly.”

“Support insofar as” was the rotten old formula he and Stalin used back in March and against which Lenin’s “April Theses” were directed. It made its reappearance at the Democratic Conference. Even the debacle of the Democratic Conference and the Pre-Parliament failed to budge Kamenev. He resisted a boycott right to the end.

The decisive clash with Lenin and Trotsky came a week after the historic 10 October meeting. Amuch larger CC was held on 16 October with representatives of various other committees also in attendance. It revealed that the vacillators represented a strong current in the party. Although Lenin’s resolution for an insur


rection was passed once again 19-2, a proposal from Zinoviev, to wait until the Second Congress of Soviets, was defeated 15-6. This resolution – sharply counterposed to Lenin’s given that it was not yet certain the Congress would be convened – showed the extent of support for Zinoviev. Those forces were only for a rising in the abstract. Notables such as Kalinin spoke of the rising as a far off event. Nevertheless the die was cast.

 

Faced with this decision Zinoviev and Kamenev betrayed the party. They immediately circulated a letter against the decision to the members. More clearly than ever before it revealed the deeply opportunist kernel within their perspective. They asked if Russia was ripe for insurrection and replied “No, a thousand times no!!!” They pinned all their hopes on the “excellent” chances that the Bolsheviks held of becoming the biggest opposition in the Constituent Assembly. And they argued – as did the reformist Rudolf Hilferding some years later – that soviet power and bourgeois democracy should be combined:

 

“The constituent assembly too can only rely on the soviets in its revolutionary work. The constituent assembly plus soviets – here is that mixed type of state institution we are going towards.”

 

In effect they wrote off the crisis that had engulfed Russia as something a yet to be convened constituent assembly could solve. As Trotsky later noted this perspective was based on “fatalist optimism” which binds:

 

“. . . the proletarian vanguard hand and foot, and by means of the ‘democratic’ state machinery turns it into an oppositionist shadow of the bourgeoisie bearing the name of Social Democracy.”

 

While their action in opposing the rising could be explained as a mistake and while their campaign to reverse the decision of 16 October in the party was a breach of democratic centralism, their next move was, as Lenin said, strike-breaking. In an article in Gorky’s non-party paper, Novaya Zhizn, Kamenev publicly declared his opposition to the CC decision for a rising. He did so even though that decision had, obviously, not been published for security reasons. Kamenev was, in effect, giving Kerensky advance notice of the Bolshevik plan.

 

Lenin was resolute in carrying through the struggle against the vacillators, who had now turned into strike breakers. Zinoviev had acceded to Kamenev performing this act of treachery and was branded as co-responsible by Lenin. In demanding their expulsion from the party, Lenin wrote:

 

“It is not easy for me to write this about people who were once close comrades but it would seem to me a crime to hesitate here, for a party of revolutionaries which did not punish prominent strike-breakers would perish.”

 

Lesson for revolutionists

 

There is a lesson for every revolutionist here. The party had set its course towards the insurrection. That decision had been democratically arrived at. Zinoviev and Kamenev had put their case and lost. They went on to betray the party. For Lenin, at this point, the struggle against vacillation could not be stopped half-way. It could not be suspended because these men were friends and comrades. The good of the revolution, the will to victory demanded that they be expelled.

 

As it turned out they were not thrown out. Stalin even published an editorial note on the affair criticising Lenin’s tone and soilidarising with Zinoviev. But, with this action Zinoviev and Kamenev destroyed their chances of reversing the party’s decision.

 

Following the affair Lenin pressed, ever more impatiently, for the attack to be launched. On the eve of October, interpreting every delay as a potential new vacillation, he declared of the CC:

 

“Idon’t understand them. What are they afraid of . . . Just ask them if they have one hundred loyal soldiers or Red Guardsmen with rifles. Idon’t need anything else.”

 

In fact he had won. Delays from late October were caused by technical rather than political difficulties. Thus, when he arrived – without CC permission – at the Smolny late on the evening of 24 October, matters were well in hand. Lenin had brought the decisive subjective factor, the revolutionary Bolshevik Party itself, into line with the tasks and potential of the objective situation.

 

 

8. The October Insurrection

 

 

 

It was Trotsky and Sverdlov who perfected the means of achieving the proletarian seizure of power that Lenin was urging on the Party. That means was to be an armed insurrection organised by the Petrograd Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) timed to coincide with, and therefore pass power to, the Second Congress of Soviets. The remorseless struggle of Lenin and the party rank and file was now set to bear fruit.

 

Lenin had favoured a rising led by the Northern Region Congress of Soviets in mid-October. His impatience was leading him, if anything, to underestimate the task of preparing for the rising. His major allies against the vacillators – Trotsky, Sverdlov, Antonov-Ovseenko, Bubnov and Sokolnikov – stood against him on the question of when and how to stage the rising.

 

While Lenin had sensed the mood of the workers for a rising and acted on it, those comrades who were in more direct contact with every sector of the masses, grasped the conditions under which the masses would actually stage and support a rising.

 

Their plan from the outset was to deliver power into the hands of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, through a rising organised in defence of that Congress against the Provisional Government’s attempt to crush it and with it the revolution. Their tactics, from 16 October, demonstrated the validity of their approach. By subverting the authority and military power of Kerensky from that date until the weekend of 21/22 October, they created the conditions of a certain victory on 24/25 October.

 

So clear was it that the masses wanted soviet power, and so successful were Sverdlov and Trotsky in their campaign to rally the soviets for the struggle for power, that Lenin was obliged to acknowledge the correctness of their line. The first shots in the campaign for the rising were fired during the garrison crisis which began on 9 October. Kerensky tried to move the bulk of the garrison out of Petrograd since it had largely gone over to the Bolsheviks.

 

The move, rightly suspected as a means of preparing a counter-revolution, was greeted with outrage. Ameeting of the Egersky Guards Regiment on 12 October resolved that:

 

“The pulling out of the revolutionary garrison from Petrograd is needed only by the privileged bourgeoisie as a means of stifling the revolution.”

 

The meeting went on to call for soviet power.

 

The Bolsheviks utilised this crisis, over the next week, to establish the Soviet’s own (MRC). Its task was to defend the revolution. The MRC was staffed by Bolsheviks, Left SRs and anarchists. But as the crisis deepened it was obvious that the Bolsheviks, and in particular Trotsky, led it.

 

The relationship between the Bolsheviks’ own Military Organisation and the MRC, was a vital factor in the success of the insurrection. Trotsky effectively won the argument that the MRC was the appropriate organ of insurrection at the Central Committee on 20 October. In relation to the Military Organisation it resolved:

 

“. . . all Bolshevik organisations can become part of the revolutionary centre organised by the Soviet.”

 

Lenin was fearful of the rightist inclinations of the Party Military Organisation. It wanted to delay the rising for two weeks. He supported the view that the MRC should organise the insurrection and set out to convince Bolshevik military leaders Nevsky, Podvoisky and Antonov to accept it. The Party did not liquidate itself into the MRC. Aprecondition for victory had been Bolshevism’s conquest of leadership in the mass organisations of the revolutionary working class. Through Trotsky the Party led the MRC and through Sverdlov the organisations of the MRC and those of the Bolsheviks were intertwined.

 

Once the MRC was established and had consolidated its ties with the 25,000 Red Guards and the garrison the Bolsheviks stepped up the action. On 22 October a mass “Day of the Soviets” was staged in Petrograd. Huge meetings in every proletarian centre in the city rallied to the call for soviet power. In the People’s House Trotsky urged the masses on to the last battle after a vote for soviet power:

 

“Let this vote of yours be your vow – with all your strength and at any sacrifice to support the Soviet that has taken on itself the glorious burden of bringing the victory of the revolution to a conclusion and of giving land, bread and peace!”

 

Afrightened journalist for the reactionary Reck newspaper recorded: “The vast crowd was holding up its hands. It agreed. It vowed. . .”

 

On 21 October the MRC declared that no orders to the army were valid unless countersigned by the MRC. This was an act of mutiny that Kerensky if he was to survive could not tolerate. Indeed when the MRC delivered this directive to the military chief in Petrograd he threatened to arrest their commissars.

 

It was an empty threat the garrison’s units all trusted the MRC. Kerensky had only officers cadets and the women’s battalion under his command.

 

As the MRC launched this mutiny the Baltic sailors under the leadership of Bolsheviks like Dybenko and Raskolnikov, were preparing to back the rising. On the pre-arranged signal of “Send regulations”, battleships laden with revolutionary sailors were to come to Petrograd. Aparticipant recalls the scene when the order came through on 24 October:

 

“What did the Gulf of Finland around Kronstadt and Petrograd look like then? This is conveyed well in a song that was popular at the time:

 

‘From the isle of Kronstadt

 

Toward the River Neva broad

 

There are many boats a-sailing

 

They have Bolsheviks aboard.’”

 

Kerensky was well aware that a rising was imminent.

 

Knowing that the Soviet Congress would sound the death knell of his regime he attempted to move into action. On 24 October he ordered the arrest of the MRC and of recently released Bolsheviks and the closure of the Bolshevik press. His few loyal troops were ordered to raise the bridges that separated the government buildings from the workers’ districts.

 

With calm resolution Trotsky ordered the MRC into action. The Bolshevik print shop was re-opened by troops and Red Guards. Smolny, the headquarters of the Soviet and MRC, was turned into an armed camp.

 

Two figures symbolise the fate of the revolution at that critical point. Kerensky full of bombast, posing incessantly, pleaded for support from yesterday’s bourgeois institutions – the Pre-Parliament and the officers “in charge” of Petrograd. Lenin, still on the run made his way to the Smolny discussing events with a conductress on a streetcar. Afew hours later Lenin was addressing the Congress of Soviets, the new power in the land. Kerensky was on the run.

 

The insurrection underway

 

Beside himself with impatience, Lenin had arrived at the Smolny to discover that the insurrection was underway at last. Victory seemed more and more certain as the morning of the 25th wore on. Stations were swiftly occupied. The mere shining of the cruiser Aurora’s arc lights across the Nikolaevsky Bridge put its cadet guards to flight. Two hundred workers and sailors immediately secured it. The telephone exchange, state bank and all the key junctions were taken by the forces of the MRC. By 10.00am on 25 October the MRC declared:

 

“The Provisional Government has been overthrown. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies the Military Revolutionary Committee which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.”

 

In fact the government was cowering in the Winter Palace. The remainder of the day was like a tense waiting game. More and more insurgents gathered at the Palace. The Congress of Soviets prepared to open. One last push was necessary. The Winter Palace had to be stormed. Kerensky himself slipped away in search of support outside Petrograd.

 

After a series of delays – including comical ones such as the forgetting to bring along the red lantern which had been agreed on as the signal for the attack – the Palace was taken with virtually no bloodshed.

 

Aforce of Red Guards and sailors stormed the Palace after the Aurora fired her blank shells. The cadets and junkers gave up without a fight Revolutionary discipline prevented any looting and a bourgeois reporter was compelled to admit that no members of the women’s battalion suffered physical or sexual abuse at the hands of the insurgents.

 

With the Winter Palace secure the rising was complete in Petrograd. Victory in the whole of Russia followed. That it did so was due to the steadfastness of the Bolsheviks and the decision of the Second Soviet Congress to accept the transfer of power into its hands. It did so in recognition of the fact that the MRC has acted to save the revolution. Its vote was a vindication of Trotsky and Sverdlov’s tactics and of Lenin’s guiding strategy.

 

The imposters leave

 

The last of the compromisers, the Menshevik Internationalist leader Martov, declared the rising to be a Bolshevik coup against the soviets. The workers soldiers and peasants answered him with catcalls and hoots of derision as he walked out of the Soviet.

 

Rebutting their claims that the Bolsheviks had usurped power, a young soldier jumped to the platform and stated:

 

“I tell you now the Lettish soldiers have many times said ‘No more resolutions! No more talk! We want deeds.’ The power must be in our hands! Let these impostor delegates leave this Congress! The army is not with them.”

 

With that hundreds of working people began to sense the power they held and the correctness of the Bolshevik proposals.

 

The seizure of power by the MRC was no coup d’etat. The absence of major “disorders”, damage to public buildings and so on was not because the rising lacked a mass character, as ignorant bourgeois reporters suggested. Rather it was because the insurrection was a well planned and highly disciplined action carried through by an apparatus that had mass support. The initial absence of bloodshed and “disorder” in Petrograd was a reflection of the weakness of the bourgeoisie. However, it would be entirely wrong to conclude from the events of the 24th and 25th in Petrograd that the insurrection was peaceful.

 

Immediately after the rising the counter-revolution mobilised. With a force of battle-hardened Cossacks under the leadership of generals Krasnov and Dukhonin, Kerensky ordered a “March on Petrograd” on 27 October. He followed this force on a white horse as it stormed Gatchina, 27 miles away from the centre of Petrograd. Meanwhile the cadets captured at the Winter Palace were all released by the Bolsheviks. The revolution was generous and trusting to a fault. It learnt of the bloodthirsty perfidy of the bourgeoisie in battle. The cadets immediately seized the telephone exchange in Petrograd and arrested Antonov-Ovseenko. Bitter fighting began in the city. Some 200 people were wounded or killed.

 

A“Committee for the Salvation of the Country and the Revolution” was established. At a public meeting it held in Petrograd one of its speakers called for the crushing of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Government “without mercy”. The very same people who were spouting about “democracy” for all they were worth were fantasising about the violence they could inflict on the working class, its party and its government. Significantly it was not only the open parties of the bourgeoisie who joined the counter-revolutionary conspiracy. The Mensheviks and SRs, confirming Lenin’s assessment of them in July as counter-revolutionary parties, joined in the attempts to physically destroy the soviets that they no longer led.

 

Any doubt about the mass support enjoyed by the new regime was dispelled as Krasnov and Dukhonin advanced. On 28 October a state of emergency was declared in Petrograd. Thousands upon thousands of workers, soldiers and sailors rallied to the defence of the city. They erected an impassable barrier to the advancing Cossacks. Then, having caused the White Guards to halt their advance, the Red forces struck. At Pulkovo Heights on 30 October workers and Red artillery men hammered the forces of the counter-revolution. Two days later a truce was signed. Kerensky disappeared into oblivion. Petrograd was secure. And yet again the revolution trustingly released its enemies. General Krasnov was set free. He immediately headed south to rally forces for the civil war the bourgeoisie now knew it had to launch.

 

The Moscow rising

 

In Moscow the rising itself was a bloody affair. The Soviet voted overwhelmingly in support of the Petrograd MRC’ s actions. Immediately the bourgeois parties and the Mensheviks and SRs established a “Committee of Public Safety” with 10,000 troops at its disposal. This force proved more effective than the Petrograd counter-revolutionary Junkers had. It trapped the Red forces in the Kremlin.

 

After being assured that there would be no reprisals the pro-Soviet forces reluctantly surrendered. They learnt a bitter lesson. Despite having had the “word of a gentleman” that they would not be harmed, the bourgeois officers immediately led their gangs into action. Red Guards coming out the of the Kremlin were set upon and beaten to death. All over the city Bolsheviks were being rounded up and shot. These were the actions of the forces of “democracy”. What a contrast they were to the actions of the proletarian democrats. For when reinforcements came from Petrograd the Red forces in Moscow were able to turn the tide. The White Guards were forced out of every quarter of the city and themselves surrounded in the Kremlin. Red gunners pounded them relentlessly. Eventually they surrendered. The Bolsheviks assured them there would be no reprisals. Unlike a few days before when the Junkers made the same offer only to ignore it and indulge in an orgy of violence, when the Whites filed out of the Kremlin not one was set upon.

 

The capitalists and their wretched reformist apologists frequently blether on about the horrific violence preached by revolutionaries, and the peace-loving democratic methods they themselves use. Let them consider the Moscow events. Military violence played its role in the service of the revolution. We revolutionaries recognise the importance of that role. But bloodlust, mindless, spiteful acts of brutality – they were the preserve of the bosses and their military and political defenders.

 

The repeated outbreaks of such violence by the forces of the counter-revolution as 1918 wore on taught the Bolsheviks the necessity for a Red Terror, for the suppression of those who were determined at all costs to destroy the workers’ state. But the Red Terror was a means of ensuring that the peasants kept their land, the workers their control of production, the soldiers their democratic rights. The White Terror had only one objective. To restore the rule of the few over the many in the name of profit and greed.

 

Revolution not reform

 

Above all else, the October events proved beyond doubt the viability of proletarian power. They showed the truth of the maxim that no ruling class ever gives up without a fight. Against today’s Kerenskys – the Kinnocks of this world – we assert the absolute right and necessity of all the exploited in Britain and worldwide, to heed the example of the Russian workers. Do not try to tinker with the bosses’ system. Do away with it. And in so doing we will open up new horizons for humankind.

 

As John Reed, a chronicler of the revolution, noted after a huge demonstration of Russian workers in Moscow in the days following victory:

 

“Slowly from the Red Square ebbed the proletarian tide . . . Isuddenly realised that the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer and for which it was a glory to die . . .”

 

Seventy years on that kingdom has yet to be built. But October 1917 has, more than any other event in history, placed it within our grasp. We must learn its heroic lessons, and act on them.

 

 

Appendix

 

‘From Words to Deeds’

 

Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Below appears the English translation of Trotsky’s article “From words to deeds” first published in the Workers Power theoretical journal Permanent Revolution 6. Seventy years after its appearance in the paper Vpered (Forward) on 28 June 1917 it remains a key document in the history of Trotsky’s convergence with Lenin’s party.

 

Vpered was the paper of the Inter-District Organisation of United Social Democrats, the so-called Mezhraiontsy. This had been founded in 1913 by Yurenev and other members of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) who rejected the discipline of both Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the Party. As Yurenev wrote later:

 

“In particular we refused to recognise the Bolshevik conference of 1912 as a conference of the entire RSDLP.”

 

Their initial project was to unify the Bolsheviks and the Left Mensheviks in a party of “United Internationalists.”

 

This project corresponded in many ways with that of Trotsky between 1907 and 1916. From the moment of the 1903 split Trotsky had taken up a position on the extreme left of Menshevism, hoping that the objective pressure of revolutionary events would propel Menshevism in a revolutionary direction (as it had briefly done during 1905). After 1914 Trotsky’s “Menshevik conciliationism” was extended to the international arena, placing him in an intermediate and conciliatory position between the social-pacifist “centre” and the revolutionary defeatist left at the Zimmerwald anti-war conference of 1915.

 

But the war and the Russian revolutionary upsurge revealed ever more clearly in practice Menshevism’s inability to evolve in a revolutionary direction. By May 1917, on Trotsky’s return to Russia, the Mensheviks had entered the coalition government alongside the capitalist and petit bourgeois parties, immediately devoting their energies to whipping up the workers’ flagging support for the capitalist war effort.

 

On his return Trotsky immediately joined the Mezhraiontsy. In 1914 they had numbered 350. In early 1917 they started off with only 150 members. Now, although individual Left Mensheviks and some ex-Bolsheviks joined-they included Lunacharsky, Joffe, Uritsky, Riazanov and Volodarsky, the Mezhraiontsy did not experience the spectacular growth of the Bolshevik Party.

 

In April 1917, whilst Stalin and Kamenev had led the Bolsheviks in support for the bourgeois Provisional Government and the war, the Mezhraiontsy had argued for a new insurrection and for soviet power. By the time Trotsky arrived in Petrograd, however, Lenin had completed the fight against the “old Bolshevik” line of Kamenev and Stalin elaborating the slogan “All power to the Soviets” in his famous “April Theses”. There was now no political difference between the Mezhraiontsy and the Bolsheviks. As Deutscher writes:

 

“At public meetings the Mezhraiontsy’s agitators were insistently asked in what they differed from the Bolsheviks and why they did not join hands with them. To this question they had in truth no satisfactory answer.”

 

On 10 May Lenin, Kamenev and Zinoviev met Trotsky and the leaders of the Mezhraiontsy proposing immediate fusion with positions on the Bolshevik leading bodies and the editorial board of Pravda. Commenting that since the “April Theses” he was in complete political agreement with Lenin, Trotsky however, prevaricated. But throughout May and June observed that what he labelled the Bolshevik’s sectarianism (“clannishness”) was being eroded by the mass influx of revolutionary workers into the party.

 

By the time of this article we see Trotsky preparing to fuse with the Bolsheviks and fighting against Yurenev’s conciliationism. This process was foreshortened by the period of reaction that followed the July Days. Lenin fled into hiding, whilst Trotsky was imprisoned. It was during this period that Trotsky “joined” the Bolsheviks, consenting, from his cell, to being elected to the Central Committee in August.

 

On 1 November 1917 Lenin remarked, during a Central Committee meeting of the Bolshevik Party, that since Trotsky had broken with his attempts to conciliate with Menshevism “. . . there has been no better Bolshevik.” This article represents the clearest moment of that break. Its title, “From Words to Deeds”, was not just an exhortation to the reluctant Mezhraiontsy. It was a symbol of Trotsky’s own transformation from Left Menshevik publicist and orator to leader of a revolutionary combat party.

 

It is already one and a half months since the conference of the Petrograd Inter-District organisation but the issue of the unification of the internationalists has not advanced one step further. More than that: whoever was present at the conference and witnessed the prevailing mood there would say that we were closer to unity then than we are now. Then, in every sense, it appeared to be a practical task. Now it is too often turned into a pious phrase that doesn’t bind us to any practical conclusions.

 

It was established at the conference that we do not have principled differences with the Bolsheviks. We have arrived at one and the same conclusions on all the fundamental questions posed by the war, the revolution and the international. But, a separate organisational existence can be justified only be deep programmatic or practical difference; in the absence of such differences the conclusion necessarily follows full organisational merger. [emphasis in original]

 

True, at the conferences difficulties were pointed to flowing from the habits and methods of Bolshevik clannishness. Of course, it is impossible to deny these difficulties that not infrequently even now appear in a highly unattractive form in the organisational policy of the Central Committee and in the pages of Pravda. But at the same time, at the conference, comrade Lunacharsky showed absolutely correctly that in the conditions of the open existence of a mass workers’ party this clannishness is meeting powerful counter-pressures. In any event, given the lack of principled differences, it is impossible to fight against clannish methods except through opposing them within the bounds of a common organisation that is by more democratic methods of conducting party work. To artificially preserve a separate organisation for the purpose of a struggle against clannishness would be to create the conditions for our own clannishness on a smaller scale. Without a doubt the Inter-District Organisation faces this danger.

 

In Vpered No3 comrade Yurenev saw one of the benefits of delaying steps towards unification by referring to the Menshevik-Internationalists.

 

“Unity”, he writes, “for us is unacceptable in the form of a separate organisational merger with the comrade Bolsheviks. Despite the fact that we coincide with them on the central questions posed by the revolution, it would be mistaken not to exhaust all possibilities for the establishment of one single revolutionary social democracy, by merging immediately. On a Petersburg scale this would be a plus, on an all-Russian scale it would be a minus. We see the way out not in such a merger but in the joint preparation of a general all-Russian conference of internationalists.”

 

It is fundamentally wrong to pose the issue this way. The question is not of a separate merger with the Bolsheviks but precisely of unification with the Bolsheviks. This type of unification is already prepared by preceding developments. The principled basis for it is formulated in our resolutions. All our work in Petrograd is conducted in the form of separate cooperation with the Bolsheviks. The problem now is whether the organisational separation is disorganising and disrupting this common political work. Comrade Yurenev himself recognises that for Petrograd such a unification would be a plus. He thinks, however, that it would be a minus for the provinces.

 

The Inter- District Organisation is above all a Petrograd organisation. Consequently without a doubt the unification of internationalist forces would be the biggest gain for the Petrograd movement This can in no way be compared with any damage such a Petrograd unification would bring to the provinces. Aplus for Petrograd in present conditions, when “Petrograd” is experiencing furious persecution by all counter-revolutionary elements, cannot but have a decisive character for us.

 

How could this present a danger to the provinces? It is the view of Comrade Yurenev that it would obviously do so. The provinces lag behind Petrograd. The political groups there are still mainly shapeless. Perhaps the provincial internationalists who want to break with the defencists cannot choose to side with the Bolsheviks but would rather side with united internationalists.

 

Such reasoning would have been more or less convincing were we a simple bloc of “internationalists” siding neither with the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks. But this is not the case. We rallied round a definite platform which does not differ from the Bolsheviks. In such conditions the maintenance of our organisation separate from the Bolsheviks is capable only of setting back and confusing the provinces. This can never be counted as a plus. Generally it would have been naive to think. when all issues are posed so sharply, that political groups in the working class or its socialist vanguard can be based on secondary features of an inner party character.

 

“But the party of a social democratic internationalists”, says comrade Yurenev, “cannot conceive of itself as a sect organised completely without any Mensheviks. And even if the Menshevik Internationalists differ from us on the question of the organisation of power – there is the possibility of common work with them, and the possibility and necessity of unity.”

 

That the party should not be a sect is absolutely correct. But unfortunately this general idea does not answer the questions facing us. If someone had proposed a vote on unity with the Bolsheviks and the Menshevik Internationalists or only with the Bolsheviks and we should have chosen the latter option then we could talk of sectarianism. But in reality none of us proposed such a vote. The Menshevik Internationalists have nowhere indicated their preparedness for unity with us. On the contrary, they particularly distinguish themselves from the position held in common between us and the Bolsheviks on the fundamental question facing the revolution – the seizure of power. Not only do they not break with their defencists in order to fuse with us and the Bolsheviks, on the contrary they emphasise in every way that which separated them from us. They restrict their tactics within the terms of the Menshevik defencist organisation, allowing themselves no independent political action.

 

If we, in our turn, were to base our work for unification on the evolution of relations between the Menshevik fractions this would mean turning our back on unified elements already of one mind in the name of preferred elements who display no willingness to fuse with us. Any time the supporters of comrade Manov could have seen their way to unite with us and the Bolsheviks – and we would have welcomed this – both for us and the Mensheviks it would have made no difference whether we were separate from the Bolsheviks or in an united organisation, united on the basis of a platform of revolutionary activity.

 

More important for us is the matter of the comparatively wide layers of workers who still look to the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. We can presume that these more backward masses will be pushed to the side of revolutionary socialism through the logic of their position and putting the government’s policies to the test-first of all the test of the offensive!

 

Each day the most oppressed layer of the peasantry and petit bourgeoisie will, starting in the army, put to the test their disappointment with the policies of the coalition government and seek a revolutionary outcome. These masses need clear, straightforward and simple political groups. The camp of petit bourgeois defencism must be answered by a united camp of revolutionary socialism. For the provinces-if we are talking of the provincial masses and not the provincial circles-the separate existence of the united internationalists and the Bolsheviks is not a plus but a minus.

 

On the question of unity it is time to pass from words to deeds. Along with the joint preparation of a general congress of internationalists it is now already necessary to secure the organisational unity of spoken and printed agitation and a fundamental unity of political action.

 

Comrade Yurenev says that unity must be created, not from above, but from below. This is correct when it is necessary to use pressure from below to speed unity at the top. Ithink that for the Petrograd workers, Bolshevik and Inter-District, now is the time to energetically come together.

 

20 Years Ago: The US-UK Invasion of Iraq

Our struggle for the defeat of the imperialist aggressors and for the victory of Iraq

Two documents from March 2003 with a brief introduction by Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 20 March 2023, www.thecommunists.net

 

20 years ago, U.S. and British imperialism unleashed a bloody invasion of Iraq based on the fake claim that it would posses so-called “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Their gigantic war machinery succeeded to destroy the Iraqi army and state within a few weeks. However, the US-UK occupation soon faced massive popular resistance, including a series of guerilla attacks. While the invaders killed several hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and militants, their troops also suffered important losses – more than they could endure (about 5,000 dead and 33,000 wounded). After years of heroic resistance, the imperialist occupiers were finally forced in 2011 to withdraw most of their troops.

The U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003 as well as the ensuing occupation played a major role in the work of the RCIT’s predecessor organization at that time. We took a position based on the Marxist principles of anti-imperialism – as we did in the Malvinas War 1982, the U.S.-led War against Iraq in 1991 or the current Ukraine War. [1]

Hence, while we did not lend political support for the bourgeois regime of Saddam Hussein, we unambiguously sided with the Iraqi resistance. Our comrades in the European imperialist countries openly advocated the defeat of the Yankee aggressors and the military defence of Iraq.

The headline of our paper in Britain, issued a few days after the beginning of the invasion, stated: “Beat Back US/UK Attack – We Say Victory to Iraq!”. Our Austrian comrades argued in their publications, shortly before the start of the war: “The anti-war movement which needs to be built, must not take a neutral stance but has to take side. Taking side for the victims of imperialism, for the oppressed and exploited, taking side for those who stand in the way for the profit greedy U.S. corporations. This is why we call for the immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops from the Middle East and for the immediate end of sanctions. If the war starts, we will take the side of the semi-colonial country. For the defeat of imperialism and for the victory of Iraq![2]

We intervened in the anti-war movement on the basis of such internationalist and anti-imperialist tactics. Our practical work had a focus on youth work and in Austria we played a central role in organizing school student strikes against the war. When the U.S.-led invasion started on 20 March 2003 we helped to organize such a strike in Vienna which brought several thousand youth on the streets. We worked towards building an alliance with other left-wing forces as well as migrant groups which organized a series of rallies and demonstrations in the coming years. [3]

Below we republish two articles which were issued in March 2003 by the RCIT’s predecessor organisation – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International. The first statement was issued on the day when the invasion began and the second a few days later.

 

* * * * *

Statement on Outbreak of War

League for a Revolutionary Communist International, 20 March 2003

 

1. The carnage of a full-scale imperialist invasion has finally been unleashed on Iraq. The three months farce of UN weapons inspections and UN Security Council debates is over. For Bush and Blair they were merely a ruse while the aircraft carriers, tanks and troops assembled in the Gulf.

2. Despite grotesque attempts at bribery, intimidation and trickery they were unable to get a second UN resolution authorising action. For the first time the US has been opposed by most of its imperialist "allies" and by most semi-colonial countries.

3. The main "collateral damage" of Bush and Blair’s drive to war has been to the United Nations itself, to NATO, and to the European Union. They have all been divided, weakened, discredited, as never before. The imperialist leaders have traded insults, impugned each other’s sincerity and made a total farce of the idea of the "international community". Revolutionary socialists have no time or inclination to weep over this self-exposure.

4. Now the diplomatic exchanges of insults, the propaganda over war aims is finished. The weapons of mass deception have given place to weapons of mass destruction, to B52 bombers and cruise missiles. Now it is a question of pounding the Iraqi army into a bloody pulp and using carpet bombing to "shock and awe" the civilian population into submission.

5. Now the fighting has started our sympathies must lie completely with those who resist arms in hand having their country stolen from them, their homes bombed and their children slaughtered. We must hope that the depleted Iraqi army and the long-suffering Iraqi masses can deliver punishing blows to the cowardly invaders. We must staunchly defend their right to use whatever means they have to kick the enemy out of Iraq and to strike at the assembled aggressors in Kuwait or the Israeli agents of US power.

6. We must encourage the masses of the Arab world, to rise up against their cowardly rulers, to strike at every element of US military and economic power in the region. By this we hope Iraq gains a victory over the United States, Britain and its other allies. For such a victory is the only progressive outcome possible.

7. The only benefit to humanity of the long diplomatic charade was the systematic exposure of the imperialist character of the US and UK’s intentions and of the impotence of the United Nations as a force for "international law." With each passing week CIA intelligence briefings were exposed as blatant lies, British government "dossiers" as crude forgeries. The inspectors’ reports revealed nothing. Bush and Blair’s self-contradictory lies have sounded an alarm to millions and better still have moved to them to direct action. As a result the global anti-war movement grew exponentially.

8. Bush and Blair claim they are liberating Iraq from a dictator and installing democracy. This impudent falsehood stands exposed by events now known to a new generation of anti-imperialists around the globe. For more than a decade after Saddam came to power in 1979 the USA and Britain supported and armed his regime with many of the weapons of mass destruction they complain of today. They covered up his crimes against his own people. They only "discovered" Saddam was a "criminal" only when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990; i.e. when he laid hands on "their" oil wells.

9. Even after expelling him from Kuwait the US helped him to stay in power rather than see him overthrown in a revolution made by his own people. Until last year the US was content to allow UN sanctions to slowly strangle and starve the Iraqi people, and cripple Iraq’s capacity to defend itself against a future US-led attack. In reality Saddam has posed no credible military threat to neighbouring states since 1991, let alone to the USA. So what changed US policy?

10. First Bush Jnr was appointed president of the US by the Supreme Court in December 2000 after he narrowly lost the presidential election. He then stuffed his government with men (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) who served under Ronald Reagan and who spent the post-cold war decade fashioning designs for a new universal US empire when they returned to power.

11. They wanted the US to use its post-Cold war total military supremacy to extend and embed its power across the world, unrestricted by international treaties or old alliances. Under Bush Jnr the new team set about tearing up existing international obligations to imperialist allies and semicolonial subordinates alike..

12. Then came 9/11. This allowed Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co to take their imperialist vision a whole stage further: the national sovereignty of other nations and the democratic rights of their citizens would be openly abrogated or destroyed if the US felt it was in its interest to do so. The new Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive" strikes against other states nakedly expresses the USA’s new offensive foreign policy.

13. Within 24 hours of 9/11 Rumsfeld urged Bush to plan an invasion of Iraq. Not because of any connection to 9/11 or al-Qaida (there was none). Not because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (they were destroyed in the 1990s). But because it was the easiest place to start to roll out the naked imperialist vision and by taking Iraq the US could reorder the whole Middle East and directly control vital oil reserves. Iraq is to be a huge military base for overawing the Middle East and the areas around it.

14. That is what this war is about: control over oil and the extension of US global power. Blair’s reasons are also clear enough. He has said that this war will "change the pattern of international relations for a generation". What he means is that there will be a Washington-London axis, with an "alliance of the willing" to impose a corporate capitalist world order. To be sure the poles of this axis are hugely unequal in strength: so much so that the USA’s "willing allies" will have influence only to the degree that they are willing to do the bidding of Washington.

15. The ideology of this new order will be unfettered market freedom and "democracy". In fact the latter will be a complete sham from the outset. Bush and Blair will not bring democracy to Iraq any more than they did to Afghanistan. US General Tommy Franks will replace Saddam as dictator of Iraq, pay the wages of the Ba’ath bureaucracy and oversee a second invasion of the country – this time by a series of US oil and construction companies that backed Bush’s hijacking of the White House. US corporate profits are thus boosted twice over: providing bombs to level Baghdad and Basra and the construction materials to make good the damage.

16. Many in the anti-war movement pinned their hopes for averting a war on France, Germany and Russia’s strategy within the Security Council. But this was merely an alternative imperialist policy. France – like Russia and Germany – had their own large contracts with Iraq’s oil industry and feared losing them to US companies. But they beyond that they hoped to use the UN to hinder US imperialism’s bid for uncontested global domination – which would inevitably impinge upon their own vital interests in Eurasia and the Middle East.

17. But French imperialism’s goal too was to see Saddam’s regime disarmed, Saddam himself overthrown by a palace coup and the country permanently occupied by UN forces – as complete a negation of Iraq’s sovereignty and its people’s desire for democracy as one could wish for. Despite their verbal opposition they have allowed their airspace, the bases, their railways, to be used by the US to mobilise for action.

18. The same can be said of the bourgeois liberal opponents of war. In the belligerent powers as soon as fighting starts they run to proclaim support for "our boys" now they are "risking their lives", to make clear they will always follow the maxim "my country right or wrong". They thus demonstrate their bedrock imperialist character. Their participation in the antiwar rallies was solely to exploit the antiwar masses at the next elections as the "antiwar" or "peace" party.

19. The anti-war movement – unprecedented in size and reach as it is – was not able to stop the imperial warmongers launching their attack. Why was this? Quite simply because the massive strength of the working class was not deployed early enough. The reason for this lies first of all in the chronic pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist nature of the leadership of the official labour movement in the main imperialist countries. The British TUC, the American AFL-CIO did nothing beyond issue pious pacifistic phrases.

20. Even the German, French, Italian and Spanish major union federations did little beyond supporting the demonstrations against war. Local sections and rank and file militants went further than this. But had the union leaders called out their millions of members in an mounting wave of political strikes, up to an including an all-out general strike, then Bush and Blair would have had to halt their foreign adventure.

21. It is no surprise that these bureaucrats did not take up an active opposition to their master's imperialist designs. Even their rhetorical antiwar fireworks were a tribute to the mass power of the antiwar mobilisations. But the left reformist, Stalinist and centrist inspirers of this movement did not focus their activities sufficiently on mobilising working class action. Mass demonstration, walkouts from schools and colleges, blockading troop and munitions trains are all brilliant and courageous actions. But to halt the drive to war or stop it once started the capitalist machinery of profit making must grind to a halt and the political power of the warmongers be challenged.

22. For this to happen revolutionaries, anti-imperialist, antiwar militants have to build a powerful united front with the organisations of the workers, above all the unions, to mobilise strike action. With the union leaders if possible, without them if necessary. For this delegate based councils of union, parties and other popular organisations need to be created That is why revolutionaries supported the call for "people’s assemblies" in Britain to do this and for the social forums and local chambers of labour to play the same role in Italy. In different countries different bodies could act to fulfil the same role. To refuse to do this is to hand the movement to the bureaucrats and the left reformists – a fatal move.

23. But now the actual horrors of war — if they are at all prolonged — can once again provoke an upsurge of mass anger and revolt. What must we do to in the coming days and weeks to help this to happen?

24. First, we must strike against the war. If demonstrations register the breadth of our anger then strikes are a measure of its depth. Bush and Blair’s violation of what millions see as elementary morality and legality, the huge "democratic deficit" in how they forced through war at home, will release millions from their normal tendency to obey the law without thinking.

25. We need to disrupt the bases and the airfields, block the munitions trains, sabotage the movement of war supplies, and appeal to soldiers to refuse to obey the "illegal" and immoral orders of their commanders .We must take to the streets, surround the parliaments, harass at work and at home those in government who sanctioned this slaughter.

26. In this we will find that we will be condemned most loudly by those liberals who yesterday considered the war unjust. Wretches! If the war was unjust and reactionary in the planning then it is even more so in the execution!

27. We work for the victory of Iraq. A humbled and defeated United States will give hope and inspiration to millions across the world fighting for their national rights and against dictators and democrats alike who rely upon Uncle Sam’s dollar and political backing to stay in office. It will encourage those who have suffered gravely from capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the countries of the former USSR.

28. A bloody debacle in Iraq for imperialism would shake the Colombian government to the core as it depends totally on Washington for arms and military aid to crush its own people. It would encourage the fightback against neoliberalism and US intervention in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela Ecuador. It will enormously encourage the growth of a new militant anti-imperialist upsurge.

29. Above all a defeat for the main sponsor of Israel and its whole expansionist project would greatly encourage the heroic Palestinian people and their resistance to national annihilation. Mass murderer Ariel Sharon can be expected to use the cover of the war to commit yet more bloody crimes on the West Bank and in Gaza. A defeat for the USA and Britain will be a huge blow at the racist settler state.

30. Inside the US and Britain their defeat would be such a huge political defeat that the massive attack on civil liberties and on immigrants and refugees would be undermined. It will further deepen the massive crisis with in the British Labour Party. In fact it will weaken the whole apparatus of the imperialist bourgeoisie within the world’s workers movement. It will strengthen the forces of class independence and class struggle. It will increase the prospects of revolution everywhere.

31. Second, we need to rebut the media lies that will come thick and fast in the next weeks. A battalion of 7,000 journalists are stationed in the Gulf – the vast majority of them will never get nearer the "action" then the hospitality tents erected for them in the desert by the military where they will be fed a diet of cover-ups and staged photo-opportunities.

32. Reports of civilian deaths ("collateral damage") will be routinely denied until the war is over; disorientated Iraqi civilians will be pressed into flag-waving to greet the UK troops in Basra.

33. The anti-war activists must take the war to the studios and offices of the global networks: BBC, CNN and Sky, and the main daily papers. We must challenge the lies at work and college. Trade unionists in the media must pull the plugs on the liars when they will not report the truth.

34. Never forget for a minute; the vast majority world-wide oppose this war and want it stopped. The more resolutely we act the more lives we save in Iraq. Legality, morality and reason are on our side. Mass action now can bind them into an unstoppable force.

* General strike to stop the war!

* Victory to Iraq!

* Victory to the Palestinian intifada

 

* * * * *

 

Iraq War: Imperialist Invasion Meets Stiff Resistance

League for a Revolutionary Communist International, 30 March 2003

 

The Iraqi armed forces and civilians are putting up far more effective resistance to the Anglo-American invasion than Washington and London thought possible.

Inflated with imperialist arrogance, they boasted the regime would collapse in a few days, unable to resist the massive force and technological sophistication of the invading armies.

For days they tried to suggest that Iraqi commanders and their men would desert, even change sides en masse. The grateful Shi’ites of southern Iraq would be showering rose petals on the US marines and British commandos as they marched in.

This scenario ignored a basic fact of life under capitalism. No people wants to see its country invaded, its natural resources seized, its rulers replaced by foreign armies, no matter how unpopular its own government may be.

Instead   of “three days to Baghdad” British troops got horribly bogged down  in Umm Qasr, taking over a week to capture the key port. The 'Desert Rats' had to beat a hasty retreat on their first attempt to enter Basra. US reports of an uprising there turned out to be disinformation.

Nasariya, a key crossing point on the Euphrates has seen a week of fierce resistance slowing the US tank advance on Baghdad. The civilian populations of Basra and Baghdad appear so far to be neither shocked nor awed by the day and night bombardments.

The first Iraqi crowd to receive the food and water aid from the Kuwaiti Red Crescent spoilt the photo-opportunity, by breaking into chants of “Saddam good! Bush bad!” according to the BBC World Service.

The USA has total air dominance and can attack the movements of any substantial armoured forces yet small groups of lightly armed infantry have harassed American convoys and the 350 mile over-extended communications lines. Bad weather — sandstorms and heavy rain — plus shortage of supplied slowed and even halted the US advance on Baghdad. 

The war that was supposed to be over within two weeks is now being declared to be a long haul, maybe even lasting for months. Over 100,000 more troops are being summoned from the USA.

Even the Coalition of the Killing is showing signs of strain. Bush and Blair have announced differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq. Tony Blair on the other hand talks of a major role for the UN in the interim government. The British desperately need to cloak their unprovoked aggression  as “liberation” and the  plunder of Iraq’s natural wealth as "humanitarian aid" or “food for oil”.

Bush and Donald Rumsfeld do not want the United Nations in Iraq except as a glorified aid agency. They want General Franks as gauleiter of Baghdad and another retired US general as civilian administrator. They don’t give a tinker’s cuss about the views of the “international community”. They just want to liberate Iraq from its people.

They are already  “liberating” Iraqi property held outside Iraq from its rightful owners. They demand that foreign governments hand over Iraqi property held in their banking systems on pain of exclusion from the international dollar exchange system.

But their brazen colonialism has one advantage over Blair’s spin — it is brutally frank and so fools no one. Blair is a nauseating hypocrite. His real purpose is to get a cut of the USA world empire.

Sensing his weakness Blair increasingly appeals on the people to “support our boys”. He even lies openly about British soldiers being executed in order to get the population onside.

Yet who put them “in harms way”? Bush and Blair. This whole filthy project is certainly not worth the lives of the dozens of US and British soldier who have died so far, let alone those of the hundreds of Iraqi civilians and the unknown numbers of Iraqi soldiers.

The best “support” we can give to British soldiers and their families is to fight here to get them out of Iraq immediately. Their death, maiming, lifelong health breakdown are a futile waste. Their killing of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians is even worse. It is a monstrous war crime.

The Iraqis, no matter who their leaders are, have every right to defend their homeland. If there is a war where one side is justifiably defending themselves and the other wrongfully attacking them then it is the duty of every democrat, let alone every revolutionary socialist, to take sides with those repelling the invaders.

There are those within the anti-war movement who say: “yes we agree but it is not tactically wise to say so”. But any determined patriot can spot this evasion. They will ask us: whom do you want to win? They will pose the dilemma:  “What if your anti-war opposition means ‘we’ lose?”  What use is an evasive or nonsensical answer: neither side? both sides? just stop fighting?

No, the only consistent answer — leaving aside the position of an absolute pacifist — is to say “yes, we want to see this invasion defeated: we do not want to see Iraq occupied.”

That is why we side with Iraq and why we must do everything we can to help their forces defeat the US/UK aggression. How can they do it? By any means necessary: guerrilla attacks, deception, suicide bombs, taking help from foreign volunteers, arms smuggled from Syria. Above all the regime must arm the population.

How can we help? By opening a home front against Bush and Blair, Howard, Aznar and Berlusconi on the streets of Europe, Australia, the USA.

The Roman Empire fell - the British Empire fell - the American Empire too will fall. Speed the day! Victory to Iraq!

 



[1] For an overview of our approach to various imperialist wars, we refer readers to Michael Pröbsting: Struggle of Revolutionaries in Imperialist Heartlands against Wars of their “Own” Ruling Class. Examples from the history of the RCIT and its predecessor organisation in the last four decades, 2 September 2022, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/the-struggle-of-revolutionaries-in-imperialist-heartlands-against-wars-of-their-own-ruling-class/ (scroll down to the end of the article)

[2] Michael Pröbsting: Bush führt Krieg für Weltherrschaft und Öl – Erklären wir Bush den Krieg! In: ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt Nr. 125 (2003), (our translation)

[3] For pictures and paper covers at that time, scroll down to the end of the above-mentioned article by Michael Pröbsting: Struggle of Revolutionaries in Imperialist Heartlands against Wars of their “Own” Ruling Class.

Review: Walter Daum – The Life and Death of Stalinism

Note by the Editor: The following essay was written by Peter Main and Clare Heath and published in 1994 in “Permanent Revolution” No. 10. This was the theoretical journal of the British section of our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International.

 

The publication of Walter Daum’s book* in 1990 could not have been better timed from the point of view of marketing. It hit the streets as the world in general and the left in particular were reassessing Stalinism. As regime after regime in Eastern Europe was toppled many on the left threw in their lot with the bourgeois critics of socialism.

“This book uses the tools of Marxism to analyse the Stalinist system”. This grand claim is from the introduction by Sy Landy, National Secretary of the League for the Revolutionary Party of the USA.

The aim of this review is to show that, far from using Marxism, Daum distorts it – and fails both the theoretical and programmatic test set by the collapse of Stalinism.

The central contention of Walter Daum’s book is that Stalinist Russia was a form of bureaucratic state capitalism.

Like Tony Cliff and numerous other centrists of Trotskyist origin, Daum claims to base his theory on Trotsky’s analysis. But unlike Cliff, Daum’s analysis of social relations in the former USSR rests on the assertion that the Stalinist economies exhibited “the laws of motion of capitalism in operation”. For Cliff Russia was capitalist despite the absence of the generalised operation of the law of value. For Daum, it was capitalist because of the role played by the law of value in the Soviet economy.

Daum stands in the tradition of CLR James, Raya Dunayevskaya and Kuron/Modelewski. All of these attempted to construct a theory of Soviet state capitalism based on the supposed social counter-revolution which took place in the mid-to-late 1930s with the introduction of various market mechanisms into the Soviet economy.

Thus, unlike Cliff and the SWP, Daum accepts Trotsky’s characterisation of Russia as a degenerated workers’ state right up to 1939, the point when Daum dates the social counter-revolution.

Yet Daum’s analyisis does share two methodolgical bases with Cliff. First, his whole case rests on a revision of the scientific meaning of certain key Marxist economic categories. Secondly, his argument is inevitably normative.1

Cliff sets up the norm of a healthy workers’ state, and by proving Russia does not fulfil the criteria declares that “it must be capitalist”. Daum also sets up a norm, a definition, but this time it is of capitalism. The definition is so one-sided and all-embracing that he inevitably “proves” Russia to be state capitalist. In the process he manages to deprive the Marxist concept of the transition to socialism of any coherent meaning. Ultimately he creates an internally contradictory theory of Soviet state capitalism which, far from building on Trotsky’s analyisis of pre-1939 Russia, challenges its very foundations.

 

Daum’s argument

 

To establish his case, Daum sets out to prove three things:

“These are: 1) that the possibility of statified capitalism flows from the Marxist theory of capitalism; 2) that a ruling class was formed out of the decay of the state and party bureaucracy in the Soviet workers’ state of the 1920s and 1930s; and 3) that the post-World War Two Stalinist states exhibit the laws of motion of capitalism in operation”. 2

This approach already tells us much about Daum’s method. He pays lip service to Trotsky’s analysis, without which “no one can reach a Marxist understanding of the Stalinist counter-revolution and society today”.3 But he does not base his own analysis upon Trotsky’s.

Trotsky’s analysis, culminating in The Revolution Betrayed, was not of a rising capitalist class and increasingly capitalistic functioning of the economy. Trotsky saw the consolidation of the power of a parasitic caste which, in order to maintain its rule, exercised a brutal and dictatorial regime over the economic system. This dictatorship denied the possibility of the democratic involvement of the working class, which alone could have ensured the efficient working of the system. Far from transforming itself into a stable class, the caste’s ruination of the economy could allow a capitalist counter-revolution, fascist in form, with which many bureaucrats could be expected to side.

To build on Trotsky’s legacy means to further develop and test this model, to elaborate it in the light of events and developments after Trotsky’s death. But this is not Daum’s approach.

Daum starts with a description of capitalism and then tries to establish the norm of “state capitalism”. What such a thing would look like, act like, is his first concern. Having established his model, his method is only to show that the Soviet Union has similar features, believing that proof of this will constitute proof of the capitalist character of the Soviet Union.

 

Soviet state capitalism?

 

With Daum’s first contention, that “statified capitalism” is a theoretical possibility, genuine Marxists should have no quarrel. But the task is to show whether or not the Soviet reality conforms to that theoretical possibility, and, if it does, how it developed in that way.

As Trotsky argued,4 labelling the Soviet Union as state capitalist gives the would-be theorist an advantage inasmuch as nobody can really tell what the term actually means. In effect, each theorist can give their own meaning to suit their purposes.

In Daum’s case considerable care is taken to avoid the pitfalls into which his predecessors have fallen. His account of other writers’ inaccuracies on the Soviet economy is a serviceable introduction to the subject.

In order to prove his first point, that a state capitalism could develop on the basis of Marx’s analysis, Daum devotes an entire chapter to the contradictions of capitalism. The main points that he wishes to establish are:

• that the existence of wage labour and the operation of the law of value, rather than the production of commodities, are the chief defining characteristics of capitalism

• that the origin of the drive for accumulation lies in the pressures of the class struggle, not in competition between capitals

• that, over and above the cyclical crises of capitalism, there is a long term trend towards falling profit rates which results from the greater centralisation and concentration of capital achieved by those crises.

The purpose of these three propositions is not difficult to see. The model takes shape before our eyes.

If there were a state capitalism then it would be characterised by wage labour and the continued operation of the law of value. Whilst there would not be great competition in the market between the different state capitals, there would nonetheless be accumulation. This accumulation would be very centralised and concentrated and, as a result, there would be an extremely low rate of profit. So great a proportion of total capital would be obsolete, and its value fictitious, that the entire economic system would be in constant danger of stopping completely through advanced sclerosis.

The similarities between this model and the Soviet economy are obvious. But they are not enough to prove Daum’s case.

In the first place Daum’s case relies upon an inadequate definition of capitalism. He fails to recognise that capitalism is generalised commodity production, which means centrally that labour has become a commodity (labour power), it is the commodification of labour which is essential to the existence of capitalism and which Daum fails to prove existed in the USSR after 1939. Secondly, Daum has to distort the nature of the transition period from capitalism towards socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and specifically the role played by wage labour and the law of value within that transition period.

 

Daum versus Preobrazhensky

 

To defend his theory, Daum launches an attack on the whole Leninist-Trotskyist understanding of the transition period. But it is a flank attack, aimed not at Trotsky himself but Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, the economic theorist of the Left Opposition who eventually capitulated to Stalinism in the early 1930s.

Daum wants to show that Preobrazhensky was wrong to say that the imposition of planning in the Soviet Union negated the operation of the law of value in the state sector.

To prepare the ground, Daum begins by taking issue with Preobrazhensky’s description of the German economy during the First World War. Preobrazhensky wrote:

“The regulation of the whole of capitalist production by the bourgeois state reached a degree unprecedented in the history of capitalism. Production which formally remained commodity production was transformed de facto into planned production in the most important branches. Free competition was abolished, and the working of the law of value in many respects was almost completely replaced by the planning principle of state capitalism” 5

Daum goes on to comment,

“Preobrazhensky drew back from concluding that the near replacement of the law of value in Germany had abolished capitalism, or even nearly so”.

Why “drew back”? Why the suggestion that Preobrazhensky might have thought Imperial Germany had abolished capitalism? The idea is absurd.

In his discussion of imperialist Germany, Preobrazhensky was making the relatively simple point that, even under capitalism, the operation of the law of value can be negated, for a period, by the state taking control of production in order to maintain its social order.

The Bolsheviks studied the experience of German “state capitalism” of the First World War period to see what lessons could be imported into the early Russian workers’ state. But there was a qualitative difference between Germany and the Russian workers’ state. In the former private ownership of the main means of production continued to exist and formed the basis of the economy. The state co-ordinated and intervened into aspects of production in order to secure supplies essential to the functioning of a war economy. The state also guaranteed orders for key industries and directed labour to some sectors.

The same was true for the British war-time economy in the years 1939-45. All these measures tended to undermine the free operation of the law of value, but they by no means subordinated it to a higher logic.

Daum is thus wrong to paraphrase Preobrazhensky as having claimed that “state capitalist planning cancels the law of value”. Preobrazhensky’s view was far more qualified, and referred to “aspects” being “almost completely replaced”, and only in those spheres taken under state control.

The purpose of all this for Daum is to establish a distinction between Trotsky and Preobrazhensky on the law of value with, by implication, Daum drawing his positions from Trotsky.

The central point about any discussion of the law of value under “state capitalism” is this: capitalism is capable of spontaneously negating the law of value in whole industries and for whole periods. But the function of this is to preserve the operation of the law of value as a whole, as the guiding mechanism of the capitalist economy.

When either a healthy workers state, or a bureaucratically degenerate one, negates the law of value it does so with the conscious aim of subordinating the economy to the interests of the working class or the bureaucratic caste. Indeed, for us, what “defines” a post-capitalist economy is the absence of the generalised operation of the law of value, even if aspects of it survive.

Daum has to distort Preobrazhensky’s understanding of imperialist state capitalism in order to accuse him of misunderstanding the transition period. But it is Daum who gets it wrong.

 

Daum on the transition to socialism

 

Daum refers to the Critique of the Gotha Programme, in which Marx outlined two stages in post-revolutionary society: communism, and the “lower stage” of communism which has come to be known as socialism.

Marx described having to deal with this earlier stage of communist society, “not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society”.6

Daum correctly points out that the dictatorship of the proletariat, which inaugurates the transition to socialism, must not be confused with the socialist “lower stage” of communism. But, having introduced the concept of the transition period, Daum proceeds to negate its dialectical content by declaring it to be a phase of capitalist society.

Having discussed the two stages of communism, having explained that elements of bourgeois right survive after the proletarian revolution and that, therefore, Lenin said the workers’ state was a “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”, Daum writes:

“The Socialist stage refers to communist society ‘when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society’. This does not mean that socialism is created right after the socialist revolution, when the bourgeoisie is ousted from state power. That would deny any transitional society between capitalism and socialism. No, it implies that the workers’ state that leads up to socialism is still part of the capitalist stage of history. The proletariat is a class that only exists within capitalism, as part of the wage labour relationship. Since it cannot be abolished and still rule its own state (the dictatorship of the proletariat), that state is in that sense still bourgeois”. 7

It should be clear from this why Daum places such a great emphasis on defining capitalism through the continued existence of wage labour.

The dialectical understanding of the transition period, where the proletariat continues to exist as a class in struggle against the remnants of the law of value, is reduced to a tautology: the proletariat only exists within capitalism; as long as the wage labour relationship continues to exist the proletariat exists, therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat is, economically speaking, a phase of capitalism.

The central error Daum makes is to confuse the wage form with the wage labour/capital relationship.

In the healthy, normative, transition period the proletariat moves as quickly as possible to abolish exploitation and the accumulation of capital, and to subordinate profit to need.

Even in the state sectors of a workers’ state the workers receive wages. However, they do not receive them from capitalists but from a central wage fund whose size is determined prior to production.

Under capitalism wages are the price of labour power and, if we assume that on balance their total price equals their total value, then the wage expresses the value of labour power. This value, like that of all commodities, is determined by the socially necessary labour embodied in it. And like other commodities under capitalism, its socially necessary labour is only determined after the event, in the act of exchange. Failed or successful exchange tells all those in the market what is and is not socially necessary. Wages may be adjusted in the next round of accumulation under capitalism on the basis of rearranging the previously existing proportions between unpaid and paid labour. This is done under the spur of competition between different capitals, the outcome of which is to constantly readjust what counts as socially necessary labour.

With the abolition of capitalist private property in the main means of production, the wage-labour relationship is qualitatively undermined. In this theoretical model of the transitional economy as a whole (that is to say including both state and private sectors) the wage form no longer expresses the relations of exploitation between capitalist and worker, constantly adjusted under the impact of competition between capital. This is so even if wages remain the form in which surplus labour is extracted in the transition period. In short, the wage-labour relationship becomes increasingly form without content.

In a post-capitalist society in transition towards socialism, wages would represent an entitlement to a definite proportion of the social stock of goods, in the first instance based on how much each person put into the stock. But this is not commodity exchange since the “value” of labour, its share of social wealth, is now determined prior to production. Wages, whether in the form of currency or certificates, are not a mediation between labour and capital that establishes the social value of individual labour, because this is established from the outset. Now it is only a way of mediating the exchange of labour for labour.

The fact that distribution of the rewards of labour is unequal between people in the transition period and under socialism reflects the fact that society cannot jump all at once beyond the limitations imposed on it by capitalism. But this distributional inequality is prevented from being the basis of exploitation since the workers’ state ensures that social ownership of the means of production are not subjected to the criteria of market competition, profitability and individual ownership.8

As the transition progresses and the material and cultural basis of society is raised, then the wage itself becomes less and less important for mediating the exchange of labour for labour. The decommodification of labour power means that an increasing proportion of social goods are provided as a collective right (basic housing, certain foods, power). Certain goods are still mediated through the wage form: they are paid for with wages. In a healthy workers state the proportion of these goods within total consumption should fall even if their absolute number grows. This stratum of consumption remains an expression of bourgeois right, that is a right of inequality.

Daum misuses Lenin’s concept of a “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”. Daum infers that this is because Lenin accepted that the economy was capitalist. But Lenin’s aphorism refers not to the content of the economy over which that state would rule, but to the very fact that any state was necessary at all. In the sense that we have established above, inequality exists in the transition period since individuals possess different abilities and these differences are rewarded to some extent. A state that guarantees this inequality—even if a workers’ council state—is to that extent a “bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie”. But the latter three words signify the fact that the same state has expropriated capitalist relations of exploitation, an important, qualitative measure!

 

Trotsky versus Preobrazhensky?

 

This view of wage labour under the dictatorship of the proletariat was employed by Preobrazhensky in his work on the USSR. He stated that in large measure state industry in the early Soviet economy “was abolishing the commodity status of labour power”.9

According to Daum, Preobrazhensky was wrong. Preobrazhensky’s “mistake” and his pre-eminence are both crucial elements in Daum’s attempt to explain why the Left Opposition, and thereafter the Fourth International, did not develop a state capitalist analysis of the Soviet economy.

Trotsky, untainted by this “error”, asserted that “principles of commercial calculation have been re-introduced and wages again made dependent on skill and output”. 10

The implication is clear: Preobrazhensky thought that statified industry was already ending the commodity status of labour power (and, therefore, the operation of the law of value) whilst Trotsky recognised that the law of the market, the law of value, not only continued to exist but should be made the basis of the state’s economics.

We have already explained that the retention of wages, the tying of rewards to ability and the decommodification of labour power are all part of the same unified process and not at all counterposed. What Daum sees as a counterposition is in fact a different stress that each is placing on aspects of the political economy of the proletariat.

The quote from Preobrazhensky is taken from The New Economics, published in 1926. It was an attempt to analyse the tendencies inherent in the Soviet economy as it approached the end of the reconstruction phase, a time when the emergencies and priorities of the early NEP were already in the past.

The quote from Trotsky is taken from his report to the Comintern in 1922 on the operation of the first year of NEP, when achieving a clear system of accounting was amongst the highest priorities of the Communist Party. To this end, as is well known, the state allowed the revival of the market.

“The gist of the New Economic Policy lies in the revival of the market, of its methods and its institutions.” 11

However, even then Trotsky went on to say, after listing the proportions of private and state owned sectors, that taxation and credit were two important levers “for securing the ascendancy of state forms of economy, that is, forms socialist in their tendency”. He added for good measure that the assertion that the state was capitulating to capitalism was “an obvious and crass distortion of the reality”.12

We could say the same for Daum’s portrayal of the rift between Trotsky and Preobrazhensky.

The law of primitive socialist accumulation

Daum argues that a fundamental difference existed between Trotsky and Preobrazhensky on the political economy of the transition period.

The other, and principal, error made by Preobrazhensky, according to Daum, is that he thought the law of value could be abolished and be replaced by the “law of primitive socialist accumulation” during the transition period.

Daum summarises Preobrazhensky’s argument like this:

“He expanded on the idea of a struggle between socialist consciousness and the capitalist inheritance embodied in the law of value. He regarded this struggle as one between two laws, the law of value and the “law of primitive socialist accumulation”. By this he meant the need of the workers’ state to expand production in the state owned sector of the economy, mainly the largest enterprises in heavy industry, by siphoning off a portion of the surplus value produced by the peasantry. If the state sector were left to expand solely on the basis of the surplus value it produced itself, it would grow only ‘at a snail’s pace’ (Bukharin’s phrase) and the working class would remain a minority of the population for a long time.”

Daum continues:

“State accumulation was certainly necessary, but Preobrazhensky’s theory was wrong. The dual character of production in a workers’ state cannot be represented as combat between laws, a capitalist law of value and a socialist law of accumulation. First of all, we have seen that accumulation is an unfulfilled capitalist task left to the workers’ state to carry out. The laws of accumulation are derived from the law of value, not counterposed. In the short run, accumulation runs counter to raising the cultural and living standards of the masses, obviously it could be accomplished far more speedily if the masses sacrificed their immediate well-being and all resources were dedicated to more means of production. In the long run, if dead labour dominates living, that is, if accumulation is the supreme goal, then all the evils of capitalism in its epoch of decay will follow and accumulation itself will be undermined.

“Nor is accumulation by the state at the expense of the petty-bourgeois peasantry specifically socialist. Achieved by transferring surplus value from the weaker and smaller units of capital to the larger, centralised and more advanced, it is again a law of capitalist development.

“The reason why Preobrazhensky’s theory is wrong is that the proletarian consciousness that combats the law of value is not a blind law independent of the will of the workers. There is no law regulating conscious planning (other than the law of value which holds it back). Preobrazhensky’s own attempts to formulate his “law” present no objective developmental process. They merely acknowledge the level of Soviet economic backwardness. The best interpretation that can be made is that Preobrazhensky’s law was an effort to give theoretical backing to the Left Opposition’s strategy for industrialisation. But it had the effect of drawing a line between the state sector and the private sector, as if the law of value could penetrate the former only from outside.”13

If that was what Preobrazhensky said, then he was wrong. But that was not what he said.

This is how he formulated the law of primitive socialist accumulation:

“The more backward economically, petit-bourgeois, peasant, a particular country is which has gone over to the socialist organisation of production, and the smaller the inheritance received by the socialist accumulation fund of the proletariat of this country when the social revolution takes place, by so much the more, in proportion, will socialist accumulation be obliged to rely on alienating part of the surplus product of pre-socialist forms of economy and the smaller will be the relative weight of accumulation on its own production basis, that is, the less will it be nourished by the surplus product of the workers in socialist industry.” 14

In other words, the less industrially developed a country is, the more it will have to rely on taking a part of the surplus created by the peasantry, or other petit-bourgeois strata, to begin industrialisation and reconstruction.

To some extent, the law would apply to all post-revolutionary societies:

“It must not be forgotten that the period of primitive socialist accumulation is the most critical period in the life of the socialist state after the end of the civil war. In this period, the socialist system is not yet in a condition to develop all its organic advantages, but it inevitably abolishes at the same time a number of the economic advantages characteristic of a developed capitalist system.”15

For the workers’ state to rapidly achieve the economic advantages of socialist planning, it must appropriate resources from outside its own sphere of economic organisation.

It is quite clear that Preobrazhensky did not conceive of his “law” as blind, independent of the will of the workers. On the contrary, it was a statement that if the socialist state cannot get hold of sufficient resources from its own sector, it will have to get them from somewhere else. In this form it would appear to be incontrovertible.

Perhaps this is why Trotsky wrote:

“The analysis of our economy from the point of view of the interaction (both conflicting and harmonising) between the law of value and the law of socialist accumulation is in principle an extremely fruitful approach, more accurately, the only correct one.”16

Preobrazhensky’s law demanded conscious recognition by the state authorities in order to operate effectively. The state authorities, personified by Bukharin and Stalin, insisted that the socialist sector had to develop on the basis of the surplus it could generate for itself. This was too slow to guarantee the defence of soviet power—therefore development had to be funded from elsewhere and levers of accumulation devised that accelerated the spontaneously arising levels of accumulation in the state sector. Where else was there apart from the peasantry and the world market?

Daum, like Bukharin in his argument with Preobrazhensky, wrongly believes that the existence of a “law” is incompatible with conscious planning and direction of the economy. This is in effect an undialectical counterposition of freedom and necessity, as if the former is freed from any obligation to the latter. But Marx and Engels recognised that “freedom is the recognition of necessity”. Applied here this boils down to a recognition that there exist definite proportionalities in the rates of accumulation between different sectors of the economy. There is in this sense a lawfulness about the rates and tempo of consumption and production which if not respected and acted upon can lead to breakdown in accumulation.

The Left Opposition’s programme, for example on housing and industrialisation, included the use of unequal17 exchange with the countryside and, where possible, on the world market. To enable the state to do this it was necessary to alter the structure of the economy, to go further than the nationalisation and monopoly of foreign trade already established, and institute a planned distribution of resources.

Within this framework the state could shift its resources unrestricted by the law of value. What it could not do was shift them any way it pleased. It had to recognise the physical scale of resources; it had to maintain an appropriate relationship between “Department One” and “Department Two”. It had to work within the very limited planning capacities it had at its disposal. But, within the state controlled sphere, they constituted a qualitative barrier to the subordination of that state sector to either the domestic or international law of value.

There was a danger in Preobrazhensky’s theorisation, more particularly in The Crisis of Soviet Industrialisation, the work that followed The New Economics, . That was his attempt to construct a mathematical model of the Soviet economy in which advance was, essentially, predicated only on the correct dispositions within the national economy and abstracted from the prevailing social and political relations.

Trotsky had already drawn attention to the danger that such work would be taken over by the Socialism in One Country theorists.18

Nonetheless, to imply that his “law of primitive socialist accumulation” (not “socialist law of accumulation” as Daum calls it) provided a rationale for the brutal subordination of the working class’s living and cultural standards under Stalin’s industrialisation drive is a crass misinterpretation.

In fact, Daum’s view of proletarian consciousness as the magic ingredient is far closer to the view that prevailed in the 1930s period of Stalinist industrialisation. Convinced that it was the repository of “proletarian consciousness”, the Stalinist regime devised voluntaristic schedules in the belief that through an effort of will alone one can overcome all material obstacles.

Of course, Daum is as critical of the results of the Stalinists’ voluntarism as we are. It follows that there are objective limits to what a transitional regime can achieve with given resources.

What determines those limits for comrade Daum? The question has already been answered: the law of value regulates planning. This must be so because the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers’ state, is still a part of the capitalist period of history:

“Even if the entire economy were brought under state ownership, accumulation would still be a capitalist survival. The socialist tasks would remain; advancing the cultural and material level of the workers, shortening the working day, bringing the masses into the running of the state, increasing equality etc. The struggle against the law of value would continue.”19

For Daum the workers’ state is, fundamentally, a benevolent capitalism. The economic laws of the society are those of value but the state, nonetheless, “struggles against the law of value” by raising the cultural level of the workers, shortening the working day in keeping with increasing productivity.

This reduces the proletarian character of the workers’ state to directing the distributional outcomes of the labour process, diverting some of it towards cultural and socially progressive undertakings. For all Daum’s insults hurled at “middle class Marxism”, his conception of the struggle against the law of value has far more in common with Fabianism than with Bolshevism.

 

A degenerated workers’ state?

 

In his discussion of late-1930s Stalinism, Daum attempts to show that the Stalinist economies were indeed “generalised commodity producing” economies with competition between enterprises, with the surplus taking the form of value. He can only do so on the basis of a profound mistake concerning the political economy of the working class under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Yet the real mystery—given this mistake—is why Daum refuses to draw these conclusions about Stalinism in the 1920s and early 1930s. Basing his argument on the idea that all forms of the transitional society are “phases of capitalism”, Daum undermines the case for seeing a “social counter-revolution” in the late 1930s. Why is such a counter-revolution necessary if the degenerated workers’ state is itself a form of capitalism?

To cover up this inconsistency Daum reduces the proletarian content of the workers’ state to its political form of rule. For Daum the class character of a transitional regime is determined by the subjective will of its ruling class or caste, since its economic content is essentially capitalist.

If there is nothing “socialist” about planning, state ownership and the state monopoly of foreign trade, then only the political consciousness of the ruling stratum characterises the class nature of the state. Thus only the political consciousness of the Bolsheviks separated their regime from state capitalism. Such an argument is a rejection of the whole Bolshevik strategy for building socialism via the seizure of state power and the utilisation of that power to negate the law of value.

It is correct to say of the young soviet state that it was “socialist” only in the sense of its aspirations and the direction of its policies. But to leave it there is to ignore the structural changes which that state introduced into the economy, namely statification, planning and the monopoly of foreign trade, and thereby deny that there is any qualitative distinction between the economy of the workers’ state and that of a bourgeois state. This becomes doubly important when we are considering not a revolutionary workers’ state but a degenerated workers’ state where the only distinctive class characteristics are those of the structure of the economy.

Daum wants to keep his Trotskyist credentials by retaining the idea of the degenerate workers’ state from 1924 to 1939. But he undermines his own argument in the process. No qualitative changes took place in the economy of the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1939.

What happened in this period was that Stalin eradicated all opposition and finally dominated a regime which had, by trial and error, developed a means of extracting sufficient production from the statified economy to maintain itself.

Certainly this period, which saw the majority of surviving ex-Bolsheviks purged or executed, represented the squeezing out of the bureaucracy of the last remnants of a subjective revolutionary consciounsess. But in no sense could it be identified as the decisive collapse of the subjective intention to build socialism. As Trotsky himself documented, this took place with the adoption of the “socialism in one country” perspective, much earlier in the degeneration process.

 

Daum on Trotsky

 

We have already noted that Daum wants to accept Trotsky’s “outlook”20 with regard to the Soviet Union up to 1939. But all that Daum actually accepts from Trotsky is the label “degenerate workers’ state”.

For example, in relation to Trotsky’s proposals for dealing with the crisis caused by the First Five Year Plan, Daum writes:

“Unlike the capitulators, Trotsky denounced the forced pace of industrialisation and collectivisation; the accompanying barbarism, irrationality and disorganisation had weakened the foundations of the Soviet state. ‘The Soviet economy today is neither a monetary nor a planned one. It is an almost purely bureaucratic economy.’ Accordingly, he called for a retreat from adventurist expansion and a ‘year of capital reconstruction’. This meant replacing the Five Year Plan with a return to the market—in the hope of later regaining the possibility of centralised scientific planning and economic accounting. ”21

Daum’s point is clear enough. Trotsky argued that it was not a planned economy and that the only way to regain any rationality was by the return of the market. This would suggest that Daum is right in saying that the underlying laws of the economy, whether recognised or not, were those of the market, the law of value.

Now let us look at what Trotsky did say in the earlier of the two articles referred to by Daum:

“The laws that govern the transitional society are quite different from those that govern capitalism. But no less do they differ from the future laws of socialism that is of a harmonious economy growing on the basis of tried, proven and guaranteed dynamic equilibrium.”22

Whatever else Trotsky may have thought, he certainly did not think that the underlying and inevitable laws of the economy were those of capitalism.

We can then read further,

“It is impossible to foretell the extent that the crisis will assume. The advantages of the planned economy remain during crises as well, and one may say they show themselves with special clarity precisely in a crisis . . . The workers’ state meets the crisis with all its resources. All the dominant levers—the budget, credit, industry, trade—are concentrated in a single hand. The crisis may be mitigated and afterwards overcome not by strident command but by measures of economic regulation.”23

What can this mean except that, first, the Soviet economy of late 1932 was a planned economy and that, secondly, to overcome the crisis, it was necessary to use state regulation of the economy.

And what about the “Year of Capital Reconstruction”? Trotsky used this as a sub-heading in his article, employing the word “capital” in the sense of “fixed installations”, factories, railways etc. The content of what he was demanding sheds further light on his argument:

“Having been knocked off balance, the Soviet economy is in need of serious reconstruction. Under capitalism the disrupted equilibrium is restored by the blind forces of the crisis. The socialist republic allows the application of conscious and rational cures. It is impossible, of course, to halt production in the whole country . . . but there is also no need to do that. It is enough to lower the tempos. The current productive labour for 1933 cannot be carried on without a plan, but this plan must be for one single year, worked out on the basis of moderate, quality quotas.”24

This does not sound like “replacing the Five Year Plan with a return to the market”. On the contrary, Trotsky explicitly counterposes the necessary planning to the “blind forces” of the market.

To explain Trotsky’s later observation that the economy was neither “monetary nor planned”25 does not require Daum’s argument but the quite simple recognition that, in that discussion, Trotsky was counterposing “monetary”, meaning capitalist, to “planned” meaning socialist, i.e. he was explaining that the economy was neither entirely free of its capitalist origins nor entirely controlled by rational planning.

The Trotskyist tradition has always referred to the workers’ state as precisely this, a transitional state.

 

The “social counter-revolution” of the late 1930s

 

There is another side to Daum’s method which we can examine in the context of his analysis of the completion of the capitalist counter-revolution between 1936 and 1939. This is the side which replaces argument altogether with simple assertion.

The year 1936 is very important for Daum because it marks the beginning of the final act in the rise to power of a bureaucratic capitalist class. This was accompanied, in his opinion, by a final consolidation of capitalism within the economy. The evidence for this is the right turn undertaken by the regime and exemplified, for Daum, by the tightening of political control leading up to the purges, the introduction of a “panoply of capitalist methods” and “revisions of Soviet theory and practice”. These included rapid advancement of arms production, restoration of traditional institutions and the return to Soviet respectability of “old ruling class professionals, like clergymen and lawyers”26, increased Russian nationalism, increased competition and inequality between workers, the consolidation of “Stalinist planning” and the reform of Soviet law.

Now, all of these things certainly happened and Trotsky drew attention to them at the time. The point, once again, is that such phenomena are entirely compatible with the characterisation of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers’ state. In fact the degenerated workers’ state analysis enables us to understand these phenomena better. Daum’s discussion of the development of “Stalinist Planning” illustrates this.

This gets to the heart of Daum’s theory that the Soviet economy was capitalist. Nowhere is the substitution of assertion for argument and evidence more glaring:

“Despite the formal hierarchy of planning, where in theory all goods produced were transferred from one firm to another not through a random market but by administrative decision, the reality was that competition flourished at every level in the planning system. The more elaborate the Stalinist economy became, the more competitive the different interests became; if not over sales, then over resources, labour, funds and assignments.”27

The “evidence” cited for this? A lengthy quote from a 1963 textbook on the Soviet justice system!28 More important than the sheer lack of any worthwhile evidence is the simple equation of competition with capitalist relations. It is every bit as fatuous as Cliff’s argument that because the USSR competed with the USA in the field of arms technology this resulted in the imposition of capitalist relations within the USSR.29 Competition under capitalism merely executes the inner laws of capital that lie in production. We are forced to return to the earlier question. Are the “resources, labour, funds” allocated on the basis of the law of value or not? We have already shown that this is not the case. Falsely abstracting from the nature of the competition proves nothing.

It is actually even odder than Cliff’s position because of the lengths to which Daum has gone to explain that, in highly monopolised state capitalism, there is precious little competition! If there were real competition there would be losers, firms which were inefficient would go out of business and the capital they represented would be destroyed. But this is exactly what did not happen in the Soviet Union.

Daum’s position is further contradicted by his own summary of the system of “Stalinist Planning”:

“It is in reality administration by fiat. The very concept of socialist competition as a means for subordinating all units of production to the drive for maximising accumulation makes genuine planning impossible. . . . Likewise the market for commodities was replaced by a system of mandates issued from above, based not on scientific planning that meshed resources with needs but on a system of priorities. Heavy industrial and military sectors were favoured and agriculture and light industry subordinated to them.”30

This is just another example of the normative method at work: if there can be no genuine planning (as in a healthy workers’ state) then there is no planning at all. At the same time, there is the fiercest of competition– but also rule by fiat–and the market has been replaced by a system of mandates.

“Marxists of every stripe”, we are told:

“have overlooked the decentralist tendencies emerging in the midst of political centralisation and national planning.”

Only comrade Daum, it seems, realised that,

“the heart of the matter was the intensification of the struggle over surplus value and accumulation”.31

With such insight, who needs evidence?

 

The new capitalist class?

 

Daum’s account of the rise of the “new capitalist class” is no more rigorous. The essence of his argument is that the scale of the purges of the late 1930s ensured that hundreds of thousands of state, party, trade union and military cadres, who had roots in the revolutionary past, were replaced by young members of the new ruling class typified by Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Andropov.

We have no quarrel with Daum over the extent of the purges. But for Daum the key point is that the formative experience of the October Revolution, vestiges of Bolshevik consciousness, had been eradicated. Daum finds the moment of social counter-revolution in a change in the political consciousness of the ruling stratum, not in a change in social relations.

 

The inner laws of Soviet state capitalism

 

Although Daum’s book purports to be an exposition of the capitalist character of the Soviet Union, the actual amount of space devoted to a positive presentation of the theory is very slight. The argument rests on analogy rather than analysis, and fails to provide much detail or, indeed, evidence.

The heart of the chapter devoted to “Stalinist Capitalism” is a comparison of the supposed characteristics of a state capitalism with various well-known features of the Soviet economy. Thus, for example, a state capitalism would exhibit considerable centralisation but this would not (according to Daum’s model) eliminate competition between sectors.

“A significant feature of the Stalinist economy is its subdivision into separate ministries acting in many ways like the giant corporations of the West: they compete among each other for shares of the system’s overall resources, but cannot completely suppress internal competitive tendencies”.32

At one level, this approach is laughable. It is asserting an equal content on the basis of an entirely superficial formal comparison that is highly contentious and for which absolutely no evidence is given. At another level, however, it does illustrate Daum’s fundamental position that capitalism rules until there are sufficient material resources to remove the need for competition for “shares of the system’s overall resources”. Daum does not want to say it, but the logic of his argument, once again, is that the Soviet Union was capitalist long before the 13th Congress.

It would be tedious to make the same point about each of the features referred to by Daum. Most Sovietologists confirm that there has been an over-concentration on extensive development, especially of producer goods industries, and to say that this could be expected to happen in a statified capitalism neither proves nor disproves anything about the class character of the Soviet Union. As Trotsky pointed out, it is also an inevitable consequence of bureaucratic control of a degenerate workers’ state. The same can be said for lousy standards of consumer production, for the failures of planning, for the continuing social inequality of women—all features presented by Daum as definitive proof of the capitalist nature of the Soviet Union.

There is, however, a rational kernel to one aspect of Daum’s argument. The period from 1936 to 1939 witnessed the creation of a system of control of the economy which enabled Stalinism to survive longer than Trotsky had predicted. This fact does have to be explained. Daum’s observation that Trotsky ceased to write detailed analyses of Soviet developments after The Revolution Betrayed, primarily because of the absence of information, is entirely valid. However, what is required of Trotskyists is not the rejection of Trotsky’s model and the imposition of an entirely different one, but an examination of Trotsky’s model in the light of information that is now available to us.

What this would show is that during and after the Second Plan, the bureaucracy evolved a number of pragmatic methods for dealing with the errors inevitably caused by its methods of planning. The system has been researched and presented by Harrison33, and was based around the creation of a network of Gosplan plenipotentiaries who were empowered to take whatever action they thought necessary to complete projects that had been prioritised by the political leadership. This same system was instrumental in allowing the maintenance of war production after the invasion of 1941 and for the astonishing creation of new war industries in Siberia prior to the counter-attack of 1943. Thereafter, in the reconstruction phase, the regime was able to utilise the lessons (as well as the actual blueprints, very often) of the First and Second Plans to rebuild the most important infrastructural and industrial projects with much lower “overhead costs” than in the Thirties.

In other words, Trotsky’s assumption that the economic dislocations caused by bureaucratic planning would eventually reach a pitch where economic collapse would cause the downfall of the regime, was offset by developments of which he appears to have known nothing.

This is not dissimilar from the way in which, while Trotsky expected the crisis at the end of the First Plan to result in the collapse of the Stalinist leadership, the speed with which they adopted important elements of Trotsky’s own proposals ensured Stalin’s survival. This did not cause Trotsky to abandon his analysis, but to refine it. The same can be said with regard to his famous predictions about the impending collapse of Stalinism towards the end of his life. The conjunctural predictions proved to be wrong, but the factors which falsified the prediction do not falsify the analytical model of the degenerate workers’ state.

Post-War Stalinism

Daum does not end his analysis with the 1930s. He goes on to consider Stalinism’s role in the post-war world. 34

As far as the class character of the Soviet Union is concerned, the only further innovation made is the argumentation to support the characterisation of the Soviet Union as imperialist. This relies mainly on drawing an analogy with Lenin’s characterisation of Tsarist Russia. Like the Soviet Union this was not a net exporter of capital and did not share many of the features of “classical” imperialism. Nonetheless, Lenin regarded it as imperialist because it was an integral pillar of the world imperialist system. Similarly, says Daum, the Soviet Union does not export capital but has clearly been central in maintaining the world order of imperialism since the Second World War. Clearly this analysis stands or falls by the characterisation of the Soviet Union as capitalist in the first place.

That it has collaborated in butchering revolutions, made concession after concession to imperialism and has generally been guided by the need to prevent any strategic advance by the international working class, is not at all incompatible with its character as a degenerated workers’ state. Stalin did all of those things during the period when Daum thinks he ruled a degenerated workers’ state.

This is no terminological debate, as there is a key political point to calling the Soviet Union imperialist. It means that revolutionaries do not defend it, even in confrontation with the main imperialist powers. Opposition to defence of the Soviet Union was the driving force behind Shachtman, and it is the driving force behind Daum and his organisation. This final point can be evidenced by looking at the programmatic conclusions drawn at the very end of the book.

 

Hollow orthodoxy

 

Daum strikes a very revolutionary attitude by insisting that correct the programme for the Soviet Union is, essentially, the Transitional Programme developed by Trotsky in 1938 for capitalist countries. He argues that the programme of political revolution adopted by Trotsky for the Soviet Union has become completely outmoded.

For example, it makes no sense to talk about “regenerating the soviets” when there have been none for effectively three generations. Similarly, for the working class to take power would require the “smashing” of the essential organs of the state such as the secret police and the officer corps.35 Daum therefore outlines the key elements of the Transitional Programme that are likely to be applicable in the Soviet Union (and other similar states): sliding scale of hours, socialisation of housework, workers’ control, expropriation of key industries by the state, public works, workers’ management, national programme for housing, pensions, creation of strike committees, workers’ militias, soviets and the workers’ (and farmers’ where appropriate) government in a workers’ state.36

All very orthodox. In reality, all very hollow. Such a programme avoids all the political problems actually facing revolutionaries in the Soviet Union. Take the “expropriation of key industries”. What are we to understand by this? The key industries are already state property—how can the state expropriate them? Daum is not talking about expropriation by a revolutionary government because he specifically explains that it is principled to demand nationalisation by a capitalist government.

What does workers’ control imply in a fully nationalised economy? It can only mean asserting the control of the workers over the economic decision making concerning their plants. But the decision-making is still, ultimately, in the hands of the central economic planning and banking institutions and so the demand really comes down to taking control of them. The workers of the Kuzbas coal mines must, at the very least, re-establish the distribution and supply links that have been disrupted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. To do this they do not need to smash the planning ministries, they have to take control of what’s left of them. That being the case, of course, it suggests that, wherever such systems still exist, even though not yet under workers’ control, revolutionaries will defend them against either dismantling or privatisation.

That is what Daum wants to leave out of his programme. He is perfectly well aware that, if it is necessary to defend a single statified industry, or a single planning agency, then it is necessary to defend them all. And when an entire economy has been statified it is necessary to defend the whole economy and that means defending the state controlling that economy against imperialist aggression.

Daum’s programme would leave a revolutionary in Russia completely disarmed as the massed ranks of restorationists and imperialists move in to complete their destruction of the last vestiges of the planned economy and the degenerate workers’ state. The capitalist counter-revolutionaries recognise the importance of the destruction of these vestiges of the October Revolution even if Daum, armed with his theory, does not.

 

Footnotes

1 For an analysis of Cliff’s theory of state capitalism see Paul Morris, “The crisis of Stalinism and the theory of state capitalism”.Permanent Revolution 9, London, 1991

2 Daum, The Life and Death of Stalinism, New York 1990, p22

3 ibid, p194

4 Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, London 1973, p245

5 cited by Daum op cit p82

6 cited by Daum, ibid, p112

7 ibid p120

8 Naturally, the partial continued existence of private capital in a workers’ state in the consumer goods sector stands in contradiction for the general abolition of exploitation.

9 E. Proebrazhensky, The New Economics, Oxford 1965, p.191. He wrote further:

“As regards the workers. . . in the state economy, the special feature of the situation which has come into being here is the process of abolishing the commodity status of labour power, a process which has begun and which is progressing as the productive forces develop.”

10 Leon Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Comintern, Vol 2, London 1974, p267, cited by Daum, op cit, p138

11 ibid, p267

12 ibid, p269

13 Daum, op cit, pp147-9

14 Preobrazhensky, op cit, p124

15 ibid, p89

16 Leon Trotsky, “Notes on Economic Questions”, in Challenge of the Left Opposition, Vol 2, New York 1980, p57

17 By “unequal” we mean both selling above and below “value” as was necessary to achieve the objective.

18 And it could certainly be argued that this was the basis upon which Preobrazhensky defected to the Stalinists after the industrialisation turn of 1928-29.

19 Daum, op cit, p148.

20 ibid. p9

21 The quotations cited by Daum on p165 come from, Leon Trotsky, The Degeneration of Theory and the Theory of Degeneration, April 1933 and The Soviet Economy in Danger, October 1932 Daum has reversed the chronological order so that it appears that the need for a “year of capital reconstruction” flows from the characterisation of the economy.

22 In Trotsky’s Writings, 1932, New York 1973, p278

23 ibid, p279

24 ibid, p281

25 In Trotsky’s Writings, 1932-33, p224

26 Daum, op cit, p172

27 Daum, op cit, p175

28 H. Berman, Justice in the USSR, 1963, cited Daum, p176

29 See Morris, P op cit.

30 Daum, op cit.

31 ibid. p177

32 ibid. p197

33 M. Harrison, Soviet Planning in War and Peace, 1938-45, Cambridge, 1985

34 Daum discussed the impact of Stalinism’s survival on degenerating Trotskyism. In this context he makes many correct observations about, for example, disputes between the International Committee and the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. These points have been made by Workers Power and the LRCI many times. Both in The Trotskyist Manifesto, London 1989, and in various action programmes, the LRCI has made it clear that it is entirely possible to overcome such anachronisms in Trotsky’s programme for political revolution whilst retaining the essential features which are related to the existence of a degenerated workers’ state, eg. defence of planning and statified industry etc.

35 Daum, op cit, pp357-36

 

Against market socialism

Note by the Editor: The following essay was written by Keith Harvey and published in 1996 in “Trotskyist International” No. 20. This was the theoretical journal of our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International.

 

Defending the very idea of socialism is one of the most important tasks for Marxists today. It has to be defended not only against its capitalist critics but also the theorists of “market socialism”. Although the ideological offensive of the free-marketeers in the 1980s was primarily aimed at the remnants of Keynesianism, their arguments originated as a critique of the economic policy of the early USSR. The dominance of the neo-liberals, and the paralysis and collapse of the Soviet Union, led many “socialist” economists to concede the need for market mechanisms even in a future socialist society. In the first two-part articles, Keith Harvey defends the need for socialist planning.

Capitalism long ago lost its generally progressive character. The human costs that have to be borne for economic development under its rule far outweigh the benefits. Absolute poverty has grown enormously within all the capitalist economies over the last 25 years. Over one billion people now live below subsistence level; each week in excess of 100,000 children die of malnutrition and other poverty related diseases.

Although capitalism has continued to revolutionise technique, it can only do so at the expense of productive employment.

Tens of millions are kicked off the land by capitalist agribusiness while industry and commerce cannot find them employment in the cities. Nor will the capitalist state take responsibility for the suffering imposed in this way. Welfare benefits are being pared back, leaving millions to depend on crime or charity for survival.

Social inequality has widened as the free market has let rip. A minority have enriched themselves from the sale of undervalued state assets, by an ever more ruthless exploitation of previously protected resources, the depression of their employees’ wage levels, and by tax cuts.

Workers find their conditions of labour increasingly intolerable. In some parts of the world capitalism still cannot survive without bonded labour; elsewhere millions are deprived of rights and forced to work longer and more unsocial hours. Millions more have had security of contract removed or undermined. Millions more again are trained for jobs that simply do not exist and are pressed into others out of desperation. In short, alienated labour grows year on year.

Alongside this waste of creative power, capitalism continues to squander other economic resources.

In the search for competitive advantage, modern machinery is scrapped while it still has on average around half its useful life ahead of it. Modern corporations waste billions duplicating research. Even larger sums are spent unproductively. Hundreds of billions of dollars annually are wasted in order to protect the capitalist class from its own working class—whether in sealing itself off from the effects of the urban nightmares it has created, or by arming and training its agencies of repression.

Similar amounts are spent on “defence”: protecting rival capitalist classes from their claims and counter claims against each other. Meanwhile, competition drives rival capitalists to spend millions on advertising: persuading workers of the importance of subtle differences between products that they do not need. The constant creation of ephemeral tastes, while the basic needs of tens of millions for housing and food go unmet for lack of “effective demand”, is a resounding refutation of the neo-liberal ideologues’ boast that the market provides for the maximum satisfaction of the maximum numbers.

Yet, despite all the evidence, these hired apologists of the market still insist that it guarantees the optimal allocation of resources, the equality of participants in exchange, freedom of choice and just rewards of the factors of production. When these arguments fail they shrug their shoulders and insist that at any rate the market is an eternal or natural way of regulating human economic activity.

 

Contradictions of capital

 

Regardless of what the apologists claim, the market was not a spontaneous creation of blind economic laws; Neither is it an a-historical institution as old as humanity itself. Rather, the capitalist market emerged in Europe in the sixteenth century as a qualitative extension of the simple commodity mode of production that had existed as a subordinate part within all class societies.

It was the creation of an entire class of people who had no means of survival apart from their ability to work which transformed simple commodity production into generalised commodity production. The emergence of a market in human labour power required political–above all state– intervention to break up traditional patterns of economic activity and to destroy the ties that bound labourers to the means of production and to the land. In this transition to capitalism alternative or supplementary sources of income—other than the sale of labour power—had to be forcibly denied to the mass of direct producers in this transition to capitalism.

Nor was this a once-and-for-all act in the dim and distant past of Europe. It was reproduced time and again on an ever more brutal and larger scale wherever imperialism conquered colonies and implanted capitalism among indigenous peoples.

Once forcibly established, the laws of the market became eternalised in the minds of those subject to them. The main task of bourgeois political economy for the last 150 years has been to “prove” the natural and eternal superiority of these laws. Karl Marx, however, scientifically revealed the real mode of operation of the laws of the market, in his re-elaboration of the classical labour theory of value.

He demonstrated that alongside the realm of equality of commodity owners in the market place there exists the despotic rule of commodity owners over workers in the factory. The purchase of labour power is but the first step to the exploitation of its use value and the extraction of the surplus generated by this ruthless enjoyment.

Misery, degradation, alienation all flow from the fact of commodity ownership once labour power has itself been made a commodity. Hence, the generalisation of the market brings forth wage slavery.

In a market economy, the allocation of economic resources, including human labour, is regulated by the law of value: the generalised exchange of all commodities according to the quantity of socially necessary labour-time worked up in them.

This law applies to the value of labour power itself and, indeed, it is only because it applies to labour power that the law of value can come to regulate an entire national economy. Such regulation requires a common measure for the value of the labour embodied in all commodities produced within the national economy and this can only be derived from a socially average price for labour power. Such a price can only be established where labour power has become a commodity, and was, therefore, impossible before capitalism.

The law of value regulates the production of goods and services and the modes of distribution and exchange that arise production. But it does so blindly, as a post festum result of the competing and clashing operations of many autonomous and private owners of capital. What is socially useful emerges only as a result of a blind process that generates much waste, disproportion and overproduction.

This capitalist market is doomed because of the crisis it generates. The Marxist critique of the market does not originate in an abstract, humanist desire for equality but, rather, from the recognition that capitalism generates social crises that can only be ended by the abolition of market regulation of economic life.

This capitalist market produces economic crises which no capitalist or government can forestall indefinitely. So long as the social rule of capital continues, such crises forcibly resolve the systematic disproportions and overproductions that are generated by the market’s operation. Production and consumption are forcibly and repeatedly brought back into line through the destruction of products for which no buyer can be found, despite the fact that many of these commodities are needed.

In its many attempts to stave off the effects of crisis, capitalism has always been forced to limit, or even partially negate, the operation of the law of value; in this regard it anticipates and mimics socialism. It prepares the working class—now larger than at any time in history—for the tasks of socialist transition.

It has created a working class numerous and educated enough to take over the functions of management in production for itself. It has created techniques of market regulation and manipulation that can be taken over and extended. It has created planning instruments—partially applied and incapable of lasting effect while private property owners predominate—by which capitalism seeks to minimise the wasteful consequences of anarchy in production.

These foretell the end of market regulation of economic life.

However, just as this market did not arise peacefully but had to smash aside obstacles in its way, so the end of the market in regulating economic life will be neither peaceful nor instantaneous. The forcible overthrow of the state machine that protects and guarantees this market is an essential first step. This allows the wealth and capital of the minority to be expropriated and placed in the hands of society.

Nonetheless, the eradication of the market will not be quick; the market, cannot be simply abolished any more than the state can. It must wither away. In post-revolutionary society, some scarcities will continue and the distribution of scarce resources may well be achieved, in part, through market mechanisms. The market will have to be manipulated as it becomes a declining factor in economic life; it must be forced to serve the cause of its own abolition. This is the aim of the transition period between capitalism and socialism under the direction of a revolutionary workers’ government.

Notwithstanding the blindingly obvious deficiencies of the operation of the free market, from the African continent to the urban ghettos of the USA, the left is on the ideological defensive.

The collapse of the Stalinist ruled states since 1989 has convinced many commentators on the right and left that there is no logic in seeking to put an end to the market regulation of economic life.

In addition, socialism’s critics discredit the cause of socialism in the West by pointing to the failure of public ownership and nationalisation in capitalist societies to prevent inflation and mass unemployment. Many activists in the international labour movement and in the new generation of youth are influenced by these arguments. Those seeking to replace capitalism with some form of socialist society have been placed on the defensive—politically and ideologically. It is time to go on the attack.

 

The neo-liberal defence of capitalism

 

In the years between the two world wars, the “Austrian school” of bourgeois economics (von Mises, Hayek) developed a critique of the political economy of socialism. Following hard upon the experience of “war communism” (1918-20) in Russia, Hayek and von Mises argued that it was impossible to organise a rational economic system without full use of money, competitive markets and prices. Hayek argued that socialism had no economic answer to “the general problem which arises everywhere when a multiplicity of ends compete for a limited quantity of means”.

For Hayek, this problem can only be solved in a blind fashion as a result of the unplanned outcome of competing decisions by individual and atomised producers and consumers in the market place. Since for Hayek “value” has no objective foundation in labour, it can only exist in the subjective evaluation of the usefulness of a product to various competing consumers and producers. These colliding evaluations are co-ordinated by the market price system which sends signals to all consumers and producers about the relative value of goods.

A central plan, devoid of such a price system and market, cannot arrive at such an evaluation as to what is the most rational use of scarce economic resources.

A system of private property in the means of production was essential for the Austrian school so that an incentive system (profit on the one side and risk of failure on the other) could compel decisions. These decisions alone could stimulate innovation and enhance labour productivity.

The Austrians also insisted that planning was incapable of solving the “informational problem” that was solved automatically by markets. The millions of goods that existed were all different from each other, even examples of the same type of goods were in different states of wear and tear.

Moreover, technological improvements occurred incrementally and repeatedly. In short, no central plan could possibly collate and co-ordinate the necessary information to make operative plans work. Even if the information could be gathered, formulating a plan would require a set of equations of such a magnitude as would be beyond the scope of mathematical science. Any attempt in that direction would necessarily lead to a reduction in labour productivity as compared to capitalism.

During the course of the debate, Hayek shifted the weight of his argument on to a different plane. He insisted that a system of inharmonious competition between rival private property owners is the only way that fragmented knowledge (about product improvements, structure of demand) can be generated. He accepted that in a static system of demand and supply and of equilibrium prices (the price at which supply and demand are in balance) it could be possible to solve the problem of information. But this could not be done in a dynamic, ever-changing and competitive system.

In this sense, the Austrian argument is not about whether information can be gathered to make allocation possible, but rather that competition and rivalry are the only way that entrepreneurship and economic progress can be guaranteed. They also guarantee improved knowledge, collated ultimately via a price system.

The Marxist response to the ultra-free market views of the Austrian school has to start from a critique of its methodological assumptions about the nature of economic life.

Hayek adopts the standpoint of extreme individualism and subjectivism. The needs of the consumer are seen as the driving force of all economy. All of economic life is reduced to market exchanges between free and equal private property owners.

Marxists, while not denying the reality of such a sphere of economic life, contest the idea that this level of economic life provides an explanation of the key regulatory dynamic of economic development, that is, that it determines the allocation of economic resources in a capitalist commodity economy. Marxism, therefore, provides an alternative account of economy which insists on the historical and relative character of economic laws, and rejects a timeless and a-historical conception.

Hayek’s extreme subjectivist account of economic forces naturally clashes with the reality of capitalist development. A crucial argument, for Hayek, is that market prices contain all the information private commodity owners need to make rational decisions about resource allocation. But this is patently at odds with the way real capitalism works.

Hayek assumes that prices are parametric for all consumers (i.e. given in advance and non-influencable); consumers are price-takers. This is not generally true. Much production (e.g. defence procurement) is undertaken only after a tendering process in which the nature and quality considerations of the commodity have been decisive and the price is then given for that specification.

Moreover, contract enforcement, the firm’s reputation and delivery times, among other issues, affect decisions about market exchanges as much as, if not more than, price.

As for Hayek’s suggestion that entrepreneurial risk-taking provides the main dynamic for economic progress under capitalism, it is only necessary to contrast the real character of innovation and technological progress with this nineteenth century myth. Today’s multi-national corporations seek to monopolise products and research in a way which minimises risk-taking.

Furthermore, Hayek operates with an absurdly unrealistic concept of perfect competition in which producers have free and unrestricted entry into and out of markets. In truth, the market only offers up fragmented knowledge for any individual and this knowledge is only a partial and inadequate guide to the social effects of decisions taken. It is impossible for any individual to be aware of important and possibly decisive public and social facts that will affect the rationality of their own individual decision.

For example, the effect of a decision over the siting of public infrastructural developments near a town or factory cannot be foreseen. The effect on one individual of a decision taken by another person may, in turn, alter the assumptions under which the first decision was taken.

In particular, competition between egotistic rivals in the market place, guided only by current prices, cannot lead to optimum use of society’s resources when it comes to investment and accumulation, i.e, future production. This must be so since it is beyond any one individual to calculate future price movements that will render his/her current decisions about investment rational or not.

So the fragmented character of knowledge and its unforeseen trans-individual or social costs can render economic decisions wasteful. Resources are needlessly duplicated; or in that output may find no final consumer. Atomised decision-making is irrational in that it inhibits economic progress.

All these criticisms of Hayek’s economic model come back to the same point: he makes a false (idealistic) abstraction about the nature of economic life. Rather than generalising it out of the real class character of production under capitalism he does so from the one-sided nature of individuals in market exchange.

It has to be added that Hayek is also guilty of an idealistic abstraction about human nature in general, which is in full contradiction to all the results of modern psychology and other social sciences. Hayek conceptualises human individuals as essentially full blown bourgeois: independent from other individuals, sovereign in their decisions, judging all human relationships only according to the exchange value that others command, acting solely in the pursuit of their individual material interests.

Direct human relationships (as opposed to exchange-oriented ones), based on trust, solidarity or love, do not figure in this abstract concept or, if they do, are completely separated from the “economic sphere”. Therefore, for Hayek, capitalism not only fits with human nature, but even more, capitalism is nothing less than the full realisation of human nature. It flows logically that there cannot be any other social system “more human” than capitalism.

While it is true that capitalism subsumes everyone’s social life, it is completely false to suggest that this is in harmony with human nature. On the contrary, human beings are in need of direct social relationships if they are to realise their potentiality to the full.

The “market nexus” may not be so damaging in the case of bourgeois property owners, since the (successful) capitalists can draw psychological strength from their social power and wealth. Because the social power of capitalists is buttressed by the unpaid labour of their workers, capitalists are compensated for their alienation.

The workers, however, are robbed of their objective contribution to social and historical development. Their personalities are impoverished to the same extent as the capitalists enrich themselves. The increasing levels of psychological and psychosomatic disease within the working class is, in the last analysis, the result of capitalism’s destructive effect upon human relations.

 

Market socialism: old utopias for the new millennium

 

The intellectual challenge mounted by Hayek and the liberal free market tradition is comprehensive and consistent, even if it is wrong. It establishes its case for capitalism on multiple grounds; it is supposedly more efficient, uniquely innovative and guarantees maximum choice. Moreover, the argument is underpinned by a view of human nature that neatly dovetails economics and social philosophy.

Marxism can rise to this challenge. By contrast, the various schools of “market socialism” cannot. They are an eclectic, muddled blend of economic and philosophical logics. They do not withstand intellectual scrutiny and have failed the test of experience wherever they have been bench-tested in policy terms.

“Market socialism” has a long intellectual history. Its origin can be traced back to various utopian schemes in the early nineteenth century such as those of Saint-Simon, Owen, and Proudhon. In class terms, these corresponded to the yearnings of an intermediate social layer—the petit-bourgeoisie—crushed between the dominant classes of capitalist society.

The onward march of capitalism massively reduced this social class of artisans and shopkeepers and their intellectual saviours. More recently and the standpoint of market socialism has been adopted by intellectuals, academics, representing the liberal urban middle class: repelled by collectivism and class struggle on the one hand, and the dehumanising effects of capitalist exploitation on the other. While the specific policy prescriptions have moved on—from the labour coupons of Proudhon to the “stakeholder” shares in multinational companies much beloved by John Roemer—market socialism still yearns for the impossible: commodities without capital, capital without exploitation, money without speculation. In short, Utopia.

In modern times, the origin of “market socialism” lies in the 1930s. Stung by the attack of Hayek, various writers defended the rationality of socialism but mounted their defence from within bourgeois economics, reject Marxist political economy and the labour theory of value.

Fred Taylor and Oscar Lange were foremost representatives of this school. They approached their defence almost entirely from the standpoint of the efficiency of socialism. This in turn had two component parts. First, efficiency meant the most cost-effective use of available resources; secondly, the price mechanism should be used to guarantee equilibrium between demand and supply.

For them, “socialism” was nothing more than public ownership of the means of production and an egalitarian distribution of income. They assumed that political democracy would be similar to bourgeois parliamentarism but they believed that their economic model was also compatible with political authoritarianism, such as existed in the USSR.

Lange accepted that Marxism could explain the evolution of society from one class system to another but argued that it could not explain “everyday reality”. For him, bourgeois economics “understands static economic equilibrium under a system of constant data and the mechanisms by which price and quantities produced adjust themselves to these data.” While Marxism could explain the development of classes in production, the labour theory of value could not explain the distribution of goods and services between individual consumers and firms.

For this Lange relied on neo-classical marginal utility theory, a branch of bourgeois economics that arose from the 1870s and whose essence was to abstract the working of supply and demand in the market from production. As a branch of economics it revolved around subjective estimation of the value (utility) of goods to the individual. So the study of the subjective worth of an object to a person replaced the objective study of the social relations of people in the production and exchange of commodities. This theory more and more abandoned the study of “real costs” lying behind production in order to study “utility”.

Despite this, the work of Taylor (The Guidance of Production in a Socialist State) and Lange (On the Economic Theory of Socialism) was accepted as the most complete pre-war refutation of the Austrian claim that economic calculation was impossible under socialism. They assumed that the means of production were publicly owned but that there was complete freedom of choice in consumption and in the choice of jobs. Taylor argued that the method of allocating goods should essentially be the same as under capitalism. The state would own the means of production and be responsible for distributing income according to the requirements of social justice. Production would be guided by consumers’ preferences but these preferences would be expressed by “demand prices” in the market.

According to Lange, production is undertaken by independent and competing firms but they have to produce under two “parametric rules” as established by a Central Planning Board (CPB). The first of these rules is that the choice of the combination of factors must minimise the average costs of production, so that the marginal productivity of factors is equalised; secondly, the scale of output should be determined at the level at which marginal costs become equal to the price of the product. If firms operate according to these rules then the prices of labour and consumer goods are determined by the market.

Prices of production goods should be set, initially, by the CPB based on a calculation of costs of a range of alternatives. Given these, the quantities supplied and demanded would be determined. If it appeared that the prices set out by the CPB failed to match supply and demand, then prices would be adjusted by a system of “trial and error” until they did. Hence, by mimicking the competitive market, the CPB would arrive at demand and supply schedules for all goods and services.

There are many criticisms to be made of the Lange solution from a Marxist standpoint, most of which flow from the insistence on abstracting the system of production from that of distribution. There can be no possibility of overcoming alienated labour or commodity fetishism in this model of “socialism”. Human labour and its all-rounded development is not the starting point for Lange; indeed he proceeds from the efficiency of production and the balance between supply and demand. Hence labour is treated as a factor of production whose price is to be set on the open market, at a level established by firms operating according to parametric rules to govern efficiency.

Moreover, the freedom and sovereignty of the consumer is, in fact, shallow and limited. The consumer is separated from his or her role as worker and hence the consumer cannot influence the production of consumption goods before production, or take any decisions about the introduction of new goods. Rather, the consumer is nothing but a passive price-taker of a given limited range of consumer goods which they are “free” to buy or not. The fact that a commodity is put on the market at a price that covers it‘s costs of production is no proof that it is the commodity that the consumer would have preferred, given full knowledge of the possible range of alternatives prior to production. Similarly, the “trial and error” procedure for mimicking the competitive market and arriving at equilibrium prices is a wholly unrealistic model of the way prices are arrived at.

As a system, it is based on Walrasian equilibrium theory. This model makes the completely unrealistic assumption that individuals can adjust their plans to produce or consume in response to price signals before they actually buy and sell. In this model, repeated responses to varying price signals reveal consumers’ preferences and the auctioneer (i.e. the CPB in this case) co-ordinates the process. Thus, the CPB would announce a set of prices and everyone would decide whether they wanted to buy and sell at these prices. This information would be processed by the auctioneer and then prices would be adjusted to bring supply and demand into line. Only then would sales and purchases take place. The problems associated with atomised sequential decision-making are neatly avoided by this process; in short, it is (falsely) abstracted from real time and, therefore, reality. In sum, Lange and Taylor simultaneously present both an unworkable model of the market under capitalism and a technocratic and social-democratic vision of socialism in which the working class remains exploited.

 

Market as a corrective to bureaucratic planning

 

The next stage in the market socialist debate arose out of attempts to reform bureaucratic command planning in the degenerate workers’ states. Here, market mechanisms (e.g. enterprise autonomy, profit-maximising behaviour) were advocated and/or introduced in order to correct the increasing tendencies towards stagnation (declining productivity), limited consumer choice and a poor record of technological innovation.

In the mid-1980s, Alec Nove, in his Economics of Feasible Socialism reflected on the experience of market correctives to central planning. It was a negative assessment. The book became the bible of the left social-democratic intelligentsia in the West who tried to defend the possibility of “socialism” against the neo-liberal critique by lambasting the experiment of centralised planning.

Nove proposed that five types of property were needed, each possessing different advantages. First, centralised state companies should own the strategic parts of industry, commerce and finance. These would not be self-managed enterprises, but both administratively and financially centralised.

Secondly, Nove proposed “socialised enterprises”, that is, state owned enterprises with full autonomy and a management responsible to the workforce. They would be medium-sized and should cover the bulk of social production and services. They would work under conditions of “benign competition”, which he took to mean that “market success” would influence the earnings of managers and workers, but the means of production could not be sold or bought and the state would retain some powers in the case of bankruptcy.

Thirdly, co-operative enterprises would be privately owned by the workforce, self managed, small in size and fully responsible for their own success or failure. Next, there would be small-scale fully private enterprises, with capitalists allowed to employ not more than around 10 workers. Finally, Nove suggests that the right of self-employment be recognised (e.g. freelance journalists, plumbers, artists).

Nove accepts the neo-liberal critique that centralised planning is per se inefficient because of the irresolvable informational problems involved. So the “centre” would not attempt to plan the whole economy but would merely retain certain functions. Via parliament, it would decide on the distribution of social wealth between accumulation and consumption. This would be effected by the tax system. Crucially, the centre would decide on central investment needs (i.e. building of new factories and infrastructures). Meanwhile, the state banks would monitor decentralised investment as well, but intervene only in case of obvious duplication.

The central planning board would control the centralised state corporations and would define the market rules for the socialised and private enterprises. It could even intervene in this sector in exceptional cases. The state would promote environmental protection, transport planning, science and regional development through use of subsidies. As to the nature of current output there would be long term plans, but they would contain only recommendations, not orders, for the socialised enterprises.

Nove is very clear that this role for the centre would leave the bulk of the economy to be ruled by the market. Co-operatives and private enterprises clearly could go bust. In the socialised enterprises as well, the workforce would have to “take the responsibility for the management”, that is, become unemployed in the case of closure, except in cases where society had a strong and democratically expressed interest in protecting a particular enterprise. There would be a few state regulated prices for infrastructural services but most prices would be market prices.

Profits are problematic for Nove only if they are privately appropriated. In the socialised sector they are simply an indicator of efficiency and success. This is true only for the individual firm. The overall rate of profit obviously depends on the wage level which, for Nove, should be determined politically and not economically.

In this system, there would be no exploitation, says Nove, as the power to dispose of profits remains mainly in the hand of society (i.e. parliament). Wages should be closely correlated to productivity but, at the same time, there should be legal limits to wage differentials. For Nove, a labour market is indispensable because only wage differentials can channel the labour force to the most efficient uses. The idea of voluntary distribution of labour not only overestimates human altruism, but ignores the practical problem that the individual worker could not know where the socially most sensible workplace for him/her is.

All experience of self-management, under capitalism and in the degenerate workers’ states, shows that a lack of interest in the long term well-being of the enterprise emerges when there is no property relation between the enterprise and its workforce. Nove’s solution is that there should be an enterprise fund, equally owned by all employees. This would grow or shrink according to the development of business. Any new worker would have to buy into that fund and on leaving the worker would get this (expanded or reduced) share back.

Nove estimates that in this way the workers would develop the necessary entrepreneurial spirit to increase production in response to rising market prices because otherwise their enterprise would lose market share, incomes would fall when prices were coming down and, in the long term, this would lead to a devaluation of the enterprise fund. To prevent the most successful firms from achieving a monopolistic position, and thereby liquidating the competitive drive, Nove insists that anti-trust laws would be necessary.

Business cycles that are typical for market regulated economies can be prevented, according to Nove. He thinks that credit policy, strategic investment, price control in the centralised state sector, incomes policy and the tax system are all important anti-cyclical measures to correct a recessionary economy.

Nove wants to combine social ownership of the main means of production, democratic control of strategic investment and the rate of accumulation, on the one hand, with market regulation of production and distribution on the other. He thinks that this would be a harmonious supplement and does not see that within that system an aggressive contradiction would be lodged. Two modes of economic regulation would be set in motion that would represent (i.e. respectively serve) different classes.

Central directives set by the planning authorities concerning income and employment would, in Nove’s model, be constantly undermined by the decisions taken by autonomous enterprises, which would be guided in their micro-economic decisions by considerations of profit maximisation. It would be natural in the latter case that enterprises would be differentially successful. What response should be then forthcoming from the centre when some firms lost out in this competition? What if the goods produced were unprofitable but fulfilled a minority social need? What if a firm sought to shed labour or close a part of their production in order to get back into surplus?

It is likely from the outset that such unforeseen developments would immediately render sections of the plan redundant and throw the rest of the plan into disequilibrium. Further, any failure to stop unemployment or income inequalities between enterprises would contradict the structure of demand envisaged in the national plan and be incompatible with the egalitarian ethos of the transition.

The enterprise fund in Nove’s model is, in fact, the embryo of private ownership in the means of production. Managers would argue (and in successful enterprises they would find support among their workers) that they wanted to invest their enterprise fund to extend or improve the fixed capital of their firm, thereby acquiring ownership rights in it. Other managers would fight for the right to give credits out of their enterprise funds to other enterprises and, in the case of their inability to pay back, it would be an obvious option to turn these into ownership shares. They would organise politically for these aims, probably together with the small capitalists and co-operatives who would be demanding an extension of the limits for the size of private capital.

In other words, the bourgeoisie would fight first for more rights, and eventually for their unlimited class rule. On the other hand, the workers of the unsuccessful enterprises, who would face low wages and even unemployment, would demand state intervention. They would argue that the failure of their enterprises was not their fault but that objective changes in the market conditions (e.g. superior competition from a much bigger company that had been allocated greater investment, or from a more developed country) had made their success impossible.

Although Nove believes that state interventionism can avoid recessions, real life would show that the dynamism of the market was stronger and enterprise failures would be the simple result of declining overall demand. Why should some workers carry the consequences of “system errors” and others not? Of course, these workers would also politically organise to fight for a generalisation of state ownership, and consequently for thoroughgoing central planning.

Another factor would contribute to the development of class struggle. Under market conditions an average rate of profit is established in the whole economy. As the rate of profit represents the amount of profit per unit of advanced capital (constant and variable), it is independent of the specific amount of labour time extended in individual enterprises.

This means that enterprises with the same numbers of workers may “earn” completely different amounts of profit, depending on the value of the constant capital of the enterprise concerned. If the income or the enterprise fund share of the workers were in any way correlated to the profit of the enterprise there would be widely differing wages and/or fund shares. Obviously, those who took advantage of such a system would be politically inclined to defend it, whereas those who lose would be opposed to it.

Nove‘s “socialism” is conceptually unstable, because it tries to institutionalise a sort of dual power. Instead, such an arrangement would break down and a political fight would result in the definite victory of one side or the other. Either the freedom of private ownership would be restored and capitalism regain its full rights, or the workers would achieve their emancipation from market fluctuations, i.e. from the post festum determination of their individual (private) work as socially necessary work. And that is only possible under a democratically planned economy.

 

Markets, choice and innovation

 

The debate around the issues raised by Nove dominated the second half of the 1980s, up until the collapse of Stalinism. The fall of the Berlin Wall shifted the debate even further to the right. The West won the Cold War and capitalism began the process of reclaiming the planned economies. Even prominent advocates of market socialism in the East renounced their long held views.

The theory of buttressing a central plan by the use of the market did not stand the test of experience. Various experiments in Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Gorbachev’s Russia between 1965-87 suggested that if the curbs on enterprise autonomy were substantial (e.g. inability to sanction investments for additional capacity, inability to cease trading or to sack workers) then enterprise autonomy could not lead to effective mimicking of competitive markets and the system descended into chaos.

A number of Western social democratic academics and economists (e.g. Roemer, Millar, Le Grand) have drawn the conclusion that there is no room for a plan at all in market socialism.

At their most extreme, these writers have abandoned any role for central state regulation in any type of production (or even workers’ management of the enterprise), including investment goods, and advocate a free competitive market in setting prices (and thereby supply and demand) for all goods and services (including labour). The claim that this is a “socialist” model at all rests on the advocacy of a specific form of public ownership of the means of production (citizens’ ownership of company stocks) and thereby the egalitarian distribution of profits.

These writers are, above all, concerned with choice and innovation. It has been suggested that removing the market allocation of commodities would lead to a reduction in the range of goods and services and in the level of consumer satisfaction. The market socialists argue that the market and the price system are the best way to co-ordinate the huge quantity of information about consumer needs and desires. By contrast, passing this information up and across any planning system without distortion would be impossible, it is said, and so no plan could ensure that production conformed to the (ever changing) pattern of demand.

In reality, consumer satisfaction under capitalism is restricted both on the supply side, by the demands of profit maximisation and competition, and on the demand side, by the structure of income. In the first place, under modern capitalism, the consumer is forced to pay far more than the average cost of production for goods and services due to the huge distribution costs (including advertising) involved in marketing any product. These can typically amount to more than 50% of market price.

In the second place, under capitalism, consumption patterns are not set by the consumers but by the producers. The growing monopolisation of production gives companies the power to substitute products with higher profit margins (e.g CDs over LPs) which leads to the narrowing of choice for the consumer. The clothes industry, for example, determines seasonal fashions according to the need of companies to increase their turnover.

On the other hand, consumer choice is irrelevant without income to make demand effective. The housing market, a key sector of all modern industrial and service economies, is fuelled by a core of second-home buyers while homelessness escalates alongside this demand. The idea therefore, that market price is an adequate, let alone the best, signal of consumer wants is grotesque. All it actually reveals is the structure of income established by exploitation and the inequality of private property ownership.

Many writers sympathetic to centralised planning of some sort (e.g. Itoh, Elson) as well as all market socialists, have argued that even a de-centralised planned economy would have a problem generating innovation as there would be no competition between enterprises. They have argued that in order to stimulate improvements in technique, as well as new goods, enterprises would have to be allowed to command a “monopoly profit” as a result of devising a new product line or a new process.

This view must be rejected on the grounds that, far from reconciling individual and social needs, it brings them into conflict. It would mean de facto if not de jure recognition of private property (in a patent for a new product or technique for example). This would then obstruct the rapid diffusion of new inventions across society and, therefore, condemn part of industry to inefficiency and relative backwardness.

Market socialism, then, is an inherently contradictory combination of economic logics and regulations.

Competitive capitalist markets demand a multiplicity of private owners of capital who are each responsible for taking risky decisions about the pattern of investment, about the structure of productive capacity. These decisions have to be taken individually, in broad ignorance of decisions of the other producers and motivated by the desire to maximise profits over the longer term.

Only the interplay of these blind impersonal market forces establishes equilibrium levels of employment, prices and interest rates that confront all private capitalists.

Even the most weakened form of “socialism” which gives most free rein to competitive markets in setting production and price levels still has a core defect; namely, that the collective, egalitarian form of profit distribution and common ownership of property rights, conflicts with the mode of production of those profits.

“Market socialism”, then, is a late twentieth century form of petit-bourgeois socialism which, in the words of the ABC of Communism “protests against large-scale capital, but it does so in the name of the ‘freedom’ of petty enterprise.”

In the nineteenth century this petty enterprise was artisanal in character; today’s market socialists preach the freedom of the self-managed or co-operatively run industrial enterprise; freedom not only from large-scale capital (i.e. monopolies and banks) but from central plan directives.

But such freedom will ensure chaos and anarchy. It will guarantee dislocation between the aims of the producing enterprises and the changing needs of the consumer. It will be “freedom” bought at the price of growing inequality.

In the end collective property rights will be deemed incompatible with such freedom. In short, it will make socialism impossible.

 

Against the market: Planning the future

Note by the Editor: The following essay was written by Keith Harvey and published in 1998 in “Trotskyist International” No. 24. This was the theoretical journal of our predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International.

 

If "deregulation" was the buzz word of the 1990s boom, "supervision" looks set to be the received wisdom of the turn of the 21st century recession. Whether it is the European Union trying to make its economies converge for monetary union or the G7 responding to the Asian crisis by suggesting that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should oversee international flows of capital, the need to control the anarchy of the market is evident to big business and bourgeois politicians alike.

We can predict that when the next recession hits the major economies, and the threat of militant working class resistance becomes apparent, the political parties that represent the "left wing" of the bourgeoisie will take up the call for the state to step in to counteract the spontaneous operation of the market. Whether this takes the form of counter-cyclical investment programmes, subsidies or even a return to state ownership of fundamental economic sectors, they will hope by such measures to neutralise and divert militancy away from the fundamental questions of who ultimately controls the economy

Revolutionaries will respond to such developments by explaining how they leave capitalist control intact, using taxation to compensate bankrupt companies or to modernise obsolete industries.

They will demand expropriation and argue for the creation of organisations of workers' control as a step towards the socialisation of the entire economy and its subordination to the interests of the working class.

In the past, revolutionary propaganda has largely concentrated on this political aspect.

Quite rightly, Trotskyists have emphasised that the creation of organisations, democratically based upon the workforces and fighting to impose control over management, was a crucial growth point for workers' councils which themselves will be the foundation of the workers' state.

This was one practical expression of the whole political method of Trotsky's Transitional Programme.

Less attention has been paid to the economic aspects of workers' control, how "opening the books" or "control over hiring and firing" relate to the revolutionary programme for the transforming the economy. Yet, such attention is vitally necessary.

Recognition of the need to go beyond workers' control in the factory, to the democratically planned control of the entire economy by the working class, is no more a spontaneous product of the economic struggle than is consciousness of the need to destroy the state and replace it by workers' councils.

Indeed, it could be argued that, in the aftermath of revolution and civil war, the lack of programmatic clarity on this question contributed to the emergence of bureaucratic planning in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Worse still, the key characteristics of Stalinist planning - the attempt to subordinate the entire economy to planning at a stroke, isolation from the world economy, exclusion of the direct producers from the development of planning targets and subordination of consumption to the maximum rate of growth in heavy industry, are widely considered to be the "classic" model of economic planning.

In reality, it was the very antithesis of the revolutionary concept of planning advanced by Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Although the economic aspect of the revolutionary programme has been too long neglected, or traduced, today's revolutionaries can build on a rich tradition of theoretical principles and practical experience bequeathed to us by the founders of Marxism, by Lenin and by the Left Opposition of the 1920s.

On that basis, we have the duty to develop a clear, coherent and scientific exposition of the political economy of socialism, not as some idealistic blueprint, fabricated out of our imaginations, but as it will be built out of the dialectical negation of the dominant trends within modern capitalism.

We begin, therefore, with a brief reprise of this revolutionary tradition, emphasising Marx's fundamental proposition that the socialist economy develops out of the womb of capitalism and bearing its birthmarks.

This means not only the physical proportions and disposition of the means of production and established economic linkages, but also the techniques of regulation, control and even planning that capitalism creates and recreates in its attempt to stabilise itself in the face of its own crises.

Marx and Engels on socialism

Just as the socialist economy has its material roots in capitalism, so Marx and Engels' theoretical insights into the political economy of socialism developed out of their understanding of the contradictions that drove capitalism forward, making it both dynamic and unstable.

The first and most general of these was that between the increasingly social character of production and the continued private ownership of the means of production: that is, the private appropriation of what was produced, including the "surplus product".

This was inherent in any system of commodity production because, by definition, a commodity is privately produced not for consumption by the producer but for sale on a market.

With the development of capitalism into a global system, the actual direct producers number many millions and, in that sense, production is "social production", but ownership of production and, therefore, decisions over what is to be produced, remains private. However, whether there will be a market for the goods produced is always, ultimately, unknown.

Two years ago, highly successful South Korean corporations were confidently planning further increases in production.

Today, their economy is in ruins. In order to safeguard what they can of their own wealth, the private corporations lay off the workforce, destroying the lives of millions. Thus, private ownership conflicts with social production.

The second great contradiction of capitalism results from the commodification of labour power, the human capacity to work. As Marx showed, capitalist profit originates in the difference between the cost of employing a worker for a period of time and the value of the products that can be produced in that period of time.

In order to maximise profit, each capitalist tries either to make workers work harder and longer, to which there are physical limits, or to increase output per worker through the introduction of improved technology.

As a result, output and productivity are increased but the fundamental source of profit, the employed workforce, tends to decline. Consequently, while the mass of profits may increase, the rate of profit tends to fall.

Where, for example, investment of £1 million once generated a profit of £100,000, the same profit needs £10 million invested. As fewer workers operate more productive technology, the numbers of the unemployed swell, wasting society's most important resource.

In their attempts to combat this, capitalists not only drive forward production by introducing new technologies, new processes, new products, new ways of organising production and opening up new markets, they also take measures to negate important aspects of capitalism's own character.

In place of many competing firms they centralise and concentrate capital into huge corporations, instead of individually owned capital they try to spread the load by a degree of "socialisation" in the form of joint stock companies, pension funds and banks which channel private savings into investments the world over.

As the corporations grow bigger they even try to offset the key characteristics of the market economy itself by monopolisation, sophisticated market research and forward planning.

Lastly, because capitalist profit is rooted in exploitation, capitalist society is permanently characterised by class struggle and periodically convulsed by open class war.

This too exacts a cost on society ranging from interruptions and limitations to production, right through to the catastrophes ol mass unemployment, famine and civil war.

Marx and Engels considered that the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism could overcome all these defects by making labour "directly social".

That is to say that by taking all production into social ownership the activity of the entire workforce could be co-ordinated and integrated, instead of each particular production unit being related to others only indirectly via the lottery of the market:

"From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start, and directly, social labour.

"The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way: daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average ... it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include in particular its labour power. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan."

Social ownership of production, therefore, immediately implies planning.

The plan is a conscious instrument employed by society to "establish a relation between the volume of social labour-time applied in producing definite articles, and the volume of social want to be satisfied by these articles." Unlike capitalism, socially owned production is driven and regulated by the changing structure and expansion of the needs of society rather than the thirst for private profit.

From this conception further consequences follow.

First of all, products cease to take the form of commodities since they are no longer exchange values, that is goods and services whose socially necessary labour is determined only in the act of exchange itself. Rather, this decision is taken in advance, goods are produced because there is a social need for them.

Secondly, money loses its specific character as a universal equivalent of all exchange value. Instead:

"Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour arc contained in a steam engine, a bushel of wheat at the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality.

It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time ... Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products."

If the profit motive, the desire to accumulate more and more surplus value, is no longer the guiding principle in the collective economy, and no longer the spur to innovation and increased productivity, what is? Marx argues that it is, "economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself." since "the less time the society requires to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or mental."

Freed from the compulsion to increase surplus labour (that is to say labour over and above what is necessary to maintain the workforce) society will be able to reduce working time and extend disposable, free time.

Necessary labour will be reduced to a minimum and with this the separation of people into "mental" and "manual" workers will be overcome.

Finally, Marx and Engels recognised that communism would not arrive all at once or overnight.

Whilst they recognised that, historically, the socialist revolution represented a "leap from the realm of necessity into that of freedom" this did not mean that a fully socialised classless society could be proclaimed on the morrow of this revolution.

Economically speaking, there would continue to be a situation of relative scarcity for some time.

Hence, society would need to adopt a mechanism for deciding on the distribution of the fruits of labour amongst the members of society.

They argued that under socialism (the lower phase of communism) each member "receives a certificate from society that he has furnished so much labour ... and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour" after certain deductions have been made.

These deductions would include: "replacement of the means of production used up ... additional portion for expansion of production ... reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents ... general costs of administration not belonging to production ... that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools ... funds for those unable to work."

Some social inequality would be inherited from capitalism and would have to be consciously reduced over time. Only under communism would the criteria for distribution change.

Instead of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their work" society would be able to adopt "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".

A superabundance of all necessary material goods and services would obviate the need for any form of rationed access to the products of social labour.

This is as much as Marx and Engels established about the political economy of socialism.

It would be rational, planned, democratic.

It would overcome the anarchy and disproportionality of capitalist production.

It would release humankind from the oppressive effects of alienated labour and allow for the development of rounded individuality which, in turn, could only take place in a society which guaranteed freedom from want and oppression.

It would overcome the under-utilisation and waste of labour.

It would avoid the needless over- exploitation of nature and end the destructive antagonism between town and country.

On taking power

Marx and Engels' insights, as suggestive as they are, do not exhaust the matter of economic construction under the political rule of the working class.

It fell to the next generation of revolutionaries to extend their conceptions in the light of the experience gained alter the Bolshevik Revolution.

At the time of the Revolution itself, the Bolsheviks' ideas on the economics of the transition period did not extend much beyond the legacy of Marx and Engels.

Lenin's writings, such as the "Impending Catastrophe" (September 1917) clearly draw on this tradition, arguing that the experience of state regulation of a modern economy such as Germany's held important lessons for Russia's future.

The fact that he was simultaneously writing State and Revolution, with its emphasis on the destruction of the bureaucratic state and its replacement by the rule of the soviet "semi-state" already points to a qualitatively different conclusion from that of the reformists.

In the course of the revolution itself, various organs of workers' control, most importantly factory committees, were established and their right to veto management and owners' decisions was recognised by the soviet state.

As the class struggle grew into civil war so these committees asserted their right to expropriate enemies of the workers' state and the majority of plants were, thereby, nationalised.

However, although this gave the state the means to allocate resources, its objective in these early years was survival and military victory ,not the construction of a socialist economy.

It was in the 1920s that the most important gains in the study of the economics of the transition period were made.

The first of these concerned the relationship between the economy of the workers' state and still existing capitalism.

In the Soviet Union this meant, above all, the internal rural economy but the same basic considerations will hold true for a workers' state in relation to a world market still dominated by capital.

Unlike Bukharin, who argued that the tempo of development in the state economy had to be based on that of the still more powerful market economy, or the Stalinists who concluded that all links with the external market should be broken and the internal market should be liquidated, Trotsky explained the need to establish a regulated relationship with the market.

On the one hand, this meant protecting the fledgling workers' economy by enforcing a state monopoly of foreign trade but on the other it meant utilising the market as a source of necessary goods and as a criterion against which to judge progress in the workers' economy.

To do this it would be necessary to maintain many of the mechanisms of the market, most importantly, a stable currency and prices which reflected accurately the costs of production.

Within the state sector, however, although it was essential to have accurate data on materials, workforces, productivity and the other key indicators of performance, production was not dominated by the law of value.

There were very real physical limits to what could be done and economic proportionality had to be maintained but, within those constraints, the state could allocate resources according to political priorities.

At first, the benefits of state control were felt principally in the sphere of distribution.

The elimination of unnecessary expenditure on the aristocracy, Church and Tsarist system and concentration on production of essentials rapidly brought living standards back to pre-war levels.

However, Trotsky argued that it would be the application of socialist economic principles to the sphere of production, via planned development of industry, that would allow rates of growth higher than those of capitalism to be achieved and sustained.

The actual techniques of planning: what to plan, how to plan, on what scale, over what periods of time, were also first investigated by the Left Oppositionists.

Again, the differences from the bureaucratic system actually imposed could not have been greater.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference was in the conception of all plans as hypotheses, not orders from above that could not be amended, let alone criticised.

For Trotsky, "The checking of a plan of production is one of the most important points in its realisation."

Although the first experience of planning was gained from the reconstruction of specific sectors, such as railway transport, Trotsky recognised from the early 1920s the need for industrial planning to be integrated across a range of sectors.

In relation to Lenin's famous call for an electrification programme, for example, he argued that, "the orientation plan of electrification is entirely subordinate to the orientation plans of the fundamental branches of industry, transportation, finance and, finally, agriculture.

All these partial plans must first be harmonised with each other on the basis of the data we have at our disposal about our economic resources and possibilities."

Planning, however, did not mean aspiring to move directly to a plan for the whole national economy.

On the contrary, it meant identifying strategically important projects and then planning their integrated development so that proportionality could be maintained between the different sectors if the economy and, vitally, the living conditions of the workers themselves could be improved in step with the economy as a whole.

Similarly, rather than a strictly delimited "Five Year Plan" during which all projects should be completed, the Left Opposition's conception was of "rolling planning" in which particular projects would naturally have a planned completion date hut the overall plan would move forward year by year.

This approach would have avoided the absurdities of bureaucratic planning which created disproportionalities by concentrating investment in the early years of each planning period.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, Trotsky recognised the necessity and potentiality of harnessing the creative power of the workers themselves in the building of their economy.

In the Twenties this meant not only ensuring a systematic improvement in living standards but the revolutionising of education by its integration into production and the subordination of managements to the democratic decision-making of the workers.

As a necessary corollary of this, Trotsky envisaged debates over the best priorities for the plan becoming the principal substance of political argument, even to the extent of faction formation over the rival claims of supporters of different priorities.

What is clear from even a brief survey of the classical Marxist writers, then, is that between the overthrow of the capitalist class and the construction of socialism there lies a whole period of transition from a world economy dominated and regulated by the market to one of abundance in which labour is so productive that it guarantees all workers most of their material and cultural needs as of right.

During this transition period, the organs of workers' power, created initially in class struggle, have to take control of production and re-order it according to planned priorities.

As Trotsky put it in 1925, the aim is to "spread the planning principle to the-entire market, thus swallowing and eliminating it".

This very way of posing the question suggests that the market cannot be abolished over night.

Rather, for a whole epoch, it will be necessary to manipulate the market mechanisms (e.g. money, prices) in such as way as leads to their withering away.

Immediate economic tasks

On the day of its victory, the socialist revolution will transfer all political power to the semi-state institutions of the proletariat (soviets, workers' militia) and initiate radical economic measures.

It is possible that a new workers' state will not immediately expropriate all the means of production. It will start with the expropriation of the big banks, large factories and trading organisations.

Simultaneously, the state will begin to construct an economic administration and planning agency that will broaden its sphere of operation over time.

The time taken to nationalise the great mass oi the means of production will depend on the level of development and the degree of working class control established in the class struggle prior to the revolution.

Through the process of expropriation and socialisation, class exploitation will be progressively removed and the private appropriation of surplus labour will be abolished.

From the outset of the transition, the bulk of the surplus will belong to society: that is, to the democratic association of direct producers.

The worker's labour will not become social through the act of private exchange in an anonymous market: it will be immediately and directly social since its content and form will be the subject of democratic discussion and debate.

Equally, the workers will not be alienated from the process of labouring.

They will no longer be subject to oppression at work, subject to the tyranny of the clock and the manager. The machine will not dictate the pace of work to the machinist but vice-versa.

In addition, workers will not be confined to one type of work throughout their entire lifetime. Access to training and education will not bear the stamp of class origin, still less access to private sources of wealth.

Such training will produce diverse skills which can be put to use during each person's lifetime and therefore one will no longer "be" what one "does".

A society which is building socialism will ensure that each person's natural and acquired abilities are detected and nurtured to the fullest extent, free from the oppression that currently arises from class origin, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

As much hazardous, exhausting, dreary and repetitive labour as possible will be automated. All the producers will learn the theoretical, technical and organisational aspects of the production process as a whole. The division between mental and manual forms of occupation will progressively be overcome.

The goal will be to progressively break down the distinctions between "labour", "education" and "recreation", and replace them with general human creativity in all aspects of life.

Will there be enough?

Every school student studying economics for the first time is appraised of "the economic problem" that all human societies have to confront: namely, how to satisfy a relatively limitless range of needs and desires with relatively scarce economic resources? How will production and consumption be reconciled when exploitation of the mass of human labour by a minority of private property owners has been overthrown? Democracy and empowerment are not sufficient conditions for the advance towards socialism in the economic sphere.

Economic life will have to be regulated in the transition to socialism by the conscious application of a series of laws of development that govern production and consumption, laws that guarantee both equilibrium and expansion.

In this process the market will no longer be a decisive factor but it will be a factor, nonetheless.

In industrially backward countries, with a high level of private agriculture, commodity production and exchange, the dictatorship of the proletariat will have to adapt elements of the programme of the Left Opposition in the 1920s, seeking to accumulate resources for industrialisation in part through taxing a largely private agricultural sector so long as the technological or political basis for voluntary collectivisation of agriculture does not exist.

This situation is unlikely to trouble the domestic economy of any OECD country.

There is unlikely to be any significant commodity production outside the provision of certain personal services which do not involve hiring wage labour.

However, the transition to socialism in its early stages, even in these countries, will involve some exchange of goods and services between workers' states and capitalist countries.

Capitalism, then, will have an impact on the workers' states in several ways.

First, it will affect the choice of whether to invest resources into producing the presently imported goods or continuing to import them.

Secondly, if the workers' state seeks to compete for markets with capitalist rivals in order to gain export earnings this will compel the socialist-oriented industry to raise its productivity up to, or maintain it at, world market levels.

This is even more true now than in the Twenties, given the highly integrated international character of modern capitalism.

The attempt at economic autarky in the Soviet Union added massively to the costs of industrialisation but for any modem, industrially developed workers' state to try to withdraw totally from the world market would be catastrophic.

Thirdly, it may be necessary for some period to allow foreign-owned concessions to exploit labour in return for a portion of the profits or the output, rather than allow the under-utilisation of resources.

Money too has to be used and manipulated in the transition to socialism.

Under capitalism, money prices revolve around the values of commodities, that is, the amount of socially necessary labour time they contain. But they only indirectly express this value.

In the transitional economy of the workers' state, the abolition of private property in the main means of production immediately introduces important changes in the use of money and prices: but they are far from being "abolished".

On the contrary, as inherited instruments from capitalism they have to be used so long as commodity production and exchange exist either within the workers' state or between it and capitalist countries.

Markets and money in the first phases of the dictatorship of the proletariat are the only methods of measurement and thus remain the basis of calculation.

At the start of the transition to socialism, planning has to compare its results with market standards and for this a sound monetary system will be needed.

Trotsky argued that planning will be a real test "of an a priori calculation with the help of a universal equivalent, a thing that is unthinkable without a stable money system."

Nonetheless, from the outset, there will be changes in the function of money.

Market prices under capitalism indicate the ratios at which alternative goods are exchanged in the market. This conveys a very narrow range of information.

Private commodity producers are not interested in a range of external (i.e. social) costs, nor are they interested in the long run effects of their decisions.

What the workers' state needs are prices which express the cost of alternative uses of social labour.

Without such prices, it would be impossible to measure productivity improvements or make rational judgements between alternative investment choices.

Genuine cost prices can take into consideration various social costs (e.g. environmental damage) that lie outside the scope of the individual firm.

While the prevailing costs of production in the technologically developed capitalist world should provide a bench-mark fur cost prices in the transition, post-capitalist society will need to construct cost prices for goods and services that reflect these social costs in the short and long run.

Modern information technology has already simplified the task of drawing up spread sheets to indicate the effect on real cost prices of a number of variables (such as changing rates of investment in different sectors over time) which capitalist market prices are incapable of reflecting.

Such a system not only differs from the way money prices are constructed under capitalism but also from the use of prices under the bureaucratically planned economies.

Attempts there to construct artificial prices (e.g. for bread) to affect demand should be rejected. Not only docs this not accurately signal the real costs to society but it encourages waste in the use of certain products.

Although in the initial stages, the workers' state will consciously influence demand for some consumer goods and services through taxation or targeted benefits, it will still need to be able to accurately measure the real labour time costs of those goods and services.

Clearly, even such subsidies will become superfluous to the extent that an egalitarian income structure prevails.

Naturally, as a means of exchange, the use of money will diminish during the transition to socialism.

In the first instance, many commodities will be recognised by society as necessities and will be distributed as a right, and paid for out of social taxation (i.e. a minimum level of housing, clothing and food goods).

There will be no need for these to be bought and sold, a transaction requiring money.

Under capitalism, most people only consume a few thousand different types of commodities in the course of a lifetime.

Over time, more and more of these goods will be distributed automatically as a recognised social entitlement.

As the productivity of labour improves, the price of such goods (accurately reflecting a diminishing portion of social labour) will dwindle towards zero: they will become "too cheap to meter" and be added to the list of non-monetary exchanges.

As communism approaches - a classless and stateless society - the role of money as an independent physical expression of different amounts of social labour will disappear and be replaced by mere accounting devices such as units/hours of social labour.

The building of a planned economy necessarily implies the conscious allocation of resources to achieve identified objectives.

Lenin's aphorism, "Politics is concentrated economics" will be transparently the case in a workers' state.

Decision making over the priorities of the plan will be a primary concern of the workers' councils and, no doubt, the subject of party conflict as the demands and interests of different sectors are weighed both against each other and against the long term priorities of socialist construction, nationally and internationally.

Laws guiding planning

Social production must seek to raise labour productivity over time through optimum (not necessarily maximum) use of all the factors of production.

An optimum level of output is a level that is compatible with other goals such as shortening the working day and increasing the amount of time available for education and leisure as well as allowing for rational use of non-renewable raw materials and planned reproduction of renewable resources.

Without a progressive increase in disposable time it will prove impossible for workers to develop themselves as rounded individuals.

Education and the pursuit of a range of cultural activities will be essential pre-conditions for active participation in the massively increased process of decision-making that will be a feature of the transition.

Taking collective control of one's life, at work, in the local community and over the multifarious economic and political decisions will require time and study.

It flows from this that society may wish to concentrate productivity improvements in the industries responsible for consumer goods in order to reduce the amount of necessary labour-time required to reproduce labour.

The aim in reducing necessary labour time is not, as it is under capitalism, to maximise the length of surplus labour time. It is to increase disposable labour time.

Once the length of the working day has been established and the amount of disposable time set by the plan, then there remains naturally the extent and structure of material production.

The goal of production is not now production for its own sake, nor for profit maximisation. Rather, production must serve final consumption, the needs of the democratic association of producers.

Under capitalism, the only "needs" recognised as legitimate are those that appear through a market exchange and the ability to pay (or "effective demand" as the economists revealingly call it).

This is so even if food is exported from famine-stricken areas or houses stand empty because they cannot be sold while thousands of people are homeless.

By contrast, a rational "need" from a socialist standpoint is one related to guaranteeing provision of food, shelter, clothing, and access to recreation and education for all.

In order to achieve this, a massive increase in the level of the productive forces will be necessary. In this sense, production is governed by the law of socialist accumulation.

It will be necessary to raise the rate of accumulation (especially of modern industrial investment) at the same time as raising the volume of consumption. This can be done through various means.

First, a reorganisation of the international and national division of labour will produce increased economies of scale and new efficiencies: these would include the gains to be made from an elimination of costly trade barriers and the rational dissemina-tion of technological innovations throughout industry, now no longer prevented by private property.

Secondly, a drastic reduction in unproductive expenditures (e.g. weapons, specifically capitalist bureaucracy, marketing costs of most consumer goods, wasteful and socially harmful "luxury" spending) will allow for a redirection of social labour to productive uses.

Thirdly, the expropriation of private property in the means of production will allow for the full employment of labour and other resources and thereby massively increase goods and services.

Fourthly, it can be expected that a significant increase in the productivity of labour would come from the removal of the oppressive character of waged labour.

New scope for the initiative and inventiveness of collective labour will be possible.

Fifthly, a revolutionary programme of land reform in many countries would lead to increases in production.

Production must expand in such a way as to ensure that different types of goods and services are produced in the necessary proportions (including between producer goods and consumer goods) to ensure equilibrium between different sectors of production and between production and consumption.

This must include decisions about the pattern of final demand by consumers as well as the rate and structure of investment.

The pattern of final demand will determine the mix of producer and consumer goods and the investment decisions will include whatever level of current consumption is willingly deferred in order to guarantee future consumption.

Planned over-production will necessarily be part of these calculations in order to cater for sudden demands not anticipated at the stage of initial plan formulation.

In making these decisions there will be objective economic criteria to be taken into account.

A transitional economy would aim to increase its investment programme in the means of production up to the point where no further gain in productivity would result and where total net output should be used for current consumption.

The rate at which investment should take place depends on the conditions existing at the time the transition is undertaken.

Certainly, the present cannot be sacrificed for the future by squeezing current consumption and using all resources for investment.

It may be necessary to devote output in the short-term to raising the standard of living even at the expense of a less rapid rate of increase in the more distant future.

On the other hand, a compromise may have to be made between this desire and investment demands where a country suffers from a low level of industrialisation, since a minimum level of industrialisation would be essential for establishing a centralised plan for the whole economy.

A federation of several workers' states, and even more so a world federation of soviet socialist republics, would aim at the rapid equalisation of levels of industrialisation between them.

This implies to a certain extent a shift of resources to the "Third World" countries to compensate for the situation that prevailed under imperialism.

This does not mean that the standard of living of the more developed countries will deteriorate during this phase. It would only grow more slowly than it would without undertaking this act of international co-operation.

Secondly, the tempo of industrial development in former colonies and semi-colonies must not be so high that the population could not adjust its culture without disruptive instability.

The identification of the necessary balance between such competing demands on resources will be a fundamental task of revolutionary politics within the framework of workers' democracy.

Calculation by labour-time

A rational reorganisation of production and consumption will only bring about the first gains.

As the transition progresses towards its goal of socialism, productivity will have to be systematically enhanced, production must be more efficient.

At this point, Marxists confront the first challenge laid down by the earliest critics of socialism.

Marxists have established that the aim of reducing the length of the working day and increasing disposable labour time is sufficient motive for efficiency strivings.

But various critiques have insisted that, having abolished market regulation, socialism would have no effective method of measuring economic progress.

The Austrian school (von Mises, Hayek) argued that socialism, lacking a system of market derived prices, would have no mechanism for calculating rationally how to distribute productive resources between various uses.

Of any two methods of production it would be impossible to say which was the "more economic" because any comparison of costs against their value-productivity would be impossible.

It is true that, in order to make a comparison between the efficiency of alternative uses of resources, qualitatively different goods must be reducible to quantitative terms.

It is wrong, however, to believe that only market prices can produce this calculation.

What is true is that reference to the movement of prices of intermediate and final goods is the only way that decisions over resource allocation can be taken in an atomised and individually competitive economy.

Enterprises are forced to respond to these externally imposed conditions.

However, as we have seen above, market prices express only a very narrow range of actual costs and, therefore, decisions taken on their basis are not by any means necessarily the best decisions that could be taken.

In the transition to socialism, the reduction of qualitatively different goods to a common quantitative standard will be done via the calculation of the labour-time embodied in the differing products and services.

All opponents of Marxism (including market socialists) insist that this is not possible.

Von Mises, Tugan Baranovsky and Bohm-Bawerk rejected the labour theory of value as a whole and, therefore, also as a means of calculation according to embodied labour-time.

Even Karl Kautsky believed that in practice it was impossible to calculate the amount of socially necessary labour time in a given commodity.

In contrast, Marx argued that under socialism: "labour-time would ... play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite plan maintains the correct proportions between the different functions of labour and the various needs of the associations. On the other hand, labour-time also serves as a measure of the parts taken by each individual in the common labour and his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption."

Labour-time provides the common basis for the calculations of costs involved in the allocation of social labour to different spheres of production as well as determining the distribution of means of consumption to the population.

Consider the allocation of resources to social production, It is necessary to establish what sort of labour time is being referred to.

Under capitalism there is a distinction between concrete and abstract labour.

The act of exchange itself under capitalism reduces all concrete labours to so much abstract human labour-value.

This value in turn can only appear in the form of a rate of exchange (exchange-value) between a definite quantity of one commodity and a definite quantity of another.

Money is an independent representation of this exchange value.

Under capitalism, as a result of the constant experience of market exchanges and competition, a clear idea of what constitutes labour of average intensity for any given industry emerges, that is, socially necessary labour.

In the transition to socialism, the abolition of commodity production eliminates the "blind", after the event, calculation of socially necessary labour.

This calculation is now made consciously by society.

What counts as an averagely intense unit of labour time will be decided by workers' democracy and supervised and checked by workers' committees.

The discussion of such standards will obviously consider capitalist comparisons but will not slavishly copy them.

Scientifically established standards of labour intensity would have to include both a physical and a psychological component in their evaluation of stress and exertion.

If a specific type of work leads to a particularly high level of exertion and exhaustion this should not be seen as producing more value: rather, the concrete labour should be made to correspond to labour of average intensity by compensating rest periods, which become incorporated into the calculated work time.

The calculation of how much labour-time specific products represent will be the task of the workforce itself.

For this, the workers simply have to add up the hours that their brigade or team is expending and add this figure to the sum that they received in the form of raw materials and initial products.

They add an all-inclusive figure for wear and tear, energy and water etc.

and compare the resulting total with the equivalent figures for all enterprises that produce the same product.

The average amount of labour time necessary represents the social labour-value, which may differ from the individual labour-values in both directions.

During the transition period, education, training, job rotation and the general raising of the cultural levels of the workforce, will tend to make units of labour time commensurable across all areas of production.

This is an important basis for the planning authorities.

"Labour certificate" entitlement' will be derived from the individual amount of hours expended, but economic calculations will have to be based on social labour-value figures.

Such calculations (and thus the decisions based on them) will be highly transparent for all workers as they will be expressed in units of labour time.

This system will provide the basis for cost calculations and the allocation of resources to alternative uses.

The "price" of goods and services will be measured in units of labour time.

Producer goods and consumer goods will be priced according to their cost of production (i.e. raw materials, dead labour transferred from machinery), and the agreed price of labour (again, as measured in units of labour time needed to make the goods that reproduce labour to an acceptable standard).

The amount of surplus labour time (or mark up) added to cost price will be set by society according to the agreed rate of investment.

Once a scale of priorities is drawn up by the direct producers themselves as a result of collective debate, the actual productivities of the resources in various uses needs to be calculated.

It is necessary first to discover the "costs" of resources and then find out their relative productiveness.

Planning bodies would need to know how many hours of labour time would be necessary (stored up in machinery and labour itself) to produce an extra n yards of linen, compared to how many extra cars could be produced by the allocation of the same amount of hours.

It would be possible to arrive at an idea of which, out of a range of alternatives, would result in the greatest net productivity.

In addition, comparisons with the immediate past would be used.

Such detailed comparisons could be made from the national macro-economic level right down to the enterprise level (and even departmental level) depending on the technical level of the information system.

The "monetary" or "price" expression of these relative productivities is entirely secondary and the only consideration is that it be stable and consistently applied to all parts of the economy.

The distribution of goods

The principles governing the distribution of the social product among the workers will be a matter for the society of direct producers themselves to work out.

As mentioned earlier, Marx and Engels suggested that the principle would be that the worker receives a "labour certificate" equivalent to the work done minus the portion for insurance, investment and other agreed deductions.

Marx adopted this principle because he recognised that it would be impossible to leap to a society without generalised scarcity and hence there would be a need to regulate access to limited resources.

But he was already aware that the slogan of "from each according to his abilities" was adopted "only for the sake of parallel with the production of commodities" and that the concrete method and norms of distribution of consumption goods will depend on the degree of development of the social forces of production.

The more developed the economy at the start of the socialist transition, the more will the needs of the general population be the starting point.

It is likely that in the industrially developed imperialist democracies, the socialist transition will start from a fairly high level of guaranteed access to consumption goods, irrespective of individual abilities.

Although this would immediately be applicable to goods which can be simply given away by the state because productivity in that sphere is already so high that free distribution will not raise demand above possible production.

it should not be expected that this will be possible for a majority of goods within any foreseeable time.

If we think of socialism in world wide terms, demand (i.e. need, not ability to pay) will be so enormous that for decades it will be beyond the possibilities of production, even it we assume an accelerated growth of productivity under most phases of the workers' state.

The fact that "labour certificates" will be calculated according to how much work an individual has carried out, implies that there will be a degree of social inequality in the transition.

This inequality will reflect, among other things, the need to provide social incentives to undertake unsocial tasks or normal tasks during unsocial hours or work in remote and inhospitable conditions.

In other cases, workers will prefer to trade-oil increased disposable time against labour certificates.

Definite limits must be established to this inequality and, where possible, other measures must be found for accomplishing the same ends by different means.

For example, regular rotation of jobs, based on multi-skilling over a lifetime, may make it feasible for all workers to undertake certain tasks, in turn, as a social duty, hence eliminating the need for a permanent minority of workers to have to be induced to carry them out.

Marxists reject out of hand the idea that workers should receive wage bonuses according to the improvements in productivity registered by their enterprise, a proposal put forward by "market socialists" such as Alec Nove.

In the first place, differing productivity levels of separate enterprises should not in general be the basis for differential reward since it will generally be a product of macro-economic investment decisions taken by society as a whole.

The benefits of increased productivity should not fall to individual workers or plants but to society as a whole in the form of lowered prices and increased quality and diversity of goods.

Every worker will thus have the same interest, a collective interest, in ensuring the maximum efficiency of production to achieve the most rapid fall in prices.

Workers as consumers will benefit directly from the achievements of workers as producers.

The problem of skilled labour All forms of concrete human labour, whether skilled or unskilled, arc qualitatively different from each other and not measurable by a common standard as concrete labour.

That is why, under capitalism, all concrete labour, including skilled labour, is reduced to abstract human labour, in the process of exchange.

Marx considered skilled or "complex" labour to be only a multiple of unskilled labour.

Does this mean it should receive higher wages under socialism or that it creates more value than unskilled labour?

Under capitalism, where the costs of training and reproducing skilled labour are borne privately, skilled labour receives higher wages.

This will decrease during the transition to socialism.

As Engels said; "in a socialistically organised society these costs are borne by society and to it, therefore, belong the fruits, the greater 'values' produced by compound labour".

So the remuneration for skilled labour must be the same as for all labour: egalitarianism must be the guiding principle.

There are no grounds for challenging this with the view that skilled labour involves any greater physical or mental exertion than unskilled.

Nor does skilled labour create more value during the course of an hour.

This would be to confuse the exchange value of labour power with its use-value.

Its "exchange-value" may be higher due to the higher costs of reproducing it but it does not have any mysterious higher power of creating more value.

However, the higher reproduction- value must be recognised in the planning and accounting process during the transition.

Take a project which requires 100 workers (or ten days of whom ten workers must possess special training and this training embodies 200 working days in total.

In this case, society has to account for these 200 days and thus the project would embody 1.200 days not 1.000.

Hence, skilled labour in this sense, while it does not create more value than unskilled labour, does, like constant capital under capitalism, embody a certain proportion of stored labour that is transferred to the value of the final product.

The information problem

The problem of how changes in consumer demand would be dealt with in any socialist system of distribution invites the charge from bourgeois economists (especially Hayek) that no socialist planning agency could ever acquire the necessary complete picture of all the fragmented knowledge of consumer needs that exists in order to arrive at creative solutions to changing desires.

In response, we first have to say that in the first stages of the transition where "constructed prices" are necessary. These prices can easily be used to reflect certain fluctuations in consumer demand.

Here, changes in inventories are managed by: (a) price movements which can match short-term disequilibrium in supply and demand and (b) changes in the respective production schedules.

The law of value would have no role in either case since the higher prices would not be allowed to transform themselves into extra-profits and, thereby, regulate the production process.

Secondly, later in the transition, when socialism approaches and when electronic "labour certificates" are used to regulate access to those residual goods that are not yet available in "abundance", then the computerised information on stock control will suffice in almost all cases to correct impending shortages well in advance of any shortfall in the provision of goods at the point of sale.

So "price fluctuations" to regulate supply and demand will no longer be necessary.

As to the general "informational problem" as stated by Hayek and others, this is based on the belief that Stalinist bureaucratic planning is the only possible model of a planned economy.

We reply that any healthy workers' state would not build up a planning system in such a hyper-centralised manner.

The supercentralism and hypertrophy of the planning system in the degenerated workers' states reflected the needs of the parasitic bureaucracy, above all the imperative to exclude the working class from decision-making, and did not flow from any "principle" of planning.

On the contrary, proletarian planning has to be simultaneously centralised and decentralised.

How can this be arranged? By the organisational principle of democratic centralism.

Proletarian planning implies decision-making at different levels.

Each decision should be taken at the level that is best able to carry it out and which is affected by the decision: in other words, every decision is to be taken at as high a level as necessary and as low a level as possible.

It reflects, and is related to, the system of Soviets and factory/workplace councils.

If it is possible to decide on changes in the product mix of a factory at a local (i.e. plant) level without disrupting the overall pattern, then this should be done and the available local knowledge can inform that decision.

On the other hand, if developments of a technological or ecological character demand certain adaptive changes within the production schedules of a range of factories, then the most effective level of decision-making must reside at a higher level, be that regional, national or international.

In principle, there is no problem with locating decision-making at an adequate level as long as there is no bureaucracy that seeks to monopolise (central) power in its hands and as long as there is no nascent bourgeoisie that wants to decentralise economic decision-making into private hands.

Bettering capitalism's best

One of the best arguments for planning in the transition to socialism is the experience of capitalism in the twentieth century.

It is well known that monopolies seek to remove as much uncertainty as possible from their economic calculations.

Investment decisions and profit projections are vulnerable to the inherent anarchy of the market and competition from rivals.

By capturing as much as possible of a given market or supply of raw materials, by engaging in "price-fixing" with their supposed rivals, monopoly firms endeavour to inject as much certainly and planning into decision-making as they can.

It is important that we take this experience as our point of departure - real tendencies within the capitalist mode of production itself, developments which prove both the possibility of planning on an ever more inclusive scale and the need to destroy private property in the means of production in order to fulfil the intrinsic possibilities of planning.

The growth of corporate planning has not only meant the attempt to guarantee market sales and hence realise their profits. The labour process itself is being transformed.

One example of this can be seen in the "quality revolution" which in turn has accompanied and made possible "lean production".

The success of the Japanese during the 1970s with these techniques, and the increasing competitiveness of the world market in the 1980s, forced these new techniques on every producer.

The "quality revolution" is based on giving workers more control of the production process.

Hitherto, the dominant form of production since the 1920s has been the assembly line.

This technique of production reduced workers to simple assembling machines whose activity was governed by the line which brought the work to them.

While this technique boosted productivity enormously, it did so on the basis of low quality of production.

Quality departments had to be set up to correct defects created by this mind-numbing and body-destroying method of production.

With mass line assembly work, workers were reduced to automatons with no say in the production process, let alone the pace of the line.

The "quality revolution" has sought to get rid of some of the alienation of the assembly line.

Workers are now organised in work teams doing a broader range of tasks.

Above all, they are now responsible for quality and that has meant greater consultation and the power to control the immediate work process.

However, giving workers increased control of the work process requires increased loyalty to "their" company lest it become a threat to capitalism itself.

It requires class harmony within production.

In the face of class struggle prompted by economic crisis, this will break down.

Quality production under capitalism comes into contradiction with the competitive and anarchic character of capitalism.

However, the experience of such production systems, coupled with a victorious struggle for workers' control and revolution, will be a powerful asset to the new workers' state.

The quality revolution also breaks down the divide between mental and physical labour.

In the past, products were designed with scant regard to the production process.

Designs were then modified by the production engineers to put them into operation.

With "quality production", workers are consulted at the design stage.

Products are designed to be defect-free from conception, and this is only made possible by the collaboration of all those engaged in the design, development and production phases as a joint team.

The result is that not only has the development cycle of major products been halved, but they are better designed and more worker friendly to produce.

In its most advanced form, this integration takes the form of concurrent engineering which indicates that capitalism is forced to minimise the disruption caused by the social division of labour.

With concurrent engineering, design and production are tackled simultaneously.

As the design progresses, so too does the method of producing it, with the one feeding back into the other.

This requires the integration of design engineering, material sciences and manufacturing technology.

It requires an even tighter co-operation between the design centre, suppliers and supportive services, lust as "quality production" involves increased socialisation of the labour process within a factory or company, so it and "lean production" tend to socialise production between factories, their suppliers and all the contractors who support it.

Manufacturers not only demand defect-free supplies, but the minimum of supplies - Just In Time inventories.

The best factories in Japan operate with only two hours' worth of parts.

Socialism will relieve humans of much menial work To achieve this level of efficiency, suppliers have to lap into the computer of the producer to determine the flow of production and the requirement, therefore, for their parts.

The next goal for the capitalist labour process is computer integrated manufacturing (ClM) - an automated shop floor, with functions such as purchasing, stock and sales in the retail outlets linked electronically to the factory floor.

Already pilot schemes connecting home shoppers via the internet to superstores and they in turn to suppliers, are up and running in Britain.

The real problem is its complexity and the complexity flows from the anarchy of the market, i.e. the rivalry in profit making, the business secrecy that this necessitates, etc.

If sales could be predicted and planned in advance, then CIM would be practicable.

Its full execution requires the end of the business cycle - an impossibility under capitalism.

Despite the fact that companies spend millions in marketing efforts to discover consumer wants and to improve the usability of their products, the real problem is not what consumers want, but what they can afford to buy, and it is this element that is the most unpredictable of all and lies behind the operation of the business cycle.

The more these changes in the labour process develop, the more their efficient and further development requires the overcoming of the contradiction between private consumption and socialised production.
Planning structures

Objections to planning arise from different starting points: some have argued that without competition innovation and efficiency arc impossible.

Others insist that without markets it is impossible to collate the necessary information about consumer preferences since the centralisation inherent in state ownership and direction deters the flow of information and creates a distinct layer of functionaries with separate interests that disrupt the operation of any plan.

This is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the state in the transition.

This state is a semi-state.

The semi-state retains certain features common to all states: a centralised armed power to defend the revolution from internal enemies and from outside threats.

So long as scarcity and inequalities exist some form of body regulating the sphere of distribution will be necessary.

But this state is no longer "out of the control" of the masses, the weapon of an exploiting class, raised above and against the people.

It is now a state that is rooted in civil society and does not stand opposed to it.

For example, the state functionaries themselves are not a permanent caste of officials, but arc made up of individuals who are trained for this task among others and are subject to rotation.

Moreover, they are accountable and recallable by the genera] population that acts as a check upon the development of any special interests that collide with the mass of consumers and producers.

In short, the process of political and economic negotiation between society and state, between politics and economics is fluid.

Even the market socialists cannot devise a state that is as "democratic" as this.

All market socialists advocate parliamentary democracy and a sphere of "politics", which is separate from economic management.

It is they who thereby advocate the need for a bureaucracy to mediate between state and civil society.

The structures of the planning apparatus work on the principle of elective representative democracy.

Members of workers' management committees from places of work together with representatives of consumer associations meet at every level from local, regional to national.

The national planning commissions are responsible for devising broad parameters of aggregate investment and consumption, including the allocation of production into one of several sectors (transport, production, services for example).

These will be passed down for discussion and disaggregation at both a sectoral level and regional/local level.

Management committees of factories, farms and offices will discuss the implications of broad planning targets for them.

At regional and local level, organisations will devise targets for specific industries: including suggestions on product mix for final consumption.

This will then be fed back up the system and the implications drawn out for the targets of semi-finished products and raw materials.

The plan should be as decentralised as possible: that is, binding decisions should be taken as low down the planning scale as possible.

For example, the same amount of prepared timber could have multifarious uses for the consumer: factories receiving it have machinery capable of making numerous end products out of it: the final form of the product, representing a quantity of social labour, should be decided by the ultimate consumer as far as possible.

Clearly, however, final choices have implications for resources back up the line of planning.

Transport, storage and packaging requirements may differ according to the final choice of end use and these will have to be negotiated with the relevant suppliers before final decisions are taken.

The rationale for decentralisation is that the centre is not omniscient and that the necessary information required to make decisions about resource allocation cannot in principle be known by the centre given the nature of the information or the speed with which it must be acted upon.

Even the best of plans carried out with as much free flow of information as possible, free from bureaucratic self-interest and with the best computers in the world, remain rough approximations, provisional hypotheses.

They need constant adjustment and checking.

At the end of the day, the transitional economy is demand driven, that is.

accumulation is guided by the democratic wishes of the mass of workers themselves as consumers of their own products.

The consumer must be judge of the results of the plan.

There are many ways that the plan can be "verified and corrected", in Trotsky's words.

Some products will be capable of being adjusted in whole or in part with little technical difficulty in the short run by quality control feedback even on a day to day basis: CIM technology and inventory controls can be used to bring production into line with current demand, even if not in full accord with the original plan projections.

But the market (i.e. exchange of consumer goods with wages) too, will have its place.

This is for two reasons.

First, the consumer makes a range of choices only on a day to day basis (e.g.

many foods). This choice from a range of possible alternatives must continue.

But it will only be possible to plan in broad terms (based on market research and watchful of past trends) in anticipation of some consumer needs.

In essence, the worker has the right to change some demand preferences daily.

In addition, given the time lag between plan formulation and production in the case of some consumer durables, it is likely that consumer preferences may change in the interim.

Moreover, inventory controls and just-in-time techniques for certain products could not alter production in line with demand in anything but the long or medium run.

Given that the plan has predetermined aggregate demand and production schedules there could only be a shift in the structure of demand.

Prices would have to be raised or lowered above or below cost price in order to clear the market.

The results of this process can then be taken into consideration in drawing up revised planning schedules.

These market prices must be market clearing prices: they must not - as for the market socialists - lead to automatic increases in production based on the increased profitability to the enterprise raising output: if allowed, this would have considerable disruptive effects on planning schedules up the chain of resource allocation.

Rather, use-value and social labour considerations will have to be taken together in the next round of planning.

The triumph of socialism

The triumph of socialism - the lower stage of communism - is impossible to achieve in one country and will be attained as a global system or not at all.

It assumes that the satisfaction of an agreed basic level of economic and cultural needs by the world's population has been reached by the methods outlined earlier.

Under communism, political economy gives way to the administration of things, or social engineering.

There is no need for a separate sphere of politics - democracy itself comes to an end.

Use-values are in such abundance with such minimum application of labour that humans are free to develop their personalities in other forms of creative endeavour.

It has become common on the left to ridicule the Marxist concept of abundance with regard to material goods under communism.

The old argument that human desires and wishes are in principle unlimited and, therefore, can never be fully satisfied is cited as an argument against the notion of communist abundance.

This argument wrongly assumes that socialist society will simply perpetuate capitalist patterns of consumption.

Firstly, labour productivity will be raised to such a high level as to satisfy the basic needs of the entire world population and to provide sufficient reserves to satisfy a reasonable proportion of non-essential desires for everybody.

This will allow human relations to be deepened, new forms of cultural expression to emerge, and the development of the human personality in general to be given more weight in society.

Secondly, the long term changes in social structure will generate a quite different psychology among people under communism.

The end of commodity fetishism, widespread rivalry and the current need for goods as compensation for alienation will relativise the importance attached to material products.

Finally, the conscious regulation of society that is possible under communism allows a long term balance to be struck between humankind and the rest of nature.

It will be obvious to all that for ecological reasons we will have to set some limit to the expansion of industry, at least as it is understood today.

These three elements, taken together, create a situation where material welfare, even if it is not absolutely abundant, reaches a level where economic accumulation ceases to be the motor force of society.

At last, human development will gain an essentially social, cultural and psychological direction rather than an economic one.

 

Plan contra Markt

Ökonomie und Politik in der Übergangsperiode vom Kapitalismus zum Kommunismus

 

Vorwort der Herausgeber: Der nachstehende Text ist die deutsch-sprachige Übersetzung einer Broschüre, die von Keith Harvey verfasst und in “Trotskyist Bulletin” Nr. 9 (1996) veröffentlicht wurde. Dies war eine theoretische Publikation unserer Vorläuferorganisation – der Liga für eine revolutionär-kommunistische Internationale.

 

VORWORT

 

Diese Broschüre repräsentiert die kollektive Arbeit der LRKI während der letzten zwei Jahre an einem Thema von lebenswichtiger Bedeutung. Ungeachtet der ins Auge stechenden offensichtlichen Defizite des Wirkens der freien Marktwirtschaft vom afrikanischen Kontinent bis zu den städtischen Ghettos der USA befindet sich die Linke in der Frage der Ökonomie und Möglichkeit der sozialistischen Planwirtschaft in der Defensive.

Der Zusammenbruch der stalinistisch beherrschten Staaten seit 1989 ist nicht nur von denjenigen als katastrophale Niederlage empfunden worden, die in ihnen 'real existierenden Sozialismus' sahen. Er hat auch jene Aktivisten politisch verwirrt, die, während sie gegen das politische Regime opponierten, in der Wirtschaftsmacht der Sowjetunion den Beweis für die Überlegenheit staatlicher Wirtschaftsplanung erblickten.

Der ökonomische Niedergang und schließlich der Paralyse der Ökonomien des ehemaligen Ostblocks hat nicht nur diese vorschnellen Hoffnungen enttäuscht, sondern viele dazu geführt, dem Ziel der Errichtung einer Planwirtschaft überhaupt den Rücken zuzukehren.

Zusätzlich verweisen Kritiker des Sozialismus darauf, daß öffentliches Eigentums und Verstaatlichung in kapitalistischen Gesellschaften nicht vermochten, Inflation und Massenarbeitslosigkeit abzuwenden. Viele Militante in der internationalen Arbeiterbewegung und unter der neuen Jugendgeneration sind von diesen Argumenten beeinflußt. Jene, die versuchen, den Kapitalismus durch eine Form von sozialistischer Gesellschaft zu ersetzen, sind in die Defensive gedrängt worden - politisch und ideologisch.

Tag für Tag beharrt die offizielle Propaganda darauf, daß alle, die versuchen, den Kapitalismus zu überwinden, eine Wirtschaftsordnung verteidigen würden, die zu Autoritarismus, gravierender Ineffizienz und Einschränkung der Wahlmöglichkeiten für die Konsumenten verdammt sei. Ein großer Teil der reformistischen und zentristischen Linken hat den Kern dieses Arguments akzeptiert. Sie sprechen sich nun für verschiedene Formen des  'Marktsozialismus' aus, der dem Wesen der von den Befürwortern des ungezügelten freien Marktes erhobenen Sozialismuskritik nachgibt.

Zum Glück sind die Auswirkungen der Propagandamaschine der Anhänger des freien Marktes auf jene, die unter Auwirkungen ebendieser Marktgesetze zu leiden haben, nur begrenzt und keineswegs dauerhaft. Für eine wachsende Zahl sind die inhärenten Vorzüge des Markts über rationelle Wirtschaftsplanung überhaupt nicht leicht festzustellen. Selbst im  Britannien gibt es - trotz 17 Jahren des Freimarktdogmas der Tories - wachsende Anzeichen, daß die Masse der Bevölkerung der Marktlogik gegenüber skeptisch ist.

In einer im September 1996 in The Guardian veröffentlichten Übersicht wurden die Beantworter gefragt, ob sie mit der Behauptung, "mehr sozialistische Planung sei der beste Weg, Britanniens Wirtschaftsprobleme zu lösen", übereinstimmten oder nicht. 43% bejahten die Frage.

Die mächtigste bürgerliche Propagandamaschine kann angesichts Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit, massenhafter Jugendarbeitslosigkeit, Niedriglöhnen und negativ beschiedenem Wohnrecht zusammenbrechen. Dann kann das Argument siegen. Aber ein instinktives Verständnis, daß es eine Alternative zum Marktblödsinn geben muß, ist nicht genug.

Die revolutionäre Minderheit hat eine Verantwortung, die Vorhut um eine klare, zusammenhängende und wissenschaftliche Darlegung der politischen Ökonomie des Sozialismus herum zu sammeln, nicht als idealistische 'Blaupause', die aus unserer Vorstellung geschaffen wurde, sondern wie sie aus den vorherrschenden Trends innerhalb des modernen Kapitalismus entsteht. Bei deren Entwicklung ist es nötig, die wirklichen Lehren aus der Geschichte, positive und negative, theoretische und programmatische, aus der Geschichte der Arbeiterstaaten mit einer herrschenden bürokratischen Kaste zu integrieren.

Diese Broschüre faßt die wesentlichen Komponenten einer solchen revolutionären Konzeption ökonomischer Planung zusammen. Beginnend mit einer kurzen Zusammenfassung des Vermächtnisses von Marx und Engels und der beschränkten Ausarbeitung ihrer Ideen durch die Theoretiker der Zweiten Internationale, behandelt sie anschließend das Experiment des jungen Sowjetstaats (UdSSR).

Die ersten zehn Jahre des Staats waren reich an praktischer und theoretischer Arbeit: von den anfänglichen Auffassungen der Entwicklung mithilfe der 'Arbeiterkontrolle' über die oft utopischen Schemata der kriegskommunistischen Periode zu den großen Industrialisierungsdebatten der Neuen Ökonomischen Politik arbeiten wir die bleibenden theoretischen Fortschritte heraus, die im Konzept der 'Übergangsperiode' zwischen der Ergreifung der Staatsmacht und der Eröffnung der 'sozialistischen' oder niederen Stufe des Kommunismus eingebettet sind.

Dieser Abschnitt endet mit der Systematisierung der polit-ökonomischen Konsequenzen, wenn dieser Übergang durch die von der stalinistischen Bürokratie durchgeführte Konterrevolution blockiert wird, nicht nur einschließlich des resultierenden Musters aufgeblähter Schwerindustrien, beschränktem Zugang zu Konsumgütern, stagnierender Landwirtschaft und entfremdeten Belegschaften, sondern auch der pro-marktwirtschaftlichen Versuche, diese Systeme wieder zu beleben.

Das zweite substantielle Element dieser Arbeit besteht aus einer Kritik der offenen wie versteckten Gegner der Planwirtschaft. Wir knacken die Argumente der Hauptrepräsentanten in der Zwischenkriegsdebatte über die Vernünftigkeit von Sozialismus - von Mises und Hayek gegen Lange und Taylor -, indem wir die abstrakte und ahistorische Methode ersterer und die unmarxistische und technokratische Sozialismusvision letzterer kritisieren. Die Ansichten zeitgenössischerer Autoren wie Alec Nove, Ota Sik und Ernest Mandel werden ebenfalls behandelt und einer Kritik unterzogen.

Der letzte Teil der Broschüre gibt eine positive genaue Ausführung - soweit so etwas möglich ist - der Haupteigenschaften des Übergangs zum Sozialismus, wenigstens in den industriell entwickelten kapitalistischen Ökonomien.

Jeder gesunde revolutionäre Arbeiterstaat wird dabei ebenso geleitet werden von der Freisetzung dessen, was rationell an den Methoden und Techniken des Kapitalismus ist, aus den sozialen Verhältnissen, in denen diese gefesselt sind, wie von theoretischen Verhaltensmaßregeln und Lehren, die aus den Erfahrungen der UdSSR und anderer degenerierter Arbeiterstaaten gezogen wurden.

Diese Arbeit ist natürlich nicht voraussetzungslos; sie ist durch die intellektuelle und politische Tradition geleitet, die von Leo Trotzki und der Internationalen Linksopposition in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren begründet worden ist. Die Linke Opposition hatte den fähigsten Wirtschaftswissenschaftler des russischen Bolschewismus der 1920er Jahre in ihren Reihen in Gestalt E. Preobraschenskis. Im Zentrum seiner Schriften zum Wertgesetz und dessen noch in der Übergangsperiode zum Sozialismus vorhandene Wirkungen steht seine Theorie der ursprünglichen sozialistischen Akkumulation .

Trotzkis Schriften zur politischen Ökonomie, insgesamt von weniger theoretisch, als vielmehr auf bestimmte politische Ziel orientier, waren nicht weniger scharfsichtig - gleich zwingend in ihrer Anklage stalinistischer Kommandoplanung und in ihrer Verteidigung der Notwendigkeit eines demokratischen nicht­marktwirtschaftlich Sozialismus.

Zuletzt noch ein Wort zu der für diese Arbeit gewählten Darstellungsform. Diese Broschüre entstand in Form von Thesen, die die Argumente und Schlußfolgerungen aus der von der LRKI vollzogenen Forschung und Debatte zusammenfassen. Von Natur aus sind Thesen der vielen Quellenverweise, Fakten, Zahlen und Zitate, die das Argument illustrieren sollen, entkleidet.

Eine solche Darlegung hat jedoch den Vorteil, daß sie die Schlüsselargumente deutlich hervorhebt.

Diese Broschüre signalisiert nicht das Ende der Arbeit der LRKI am Thema. Es ist ein Beitrag zu einer Debatte, die eine unersetzliche Rolle dabei spielen wird, all jene Kräfte ausfindig zu machen und neu zusammenzutrommeln, die sich dem revolutionären Sturz des Kapitalismus verschrieben haben.

Als solcher ist es zentraler Bestandteil der Daseinsberechtigung der LRKI, die bestimmenden Charakteristika des revolutionären Marxismus für dieses Jahrtausend zu definieren und zu systematisieren. Es geschieht im Geist des Vorantreibens dieser Aufgabe, daß wir diesen Abriß unserer Arbeit heute der internationalen sozialistischen und Arbeiterbewegung zur Diskussion, Debatte und Polemik vorlegen.

 

EINLEITUNG

 

Der Kapitalismus verlor schon vor langer Zeit seinen allgemein fortschrittlichen Charakter, weil die gesellschaftlichen Kosten, die für anhaltende Wirtschaftsentwicklung ertragen werden müssen, bei weitem den Nutzen übertreffen. Während des letzten Vierteljahrhunderts ist in allen kapitalistischen Wirtschaften die absolute Armut enorm angestiegen. Über eine Milliarde Menschen leben unterhalb des Existenzminimums; mehr als 100.000 Kinder sterben jede Woche an Unterernährung oder an anderen mit der Armut zusammenhängenden Krankheiten.

Während der Kapitalismus die Revolutionierung der Technik fortsetzt, kann er das nur auf Kosten produktiver Beschäftigung tun. Dutzende Millionen werden auf der Jagd nach Produktivität auf dem Land freigesetzt, während kapitalistische/r Industrie und Handel für sie woanders keine Beschäftigung finden können. Der Kapitalismus ist immer weniger in der Lage, jene zu entschädigen, die er marginalisiert, aus dem Heer der Beschäftigten Ausgestoßene oder jene, denen eine Eingliederung immer versagt war. Die Suche nach Profit gerät mit der Beibehaltung öffentlicher Ausgaben für Gesundheit, Bildung und Arbeitslosigkeit zunehmend in Konflikt.

Soziale Ungleichheit ist größer geworden, da der freie Markt sich voll gehen läßt. Eine Minderheit gedeiht dabei, indem sie sich unterbewertetes Staatsvermögen aneignet, zuvor geschützte Rohstoffe rücksichtsloser ausbeutet, Lohnniveaus drückt oder durch großzügige Steuerersparnis.

Immer mehr Arbeiter empfinden ihre Arbeitsbedingungen als untragbar. In einigen Teilen der Welt kann der Kapitalismus noch immer nicht ohne unfreie, vorkapitalistische Arbeitsverhältnisse überleben. Woanders werden Millionen der Arbeitsrechte beraubt und gezwungen, länger zu arbeiten. Millionen mehr ist die Vertragssicherheit genommen oder ausgehöhlt worden. Wiederum Millionen mehr sind für Arbeitsplätze ausgebildet worden, die einfach nicht existieren und aus Verzweiflung an andere gedrückt worden; kurz, Millionen sind von ihrer Arbeit entfremdet.

Parallel zu dieser Vergeudung menschlicher Schaffenskraft fährt der Kapitalismus fort, kostbare ökonomische Ressourcen zu verschwenden. Auf der Jagd nach Konkurrenzvorteilen wird moderne Maschinerie verschrottet, obwohl sie noch durchschnittlich rund die Hälfte nutzvoller Lebensdauer vor sich hat. Moderne Aktiengesellschaften verschleudern Milliarden in Mehrfachforschung.

Sogar größere Summen werden in unproduktiven Ausgaben veranlagt; Hunderte Milliarden Dollar werden jährlich verschwendet, um die Kapitalistenklasse vor ihrer eigenen Arbeiterklasse zu schützen - ob sie sich selbst hermetisch gegenüber den Auswirkungen der städtischen Alpträume, die sie selbst geschaffen hat, abschließt oder ihre Unterdrückerschergen trainiert und bewaffnet. Nochmals mehr wird ausgegeben, um rivalisierende kapitalistische Klassen vor den gegenseitigen Ansprüchen und Gegenforderungen zu schützen.

Die kapitalistische Konkurrenz läßt rivalisierende Unternehmer Aufwand treiben, Arbeitern die subtilen Unterschiede zwischen Produkten, die sie nicht benötigen, einzureden. Der endlose Lärm um modisch veranlaßte Eintagsfliegen, während grundlegende Bedürfnisse Dutzender von Millionen nach Wohnung und Essen aus Mangel an 'effektiver Nachfrage' unberücksichtigt bleiben, liefert eine nachhaltige Widerlegung des Geprahles der Marktideologen, der Markt stelle optimale Zufriedenheit für eine maximale Zahl her.

Dies alles sind Resultate der Wirkungsweise des kapitalistischen Wertgesetzes. Doch bestehen entgegen allem Augenschein die gemieteten Marktapologeten darauf, daß dieser Markt die optimale Ressourcenallokation, die Gleichheit der am Tausch Beteiligten, freie Auswahl und gerechte Einkünfte der Produktionsfaktoren garantiere. Wenn diese Argumente versagen, zucken sie mit den Schultern und verweisen hartnäckig darauf, der Markt sei auf jeden Fall eine ewige oder natürliche Form der Regelung menschlicher Wirtschaftstätigkeit; was immer seine Defizite seien, es gebe anscheinend nur seine Spielregeln.

Unabhängig von dem, was die Ideologen der Bosse behaupten, war der Markt keine spontane Ausgeburt blinder ökonomischer Kräfte; er ist auch keine überhistorische Institution. Vielmehr tauchte der Markt im 16. Jahrhundert in Europa auf als qualitative Erweiterung der einfachen Warenproduktion, die als untergeordneter Bestandteil in allen Klassengesellschaften existiert hatte.

Insbesondere war es die Bildung eines Marktes für Arbeitskräfte, die die einfache Warenproduktion in verallgemeinerte Warenproduktion verwandelte. Dieser Arbeitsmarkt benötigte politische, v. a. staatliche Eingriffe, um althergebrachte Muster ökonomischer Aktivität aufzubrechen und existierende Bande, die Arbeiter an die Produktionsmittel und den Boden ketten, zu zerstören.

Alternative oder ergänzende Einkommens­quellen außer dem Verkauf der Arbeitskraft mußten der Masse der direkten Produzenten in diesem Übergang zum Kapitalismus versagt werden. Es war auch kein einmaliger Akt in düsterer und entfernter Vergangenheit Europas. Er ist wiederholt worden auf immer größerer und brutalerer Stufenleiter, wo immer der Imperialismus Kolonien eroberte und den Kapitalismus und seine notwendigen Sozial- und Eigentumsverhältnisse verpflanzte.

Einmal gewalttätig etabliert, wurden die Marktgesetze im Bewußtsein der ihnen Unterworfenen verewigt. Die Hauptaufgabe bürgerlicher Politökonomie nach den 1840er Jahren lag darin, die natürliche, angeborene Überlegenheit und Unwiderlegbarkeit dieser Gesetze zu beweisen. Karl Marx jedoch enthüllte wissenschaftlich die wahre Wirkungsweise der Marktgesetze in seiner Neuausarbeitung der klassischen Arbeitswertlehre.

Er veranschaulichte, daß neben dem Reich der Gleichheit von Warenbesitzern in der Marktsphäre die despotische Herrschaft von Warenbesitzern über Arbeiter in der Fabrik existiert. Der Kauf der Arbeitskraft ist nur der erste Schritt zur unbarmherzigen Ausbeutung ihres Gebrauchswerts und dem Auspressen des durch ihren rücksichtslosen Gebrauch erzeugten Mehrwerts. Elend, Herabsetzung und Entfremdung resultieren alle aus der Tatsache des Wareneigentums, nachdem die Arbeitskraft selbst eine Ware geworden ist. Deshalb bringt die Verallgemeinerung des Markts die Lohn­sklaverei mit sich.

Unter dem Kapitalismus wird die Allokation der wirtschaftlichen Ressourcen einschließlich der menschlichen Arbeit vom Wertgesetz geregelt: das bedeutet allgemeinen Tausch aller Waren gemäß der Menge gesellschaftlich notwendiger, in ihnen verausgabter Arbeit. Dieses Gesetz gilt auch für den Wert der Arbeitskraft selbst. Tatsächlich kann nur deshalb das Wertgesetz das Funktionieren der nationalen Volkswirtschaft als ganzes regulieren, weil die Bestimmung der Warenwerte auf einem gesellschaftlichen Durchschnittspreis beruht, der der an ihnen aufgewendeten Arbeit gegeben wird, etwas vor dem Kapitalismus Unmögliches.

Das Wertgesetz regelt dann die Produktion von Gütern und Dienstleistungen und die Verteilungs- und Austauschweise, die aus der Produktion hervorgeht. Es tut dies jedoch blind, als post festum Resultat der konkurrierenden und aufeinanderprallenden Operationen vieler unabhängiger und privater Kapitaleigner. Welche Produkte sozial nützlich sind, erscheint erst als Ergebnis eines blinden Prozesses, der viel Verschwendung, Anarchie und Überproduktion erzeugt.

Zu seiner Zeit war der blutige Triumph des Markts trotz der dadurch auferlegten Leiden geschichtlich progressiv, insoweit er den Weg für den Triumph der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise über alle vorhergegangenen oder parallelen Produktionsweisen ebnete. Einmal siegreich, revolutionierte der Markt das wirtschaftliche Leben und verlieh der Produktivität menschlicher Arbeit einen enormen und beispiellosen Anschub. Er errichtete der Reihe nach nationale Märkte, den internationalen Handel und schließlich eine globale Ökonomie.

Der Markt hat unvermeidlich verschiedene Ausdehnungen und Modifikationen in den letzten 250 Jahren durchlaufen. Frühe Formen des Schutzzollsystems (Merkantilismus) machten einem System größeren Freihandels in Industrie und Geschäftsverkehr Platz.

Da die freie Konkurrenz die Kapitalkonzentration förderte, schränkte sie Konkurrenzmärkte ein bzw. schaffte sie ab und brütete Monopole aus, die die Operation des Wertgesetzes beschnitten.

Die Vermehrung des Monopols im 20. Jahrhundert diente der Verlangsamung der Akkumulation, weil die Unternehmen eher ihre Anlagewerte zu erhalten trachteten, als sie durch Einführung neuer Investitionen entwertet zu sehen. So wirkte das Streben nach Profitmaximierung als Bremse auf Erneuerung und Produktivität. Krise, Depression und Massenarbeitslosigkeit folgten, weil Produktionsfaktoren und Arbeit nicht beschäftigt werden konnten.

Der Kapitalismus wurde aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Malaise nur durch den Krieg und die erzwungene Zerstörung  und Entwertung des Kapitals, die er mit sich bringt, gerettet. Der Staat selbst beaufsichtigte diesen Prozeß, übernahm die Verantwortung für die Lenkung großer Teile der Kapitalakkumulation und führte sie sogar durch. Die Garantie von Märkten und Profiten als Ergebnis der schleichenden Sozialisierung von Produktion und Verteilung war selbst ein Verdammungsurteil über das Versagen des Markts im Kapitalismus.

Diese von den Monopolen veranlaßte Antwort auf die Krise schuf jedoch in der Folge eigene Probleme: Vollbeschäftigung und steigende Löhne gingen mit einer sinken Produktivität öffentlicher Investitionen einher, drückten so die Profite und damit die weitere Akkumulation. Die letzten 25 Jahre erlebten eine intensive Rückkehr zur freien Konkurrenz, nicht anstelle der Monopole, sondern zwischen ihnen und an ihrer Seite.

Aufhebung von Handelsbarrieren, Deregulierung des Arbeitsmarktes, Abschaffung von Kapitalkontrollen, Privatisierung (und Abwertung) von Staatsvermögen, all dieses hat darauf gezielt, Akkumulation und Produktivität einen Schub zu verleihen. Und mit welchen Ergebnissen für die Masse der Bevölkerung? Einem beispiellosen Anstieg sozialer Ungleichheit, absoluter Armut und Massenarbeitslosigkeit.

Jede dieser kapitalistischen Entwicklungsphasen ist eine Antwort auf die in der vorherigen Phase erzeugte Krise gewesen. Die marxistische Marktkritik entspringt nicht aus einem abstrakten humanistischen Wunsch nach Gleichheit, sondern vielmehr aus der Erkenntnis, daß der Kapitalismus Gesellschaftskrisen erzeugt, die nur durch die Abschaffung der Marktökonomie beendet werden können.

Krisen treten unausweichlich und regelmäßig wegen des Widerspruchs, der zwischen zunehmend gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräften und dem privaten Charakter der Aneignung existiert, auf den Plan. Weder irgendeine Gruppe von Kapitalisten noch irgendeine Regierung kann solchen Krisen auf Dauer zuvorkommen, da ihre Funktion die Lösung systematischer Disproportionen und Überproduktion, die durch die Operation des Markts gesetzt werden, ist. Die als Resultat des spontanen Wirkens der 'Marktkräfte' zunehmend aus der Harmonie miteinander geratene Produktion und Konsumtion werden durch Zerstörung von Produkten, für die kein Käufer gefunden werden kann trotz des Faktums, daß viele dieser Waren benötigt werden, gewaltsam und wiederholt auf Linie gebracht.

Hinter den einzelnen Ausprägungen spezifischer Krisen innerhalb des Kapitalismus steckt der tendenzielle Fall der Profitrate. Dieser hat seine Ursachen im Verhältnis zwischen der generell steigenden organischen Zusammensetzung des Kapitals und der generell fallenden Mehrwertrate. Seine letztliche Konsequenz besteht darin, daß an einem gewissen Punkt neue Investitionen von den Kapitalisten zurückgehalten werden, weil sie keine Aussicht auf akzeptable Ertragsraten sehen.

Somit führen Privateigentum und Profitstreben zu Einschränkungen, ja sogar Einstellung der Produktion im einzelnen Sektor. Je größer die betroffene Kapitalformation ist, umso verheerender ihre Auswirkung auf die gesamte gesellschaftliche Produktion. Ähnlich führt der Investitionentransfer aus einem Sektor zum anderen, wieder auf der Suche nach größtem Profit, zu Disproportionalitäten zwischen den verschiedenen Sektoren der ganzen Volkswirtschaft. Von daher kann nur ein grobes und zeitweiliges Gleichgewicht zwischen Produktion und Konsumtion im Kapitalismus resultieren.

Mit seinen zahlreichen Versuchen, die Auswirkungen der Krise zu mildern, ist der Kapitalismus immer gezwungen gewesen, das Funktionieren des Wertgesetzes zu begrenzen oder sogar teilweise abzuschaffen; in dieser Beziehung nimmt er den Sozialismus vorweg und äfft ihn nach.

Er bereitet die Arbeiterklasse für die Aufgaben des sozialistischen Übergangs vor. Er hat eine zahlreiche und genügend gebildete Arbeiterklasse geschaffen, die die Funktionen des Managements in der Produktion selbst übernehmen kann.

Er hat Techniken der Marktregulierung  und -manipulation geschaffen, die übernommen und erweitert werden können. Er hat Planungsinstrumente geschaffen, - partiell angewandt und unfähig zu dauerhaftem Effekt, solange Privateigentümer vorherrschen - mit denen der Kapitalismus die verschwenderischen Konsequenzen der Anarchie in der Produktion zu minimieren sucht. Diese nehmen so das Ende der Dominanz des Marktes über das Wirtschaftsleben vorweg.

Gerade wie der Markt jedoch nicht friedlich entstand, sondern Hindernisse auf seinem Weg zermalmen mußte, so wird auch das Ende des Markts in der Regelung des Wirtschaftslebens weder friedlich noch unverzüglich sein. Ein gewaltsamer Umsturz des Staates, der diesen Markt schützt und garantiert, ist ein essentieller erster Schritt, der die Enteignung des Reichtums und Kapitals der Minderheit gestattet und es in die Hände der Gesellschaft legt.

Die Ausrottung des Marktes als wirtschaftlichen Mechanismus' wird jedoch nicht unmittelbar danach stattfinden. Während seine Tyran­nei über die Masse der direkten Produzenten schnell beendet werden kann, kann doch der Markt nicht einfach abgeschafft werden. Wie der Staat, so muß auch der Markt absterben.

Knappheit wird weiter existieren und die Verteilung knapper Ressourcen mag wohl, wenigstens zum Teil, durch Verkäufe auf dem Markt bewerkstelligt werden. Aber der Markt wird manipuliert werden müssen, da er ein abnehmender Faktor im ökonomischen Leben wird; er muß gezwungen werden, der Sache seiner eigenen Abschaffung zu dienen. Dies ist das Ziel der Übergangsperiode.

 

DAS ERBE VON MARX UND ENGELS

 

Marx und Engels schrieben keine separate Arbeit über die politische Ökonomie des Sozialismus. Ihre Gedanken sind über theoretische, programmatische und polemische Bücher verstreut. Nichtsdestoweniger haben diese zusammengenommen die grundlegenden Konzepte entworfen, die seitdem die revolutionäre Bewegung anleiteten.

Zuerst bestanden Marx und Engels darauf, die künftige sozialistische Gesellschaft müs­se ihren Startpunkt von den in der modernen Industrie verzeichneten Fortschritten nehmen, der modernen Technik und der Arbeitsteilung.

Der Sozialismus würde auf der Zentralisation der Industrie und den Elementen vergesellschafteten Eigentums an den Produktionsmitteln, die innerhalb der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft vorkommen (z. B. Aktiengesellschaften, Kooperativen), aufgebaut. In diesem Sinne traten sie gegen alle Schemata auf, die einen Rückschritt in der Technik oder sozialen Organisation gegenüber dem, was unter dem modernen Kapitalismus erreicht war, verkörperten.

Marx' und Engels' positive Bemerkungen über Sozialismus und Kommunismus begannen natürlich mit der Erkenntnis, daß die nachrevolutionäre Gesellschaft bewußt daran gehen würde, die den angeborenen Defiziten kapitalistischer Produktion und Verteilung zugrundeliegenden Widersprüche zu lösen. Der allgemeinste Widerspruch im Kapitalismus war der zwischen dem zunehmend gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Produktion und der privaten Natur der Aneignung des Wertprodukts. Dieser Widerspruch war vom Wesen der Warenproduktion ererbt:

"Was sind Waren? Produkte, erzeugt in einer Gesellschaft mehr oder weniger vereinzelter Privatproduzenten, also zunächst Privatprodukte. Aber diese Privatprodukte werden erst Waren, sobald sie nicht für den Selbstverbrauch, sondern für den Verbrauch durch andre, also für den gesellschaftlichen Verbrauch produziert werden; sie treten ein in den gesellschaftlichen Verbrauch durch den Austausch." (F. Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, Berlin - Ost, 1979, S. 285)

Produkte werden ohne vorheriges Wissen hergestellt, ob es einen Markt für sie gibt. Ob die zu ihrer Erzeugung aufgebrachte Arbeit gesellschaftlich notwendig ist oder nicht, kann man deshalb erst wissen, nachdem sie zu Markte gebracht worden sind. Dieser einfache Charakterzug aller Warenproduktion, ob innerhalb des Kapitalismus oder nicht, gewährleistet die Anarchie der Produktion, da nicht garantiert werden kann, daß jeder hergestellte Gebrauchswert einen Käufer finden wird, für den er nützlich ist. Andauernd treten Überproduktion und Ungleichgewichte auf und mit ihnen Verschwendung und Ineffizienz.

Der Kapitalismus jedoch, der verallgemeinerte Warenproduktion darstellt (d. h. die Arbeitskraft wird selbst zur Ware, nicht allein die Arbeitsinstrumente und Rohmaterialien), fügt eine weitere Dimension hinzu. Produktion wird in größeren kooperativen Arbeitseinheiten unternommen, in denen eine Klasse von Kapitalisten einen großen Produktionsmittelumfang besitzt und eine Klasse von Arbeitern beschäftigt, die nichts außer ihrer Arbeitsfähigkeit besitzen.

Dem Kapitalisten gehört das Kapital, das zur Beschäftigung des Arbeiters gebraucht wird und erhält damit das Recht auf das Produkt des Arbeiters. Dieses Produkt enthält jedoch mehr Wert, als der Kapitalist in Gestalt von Maschinen, Rohstoffen und Arbeitskraft auslegen mußte.

Dies deshalb, weil die Arbeitshandlung mehr Wert schafft, als die Arbeitskraft selbst wert ist. Im Ergebnis eignet sich der Kapitalist den Mehrwert an. Die Aneignung immer mehr Mehrwerts wird für den Kapitalisten zum anspornenden Ziel. Dies führt zu einem Konflikt zwischen den zwei Klassen über die Produktion und Verteilung von Mehrwert.

Darüberhinaus wird im Streben nach immer größerer Produktivität immer mehr Maschinerie von immer weniger Arbeitern in Bewegung gesetzt, was zu struktureller Massenarbeitslosigkeit und deshalb andauernder Geringnutzung von Arbeit - der wichtigsten Hilfsquelle der Gesellschaft - führt.

Weitere Verschwendung wird vom Klassenkrieg selbst mit seiner unvermeidlichen Zerstreuung von Energie und Erfindungsgabe der Arbeiterklasse verursacht. Weil Arbeit unterdrückend wirkt, hört sie auf, ein essentieller Bestandteil der Entwicklung menschlicher Individualität zu sein und bewirkt eine weitere Vergeudung der produktiven Kapazität der Gesellschaft.

Obwohl der Arbeitsprozeß im Kapitalismus immer komplexer und die Arbeitsteilung immer zugespitzter wird, organisiert immer noch privates Kapital die Produktion. Produktion im Kapitalismus bleibt deshalb wesentlich Privatproduktion trotz auf gesellschaftlichen Nutzen angelegter Produktion. Die private Form kapitalistischer Produktion steht in antagonistischem Widerspruch zu ihrem gesellschaftlichen Inhalt. Und das gleiche gilt für die Arbeit; obwohl viel Arbeit in großen kapitalistischen Firmen und sogar Trusts als gesellschaftliche Aktivität erscheint, bleibt doch aus zwei Gründen die Lohnarbeit im Kapitalismus Privatarbeit.

Erstens, weil es eine Funktion des Privatkapitals, nicht der Gesellschaft ist; zweitens, weil der Arbeiter/die Arbeiterin vom sozialen Inhalt seiner/ihrer Arbeit entfremdet ist (und deshalb im wesentlichen ihm gegenüber gleich­gültig). In welchem Ausmaß die privat verausgabte Arbeit gesellschaftliche Arbeit verkörpert, nachdem der Markt die betreffenden Preise für alle Waren und ob die Waren zu diesen Preisen verkauft werden können, enthüllt hat. Der Zirkulationsprozeß überträgt ein gewisses Ausmaß konkreter (privater) Arbeit in ein unterschiedliches Maß abstrakter (gesellschaftlicher) Arbeit. Die Übersetzungsbedingungen können im Vorhinein nicht bekannt sein. Im Kapitalismus bleibt die Arbeit bestenfalls indirekt vergesellschaftet, im schlechtesten Fall überhaupt nicht.

Das Überleben aller Einzelkapitale hängt vom Grad ab, bis zu dem in ihm verkörperte konkrete Arbeit (ihre Waren) wirklich abstrakte Arbeit darstellt, und dies hängt in letzter Instanz von der Produktivität ihres Kapitals ab. Jedes Kapital ist ständig zu akkumulieren gezwungen, um zu überleben, weil nur Akkumulation ein ständiges Produktivitätswachstum sicherstellen kann. Dies bedeutet am Ende, daß der Arbeiter, die Verkörperung der lebendigen Arbeit, systematisch der Akkumulation, d. h. der toten Arbeit, untergeordnet wird.

Kapitalistische Produktion dient keinem anderen Ziel als dem der Akkumulation. Sie ist ein quasi automatischer Prozeß, unabhängig vom menschlichen Willen. Es ist diese Monsternatur des Kapitalismus, den die Arbeiterklasse überwinden muß, um die Menschheit und den Planeten Erde zu retten. Marx' Kapitalismusanalyse macht eindeutig klar, daß es die private Form der Produktion und Arbeit ist, die Indirektheit (d. h. die Blindheit) der Vergesellschaftung von Arbeit, die im Kern den ganzen Skandal des Kapitalismus einschließt: die Diktatur des Kapitals über den Arbeiter.

Marx und Engels erwogen, daß diese Defizite in der verallgemeinerten Warenproduktion überwunden werden könnten, wenn Arbeit direkte gesellschaftliche wäre:

"Sobald die Gesellschaft sich in den Besitz der Produktionsmittel setzt und sie in unmittelbarer Vergesellschaftung zur Produktion verwendet, wird die Arbeit eines jeden, wie verschieden auch ihr spezifisch nützlicher Charakter sei, von vornherein und direkt gesellschaftliche Arbeit. Die in einem Produkt steckende Menge gesellschaftlicher Arbeit braucht dann nicht erst auf einem Umweg festgestellt zu werden; die tägliche Erfahrung zeigt direkt an, wieviel davon im Durchschnitt nötig ist. Allerdings wird auch dann die Gesellschaft wissen müssen, wieviel Arbeit jeder Gebrauchsgegenstand zu seiner Herstellung bedarf. Sie wird den Produktionsplan einzurichten haben nach den Produktionsmitteln, wozu besonders auch die Arbeitskräfte gehören. Die Nutzeffekte der verschiedenen Gebrauchsgegenstände, abgewogen untereinander und gegenüber den zu ihrer Herstellung nötigen Arbeitsmengen, werden den Plan schließlich bestimmen." (ebda., S. 288)

Der Plan ist ein bewußtes Instrument, der von der Gesellschaft angewandt wird, 'um eine Beziehung zwischen dem Umfang gesellschaftlicher Arbeitszeit, die zur Produktion bestimmter Artikel verbraucht wird, und dem Ausmaß gesellschaftlichen Bedürfnisses, das durch diese Artikel befriedigt werden soll, zu etablieren'. Die Produktion wird durch die sich verändernde Struktur und Ausweitung der Bedürfnisse geregelt. Aus diesem Konzept folgen weitere Konsequenzen. Erstens hören natürlich die Produkte auf, die Warenform anzunehmen, da sie nicht länger Tauschwerte darstellen, d. h. Güter und Dienstleistungen, deren gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeit nur im Austauschakt selbst festgelegt wird. Vielmehr wird diese Entscheidung ex ante getroffen, Güter werden hergestellt, weil es gesellschaftlichen Bedarf nach ihnen gibt. Zweitens verliert Geld seinen besonderen Charakter als universelles Äquivalent für alle Tauschwerte. Stattdessen:

"Die Gesellschaft kann einfach berechnen, wieviel Arbeitsstunden in einer Dampfmaschine, einem Hektoliter Weizen der letzten Ernte, in hundert Quadratmeter Tuch von bestimmter Qualität stecken. Es kann ihr also nicht einfallen, die in den Produkten niedergelegten Arbeitsquanta , die sie alsdann direkt und absolut kennt, noch fernerhin in einem nur relativen, schwankenden, unzulänglichen, früher als Notbehelf unvermeidlichen Maß, in einem dritten Produkt auszudrücken und nicht in ihrem natürlichen, adäquaten, absoluten Maß, der  Zeit. Die Gesellschaft schreibt also unter obigen Voraussetzungen den Produkten auch keine Werte zu." (ebda., S. 288)

Marx und Engels zogen in Erwägung, daß Arbeitsanteilsscheine das Geld ersetzen könnten; erstere seien direkter Ausdruck gesellschaftlich notwendiger Arbeit, die in nützlichen Produkten vergegenständlicht ist.

Wenn das Profitmotiv, das Verlangen, immer steigenden Mehrwert anzuhäufen, nicht länger leitendes Wirtschaftsprinzip ist, welches dann? Marx argumentiert, es ist 'die Ökonomie der Zeit, auf die sich letztlich alle Ökonomie reduziert'. Daher, 'je weniger Zeit es der Gesellschaft erfordert, Weizen, Vieh etc. zu produzieren, gewinnt sie desto mehr Zeit für andere Produktion, materielle wie geistige.' Vom Zwang zur Steigerung der Surplusarbeit befreit, wird die Gesellschaft die Arbeitszeit verringern und die verfügbare, freie Zeit ausweiten können. Notwendige Arbeit wird auf ein Minimum eingeschränkt werden und damit die Trennung in 'Kopf-' und 'Handarbeiter' überwindbar.

Schließlich erkannten Marx und Engels, daß der Kommunismus nicht mit einem Mal oder über Nacht einträfe. Es sei nicht möglich, schnell aus dem Reich der Notwendigkeit in das der Freiheit zu gelangen; wirtschaftlich gesprochen, würde eine Situation relativer Knappheit eine Zeit lang andauern. Daher müsse sich die Gesellschaft einen Mechanismus für die Entscheidung über die Verteilung der Früchte der Arbeit unter ihre Mitglieder zu eigen machen. Sie argumentierten, daß im Sozialismus (der unteren Stufe des Kommunismus) jedes Mitglied, "ein Zertifikat von der Gesellschaft erhält, daß es so und so viel Arbeit geleistet hat" und mit diesem Zertifikat bezieht es aus dem gesellschaftlichen Konsumtionsmittelfonds, soviel der gleiche Arbeitsaufwand kostet', nachdem gewisse Abzüge getätigt worden sind. Die Abzüge enthalten:

"Deckung zum Ersatz der verbrauchten Produktionsmittel", zusätzlicher Teil für Ausdehnung der Produktion, "Reserve- oder Assekuranzfonds gegen Mißfälle, Störungen durch Naturereignisse usw", die allgemeinen, nicht zur Produktion gehörigen Verwaltungskosten. "Was zur gemeinschaftlichen Befriedigung von Bedürfnissen bestimmt ist wie Schulen, Gesundheitsvorrichtungen usw. Fonds für Arbeitsunfähige usw." (K. Marx: Randglossen zum Programm der Deutschen Arbeiterpartei, Berlin/Leipzig 1922, S. 25)

Von daher existierte Ungleichheit, aber eine, die mit der Zeit abgebaut würde. Erst im Kommunismus würden sich die Verteilungskriterien ändern. Statt 'jedem nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seiner Arbeitsleistung', sei die Gesellschaft in der Lage, sich 'jedem nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen' anzueignen. Ein Überfluß aller notwendigen materiellen Güter und Dienstleistungen würde die Notwendigkeit jeder Form rationierten Zugangs zu den Erzeugnissen gesellschaftlicher Arbeit ausschalten.

Marx' und Engels' wissenschaftliche Perspektive entwickelte die Sache des Sozialismus aus den entdeckten Tendenzen innerhalb der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft und legte ihr keine Schemata auf. Sie schmähten den 'kleinbürgerlichen' Sozialismus für seinen Wunsch, das Verhältnis Lohnarbeit - Kapital ungeschehen zu machen und alle direkten Produzenten aus Lohnsklaven wieder in Privateigentümer ihrer eigenen Produktionsmittel zu verwandeln (Handwerker).

Marx und Engels demonstrierten, daß die politische Ökonomie von Proudhons utopischem Sozialismus auf den Versuch gegründet war, 'Sozialismus' mittels eines Systems konkurrierender kleiner Warenbesitzer zu schaffen. Diese Vormarxisten suchten nicht, den Sozialismus auf den Boden des Kriegs zwischen antagonistischen und unversöhnlichen Klassen über die Produktion des Mehrwerts zu stellen. Sie wollten die Warenverhältnisse 'säubern', Arbeiter und Kapitalisten zu Gleichen in der Produktion machen, so wie sie im Austausch erscheinen und ignorierten somit die grundlegende Natur kapitalistischer Produktion. Sie wollten Lohnarbeit/Kapital, Konkurrenz und Profit, aber ohne Ausbeutung, Ungleichheit und Arbeitslosigkeit; kurz, eine Utopie.

Soviel begründeten Marx und Engels an politischer Ökonomie des Sozialismus. Er wäre vernünftig, geplant, demokratisch. Er überwände die Anarchie und Ungleichgewichte kapitalistischer Produktion. Er würde der menschlichen Spezies die unterdrückerischen Auswirkungen entfremdeter Arbeit abnehmen und die Rundumentwicklung von Individualität gestatten, die im Gegenzug nur in einer Gesellschaft stattfinden könnte, die Freiheit von Dürftigkeit und Unterdrückung garantierte. Sie  überwände die Geringnutzung und Vergeudung der Arbeit. Sie vermiede den nutzlosen Raubbau an der Natur und würde den zerstörerischen Gegensatz zwischen Stadt und Land beenden.

Sie trafen eine Anzahl von Annahmen über die politische Ökonomie des Sozialismus; nämlich, daß die Gesellschaft im Besitz aller Produktionsmittel sei; daß die Gesellschaft in der Lage sei, den direkt sozialen Charakter der in der Produktion eingebundenen Arbeit zu kalkulieren und als Resultat sich indirekter Maßstäbe (d. h. Wert und Geld, Preisen) vollständig entledigen könne. Sie schrieben wenig über die spezifischen Einrichtungen der Planung oder die Kalkulation der verhältnismäßigen Ergiebigkeit verschiedener Nutzweisen der Arbeit und anderer Vorprodukte, nachdem einmal Geld, Wert und Produktionspreis ihren früheren Charakter verlören.

Von daher begann die Schwierigkeit für die marxistische Tradition, als einige dieser Annahmen im Lichte geschichtlicher Entwicklungen neu durchdacht werden mußten, insbesondere der russischen Oktoberrevolution 1917 und der Versuchsschritte des ersten Arbeiterstaates in Richtung wirtschaftlicher Umgestaltung.

 

ÖKONOMISCHER WIEDERAUFBAU IM ARBEITERSTAAT

 

Bolschewistische Politik der Machtergreifung

 

Marx und Engels bestanden darauf, daß es notwendig würde, die Produktionsmittel zu nationalisieren und zu konzentrieren, nachdem die Arbeiterklasse die Macht ergriffen hat. Nur auf dieser Grundlage konnte die Gesellschaft bewußt die Arbeitszeit auf die verschiedenen Sektoren der Wirtschaft verteilen, um gesellschaftliche Bedürfnisse optimal zu befriedigen.

Dieses allgemeine Konzept der post-kapitalistischen Ökonomie war auch in den marxistischen Programmen der Parteien der Zweiten Internationale einschließlich der russischen Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei zu finden. Hilferding fügte dem marxistischen Kanon die Idee hinzu, daß das Finanzkapital zum immer mächtigeren Gehirn und Organisationszentrum des produktiven Kapitals geworden war; eine Entwicklung, die die Wirtschaft objektiv auf  den Sozialismus vorbereitete: ein fertiger ökonomischer Apparat brauchte vom neuen sozialistischen Staat nur in die Hand genommen zu werden.

Während des ersten Weltkriegs schien der Staatskapitalismus besonders in Deutschland für die Bolschewiki den praktischen Beweis von Hilferdings These darzustellen. Lenin stellte deshalb 1917 wiederholt die Wichtigkeit fest, die Banken zu nationalisieren, als bedeutendsten Schritt zur bewußten politischen Kontrolle der Wirtschaft zu.

Kein Theoretiker der Zweiten Internationale , sei er Bolschewist gewesen oder nicht, arbeitete jedoch an der Idee von „Planwirtschaft„ weiter als zu diesem Punkt. Besonders das Konzept einer zentralisierten und geplanten Verteilung der Arbeitszeit wurde nicht konkretisiert. Den Bolschewisten war klar, daß Rußlands Rückständigkeit zu Beginn nicht viel zentrale Planung gestatten würde. Diese Vorsicht war vernünftig und spiegelte sich in den ersten Wirtschaftsmaßnahmen der revolutionären Regierung der Volkskommissare wider.

Die theoretische Unterentwicklung des Bolschewismus wurde, was das betrifft, am wachsenden Einfluß der verworrenen Positionen der „Linkskommunisten„ innerhalb seiner Reihen offenbar. Ihr Einfluß war besonders 1920 stark, als sie argumentierten, daß die Notmaßnahmen, die später summarisch als „Kriegskommunismus„ bekannt wurden, die ersten Schritte im Übergang zum Sozialismus repräsentierten.

Die revolutionäre Wirtschaftspolitik ab Oktober 1917 zielte darauf ab, einen klaren Bruch mit der kapitalistischen Vergangenheit auf einigen Gebieten zu bewerkstelligen. So wurde am Tag nach der Machtergreifung durch die Sowjets das ganze Land nationalisiert, wurden effektiv alle Großgrundbesitzer enteignet. Als im Januar 1918 die Konstituierende Versammlung sich weigerte, diese Maßnahme zu bestätigen, entschieden die Bolschewiki, sie aufzulösen. Das darauffolgende Dekret „Über die Sozialisierung von Grund und Boden„ führte das Programm der Linken Sozialrevolutionäre durch, indem es festlegte, daß das verstaatlichte Land in gleichen Portionen auf die es Bearbeitenden verteilt und die hohen Steuern und Grundrenten abgeschafft werden sollte/n. Die meisten großen feudalen Ländereien wurden somit in kleinen und mittleren bäuerlichen Grundbesitz aufgelöst.

Im allgemeinen bezog die revolutionäre Regierung jedoch während der ersten sechs Monate eine relativ vorsichtige Haltung zum Industrie- und Finanzsektor. Das Dekret über Arbeiterkontrolle vom November 1917 war der zweite bedeutendere Programmpunkt der frühen sowjetischen Wirtschaftspolitik. Es gestattete den Unternehmern, weiterhin ihre Fabriken zu besitzen und zu leiten, aber jetzt unter Kontrolle der Arbeitervertreter. Die Entscheidungen der Arbeiterkontrollkomitees gaben den Ausschlag. Auf diese Weise, hoffte man, würden die Arbeiter lernen, wie die Produktion zu verwalten und zu organisieren sei, während sie sie gegen Störungen und Sabotage durch die Gegner der neuen Regierung schützten.

In Wirklichkeit führte es nicht zu sozialer Kooperation, geschweige denn Planung, sondern zu halbanarchistischem Betriebspartikularismus. Im Gegensatz zu dem, was man hätte erwarten mögen, griff die Regierung nicht auf umfassende Verstaatlichung zurück. Im Glauben, weder die Fabrikarbeiter noch der Arbeiterstaat hätten ausreichende Erfahrung, um die Produktion zu betreiben, unternahm die Regierung unter Lenin anfänglich selbst im Fall der Großindustrie keine Nationalisierung. Nur in Fällen, wo Kapitalisten die Entscheidungen der Arbeiterkontrollkomitees mißachteten, wurden Unternehmen strafenteignet.

Um die verschiedenen Bereiche zu koordinieren und die Produktion aufrechtzuerhalten, führte der Rat der Volkskommissare (Sownarkom) kurz- und langfristige Initiativen ein. Man erwartete damals, Verstaatlichungen und Kontrolle über die Banken reichten aus. Ende Dezember 1917 wurden alle Banken formell unter dem Dach einer Zentralbank vereinheitlicht. Um sie loyal mit der Regierung zusammenarbeiten zu lassen, mußten jedoch die meisten Bankmanager ersetzt oder unter strikte Regierungskontrolle gestellt werden.

Kredit und Geldpolitik mußten sich an strikte Kontrollen halten, um die Konvertibilität des Rubel sicherzustellen. Um dem Zentrum zu erlauben, langfristig eine umfassende ökonomische Kontrolle zu entfalten, wurde im Dezember 1917 ein neues Gremium geschaffen - der Oberste Volkswirtschaftsrat (Vesenka). Während seiner ersten sechs Monate war Vesenka nicht effektiv, sondern befaßte sich mit vorbereitender Tätigkeit. Die Idee bestand darin, vorsichtig eine zentrale Koordination der Einzelunternehmen speziell in der Industrie zu errichten, ohne sie notwendigerweise alle zu nationalisieren und unter ein detailliertes Zentralkommando zu stellen.

 

Kriegskommunismus

 

Der Ausbruch eines alles einbeziehenden Bürgerkriegs und die westliche Militärintervention im Mai 1918 waren der Hauptgrund für einen größeren Schwenk in der Wirtschaftspolitik in der zweiten Hälfte von 1918. Produktion und Verteilung wurden jetzt auf das Ziel, den Krieg zu gewinnen, umorientiert, aber es gab ebensogut Druck von innen, besonders die Sabotage der Bourgeoisie, die den linken Parteiflügel gestärkt hatte.

Gerade vor Kriegsausbruch waren innenpolitische Faktoren eingetreten, die in vieler Hinsicht die Politik von Sownarkom ineffektiv gemacht hatten und die Argumente für eine Linkswende stützten. Arbeiter hatten spontan das Eigentum ihrer Bosse konfisziert und dadurch die Verantwortung der Zentralbank vergrößert, die alle verstaatlichten Unternehmungen finanzieren mußte. Der Kredit explodierte und die Gelddisziplin brach zusammen, als das Steueraufkommen abstürzte. All dies führte zu Inflation und Währungsabwertung.

Der Krieg machte eine Rückkehr zu ausgeglichenen Haushalten und fester Geldkontrolle noch unmöglicher. Die Argumente der „Linken„ (Smirnow, Ossinskij, Krestinsky u. a.) - der Staat sollte das ganze Geldwesen abschaffen, weil es von Natur aus bürgerlich sei und im Übergang zum Sozialismus nicht helfen könne - machten das Rennen. Lenins Appell vom April 1918, Rußland brauche eine verbesserte (finanzielle) Buchführung, größere Arbeitsdisziplin und höhere Arbeitsproduktivität, stieß auf taube Ohren.

In der Landwirtschaft bedeutete der Kriegskommunismus eine Wende zu Requirierungen. Im August 1918 wurden Arbeiterabteilungen bewaffnet und ermächtigt, sie durchzuführen. Dabei wurden sie von den neu gegründeten „Komitees der armen Bauernschaft„ unterstützt, die als Speerspitze des Klassenkampfs auf dem Lande ersonnen wurden. Gleichzeitig wurde Propaganda für kollektive und kooperative Landwirtschaft betrieben, obwohl wenige materielle Anreize verfügbar waren, sie zu ermutigen.

Als die Zahl der Staatsgüter gering blieb und die Requirierungen zur Verringerung der kultivierten Landfläche und Abneigung von Mittelbauern gegen die Revolution führten, löste Sownarkom 1919 die Komitees der Dorfarmut auf, um die Mittelbauern zu beruhigen. Nichtsdestotrotz fand immer mehr Korn seinen Weg auf den Schwarzmarkt und immer größere Landgebiete lagen brach. Als Antwort wurden die Eintreibemethoden brutaler.

1920 nahmen die Bauernaufstände zu, nicht zuletzt wegen weitverbreiteten Hungers und selbst Hungersnöten auf dem Land. Trotzdem versuchte der 8. Sowjetkongreß im Dezember 1920 den Bauernwiderstand durch Auferlegung einer Pflicht zur Aussaat zu ersticken. Erst mit Lenins Wechsel zur NÖP im Frühjahr 1921 akzeptierte die Partei endlich die Hoffnungslosigkeit solcher Vorstöße und erkannte die Notwendigkeit der Wiedereinführung von Geld und Markt in der Landwirtschaft an.

Zwischenzeitlich war die Industrie in eine einzige Versorgungseinrichtung für die Rote Armee verwandelt worden. Ein Dekret vom Juni 1918 hatte die ganze Großindustrie auf einen Schlag nationalisiert. Im Herbst war die städtische Kleinindustrie an der Reihe, und 1919 wurden sogar ländliche Handwerksbetriebe vom Staat übernommen.

Das Ausmaß an Verstaatlichungen war so hoch, daß nur 10% der 37000 Staatsfirmen wirklich zentral koordiniert werden konnten. Die staatlichen Unternehmen wurden in Trusts zusammengefaßt, die selbst unter Vesenka mit dem Ziel vereinigt wurden, den Ausstoß zu zentralisieren. Konzentration und Zentralisation der Industrie waren offensichtlich verständliche Maßnahmen im Bemühen, die Kriegsmaschine zu unterstützen, aber weil sie gleichfalls auf alle nichtmilitärischen Sektoren angewandt wurden, trugen sie erheblich zur Entstehung einer viel gehaßten Bürokratie bei.

Vesenka versuchte, die industrielle Entwicklung wesentlich zu lenken, indem sie Kredite zu den wichtigsten Kriegsindustrien hinleitete. Die Glavki waren nicht wirklich fähig, die ganze Produktion zu organisieren, noch weniger, sie zu planen, und so intervenierten sie oft in unsystematischer Form.

Austausch zwischen Staatsfirmen wurde zunehmend auf geldloser Basis durchgeführt, mit anderen Worten als Naturalientausch. Die ausgetauschten Mengen folgten keinen erkennbaren Marktregeln, sondern waren eher Ergebnis bürokratischer Eigenmächtigkeit. Gegen großen Widerstand seitens der Parteilinken und der Gewerkschaften konnte Lenin erfolgreich die Einmannleitung in den meisten Unternehmen und den Gebrauch bürgerlicher Spezialisten in Armee und Wirtschaft durchsetzen. Während letzteres als Zugeständnis an die russische Rückständigkeit gesehen wurde, wurde ersteres als Fortschritt gegenüber „rudimentärer„ Kollegialität dargestellt.

In der kriegskommunistischen Ideologie hörte die Arbeitskraft auf, eine Ware zu sein und wurde in einen „Dienst an der Gesellschaft„ verwandelt. Der Zweite Allrussische Gewerkschaftskongreß im Januar 1919 hatte das Prinzip der „Verstaatlichung„ der Gewerkschaften akzeptiert. Dies bedeutete einerseits, daß der Volkskommissar für Arbeit von den Gewerkschaften gewählt werden sollte, andererseits Arbeiterstreiks illegalisiert werden sollten.

Die Gewerkschaften sollten die ganze Volkswirtschaft verwalten und gleichzeitig die neue „sozialistische Arbeitsdisziplin„ herstellen. 1920 schlug Trotzki mit anfänglicher Unterstützung der Mehrheit der Parteiführer die „Militarisierung der Arbeit„ vor. Alle Eisenbahnbediensteten wurden als „für den Arbeitsdienst mobil gemacht„ erklärt und frühere Bataillone der Roten Armee wurden in „Arbeitsarmeen„ überführt.

Lenin und andere distanzierten sich zunehmend von dieser Politik, die zu ständigen Konflikten mit den Gewerkschaften führte, aber erst mit der Annahme der NÖP im März 1921 wurde die formale Verpflichtung zur „Militarisierung der Arbeit„ fallengelassen.

Gleichzeitig wurde der Verstaatlichungsplan der Gewerkschaften auf einen langfristigen Plan zurückverwiesen, der den Gewerkschaften einstweilen gestattete, die unmittelbaren Arbeiterinteressen in Konflikten mit ihrem eigenen Staat zu vertreten.

Die Nationalisierung der Banken schuf nicht, wie erhofft, ein effektives Instrumentarium für die Leitung der Industrie, und die Annullierung der Schulden des alten Regimes löste nicht das Problem der Finanzierung öffentlicher Ausgaben. Industrieverwaltung und bewußte Wirtschaftslenkung erforderten einen viel verfeinerteren Apparat, als die Banken bieten konnten, und so etwas wurde erst später teilweise mit dem Glavki - System aufgebaut. Gleichzeitig war ein effektives Maßsystem für die relative Ergiebigkeit und Produktivität erforderlich, als das zur Verfügung stehende alte System, das Geldwesen, aktiv untergraben wurde.

Da die verschiedenen Steuern keinen großen Haushaltsertrag erzielten, blieb als einzige bedeutendere Einkommensquelle für die Regierung die Druckerpresse. Als Resultat stieg die Inflation in einem solchen Ausmaß, daß viele mit Gütern zum Verkauf (besonders die Bauern) sich weigerten, weiterhin Papiergeld anzunehmen. Unter der Führung des früheren Linkskommunisten Krestinski, verfolgte die Zentralbank eine Politik der Hyperinflation als Steuer auf den Reichen, und um das bürgerliche Geldsystem zu zerrütten.

Unter der Wucht dieser Politik schaltete die Staatsindustrie so weit wie möglich auf Naturaltausch um; ein unter der offiziellen Parole „Für eine proletarische Naturalwirtschaft!„ gerechtfertigter Schwenk. Um 1919 wurden Arbeiter zunehmend in Sachleistungen bezahlt und 1920 wurden Basisgüter und -dienstleistungen umsonst zur Verfügung gestellt. Bezahlung für Kantinenmahlzeiten, Postdienste, Telefon, Wasser, Gas und Elektrizität wie auch Mieten wurden abgeschafft.

Jedoch existierten die materiellen Voraussetzungen für einen solchen Abkürzungsweg zum Sozialismus nicht. Dies wurde durch den gewaltigen Anstieg des Papiergeldvolumens deutlich, das für Verbraucher und Unternehmen notwendig blieb, um Güter vom Schwarzmarkt zu erhalten. So provozierte die späte Kriegskommunismuspolitik sowohl das Ressentiment von Arbeitern und Bauern, wie es auch die Ökonomie ohne irgendeine Möglichkeit zurückließ, ihre eigene Entwicklung zu messen oder festzulegen, wie sie sich unter Friedensbedingungen neu orientieren sollte.

Proletarische Planung im Sinne langfristigen und konstruktiven Unternehmens für den Übergang zum Sozialismus begann vor dem Bürgerkrieg mit einem Auftrag Lenins an die Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sie wurde gebeten, ‘so schnell wie möglich einen Plan für die Reorganisation der Industrie und die wirtschaftliche Wiederbelebung Rußlands auszuarbeiten’.

Ähnlich begann Vesenka durch sein „Komitee für öffentliche Arbeiten„, Anfang 1918 Projekte zu planen. Sie machte sich daran, eine 1700 km lange Eisenbahnlinie zu bauen, um das Kohlebecken von Kusnetzk mit den Industrien am Ural zu verbinden. Mit dem Ausbruch des Bürgerkrieges wurden alle diese Projekte aufgegeben, als die größte Verfügungsgewalt über Ressourcen in die Hände der „Außerordentlichen Kommission für die Versorgung der Roten Armee„ gelegt wurde.

Vesenka schaffte es nie, die „einheitliche zentrale wirtschaftliche Autorität„ zu werden, als die ihre Führer sie zu funktionieren wünschten. Ähnlich teilte die „Nutzbarmachungs­kommission„, die gegründet wurde, um Nutzungspläne für alle einzelnen Produkte aufzustellen, ihre Autorität mit den Beschaffungsabteilungen der Glavki. Im März 1920 schlug Trotzki die etwas auf Kosten der Glavki und der Nutzbarmachungskommission gehende Stärkung der regionalen Körperschaften und die Zentralisierung der Aufgabe nationaler Wirtschaftsplanung unter dem „Rat für Arbeit und Verteidigung„ (STO) vor, der alle Volkskommissare umfaßte, die mit ökonomischen Angelegenheiten befaßt waren. Sein Vorschlag wurde am 9. Parteitag angenommen.

1920 machte die Hyperinflation allen Fortschritt auf einen einheitlichen Wirtschaftsplan zu unmöglich, aber das Jahr erblickte bedeutende Teilpläne, z. B. Anordnung 1042, die Trotzkis Plan für die Reorganisation der Eisenbahnen war. Lenin billigte solche konkreten Pläne und favorisierte besonders die Kommission für die Elektrifizierung Rußlands (Goelro), die ein Zehnjahresprojekt für die Entwicklung eines „Netzwerks von Elektrizitätskraftwerken„ in Rußland umriß. Nicht eher als 1921 begann Gosplan seine Arbeit am einheitlichen Wirtschaftsplan und es sollte mehrere Jahre dauern, bis diese Arbeit effektiv werden konnte.

Der Kriegskommunismus bedeutete die plötzliche Abschaffung des Kapitalismus im Unterschied zu der in den ersten sechs Monaten der Revolution verfolgten Politik von Kontrolle und Unterordnung. Er unterdrückte das Wertgesetz in Schlüsselsektoren der Industrie durch die Aneignung politischer Kriterien für Preisbildung, Kreditzuteilung - und in seiner späteren Phase - Naturalientausch.

War das Planung? Ja, aber losgelöst vom Übergang zum Sozialismus. Es war eine kurzfristige und verzweifelte Form von Planung, um den Krieg zu gewinnen, aber keine proletarische Planung im Sinne des marxistischen Programms. Letztere war ausgelegt als eine Reihe von Schritten in Richtung einer sozialistischen (d. h. nichtstaatlichen) Ökonomie. Dies beinhaltete die Konstruktion eines Systems von Wirtschaftslenkung, das auf der Arbeitszeit basiert, effizient, durchschaubar und komplett von den Produzenten kontrolliert ist. Und dies schließt im Gegenzug ein Wachstum der Produktivkräfte und eine Abnahme sozialer Ungleichheit ein.

Die russische politische und militärische Situation zwischen Mitte 1918 und Anfang 1920 ließ das nicht zu. Natürlich rettete der Gewinn des Krieges die proletarische Diktatur und dadurch die Möglichkeit irgendeines Übergangs zum Sozialismus; deshalb war der Kriegskommunismus taktisch rationell und geschichtlich gerechtfertigt. Nichtsdestoweniger kann dies die Tatsache ändern, daß während der Periode des Kriegskommunismus die Wirtschaft wie die plebejischen Klassen enorm litten und dies einen riesigen Rückschlag für den Übergang zum Sozialismus darstellte.

Abgesehen von der - einfach gesagt - Zerstörung der Produktivkräfte und dem Schrumpfen der Arbeiterklasse (auf 1,3 Millionen Arbeiter 1921 von 3 Millionen 1917) war der Kriegskommunismus auch - im Gegensatz zu seinen Absichten - ein Regime zunehmender Ungleichheit. Die Privilegien der Spezialisten wurden nicht abgebaut, sondern gesteigert und Schwarzmarkthändler aller Art schlugen aus dieser Situation „verallgemeinerten Mangels„ enorme Profite.

Es war ein Fehler und Ausdruck theoretischer Unreife, daß die meisten Bolschewiki den Kriegskommunismus selbst als Teil des Übergangs zum Sozialismus ansahen. Dies war Bucharins Position in seiner Ökonomik der Transformationsperiode, einer Arbeit, die Lenin grundlegend bejahte.

Selbst Trotzkis Vorschläge von 1919/1920 legten nahe, daß der Kriegskommunismus der Ausgangspunkt für den Übergang zum Sozialismus sei. Im Februar 1920 skizzierte er drei Bedingungen dafür: a) eine Naturalsteuer für die Bauern, die ihnen gestatten würde, ihr Mehrprodukt gegen Industrieerzeugnisse zu einer vom Staat festgelegten Austauschrate zu handeln; b) die Militarisierung der Arbeit als Basis für jede zukünftige Arbeitszeitkalkulation; und c) die Beschneidung des ausufernden Bürokratismus„ des Glavki - Systems.

Mit anderen Worten, obwohl Lenin und Trotzki ursprünglich den Kriegskommunismus als pragmatische Antwort auf die Kriegssituation ansahen, gaben sie später der ultralinken Sichtweise nach, von dort zu starten, um zum Sozialismus zu kommen.

Aber gab es eine Alternative? Für die Dauer des totalen Bürgerkriegs, d. h. bis Anfang 1920, lautet die Antwort: wahrscheinlich nicht.

Mit einer klaren theoretischen Analyse der wirtschaftlichen Optionen wäre ein früherer Wechsel zur NÖP jedoch möglich gewesen. Das Jahr 1920 hätte genutzt werden können, um die NÖP vorzubereiten durch Stabilisierung des Geldangebots und die Einführung beschränkter Märkte auf dem Lande. Das hätte nicht nur Zeit gewonnen, sondern der Arbeiterklasse und den armen und mittleren Bauern die schlimmsten Aspekte des späten Kriegskommunismus erspart.

 

Neue Ökonomische Politik

 

Lenins Neue Ökonomische Politik (NÖP) wurde von der Partei im März 1921 vor dem Hintergrund des Kronstädter Aufstands und der Bauernrevolte in der Region Tambow angenommen. Zwangsbeschaffung von Korn wurde abgeschafft und durch eine Steuer ersetzt, die niedriger als das vorhergehende Beschlagnahmeniveau war.

Was immer die Bauern behielten, konnten sie frei auf den lokalen Märkten handeln. Selbst der ursprünglich „auf lokale Märkte„ beschränkte Zugang wurde bald gelockert, weil die Versorgung der Städte ohne Zwischenhändler unmöglich war.

Gegen Oktober 1921 wurde klar, daß die NÖP nicht auf die Agrikultur beschränkt werden konnte; das neue Herangehen mußte auf alle Wirtschaftsbereiche ausgedehnt werden. Die Partei behielt die zentrale Kontrolle über die sogenannten „Kommandohöhen„ der Ökonomie, d. h. Bankensektor, Außenhandel, große Industrie und Transportwesen, aber die Gesamheit der Verhältnisse in der verstaatlichten Industrie wurde neu unter die Lupe genommen.

Tausende kleiner staatlicher Läden wurden an private Unternehmer verpachtet oder sogar verkauft. Später wurden sogar einige private Großunternehmen zugelassen; um 1924/25 waren etwa 18 Privatfirmen in Betrieb, die jede zwischen 200 und 1000 Arbeiter beschäftigten.

Ende 1921 war die Industrie komplett umstrukturiert. Unternehmen ähnlicher Art wurden in Trusts vereinigt und diese wurden angehalten, von Anfang 1922 an auf rein kommerzieller Grundlage zu operieren. Güter sollten dort verkauft werden, wo sie den höchsten Preis erzielten und Rohstoffe sollten von den billigstmöglichen Quellen gekauft werden. Der Staat würde nicht bedingungslos Kredite gewähren, sondern nur, wo es eine gute Chance gab, einen beachtlichen Gewinn zu sichern.

Das Volkskommissariat für Finanzen versuchte, den Rubel zu stabilisieren und deshalb mußte das Geldangebot bechränkt werden. Dies führte im Gegenzug zur Schließung einiger Fabriken und in anderen zur Verminderung der Belegschaft. Da die meisten Firmen keine Finanzreserven besaßen, waren sie zum Verkauf ihres Ausstoßes zu beinahe jedem Preis gezwungen. Weil die Nachfrage niedrig war, waren es auch die Industriepreise und die Arbeitslosigkeit stieg als Konsequenz.

Lenin verteidigte die Notwendigkeit dessen, was heute „Schocktherapie„ genannt werden könnte. Mehr noch, er argumentierte, es solle ausländischen Firmen erlaubt sein, russische Ölfelder auszubeuten und russisches Holz zu exportieren, weil dies Devisen einbrächte und dem Arbeiterstaat erlauben würde, essentielle Materialien und Technologien zu importieren. Praktisch stellte die Feindschaft der internationalen Bourgeoisie sicher, daß der Import von Auslandskapital wähernd der 1920er Jahre schwach blieb, obwohl der auswärtige Handel wieder zunahm und 1924/25 die Exporte neunfach höher als 1921/22 waren.

Während der NÖP wurden die meisten Preiskontrollen abgeschafft. Trotz der besten Absichten der Regierung gestattete das der Inflation, sich in die Höhe zu schrauben. Industriepreise waren folglich nur in relativen Begriffen niedrig, gemessen am Preis für Lebensmittel und Rohmaterialien. Aus diesem Grund gab die Sowjetregierung Mitte 1922 eine neue Währung heraus, den Tscherwonez. 1923 existierten Rubel und Tscherwonez nebeneinander, wobei der Tscherwonez stabil war, aber bei alltäglichen Transaktionen selten benutzt wurde und der Rubel täglich abgewertet wurde, als die Inflation zunahm.

Ohne die Wirtschaft absichtlich in eine vollständige Krise zu steuern, war es unmöglich, die Inflation sofort zum Stillstand zu bringen und erst im Februar 1924 konnte der Rubelkurs wieder umdrehen. Zu der Zeit war ein Tscherwonez 500 Milliarden Rubel von 1921 wert! Die vom Volkskommissar für Finanzen, Sokolnikow, eingeleiteten Maßnahmen griffen gut genug, so daß der Regierungshaushalt für 1924 einen kleinen Überschuß erzielte.

Während 1922 die Preise stark zugunsten der Bauern geschwankt hatten, war das Pendel im Herbst 1923 vollständig in die andere Richtung geschwungen. Industriepreise waren nun dreifach höher als Agrarpreise, verglichen mit den Relationen von 1913. Dies wurde mit Trotzkis denkwürdigem Satz als die „Scherenkrise„ bekannt: eine sich weitende Lücke zwischen steigenden Industriepreisen und sinkenden Agrarpreisen - gefährlich scharf wie eine Rasierklinge! Viele Bauern zögerten, bevor sie ihr Getreide in die Städte brachten. Dies bedrohte nicht nur die Lebensmittelversorgung der Städte, sondern auch die strategische Allianz im Herzen des politischen Systems - das Arbeiter- und Bauern - Bündnis (Smytschka).

Die Ursachen für die Änderung der relativen Preise waren ganz offensichtlich. Die Agronomie hatte sich viel schneller als die Industrie erholt, weil sie nicht soviel technologischer Erneuerung bedurfte und nicht so hart von der mangelhaften Transportinfrastruktur beeinträchtigt war. Zweitens hatte Vesenka den industriellen Wetbewerb zwischen den Trusts eingeschränkt, indem es viele von ihnen in einheitlichen „Syndikaten„ kombinierte. Dies gestattete den Trusts, Monopolpreise festzulegen. Schließlich wurde im Vergleich zu 1922 die Kreditpolitik wieder gelockert; dies hob den Druck auf die Unternehmen auf, zu herrschenden Marktpreisen zu verkaufen. Als Resultat füllten sich die Lager und viele Fabriken produzierten weit unter ihrer vollen Kapazität.

Ende 1923 wurden drastische Maßnahmen unternommen, um das Steigen der Industriepreise umzukehren. Preiskontrollen wurden eingeführt und Arbeiter entlassen, um Produktionskosten zu senken. Kredite zu erhalten, wurde erschwert, um die Firmen zu zwingen, ihre Lagervorräte zu verkaufen. Gleichzeitig wurde eine staatliche Handelsorganisation gegründet, die der Industrie erstmals erlaubte, ihre Produkte direkt an die Dörfer zu verkaufen. Dies machte viele NÖP-Zwischenhändler überflüssig und gestattete, die Ersparnisse an die Bauern in Gestalt niedrigerer Preise weiterzureichen. Durch diese miteinander verknüpften Maßnahmen gelang es der Regierung, bis April 1924 die relativen Industriepreise um mehr als die Hälfte zu kürzen.

1924 und 1925 waren die „besten Jahre„ der NÖP in dem Sinne, daß Landwirtschaft und Industrie verhältnismäßig harmonisch expandierten und das Vorkriegsniveau der Produktion wieder erreichten oder sogar übertrafen. Etwa 90% aller Industriearbeiter arbeiteten in Trusts, die Vesenka direkt oder indirekt untergeordnet waren. Die Fabriken waren weder souveräne ökonomische Einheiten noch legal unabhängig. Sie machten keine eigenen Finanzkonten auf; ihre Zahlen wurden dem Abschneiden des Gesamttrusts angepaßt.

Vesenkas Politik gegenüber verschiedenen Trusts variierte. In strategischen Sektoren erließ er detaillierte Anordnungen und überwachte ihre Durchführung. In der Leichtindustrie mußten die Trusts Produktionspläne entsprechend den vorherrschenden Marktbedingungen erstellen, und Vesenka intervenierte nur sporadisch. Es gab damals keine zentrale Planung. Verschiedene Planfunktionen waren nicht einmal in einer gesamtrussischen Institution zusammengefaßt. So wurde eine bruchstückhafte administrative Planung von Promplan, der Planabteilung des Vesenka, durchgeführt, wohingegen die Vorbereitung umfassender nationaler Planung in den Händen von Gosplan lag, einer Forschungs- und Koordinierungsstelle des STO (Rat für Arbeit und Verteidigung).

1925/26 veröffentlichte Gosplan erstmals „Kontrollzahlen„, die jede Wirtschaftsaktivität im Lande in den verschiedenen Branchen und in ihren entsprechenden Proportionen widergaben und darstellten. Zusätzlich enthielten sie eine Prognose über mögliche zukünftige Trends. Es gab eine gehörige Portion an Opposition in der aufstrebenden Bürokratie gegen wachsende Machtbefugnisse für Gosplan. So beklagte sich Krschischanowski, der Leiter von Gosplan, auf dem 15. Parteitag über den Mangel an Zusammenarbeit seitens anderer Verwaltungsgremien. Obwohl die Kontrollzahlen keine Plandirektiven waren, waren sie nichtsdestotrotz mehr als rein passive Vorhersagen. Sie waren eine Ansammlung von Richtlinien für strategische Investitionen und die Grundlage für eine Diskussion über wirtschaftliche Prioritäten.

Bis zur Scherenkrise befand sich der Handel, Einzel- wie Großhandel, fast ausschließlich in privater Hand. Von 1924 an war eine Staatshandelsorganisation tätig und das genossenschaftliche Handelssystem wurde verbessert. Obwohl der Anteil des Privatsektors am Einzelhandel 1925/26 auf 42% fiel und ein Jahr später auf 37%, wuchs der private Handel in absoluten Begriffen kontinuierlich an; der Handel war deshalb ein wichtiger Bereich, in dem sich eine „neue Bourgeoisie„ entwickeln konnte.

Während die große Industrie vorwiegend in Staatshand verblieb, war die Situation innerhalb der Kleinindustrie ganz verschieden. Weniger als 2% der in dieser Sparte beschäftigten Arbeiter arbeiteten in vom Staat betriebenen Firmen; der Rest gehörte zum privaten Industriesektor, der zu einer zweiten wichtigen Arena wurde, in der sich die neu entstehende kapitalistische Klasse kräftigen konnte. Natürlich waren die Privateigner in vielen Fällen stark vom Staatssektor abhängig, der deshalb eine gewisse Kontrolle über den Markt ausüben konnte. Andererseits kontrollierten die NÖP-Männer nicht nur die traditionellen Dorfgemeinden, sondern auch zunehmend die ländlichen Sowjets. Auf diese Weise wurden sie zu einer politischen Kraft, die auf den Arbeiterstaat Druck auszuüben suchte, größere Geschäftsfreiheit zu gewähren.

Die Landwirtschaft blieb während der ganzen NÖP-Periode überwiegend privat. 1927 wurden weniger als 2% des bewirtschafteten Landes von Staatsfarmen oder Kooperativen kultiviert. Tatsächlich hatte die Landreform nach 1917 die Anzahl kleiner Bauerngrundstücke angehoben (von 17 Mio. auf 25 Mio.), wohingegen die Durchschnittsgröße abnahm.

Die traditionelle russische Dorfgemeinde wurde gestärkt und dies bedeutete eine Erstarkung des ideologischen Zugriffs von Privateigentum und der Bourgeoisie. Natürlich gereichten Wachstum und Ausdehnung des Markts unter der NÖP nicht allen Bauern zum Wohl; im Gegenteil, sie trugen zu wachsender Klassendifferenzierung auf dem Land bei. Reichtum und Einfluß der reichen Bauern (Kulaken) nahmen zu. Ein Drittel aller Bauern heuerte Lohnarbeiter an. Andere pachteten zusätzliches Land von ärmeren Bauern, einige verliehen Geld zu exorbitanten Zinsraten oder Getreide an Klein- und Mittelbauern im Frühjahr, wenn diese ihre Rücklagen aufgebraucht hatten.

Die Kulaken selbst waren nicht gezwungen, all ihr Korn unmittelbar nach der Ernte zu verkaufen, sondern konnten es bis zum nächsten Frühling und Sommer einlagern, wenn sie einen Vorteil aus viel höheren Preisen ziehen konnten. Die Kulaken waren offensichtlich der Kern der russischen Bourgeoisie in den 1920ern. Sie identifizierten sich mit dem Standpunkt der neuen kommerziellen und kleinindustriellen Bourgeoisie. Zusammen führten sie einen Klassenkampf, um die Errungenschaften, die der Arbeiterklasse von der Oktoberrevolution gebracht worden waren, rückgängig zu machen.

Die Parteiführer gestanden diese Gefahren nicht ein; noch weniger mobilisierten sie die Kräfte des Arbeiterstaats, um sie auszuschalten.

Vor dem ersten Weltkrieg waren es die halbfeudalen Großgrundbesitzer und die Kulaken, die das meiste Getreide an die Städte lieferten. Nach der Parzellierung der großen Landgüter und ihrer Umverteilung an Millionen landloser Bauern 1918, stieg der Anteil des auf dem Lande selbst verbrauchten Korns, während der an die Städte gelieferte oder für den Export abgezweigte Umfang dramatisch sank.

Mitte der 1920er Jahre, als das Ausmaß an Saatfläche und geernteten Getreides wieder Vorkriegsniveau erreichte, umfaßte noch das des vermarkteten Korns nur die Hälfte der Menge von 1913. Dies traf hauptsächlich den Export, was im Gefolge die industrielle Entwicklungsrate verlangsamte, weil die Industrie vom Import von Kapitalgütern abhängig war. Die Getreideexporte erreichten 1913 mit 12 Mio. t ihren Höhepunkt, waren aber 1926 auf 2,1 Mio. gefallen.

1927 schrumpfte der Getreideexport weiter auf 0,3 Mio. t und die schon magere Versorgung der Städte geriet in Gefahr. Die Linke Opposition in der Kommunistischen Partei unter Führung von Leo Trotzki hatte lange vor dieser herannahenden Katastrophe gewarnt, die das voraussagbare Resultat der rechten Politik des herrschenden Blocks Bucharin/Stalin innerhalb der Partei und des Regierungsapparats war.

Eine Reihe „Spezialmaßnahmen„ wurde von der Regierung durchgezogen. Zusätzliche Industrielieferungen wurden schnell in die Kornanbaugebiete befördert; schwere Strafen wurden gegen Kornpreisspekulanten verhängt. Doch während des Jahrs vor dem Oktober 1928 fiel das Volumen des auf städtische Märkte verbrachten Getreides um weitere 14%. Die Städte standen kurz vor einer Hungersnot, obwohl genügend Angebot auf dem Land existierte. Mittlerweile wurde der Mangel an Industriegütern in den Dörfern auf die Höhe von 100 Mio. Rubel geschätzt.

Die Kulaken hatten den Einsatz bei ihrer Konfrontation mit der Regierung erhöht und brachten es fertig, alle Mittelbauern für ihre Seite zu gewinnen. Die Arbeiter- und Bauernallianz war an einer Bruchstelle angelangt, wenn nicht schon zerbrochen. Die Reaktion der Regierung auf diese Gefahr war widersprüchlich und spiegelte den Fraktionskampf in der Partei und die zentristische, schwankende Rolle der Bürokratie wider.

Schon 1926 hatte sich eine Fraktion der Bürokratie unter Sinowjew und Kamenjew von der pro-bürgerlichen Linie Bucharins angesichts wachsenden Drucks unzufriedener städtischer Arbeiter distanziert.

Sie schlossen sich mit der Linken Opposition zusammen, um die Vereinigte Opposition zu bilden. Stalin, der die Mittelfraktion der Bürokratie repräsentierte, blieb in seinem Block mit Bucharin, dem Führer der Rechtsopposition, die für die bessergestellten Bauern sprach. Für Stalin war die Niederlage der Linken die erste Priorität, weil sie allein die zunehmenden Privilegien der herrschenden Schicht abzuschaffen drohte.

Nichtsdestotrotz war Stalin gezwungen, der proletarischen antibucharinistischen Mißstimmung Lippendienste zu leisten. Gegen die immer schamloseren Aktivitäten der „Neureichen„ wurden einige Maßnahmen ergriffen; ihre Superprofite wurden einer Progressivsteuer unterworfen. Alles in allem jedoch leisteten diese Maßnahmen keinen entscheidenden Schlag, wie man an der Tatsache ersehen kann, daß der vom Privatsektor verdiente Anteil am Volkseinkommen zwischen 1926 und 1928 nur um 3% fiel und immer noch nahezu die Hälfte betrug.

Erst 1929 vollführte Stalin die entscheidende Wende zur Kollektivierung der Bauernschaft. Er setzte auch ein geschwindes Industrialisierungsprogramm in der Schwerindustrie durch, das unter Bedingungen ökonomischer Autarkie durchgeführt werden sollte.

Um es gegen jeden Widerstand durchzupeitschen, zentralisierte der stalinistische Apparat im Verlauf der nächsten paar Jahre die politische Macht weiter in seinen Händen und zerstörte die Überreste jedweder unabhängigen Organisationen (z. B. der Gewerkschaften), indem er sie mit der bürokratischen Staatsmaschine verschmolz. Die Wirtschaftslenkung wurde zur hyperzentralisierten Kommandoplanung von oben nach unten.

 

Die Debatte um Plan und Markt in der UdSSR in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren

 

Die Sowjetunion in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren war ein Laboratorium, in dem verschiedene Theorien über den Aufbau des Sozialismus auf den Prüfstand gestellt wurden. Marx und Engels hatten eine Handvoll andeutender Bemerkungen hinterlassen. Die Zweite Internationale hatte diese Einsichten wenig erweitert. Nun verlangten drängende praktische Probleme neue Antworten, Lösungen, die von mehr als vorübergehender akademischer Bedeutung waren. Das Schicksal von Revolutionen, die Geschicke von Dutzenden Millionen standen auf dem Spiel.

Die russische Oktoberrevolution von 1917 und die Erfahrungen der ökonomischen Transformation während der nachfolgenden zwei Jahrzehnte schieden scharf die Ansichten. Reformistische und offen bürgerliche Wirtschaftswissenschaftler verunglimpften allein die Idee des Übergangs zum Sozialismus als Utopie, wenn schon nicht generell, so doch mindestens in einem rückständigen Agrarland.

In diesen Jahren engagierten sich die Befürworter und Feinde des Sozialismus in Argumenten und Erwiderungen. Diese Debatte war in Rußland nicht weniger zugespitzt als außerhalb. Die Haupttheoretiker  und Parteiführer des Bolschewismus beschäftigten sich mit Themen wie dem Charakter ökonomischer Kategorien in einer nachkapitalistischen Gesellschaft, dem relativen Gewicht von Marktmechanismen und geplanter Zuordnung in der Verteilung von Ressourcen, dem relativen Entwicklungstempo von Industrie und Agrarwirtschaft, der Funktion von Geld und Preisen, nachdem einmal das Wertgesetz nicht mehr länger souverän herrschte.

 

Bucharin

 

Da diese Debatte keine müßige akademische Übung war, drückten die Ideen natürlich mächtige soziale Kräfte aus, jede mit einem bedeutenden Anteil an der Ausrichtung der Wirtschaftspolitik nach der Revolution. Diese gesellschaftlichen Triebfedern fanden ihre Vertreter in leitenden Figuren innerhalb der Kommunistischen Partei. Nikolai Bucharin war während des Kriegskommunismus (1918 - 1920) ein Repräsentant des linken Flügels gewesen und hatte sich mehr als bereit gezeigt, administrativen Zwang einzusetzen, um ökonomische Ziele zu erreichen. Aber nach 1921/22 durchlebte er einen schnellen Wandel, zuerst in einen späten Konvertiten der NÖP und dann zum Führer des rechten Flügels in der Kommunistischen Partei.

Er argumentierte, die NÖP müsse für lange Zeit angewandt werden, wenigstens für eine ganze Generation. Jetzt sei Gewaltanwendung gegen die Bauernschaft unzulässig. Obwohl es politisch korrekter sein möge, die armen Bauern zu unterstützen, seien es die mittleren und reichen Landwirte, die das Getreide ablieferten und darum sei es wichtig, die Interessen dieser Schichten zu fördern. Jede andere Politik führe zu den alten Requirierungsmethoden zurück und zerstöre so das Arbeiter- und Bauernbündnis.

Bucharin war überzeugt, den Sozialismus entlang dieser Linie aufzubauen und es gehe nur um die Frage, welches Entwicklungstempo am besten sei. Nach Bucharins Auffassung war es unklug, schneller zum Sozialismus voranzuschreiten als die Bauernschaft bereit war; nach seinen berühmten Worten mußte Rußland ‘auf einer Bauernmähre zum Sozialismus reiten’. Er war sich sicher, daß selbst die Kulaken naturwüchsig dahin gelangen würden, den Sozialismus zu akzeptieren, wenn die Partei sie nicht entfremdete. Seine berühmte Aufforderung der Kulaken ‘Bereichert Euch!’ war nach seiner Ansicht nicht gegen den Sozialismus gerichtet, weil die sozialistische Industrie der Bauernwirtschaft immer und automatisch überlegen sei. Die Industrie brauche keine besondere Unterstützung durch den Staat.

Auf mehr theoretischer Ebene zog Bucharin den Schluß, daß das Wertgesetz ein universelles ökonomisches Gesetz sei, daß unter verschiedenen Gesellschaftsbedingungen nur verschiedene Erscheinungsformen annahm. Während des Übergangs von der einfachen Warenproduktion zum Kapitalismus hatte es sich verändert und es nehme im Übergang zum Sozialismus wieder eine andere Form an. Insbesondere würde es nicht in einer anarchischen, vom Markt geleiteten Weise wirken, sondern auf direkte und bewußte Art.

Er verstand den Plan lediglich als bewußte Vorwegnahme dessen, was andernfalls spontan erreicht würde. Bucharin erkannte natürlich an, daß der Plan der Gesellschaft ersparen könnte, Verschwendungsprojekte zu unternehmen und daß die Verteilung sicherlich gleichmäßiger sei. Nichtsdestoweniger sei die Produktionsstruktur im Grunde dieselbe und daraus folgte, daß das Wachstum des Markts keine grundlegende Bedrohung für den Arbeiterstaat aufwerfe.

Bucharins Konzeptionen verliehen der Anpassung von Schichten der Parteiführung an die kapitalistischen Elemente Ausdruck, die unter der NÖP stärker wurden. Sie leugneten explizit die Unvermeidlichkeit weiterer Klassenkämpfe unter der Diktatur des Proletariats. Doch es war dem Proletariat zunehmend klar geworden, daß, um die Macht zu behalten und weitere Fortschritte zu sichern, ein bewußter Kampf gegen das Bürgertum noch notwendig war.

 

Preobraschenski

 

Es fiel der Linken Opposition zu, die objektiven Interessen des Proletariats im Übergang zu formulieren, wohingegen die Bürokratie um Stalin herum in typischer Manier zwischen wechselndem Klassendruck herumlavierte, sich aber taktisch sehr früh mit dem rechten Flügel verbündete, weil sie sich zunehmend von der Bedrängnis seitens der Arbeiterklasse abkapseln wollte.

Hauptwirtschaftstheoretiker der Linken Opposition war Jewgeni Preobraschenski. Er betonte die Dringlichkeit für das Proletariat, die industrielle Wirtschaftsbasis des Arbeiterstaats zu entwickeln. Er lehnte die Idee, der Sozialismus könne im „Schneckentempo„ erreicht werden, vehement ab. Gefahren waren sowohl auf dem Welt- wie auf dem Binnenmarkt vorhanden. Wenn die sowjetische Industrialisierung nicht mit dem Westen Schritt halte und sich der Privatsektor schneller als der sozialistische Sektor entwickle, würde der Arbeiterstaat selbst von der besten Roten Armee nicht gerettet werden.

Das Tempo der sozialistischen Industrialisierung war entscheidend für ihn. Bei der ökonomischen Zielsetzung des Arbeiterstaats sollte ihm deshalb die höchste Priorität zukommen. Um die Geschwindigkeit der Industrialisierung zu steigern, mußte ein Teil des Agrarüberschusses abgeschöpft und in industrielle Investitionen umgelenkt werden und besonders, um ausländische Technologie zu erhalten. Das brächte eine breite Palette an Industrieerzeugnissen schneller auf das Land.

Der Mehrwerttransfer aus dem privaten landwirtschaftlichen zum staatlichen industriellen Sektor sollte sowohl über ungleichen Tausch (Preise für Industriegüter höher gesetzt als die Produktionskosten) wie eine Progressivsteuer erfolgen. Die reichen Bauern sollten die Hauptwucht dieser doppelten Steuerlast tragen, während den armen Bauern zu helfen sei und sie für die Produktion in Kooperativen durch billige Kredite und die Bereitstellung angemessener Technologie gewonnen werden sollten. Für Preobraschenski war es wichtig, das Bündnis mit den armen und mittleren Bauern zu stärken, aber es war eine Illusion, auf eine stabile Allianz mit den Kulaken zu hoffen.

Auf theoretischem Gebiet formulierte Preobraschenski ein spezifisches Wirtschaftsgesetz des sozialistischen Sektors in einer Übergangsgesellschaft. Dies nannte er das Gesetz der ursprünglichen sozialistischen Akkumulation, das in fundamentalen Konflikt mit dem Wertgesetz gerät, das im privaten Binnensektor und auf dem Weltmarkt vorherrscht.

Das Wertgesetz wurde von Preobraschenski nicht einfach als die kapitalistische Variante eines Universalgesetzes verstanden, das die Verausgabung von Arbeitszeit durch alle Geschichtsepochen hindurch regelt. Das eigentliche Wesen des Wertgesetzes beinhaltet die Unterordnung des lebenden Arbeiters unter das akkumulierte Kapital (d. h. die Maschinerie). Dieses Gesetz reproduziert zwangsläufig kapitalistische Produktionsverhältnisse und das auf stets erweiterter Stufenleiter, wenn es sich spontan entfalten kann.

Im Gegensatz dazu setzt das Gesetz der ursprünglichen sozialistischen Akkumulation spezielle Ziele für das Wachstum verschiedener Wirtschaftsbereiche. Darüberhinaus ist die Akkumulationsrate für die Gesamtökonomie durch die spezifischen Investitionsquoten, auf die man sich für den sozialistischen Sektor geeinigt hat, festgelegt. Teil des Gesetzes der ursprünglichen sozialistischen Akkumulation ist die eiserne Notwendigkeit des Surplustransfers vom privaten zum sozialistischen Sektor. Alles, was dieses Gesetz verletzt, bringt den Arbeiterstaat in Gefahr.

Kritiker haben mehrere Vorwürfe gegen Preobraschenski gerichtet, die unbegründet sind. Zuerst ist da die Frage seiner Analysemethode. Preobraschenski verteidigte, daß es ein wesentlicher erster Schritt sei (einer, den Marx selbst machte), die Ökonomie der Transformationsperiode in Abstraktion von der Politik zu analysieren. Dies bewog Bucharin, ihn dafür zu kritisieren, die kapitalistische Produktionsweise mit der nachkapitalistischen gleichzusetzen, eine in den 1970ern von maoistisch inspirierten Stalinisten, die argumentierten, der proletarische Staat sei nicht länger Teil des politischen Überbaus, sondern eine integrale Komponente der Produktionsverhältnisse selbst, wiederholte Anklage.

So, wurde entgegnet, sei es nicht möglich, von diesem Apparat selbst im ersten Stadium der ökonomischen Analyse zu abstrahieren. Preobraschenski wurde heftig kritisiert für seinen ‘ökonomistischen Irrtum’, der ihn, so sagte man, dahin führe, das Arbeiter- und Bauernbündnis unterzubewerten und im Ergebnis zu einer sektiererischen Politik gegenüber den Bauern.

Dieser Vorwurf ist ein kompletter Unsinn. Solange eine von der Zivilgesellschaft getrennte Staatsmaschine existiert (und dies ist auch für einen gesunden Arbeiterstaat der Fall, bis er abstirbt), werden die politischen Formen in letzter Analyse von der Wirtschaftsstruktur, auf denen sie beruhen, determiniert. Um den Rahmen, in dem Staatspolitik gemacht wird, und den Charakter der Institutionen, die sie ausführen, zu verstehen, ist es deshalb notwendig, die grundlegendsten Gesetze, die die Gesellschaft regieren, zuerst zu analysieren.

Mit dieser Kritik verknüpft ist der Einwand gegen den Gebrauch des Begriffs „Gesetz„, wenn man auf die Regulierung des nichtkapitalistischen, „sozialistischen„ Sektors anspielt. Zugegeben, eine solche Begrifflichkeit suggeriert, daß im Arbeiterstaat gleiche blinde Prozesse am Werk sind wie im Kapitalismus. Dies, so wird gesagt, würde die Bedeutung einer lebendig pulsierenden, bewußt artikulierten Arbeiterdemokratie in der Übergangsperiode unterbelichten und bereite damit den Weg für ein bürokratisches und administratives Regime.

Die Stalinisten konnten z. B. die Vorstellung von einem „objektiven ökonomischen Gesetz„ ausnutzen, um ihr Zermalmen der Arbeiterselbstverwaltung am Arbeitsplatz und der Sowjetdemokratie in der Gesellschaft zu legitimieren. Dieser Einwand gegen die „gesetzliche„ Natur der sozialistischen Akkumulation ist auch von Antistalinisten wie Cathárine Samary, einer führenden Theoretikerin des Vereinigten Sekretariats der Vierten Internationale, wiederholt worden, aber das ändert nichts daran, daß er falsch ist.

Jeder isolierte Arbeiterstaat wird intern von überlebenden kapitalistischen Elementen belastet und wird von einem feindlichen kapitalistischen Weltmarkt umgeben. Dies zwingt dem Arbeiterstaat eine Verpflichtung auf, ganz bestimmte Akkumulationsraten auf sich zu nehmen und spezifische Ziele für den Surplustransfer vom privaten zum staatlichen Sektor zu setzen. Dieser Zwang wird akkurat als Gesetz beschrieben. Dies schließt nicht aus, daß dieses Gesetz verstanden und bewußt gehandhabt wird. Aber es bleibt ein Gesetz.

Und was ist mit dem Internationalismus Preobraschenskis? Nahmen seine Ideen, die Geschwindigkeit der Industrialisierung in der Sowjetunion zu beschleunigen, Stalins „Linkswende„ 1928/29 vorweg? Sind sie im Wesen mit Stalins Theorie des „Sozialismus in einem Lande„ kompatibler als mit Trotzkis permanenter Revolution? Nein!

Von Preobraschenskis Frühschriften bis zu seinen Schriften in den frühen 1930ern, betonte er wiederholt die Notwendigkeit der internationalen Revolution als der einzigen Lösung für die ökonomischen Probleme der Sowjetunion. Er war ein führendes Mitglied der Linken Opposition und beachtete alle ihre internationalistischen Positionen treu. Es ist wahr, daß seinem Internationalismus die vollständige Konsistenz fehlte. Als 1928 die kommunistische Bewegung ausführlich die Perspektive für die chinesische Revolution diskutierte, stimmte Preobraschenski mit Trotzki nicht überein. Er empfand, daß China nur für eine bürgerliche Revolution reif sei. Das mißachtete natürlich das internationale Wesen des Klassenkampfs, zeigte einen Mangel an Verständnis vom imperialistischen System und hielt vor einem klaren Verständnis des Konzepts der permanenten Revolution an.

Preobraschenskis Position zu China war seine erste Kapitulation vor Stalin. Er distanzierte sich später (1929) ganz klar von Trotzki und denunzierte sogar andere Oppositionelle, die vor die stalinistischen Schauprozesse als Angeklagte zitiert wurden (1936 - 38). Was im Lauf seiner Entwicklung klar wurde, ist, daß er ein völlig unzureichendes Verständnis von der Natur der stalinistischen Bürokratie hatte.

Natürlich sah Trotzki selbst irrtümlich den Hauptfeind in den 1920ern im rechten Flügel und das stalinistische Zentrum nur als mehr oder weniger schwankende und instabile Kraft. Die Liquidierung der Linken Opposition 1927 schuf jedoch eine neue Situation. Die Bürokratie schloß sich als selbstbewußte Kaste mit eigenen Interessen gestärkt zusammen und begann, offen um die volle Macht zu kämpfen. Der Schlag Stalins gegen die Rechte mußte in diesem Zusammenhang gesehen werden. Er war nicht so sehr ein Zugeständnis an die Arbeiter und die Linke Opposition als ein Mittel, die ungeteilte bürokratische Macht zu sichern.

Preobraschenski nahm das nicht wahr oder akzeptierte es nicht. Mehr noch, sein Unvermögen, die Stadien der stalinistischen Konterrevolution zu verstehen, spiegelte sich insoweit in seinem Werk wider, als er nie die Bedeutung des proletarischen Bewußtseins bei der Durchführung des Gesetzes der ursprünglichen sozialistischen Akkumulation in einer Reihe spezifischer Aufgaben vollständig explizit machte. Dieses Gesetz kann sich nur positiv geltend machen durch die subjektive Tat der viele Millionen starken Arbeiterklasse; solche ein Bewußtsein kann durch bürokratischen Paternalismus nicht ersetzt werden. Klarheit über diesen Punkt scheidet den unverfälschten Trotzkismus vom wertvollen, aber uneinheitlichen Erbe Preobraschenskis.

 

Trotzki

 

Trotzkis Beiträge zum marxistischen Kanon über den Übergang zum Sozalismus entstanden nach 1921 durch eine Serie fraktioneller Debatten innerhalb der führenden Komitees der Russischen Kommunistischen Partei. Sie kann man eher in einer Reihe von Politikrezepten für die Überwindung der Isolierung und Rückständigkeit des kriegsgebeutelten Rußlands finden als in abstrakten theoretischen Texten.

Trotzdem sind Trotzkis Gedanken lehrreich, viele von ihnen in seinem Buch von 1936 ‘Die Verratene Revolution’ in ein System gebracht. Während der 1920er und 1930er verkörperten seine Vorstellungen eine realistische und praktische Perspektive für Wirtschaftswachstum in sozialistische Richtung. Sie standen in auffälligem Kontrast zu jenen, die eine Politik staatskapitalistischer Industrialisierung unter dem Diktat der Finanzen und mit von der Geschwindigkeit der landwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung bestimmten Schritten befürworteten wie auch zu denen, die für die Politik des „Sozialismus in einem Lande„ und ihre abenteuerlichen Industrialisierungsziele stimmten.

Trotzkis Beitrag zur politischen Ökonomie des Übergangs umfaßt fünf zusammenhängende Gebiete. Erstens beharrte er darauf, daß der Arbeiterstaat eine Anzahl ererbter ökonomischer Kategorien und Mechanismen (z. B. stabile Währung, Märkte) übernehmen und nutzen muß. Zum zweiten trat er für die geplante Industrialisierung der rückständigen russischen Wirtschaft ein, um die Arbeitsproduktivität zu erhöhen und die Arbeiterklasse zu stärken.

Als nächstes, argumentierte Trotzki, sollen das Industrialisierungstempo höher angesetzt sein als das der Agrarwirtschaft und die Finanzen in den Dienst der Industrie gestellt werden, nicht umgekehrt. Viertens sah er als drängend an, einen umfassenden Plan für alle Abschnitte des Finanzwesens, der Produktion und Verteilung zu formulieren, sobald es die materiellen Möglichkeiten zuließen, und somit den Markt unterzuordnen und zu manipulieren, so daß er den Aufgaben des sozialistischen Aufbaus diente.

Schließlich und entscheidend war Trotzki ein beständiger Fürsprecher für Arbeiterdemokratie (in Verbrauch und Produktion) als dem einzigen Weg, die Qualität der Produktion auf rationeller Basis zu verbessern, ein stimmiges Bild zu bekommen, welche Hilfsquellen der Gesellschaft zur Verfügung ständen, als einzigem Weg, die wirksame Erfüllung des Plans zu überschauen.

Trotzki und Lenin waren sich zusammen mit der überwältigenden Mehrheit der Kommunistischen Partei 1921 über die Wende zur NÖP einig. Die Verwüstung der Wirtschaft im Kriegskommunismus machte es notwendig und das Ende des Bürgerkrieges möglich, einen konzentrierten Versuch zu unternehmen, die Nahrungsmittelerzeugung wiederzubeleben. Die wurde gebraucht, um die Städte zu ernähren und einen Kornüberschuß für den Export zu bilden, der die für Kapitalimporte nötigen Devisen einbrächte. Die NÖP brachte eine Neubelebung des Privatsektors im Einzelhandel und in der Kleinindustrie wie auch materielle Anreize für die Bauern mit sich. Obwohl der Staat das Eigentum an den hauptsächlichen Produktions- und Kommunikationsmitteln behielt, war die Nationalisierung allein auf sich gestellt unzureichend, um die sozialistische Leitung des Wirtschaftsaufbaus zu garantieren. Die NÖP könnte nur eine Waffe für den Sozialismus sein, wenn sie einem umfassenden Plan untergeordnet sei; alles Andere würde sicherstellen, daß eine Marktstärkung die kapitalistische Entwicklung vertiefte.

Deshalb machte sich parallel zur NÖP im April 1921 Gosplan an die Arbeit. Im ersten Jahr bekämpfte Lenin viel zu ehrgeizige Schemata zur gesamtwirtschaftlichen Planung aus dem Grund, daß die materielle Basis dafür fehlte (d. h. ein ausreichender Anteil des Staatseigentums an der Wirtschaft, genügend Sachverstand). Konkrete Teilpläne für einzelne Teile der Wirtschaft wurden in Angriff genommen (z. B. Verkehr, Elektrizitätserzeugung). Im Lauf von 1922 und 1923 wurde jedoch solche Teilplanung ungenügend, ja in der Tat gefährlich.

Der Erfolg der NÖP mit der Steigerung des agrikulturellen Ausstoßes resultierte in einem Ungleichgewicht innerhalb der Gesamtökonomie; Lebensmittelbestände gab es im Überfluß und die Preise fielen. Gleichzeitig blieb die industrielle Erholung zurück aus Mangel an Kapitalinvestitionen. Kapazitätseinschränkungen führten zu Kürzungen und die Preise zogen an. Eine „Scherenkrise„ kam auf, wo die Bauern nicht an die Städte verkaufen konnten und die Industrie nicht aufs Land. Die Reaktion auf diese Krise definierte die alternativen Konzeptionen von sozialistischer Umwälzung innerhalb der russischen Kommunistischen Partei; eine Kette scharfer Fraktionskämpfe brach 1922 aus und endete 1925 mit dem Sieg derer, die für den „Sozialismus in einem Land„ eintraten.

Trotzki und die Linke Opposition (LO) waren die einzigen, die eine Politik eines zentralisierten nationalen Plans vorbrachten, der alle Wirtschaftssektoren (Finanzwesen, Herstellung und Distribution) in ein zusammenhängendes Ganzes einband, das auf dem Vorrang der Industrialisierung und der Erhaltung einer stabilen Währung fußte. Entsprechend kämpfte Trotzki dafür, Gosplans Arbeitsweisen weg von reinen Voraussagen für Gebiete der Wirtschaft auf die Aufstellung von Zielen und Richtlinien für Produktion und Finanzsphäre zu richten.

Die Industrialisierung sollte durch Besteuerung der Agroprofite, Auslandsanleihen und Einkünfte aus Getreideexporten finanziert werden. Die Betonung sollte auf der Leichtindustrie liegen, wo Investitionen eine kürzere Anlaufzeit hatten, und die die von den Bauern dringend benötigten Güter herstellen würde. Kapitalimporte sollten sich auf jene Maschinen konzentrieren, die die UdSSR am wenigsten selbst zu produzieren in der Lage war.

Eine solche Politik rechnete für ihren relativen Erfolg nicht kurzfristig auf den Erhalt von Hilfe seitens einer erfolgreichen sozialistischen Revolution im industrialisierten Europa, noch suchte sie, die UdSSR von den Wirtschaften des kapitalistischen Westens zu isolieren. Vielmehr versuchte sie, die ausländische Revolution zu ermutigen und anzufachen, während sie an das ökonomische Eigeninteresse Europas und der USA appellierte, die Märkte für ihre Erzeugnisse und Auslaßventile für ihr Kapital brauchten.

Während der Formulierung dieses Programms unterstrich Trotzki erstmals die Bedeutung, eine stabile Währung aufrechtzuerhalten. Gegen jene, die dachten, es sei möglich, bürgerliche Kategorien wie Geld und Preise „abzuschaffen„ und nur Umgang in physikalischen Größen zu haben, bestand Trotzki darauf, daß jeder Fortschritt auf der Bedingung beruhte, ein unabhängiges Qualitätsmaß an in verschiedenen Produkten vergegenständlichter Arbeitszeit zu erhalten. Tatsächlich argumentierte Trotzki, solchen Messungen ein größeres Anwendungsgebiet zu geben als bisher in einem großteils rückständigen Agrarland getan wurde. Solche Politik war wesentlich, wenn eine wirkliche Verbesserung der Arbeitsproduktivität mit der Zeit akkurat gemessen werden sollte und an jenen in der kapitalistischen Welt herrschenden Niveaus.

In den Jahren 1922 - 25 wurde Trotzki und der LO von verschiedenen Fraktionen entgegnet. Auf dem einen Extrem stand Sokolnikow als Kopf des Finanzministeriums (Narkomfin), der für Rußland objektiv eine Politik des Staatskapitalismus verfolgte. Narkomfin wollte die NÖP auf eine höhere Ebene heben. Es argumentierte, da die UdSSR eine große, rückständige Bauernwirtschaft habe, käme der beste Ertrag für einen gegebenen Investitionsumfang aus der Agrikultur. Die UdSSR sollte deshalb ihren komparativen Vorteil ausnutzen und Korn exportieren sowie gewerbliche Erzeugnisse importieren.

Bucharin argumentierte, das Wohlergehen der Bauern führe sie dazu, ihr Geld für Industriegüter in einem Tempo auszugeben, das von ihrer Ausgabebereitschaft bestimmt war. Später könnte importierte Maschinerie zur Weiterverarbeitung von Agrarerzeugnissen eingesetzt werden und eventuell eine Schwerindustrie finanziert werden. Diese Politik befehligte 1922/24 eine Mehrheit im Politbüro. Sie betonte die Autonomie von Finanz und Kredit von der Industrie und ordnete sogar an, daß der Kredit für die Planung nicht zugänglich sei. Der Kredit sollte eingeschränkt werden, um die Stärke des Rubel zu bewahren; dies möchte es für ausländische Investoren deshalb attraktiv machen, den Kreditrahmen für importierte Maschinerie zu erweitern.

Eine solche Sichtweise von Wirtschaftsentwicklung konnte unter Bedingungen der NÖP nur zur Schwächung der sozialistischen Elemente der Ökonomie führen. Dies wurde durch die Tatsache hervorgehoben, daß das Finanzministerium darin hart blieb, die Kredite an die Industrie einzuschränken oder zu streichen, damit die Fabriken zu zwingen, ihre Produkte zu Preisen zu verkaufen, die die Lager räumten, um die Bauernnachfrage nach Industriegütern knappen Angebots zufriedenzustellen. Unter den damals existierenden Bedingungen der NÖP (Anweisungen, einen Gewinn zu erzielen) führte diese Politik 1923/24 zu niedrigeren Preisen, verzögerten Lohnzahlungen und Arbeitslosigkeit. Im Gegenzug führte diese gegen die Arbeiterklasse gerichtete bauernfreundliche Politik zu einem Aufschwung an industrieller Unruhe und linken Oppositionskräften innerhalb der Sowjets und der Partei.

Landwirtschaft vor Industrie, Finanzen über die Industrie - das war die antisozialistische Politik der Rechten und des Zentrums der RKP. Diese Politik war keine alternative Strategie für den Sozialismus in einem zurückgebliebenen Agrarland, wie sie dachten, sondern eine objektiv die kapitalistischen Bewegungsgesetze kräftigende Politik. Trotzki baharrte darauf, daß es ökonomischer Selbstmord sei, die Industrialisierungsschritte von der allmählichen Anhäufung der Sparguthaben abhängig zu machen.

Die teilweise industrielle Erholung unter der NÖP hatte ihre Grenzen erreicht; brachliegende Kapazität war nutzbar gemacht worden und der Wiederaufbau war zu Ende. Große Kapitalinvestitionen waren nötig, andernfalls konnte es keine Aussicht geben, die bäuerliche Güternachfrage zu stillen. Sie würden ihren Ausstoß horten oder mehr davon verbrauchen oder ihn sogar vernichten, weil die Preise für einen profitablen Verkauf an die Städte zu niedrig waren. Aber um Investitionen zu finanzieren, mußte es Zwangsersparnis geben und ein nationaler, integrierter Plan war lebenswichtig, denn Investitionen lieferten die gewünschten Ergebnisse erst mehrere Jahre später.

Die LO täuschte nicht vor, ihre Politik des sozialistischen Übergangs sei ohne Widersprüche - wirkliche gesellschaftliche Widersprüche. Sie existierten natürlich. Erstens durfte die Rate industrieller Akkumulation nicht so hoch angesetzt werden, daß sie auf Kosten der Gesundheit und Arbeitsbedingungen der Arbeiterklasse ginge; dies war ein großer Unterschied zur kapitalistischen Akkumulation.

Zweitens würden geplante Industrieinvestitionen notwendigerweise für Arbeiter wie Bauern zurückgestellten Konsum bedeuten. Dies könnte Bauern dazu verleiten, ihr Angebot zurückzuhalten. Dies würde wiederum zur Nichterfüllung von Exportaufträgen führen. Der resultierende Einbruch der Exportverdienste würde zwangsläufig mit der Unfähigkeit enden, viele benötigte Kapitalimporte zu kaufen.

Solchen sozialen Widersprüchen mußte ins Auge gesehen werden. 1922/23 war Handeln notwendig, um später eine größere Krise zu vermeiden. Die einzige wirkliche Chance, die Widersprüche zu mildern, war, sich Hilfe aus dem industriell weiter entwickelten Westen zu verschaffen; daher der Vorrang für die Suche nach dem revolutionären Erfolg in den Nachbarstaaten der UdSSR.

Im Verlauf von 1925 brach der Block gegen Trotzki in Wirtschaftsfragen in zwei Lager auseinander. Trotzki bewahrte zu beiden Abstand. 1924 vollzog Stalin einen entscheidenden Schwenk zur Theorie vom Sozialismus in einem Lande. Nachdem man 1923 versagt hatte, aus der deutschen Revolution Kapital zu schlagen, bezog er jetzt die konservative Position, daß Rußland nicht auf Hilfe von außen rechnen konnte und sich auf seine eigenen Ressourcen verlassen mußte.

Bucharin stimmte mit der Theorie überein und argumentierte, daß diese inneren Hilfsquellen hauptsächlich in der ländlichen Ökonomie zu finden wären; von daher müsse der Sozialismus „im Schneckentempo„ vorwärtskriechen. Obwohl Stalin im Block mit Bucharin verblieb, begann er sich in der Wirtschaftspolitik abzusetzen mit dem Verweis, wie notwendig es sei, der Entwicklung der Schwerindustrie, die auf einem riesigen, inflationären Kreditzuwachs beruhte, mehr Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen.

Die Wiederkehr der Kornkrise im Herbst 1925 schlug eine Bresche in den anti-Trotzki Block. Die Bauern hielten aus Mangel an Tauschgütern in den Städten ihr Getreide zurück. Bucharin und Stalin gewährten den Bauern weitere Zugeständnisse. Sinowjew, Kamenjew und Sokolnikow brachen ihren Block mit Stalin und Bucharin und argumentierten, die Kulaken seien die größte Gefahr für den sozialistischen Aufbau. Trotzdem hob Sinowjew an der Seite Sokolnikows die Notwendigkeit von Finanzdisziplin über die von industrieller Akkumulation hervor und scheiterte daran, Trotzkis Alternative anzunehmen.

Dank des Versagens, die Politik der LO zu akzeptieren, spitzte sich die Getreidekrise einmal mehr im Herbst 1927 zu. Das Ausbleiben der Investitionen, um die Güterknappheit 1925 zu überwinden, führte direkt zu den abenteuerlichen und bürokratischen Versuchen, die Bauern als Gesellschaftsklasse nach 1927 auszuschalten. Alle Ersparnisse der Gesellschaft sollten für die Schwerindustrie mobilisiert werden. Trotzki argumentierte, das sei falsch. Investitionen sollten sich stattdessen auf die Leichtindustrie konzentrieren, um den Hunger nach Produkten zu lindern. Die Schwerindustrie, die die Sowjetunion am wenigsten in der Lage war, effektiv zu machen, sollte importiert werden. Stalins Politik würde sogar zu weiteren Produktknappheiten in den Dörfern führen.

Ein weiteres Opfer der Transformationsstrategie der Rechten und des Zentrums war der Plan selbst. Um 1925 bewegte sich Gosplan von seiner vorherigen passiven Rolle als Statistikensammler weg in Richtung einer maßgebenden Rolle als Formulierer integrierter, branchenübergreifender Wachstumspläne. Aber Gosplan setzte seine Ziele mit Bezug auf die jährlichen Wachstumsraten von 8% - 10%, die in Phasen kapitalistischen Aufschwungs typischerweise erreicht wurden.

Trotzki charakterisierte das richtigerweise als zögernd und argumentierte, daß Wachstumsraten von doppelter Größenordnung erzielt werden könnten durch die Mobilisierung und Einbeziehung der Arbeiter selbst in die Planung. Nach 1926/27 stellte Stalins abenteuerliche Superindustrialisierungspolitik die wissenschaftliche Arbeit von Gosplan allmählich in den Schatten. Gosplans Arbeit am ersten Fünfjahresplan wurde durch die fraktionelle Intervention Stalins entstellt. Nach dem KPdSU-Kongreß im Dezember 1927 wurden alle Fragen von Tempo und Proportionalität der Planung im Streben nach mehr absolutem Wachstum im schwerindustriellen Sektor beiseite geworfen. Stalin denunzierte von nun an jenen Hinweise auf gleichgewichtiges Wachstum als „bürgerliches Abweichlertum„.

Zuerst betrachtete Trotzki Stalins Schwenk zur Überindustrialisierung von Ende 1927 als eine bloße Episode, ein Vorspiel für einen weiteren Rechtsschwenk und mehr Zugeständnisse an die Kulaken. Dieser Irrtum in der Einschätzung war zwei Faktoren geschuldet. Erstens schätzte Trotzki ein, daß die Hauptgefahr für das sozialisierte Eigentum der UdSSR von der rechten Fraktion um Bucharin komme, die die Interessen der Kulaken zum Ausdruck bringe. Zweitens war Trotzki unter Druck geraten, die Industrialisierungspolitik der Linken Opposition von der Stalins abzugrenzen. 1928/29 argumentierten Oppositionelle wie Preobraschenski und Radek, daß es nun keine bedeutsamen Unterschiede zwischen der Politik der LO und der Stalins für den Übergang gebe.

Um 1930 sah sich Trotzki gezwungen, anzuerkennen, daß die Wende mehr als eine Episode oder ein Zickzack war. Er gelangte zu der Einsicht, daß sie eine bürokratische Zerstörung der sozialen Basis der Rechtsopposition gegen Stalins Fraktion und die Bildung einer Reihe ökonomischer Verhältnisse, die dem Regime einer dominanten Zentrumsfraktion entsprachen, nach sich zog. Diese Verhältnisse waren ebenso feindlich zur prokapitalistischen Logik von Marktreformen wie zur Wirtschaftskontrolle durch die Arbeiterklasse selbst.

Trotzki war jedoch vollständig und durchgängig im Recht, die Wirtschaftspolitik der LO und die des bürokratischen Abenteuers, auf das sich Stalin nun einließ, auseinanderzuhalten. Trotzki formulierte seine Einwände aus vier Gründen. Erstens war das in Gosplans Kontrollziffern angepeilte Wachstum industrieller Entwicklung (Investitionen) unrealistisch hoch. Die bereitgestellten Kredite waren folglich dem aktuellen Ausstoß weit voraus, führten zu massiver Inflation während des Planverlaufs, Währungsabwertung und machten die objektive Produktivitätsmessung zu einer nutzlosen Übung.

Zweitens war die vorgeschlagene Struktur der Industrieinvestitionen einseitig zugunsten der Schwerindustrie und gegen die Leichtindustrie ausgerichtet. Diese Disproportionalität wäre sowohl im Ergebnis ineffektiv (In­vestitionen in der Leichtindustrie wären produktiver) wie sie auch den existierenden Bedarf an Verbrauchs- und Leichtgütern, den die Arbeiter und Bauern spüren, verschlimmern würde. Deshalb war die Disproportionalität zwischen Agrikultur und Industrie eine natürliche Konsequenz dieses Abenteurertums.

Drittens wandte Trotzki ein, daß die bewußte wirtschaftliche Isolierungspolitik vom kapitalistischen Westen unnötig und ein Eigentor war. Eine energische Außenhandelspolitik und selektive Kapitalimporte wären effizienter und zeitigten schnellere Resultate.

Viertens verdammte Trotzki das Kollektivierungsprogramm, das die Bauern als soziale Klasse zu zerstören versuchte. Stalin war aufgrund des Versagens, in den Jahren 1924 - 27 ein realistisches Programm von Leichtindustrialisierung und Auslandsimporten zu akzeptieren, zu dieser administrativen Lösung getrieben worden. Die Kornkrise und das Horten spornten Stalin 1927 an, sich eine verzweifelte „Lösung„ aufzuhalsen.

Trotzki argumentierte richtig, daß die UdSSR damals einfach nicht die materiell-technische Basis für eine Politik allgemeiner und schneller Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft besaß. Ein katastrophaler Abfall der Arbeitsproduktivität könnte nur verhindert werden, wenn der Staat die für die Großbewirtschaftung notwendige Maschinerie und Ausrüstung zur Verfügung stellen könnte. Dies konnte der Staat nicht tun, besonders da er sich weigerte, sie einzuführen. Deshalb würden die Bauern lieber ihren Viehbestand abschlachten, als ihn sich stehlen zu lassen und dies würde zu einem weiteren Absinken des Ausstoßes führen. 1932 wurden Trotzkis Argumente und Vorhersagen durch den weit verbreiteten Hunger in diesem Jahr als richtig bewiesen.

Im Laufe des ersten Fünfjahresplans (EFJP) stellte Trotzki dessen Auswirkungen dar. Vom Standpunkt des Sozialismus aus beurteilt, war er ein äußerster Fehlschlag. Trotzki führte aus, daß die Arbeiterklasse in ein Planobjekt und einen Produktionsfaktor verwandelt wurde, um wie alle anderen Komponenten des Arbeitsprozesses per Erlaß anzutreten. Im Ergebnis konnten  keine Korrekturen des Plans im Licht seiner angestrebten Umsetzung entstehen; keine Qualitätskontrolle des Outputs konnte eingeführt werden; keine Information, die zu einer Modifikation des Plans führen könnte, war möglich.

Deshalb waren Engpässe und Disproportionen angeborene und unvermeidliche Elemente des Systems. Was die Bauernschaft betrifft, stand der Versuch, sie politisch als Klasse zu liquidieren, in vollständigem Widerspruch zu den Aufgaben des sozialistischen Übergangs. Marxisten faßten das allmähliche Verschwinden dieser Klasse ins Auge, mittels freiwilliger Vergenossenschaftlichung und ihrer Umwandlung in Proletarier. Sobald Kapital auf dem Land angewendet würde und die Produktivität zunähme, würde die Zahl der auf dem Land Beschäftigten, selbst als Lohnarbeiter, schrumpfen. Solch ein Vorgang würde das Bewußtsein aller Gesellschaftsschichten stärken und sie fest an den Sozialismus binden.

Trotzki war bewußt, daß vom Blickwinkel des Arbeitsprozesses her die rücksichtslose Zentralisierung und Kombination aller Produktionsfaktoren spektakuläre quantitative Ergebnisse in gewissen Abschnitten zeitigen könnten, selbst wenn die relativen Unwirtschaftlichkeiten nach Legionen zu zählen seien. Aber vom sozialen Standpunkt her entfremdeten die physische Vernichtung und Erschöpfung der Arbeiter und Bauern, allgemeiner Mangel und Nahrungsmittelvorräte von schlechter Qualität, verknüpft mit totaler politischer Unterdrückung, die Arbeiterklasse vom sozialistischen Transformationsprojekt.

Trotzkis Kritik der Kommandoplanung war kräftig und enthielt eine realistische Alternative. In den frühen 1930ern erkannte Trotzki, daß das Elend der Kommandoplanung so arg war, daß der kontrollierte, partielle Rückzug auf Marktbeziehungen und das Aufblühen der Rätedemokratie Vorbedingungen jeder substantiellen Wirtschaftsreform seien.

Marktkorrektive mußten mit Landwirtschaft und Geldstabilisierung beginnen. Trotzki forderte zum Stoppen der Kollektivierung und sogar zu ihrer Rückgängigmachung auf. Er regte an, 80% der Höfe an kommerzielle Familienunternehmen zu geben, dadurch die materiellen Anreize und ein korrektes Verhältnis zwischen der Form von Eigentümerschaft auf dem Lande und der technischen Basis für seine Ausbeutung wiederherzustellen. Trotzki begrüßte sogar Stalins Teilrückzug 1932 entlang dieser Linien unter dem Eindruck der verheerenden Resultate der Kollektivierung.

Als nächstes war die Stabilisierung des Geldmengenwachstums dringend, wenn der reale wirtschaftliche Fortschritt gemessen werden sollte. Drittens waren in diesem Übergangsstadium auf dem Markt beruhende materielle Anreize (höhere Löhne, Produktauswahl) notwendig, falls Verbesserungen der Arbeitsproduktivität aufrechterhalten werden sollten.

Viertens würde eine vollständige Umkehr der Tendenz zur ökonomischen Isolierung gebraucht. Integration in den Weltmarkt könnte die kurzfristig nötigen Kapitaleinfuhren liefern, die Flaschenhalssituationen überwinden könnten, die Durchführung notwendiger Reparaturen erlaubten und einige Bedürfnisse der Arbeiter in Stadt und Land befriedigten.

Als Grundlage all dessen drängte die Einführung der Sowjetdemokratie, wenn alle Verzerrungen, blockierte Informationskanäle und armselige Qualitätskontrollen ins Gegenteil verkehrt werden sollten. Natürlich verstand Trotzki mehr denn je, daß alle diese Maßnahmen nur hinhaltende seien. Sie konnten, falls durchgeführt, die inneren Widersprüche der Übergangswirtschaft der Sowjetunion „abschwächen„ und „regulieren„, aber nicht überwinden. In diesem Sinne fing für Trotzki die wahre sozialistische Umwälzung erst mit erfolgreichen Revolutionen in den industrialisierten Ländern des Westens an.

Trotzki wurde mit dem Ende des EFJP (1932/33) gewahr, daß die von der Wende zur Kommandoplanung erzeugte gesellschaftliche Umwälzung Ressentiments und Widerstand in der bürokratischen Kaste verursachte. Nach dem Parteitag der Sieger 1934 schien Stalins Position schwächer. Er hatte seinen Posten als Generalsekretär verloren und Kirow hatte die meisten Stimmen bei den Wahlen zur Parteiführung erhalten. Dies verlockte Trotzki zur Spekulation über die Möglichkeit, Stalin könne ganz entfernt und die LO zur Partei wieder zugelassen werden.

Nach der Ermordung Kirows im Dezember 1934 behauptete Stalin jedoch seine Kontrolle wieder und sicherte seine Stellung durch das Entfesseln der Großen Säuberung. 1936 schrieb Trotzki seine vollendetste Anklage gegen das System der stalinistischen Kommandoplanung, nahm dabei viele Ideen in Anspruch und systematisierte sie, die er in seinen Jahren des Exils skizzierte.

Trotzki bewies, daß der selbsternannte sozialistische Charakter der UdSSR nichts dergleichen war und schlußfolgerte, das soziale Wesen der UdSSR sei das einer Übergangsökonomie zwischen Kapitalismus und Sozialismus. Eine wesentliche Schlußfolgerung stand noch aus; Wirtschaftsreformen konnten begreiflicherweise nur durchgeführt werden unter einer Bedingung: die stalinistische Kaste mußte zuerst gewaltsam durch eine erneute proletarische Revolution gestürzt werden. Dies war eine absolute Vorbedingung für die Wiederinkraftsetzung des blockierten Übergangs zum Sozialismus. Alles andere würde zu weiteren Krisen führen, einer Erosion der Fundamente des Sozialismus und dem eventuellen Umsturz der vergesellschafteten Basis des Arbeiterstaats.

Nachdem wir den Werdegang der Sowjetunion und Osteuropas wie auch die intellektuelle Auseinandersetzung um Planung und Marktsozialismus zurückverfolgt haben, können wir nun die Frage, ‘war Trotzki ein Marktsozialist?’, negativ beantworten. Zentristen wie Ernest Mandel haben vorgebracht, daß Trotzki in gewissem Sinn die Marktreformbewegungen von Gorbatschow und anderen vorwegnahm.

Das ist bis ins Mark falsch, wenn wir einmal wahrnehmen, was das Wesen des Marktsozialismus ist. Was immer sonst sie trennt, alle Marktsozialisten bestehen auf der Notwendigkeit kapitalistischen Wettbewerbs zwischen Einzelunternehmen auf der Linie der Profitmacherei wie auch der Autonomie von Entscheidungsfindung, welche Produkte hergestellt werden. Trotzki bekämpfte solche Ideen besonders und legte nach 1933 dar, das Zerbrechen von Industrietrusts in konkurrierende Einheiten wäre ein Anzeichen von wirtschaftlicher Krise und Zusammenbruch innerhalb des Arbeiterstaats und zeichne eine Rückkehr zum Kapitalismus vor. Es konnte für Trotzki nur bedeuten, Ungleichgewichtigkeit und Anarchie in den Plan einzuschleusen.

Trotzkis Ansichten über die Rolle, die der Markt im Übergang spielen sollte, waren von einigen generellen Prinzipien und einigen konkreten Beobachtungen über den Startpunkt, wie er von der russischen Wirtschaft in den frühen 1920ern präsentiert wurde, geleitet. Es konnte keine Marktregulierung und verallgemeinerte Marktverhältnisse geben, weil dies einen Markt für Arbeitskraft und Ausbeutung nach sich zöge; dies widerspricht dem Übergang zum Sozialismus.

Nichtsdestotrotz war es am Beginn in keiner Gesellschaft möglich, den Markt auszuschalten, am wenigsten in Rußland. Deshalb mußte der Markt im Dienst der Stärkung der sozialistischen Natur der Wirtschaft anerkannt, geregelt und manipuliert werden. Solange allgemeine Knappheit existierte, wurde ein Mechanismus für die Regelung von knappen Gütern gebraucht. Dies betraf am meisten von allen die Verbrauchsgüter. Hier wäre der Einsatz von Geld und Preisen, die akkurat die aufgewandte gesellschaftliche Arbeitszeit ausdrückten, der beste Mechanismus zur Regulierung von Angebot und Nachfrage und Übermittlung von Verbraucherwünschen an die Produzenten.

Konkret erhielten in der Sowjetunion die Arbeiter die überwiegende Masse an Konsumgütern im privaten Sektor (von den Landwirten) und dies diktierte, daß Preise und Märkte der beste Weg für die Arbeiter seien, ihren Druck auf die ländliche Wirtschaft auszuüben.

Darüberhinaus dachte Trotzki angesichts des rückständigen Charakters von Rußland zu der Zeit, daß eine Ausdehnung von Markt und Warenbeziehungen auf große Teile Rußlands, bis dahin auf nichtmonetärem Austausch beruhende Verhältnisse, ein Schritt vorwärts sei. Gesellschaftliche Arbeit, mittels des Wertgesetzes meßbar, war der Subsistenz und halbfeudalen Ökonomien überlegen.

Doch der allgemeine Trend während der Übergangsphase muß für den Markt sein, mit der Zeit eliminiert zu werden. Besonders wenn die Landwirtschaft industrialisiert wurde und die Bauern in Lohnarbeiter verwandelt wären, würde der Plan die Produktion direkt beeinflussen und den Markt absorbieren, nicht einfach nur regulieren. Die Nutzung des Markts, ‘um die Ergebnisse des Plans zu überprüfen’ (Trotzki), war ein bestimmtes historisches Gesetz, das den vorwiegend privaten Charakter von in die Erzeugung von Verbrauchsgütern eingebundener Arbeit reflektierte.

Wenn dann auch in diesem Sektor gesellschaftliche Arbeit vorherrschen sollte, wären auch Kalkulationen von Gütern, die für den Endverbrauch bestimmt sind, a priori  möglich. Das Bewußtsein würde in diesem Sektor in die Kommandorolle schlüpfen und der Widerspruch einer ‘geplanten Produktion für einen unbekannten Markt’ (Mandel) wäre ausgelöscht. Die Konstruktion eines dezentralisierten nationalen Plans, empfindlich für die sich wandelnden und vielfältigen Vorlieben der Masse der Arbeiter, würde die Bestätigung durch den Markt, d. h. Bestätigung post festum, nutzlos und verschwenderisch machen.

 

ÖKONOMIK DES BLOCKIERTEN ÜBERGANGS

 

Widersprüche der Kommandoplanung

 

Die Kommandowirtschaften der UdSSR und Osteuropas bestanden den Test der Geschichte nicht und ihre politischen Regime brachen unter der Anforderung zusammen. Anderswo (Kuba, China, Vietnam, Kambodscha) versucht die politische Führung ihre Macht zu behalten, indem sie die Umwälzung zum Kapitalismus leitet.

Das System der Kommandoplanung, das in der Sowjetunion in den späten 1920ern entstand, vermochte nicht, den Kapitalismus weltweit zu überholen. Dies war nicht irgendeiner „Erbsünde„ geschuldet, den Markt entthront zu haben. Es war dem Versuch zuzuschreiben, wirtschaftliche Ressourcen zu planen, während der Arbeiterklasse die Mittel zur Planfestlegung entrissen wurden. Es geschah dank der Entstellung geplanter Wirtschaftsverhältnisse durch eine allmächtige, bürokratisch parasitäre Kaste, die die Ökonomie zugunsten ihrer eigenen Bereicherung plünderte.

Die bürokratische Kommandoökonomie kön­nte nicht ohne den Sturz des Kapitalismus wie ohne die politische Niederlage der Arbeiterklasse, in deren Namen die Bürokratie lügnerisch zu sprechen behauptete, entstanden sein. Ob sich dies als Ergebnis der Degeneration eines gesunden Arbeiterstaats und einer politischen Konterrevolution wie in der UdSSR oder der Bildung eines von Geburt an degenerierten Arbeiterstaats wie überall woanders abspielte, ändert nicht die grundlegende Dynamik der ökonomischen Verhältnisse.

Obwohl es viele kulturell und historisch besondere Elemente in den Wirtschaftsexperimenten diverser stalinistischer Staaten gibt, existiert doch trotzdem eine darunterliegende Einheitlichkeit, eine Gesetzmäßigkeit, die im Herzen der Kommandoplanung zu erblcken ist. Jeder dieser Staaten setzte einige objektive Vorbedingungen für jeden Übergang zum Sozialismus, indem er das Privateigentum der Kapitalistenklasse enteignete, ein Außenhandelsmonopol errichtete und Dienststellen für die Koordinierung von Erzeugung und Verbrauch gründete.

Sie beendeten die Regulierung des Wirtschaftslebens mittels der Wirkweise des Wertgesetzes. Diese Maßnahmen waren alle geschichtlich progressiv und mußten vor dem Umsturz durch innere oder äußere Kräfte verteidigt werden.

Indem man jedoch der arbeitenden Klasse das Recht, direkt zu herrschen und die Produktion selbst zu verwalten, verweigerte, wurde der Übergang zum Sozialismus blockiert und dies unterhöhlte nach und nach die Effektivität der ursprünglichen Eroberungen. Die Arbeiterklasse wurde von ihren „eigenen„ Produktionsverhältnissen trotz eines gewissen anfänglichen Enthusiasmus„, das Erreichen der Wirtschaftsziele in Angriff zu nehmen, entfremdet.

Die Bewegungsgesetze der Kommandoplanung fließen aus der Entschiedenheit der Bürokratie, maximale Wirtschaftswachstumsraten unter selbstauferlegter Isolierung von der kapitalistischen Welt zu erzielen, während sie die verschiedenen Bestandteile der Ökonomie mittels administrativer Hebel koordiniert.

Alle Resultate der Kommandoplanwirtschaft stammen von den politischen Kalkulationen der herrschenden Kaste, in deren Zentrum die stalinistische Kommunistische Partei stand. Diese Partei war der Kitt, der alle Bestandteile des politischen und ökonomischen Apparats zusammenhielt trotz sektoraler und sogar fraktioneller Konflikte, die aufkamen.

Was erklärt die vorwärtstreibende Dynamik der bürokratisch geplanten Wirtschaft? Mit der Überwältigung des Kapitalismus hörte der Anreiz der Profitmaximierung seitens risikotragender privater Kapitaleigner auf zu funktionieren. Aber angesichts der politischen Niederlage, die der Arbeiterklasse von Stalin beigebracht wurde, konnten die Konsumbedürfnisse der Arbeiterklasse keine alternative Haupttriebfeder für die geplante Ökonomie abgeben. Vielmehr lieferte die Zwangslage für die Kaste, eine starke Wirtschaft aufzubauen, um sich selbst zu stärken und sogar in den Augen der Leute, die sie zu vertreten beanspruchte, zu rechtfertigen, die Triebkraft.

Die meisten degenerierten Arbeiterstaaten entstanden aus rückständigen kapitalistischen Ländern, umgeben  von kapitalistischen Staaten. Die herrschenden Kasten entwarfen ihre Wirtschaftspläne mit Blick auf maximale Akkumulationsraten (Investitionen), auf Schwer- und Rüstungsindustrie orientiert. Daher hatten alle degenerierten Arbeiterstaaten beständig höhere Akkumulationsraten (als Anteil am Sozialprodukt) als kapitalistische Länder.

Das Investitionsprogramm wurde mittels eines zentralisierten Plans durchgeführt. Es gab viele verschiedene Planungstypen. Die wichtigsten waren die Jahres- und Fünfjahrespläne; für Einsatzzwecke war der Jahresplan am wichtigsten. Der Fünfjahresplan war mehr indikativ als verfügend außer für die neuen Investitionsprojekte, die mit der Eröffnung eines neuen Fünfjahresplans begannen.

Der bürokratische Plan hatte typischerweise sieben Teile. Zuerst wurden aggregierte Produktionsziffern für die Hauptproduktionsbereiche aufgestellt (Industrie, Landwirtschaft, Verkehr usw.). Zweitens wurden Ziele für vorrangige Produkte in Mengeneinheiten festgesetzt und ihre Verwendung bestimmt (z. B. Halbfertigerzeugnisse). Auf dieser Grundlage wurden dann materielle Bilanzen konstruiert; auf der einen Seite wurden alle Hilfsquellen und auf der anderen alle Nutzanwendungen aufgeführt. Dies lieferte die zentrale, leitende Methodologie der zentralen Planung - ein System materieller Bilanzen, wobei ein sorgfältiger, ständiger Verhandlungsprozeß zum Ausgleich der Bilanzen führen würde.

Drittens wurde der Arbeitskräftebedarf für alle Sektoren zusammen mit der Gesamtgröße des Lohnfonds aufgesetzt. Viertens wurde ein Investitionszeitplan sowohl insgesamt wie sektoral entworfen. Fünftens wurden Ziele für die technische Entwicklung definiert. Sechstens wurden Außenhandelspläne entworfen und zuletzt die Finanzziele festgelegt (Staatshaushalt, Preise, Geldmenge).

Einzelmitglieder wie Fraktionen der Bürokratie hingen in Rekrutierung, Förderung und Bereicherung vom Planerfolg ab. Sie genossen keine Eigentumstitel, die ihnen einen legalen Anteil an einer Portion vom Mehrprodukt verliehen. Ihr Erfolg und ihre Macht beruhten auf der Planerfüllung. So gab es eine immanente Tendenz für alle Bereiche der Bürokratie, die unter ihrer Kontrolle stehenden Produktivkräfte auf Mengenbasis und ohne Rücksicht auf Qualität auszudehnen.

Der Ausbau des Reichs brachte eine Vermehrung der Macht und des Umfangs der Belohnungen. Im Gegenzug brachte diese Hauptquelle des Wachstums einen bestimmenden Charakterzug der Kommandoplanung mit sich - permanenten Investitionshunger. Unausweichlich war das mit einem permanent niedergedrückten Kosumniveau der Arbeiterklasse verknüpft. Der laufende Verbrauch wurde immer als Abzug von möglichen Investitionen betrachtet.

Die Methode der Plankoordination und -formulierung war völlig bürokratisch. In einem gesunden Arbeiterstaat muß die Arbeiterklasse die subjektive Ausrichtung der Wirtschaft vorgeben. Im Kommandosystem der Planung behandelte die Bürokratie die Arbeiterklasse im Gegensatz als Objekt des Plans - gemeinsam mit den  anderen Produktionsfaktoren.

Die subjektiven Wünsche (Nachfrage) der Masse der Produzenten und Konsumenten wurden ignoriert. Die zentralen Planer und Parteiführungen skizzierten die Planziele auf der Grundlage vergangener Planresultate, des Entstehens von Versorgungsengpässen und politischer Imperative (z. B. Kriegsbedarf, Ant­worten auf innere ökonomische/in­dustriel­le Unruhe, Fraktionsdruck in den Rängen der Bürokratie.

Planziele wurden dann von den unteren Ebenen des Apparats auseinandergedröselt und für jede Stufe hatte das erhaltene Ziel einen Kommandoeffekt. Alle Entscheidungen über Fabrikeröffnungen oder -schließungen, über Beförderungen und Ernennungen, über Prämien und Materialzuteilung wurden von einer nicht rechenschaftspflichtigen Bürokratie getroffen. Querverbindungen existierten, aber zwischen Sektoren der Bürokratie; ständige Koordination zwischen Direktorien, zwischen Unternehmen, die ein Produkt lieferten oder nutzten.

Dieses System geplanter Akkumulation funktionierte, aber nicht wirtschaftlich. Die wichtigsten Prioritäten wurden erreicht, aber nach vielen Verzögerungen und Unterbrechungen für andere Sektoren, die als nicht vorrangig eingeschätzt wurden. Wo immer Planen den direkten Bedürfnissen der Bürokratie diente (z. B. Verteidigung und verwandte Branchen), arbeitete sie am besten wie dort, wo Qualitätsaspekte am unwichtigsten waren.

Das System bürokratischer Planung besaß jedoch eingebaute Defizite, die in Abwesenheit von Konkurrenz und Marktkoordinierung nur durch die Verwaltung der Wirtschaft seitens der Arbeiterklasse behoben werden könnten. Darüberhinaus war nur dieser Handlungskurs mit dem Übergang zum Sozialismus kompatibel. Das war undenkbar für eine Kaste, die nur überlebte, indem sie der Arbeiterklasse die Fähigkeit, direkt zu herrschen, absprach und deren alleinige Existenz mit dem Sozialismus unverträglich war.

Die Bürokratie entpuppte sich nach beeindruckenden Anfangsresultaten mehr als Bürde denn als Ansporn für die geplanten Eigentumsverhältnisse. Anders als eine Klasse hatte sie im vorhandenen ökonomischen Regelungswerk keine notwendige Rolle zu spielen. Ihre Existenz sabotierte sicher den Kapitalismus, aber ihre Rolle als separate, über die direkten Produzenten erhobene Schicht war für die Formulierung und Ausführung des Plans nicht bedeutend.

Weil die Bürokratie keine einheitliche Klasse war, mußte sie sich selbst oft bonapartistischer Herrschaft unterwerfen, um sich selbst zusammenzuhalten. Dies hinderte die Formulierung und Durchführung eines rationalen Plans weiter. Im Verlauf der zwölf Fünfjahrpläne in der UdSSR (1928-90) und ähnlicher Pläne anderswo wurde das Bestehen der Bürokratie zunehmend schädlich für die Planerfüllung. Plan auf Plan registrierte abnehmende Wachstums- und Produktivitätsraten - beides direkt der Rolle der Bürokratie im Planwesen geschuldet.

Die wirtschaftlichen Anfangsresultate der Kommandoökonomien waren beeindruckend, da die Zentralisierung und Koordination der ökonomischen Ressourcen die Länder aus extremer Rückständigkeit rissen. Aber diese Ergebnisse erfolgten trotz, nicht wegen des Beitrags der Bürokratie. Es waren Dekaden extensiven Wachstums, d. h. wenn der Maschinenpark und Arbeiteranzahl absolut wachsen und der Ausstoß proportional dazu.

Zu Beginn der Planung gab es eine massive Arbeitslosigkeit, die absorbiert werden konnte, um immer mehr Leute ins Beschäftigtenheer zu ziehen; parallel dazu nahm die kultivierbare Landfläche zu. Die meisten Länder hatten am Anfang auch reiche natürliche Ressourcen auszubeuten. Zusätzlich wurde generell die Arbeitswoche verlängert - Arbeitskraft war reichlicher vorhanden als Fixkapitalausrüstung; die Anlagen konnten nur durch maximale Schichten am Funktionieren gehalten werden.

In diesen Jahren trug die koordinierende und zentralisierende Rolle der Administration - zusammen mit den enormen Naturressourcen, die zusammengefaßt und ausgebeutet werden konnten, und zweifelsohne dem Enthusiasmus der Massen (zumindest in der UdSSR) für den Wirtschaftsaufbau - zu den Erfolgen des Plans bei.

Als diese Arbeitsreserven und Rohmaterialien erschöpft waren oder wo die Kommandoplanwirtschaft auf eine schon entwickelte, sogar imperialistische Ökonomie (z. B. Tschechoslowakei) vom Start weg aufgepropft wurde, dann und dort hing das kontinuierliche Wachstum von der Steigerung der Produktivität der existierenden Produktionsfaktoren ab.

Das hätte ein System materieller und moralischer Anreize Seite an Seite mit technischen Verbesserungen des Arbeitsprozesses und der effektiveren Nutzung existierender Materialien erfordert. An diesem Punkt sollten die störenden und negativen Auswirkungen einer unhinterfragbaren Bürokratie entscheidend werden.

In allgemeinen Begriffen trug der grenzenlose Appetit auf Investitionen durch die Bürokratie zur ersten negativen Auswirkung auf die Produktivität bei. Der allgemeine Mangel an Investitionen stellte sicher, daß es de facto ein System vorrangiger Zulieferungen an Sektoren unter Kontrolle der vorherrschenden Fraktionen oder Abteilungen der Bürokratie gab. Im Gefolge sicherten sich diese Industriebereiche einen unverhältnismäßig großen Anteil an den verfügbaren Investitionen. Im Vergleich zur restlichen Wirtschaft stellte das Überakkumulation und vergeudete Investition dar und führte zu chronischen Ungleichgewichten in der ganzen Ökonomie. Dies führte wiederum zu Störungen, unvollendeten Projekten und niedrigerer Effizienz.

Innerhalb eines demokratischen Übergangs zum Sozialismus, wo die Arbeiterklasse direkt herrscht, entstünde das Problem nicht, weil die Investitionsrelationen danach bestimmt würden, was für die Gesamtwirtschaft optimal wäre. Das heißt, was die effektivste Kombination von Ressourcen wäre, die die Notwendigkeit ausgeglichenen Wachstums, steigenden Lebensstandards, der verschiedenen alternativen Nutzungen für die gleichen Produktionsfaktoren und die damit verbundenen gesellschaftlichen Kosten in Rechnung stellte.

Was die materiellen Anreize betrifft, so hat die Arbeiterklasse in der Übergangsperiode zum Sozialismus ein Interesse an der Ökonomisierung der Arbeitszeit, um die Arbeitswoche zu verkürzen und die für Bildung, Muße und politische Teilhabe verfügbare Zeit zu vergrößern. Dies spielte keine Rolle unter den Bedingungen der abgeblockten Transformation in einem degenerierten Arbeiterstaat.

Der strukturelle Anreiz fand nur Anwendung auf Mitglieder der Bürokratie (und eine kleine Schicht von Arbeiteraristokraten) und selbst dort schien er für verschiedene Schichten der Bürokratie unterschiedlich auszusehen. Die Zentralplaner und Parteiführer an der Spitze hatten ein Interesse daran, daß die Gesamtheit der Ziele für die Wirtschaft als Ganzes erfüllt werden. Dagegen waren Unternehmensmanager daran interessiert, ihren speziellen Fabrikzielen nachzukommen. Diese Schicht der Bürokratie behielt maximalen Raum für Manöver, indem sie ihren Bedarf an Investitionsquellen übertrieb und unzureichend berichtete, wo die Planziele übertroffen wurden. Insbesondere vermied sie, ihre Planvorgaben in der nächsten Runde nach oben „ausrasten„ zu sehen. All das hemmte die produktive Ressourcenanwendung.

Gleichfalls standen einer effektiveren Ausnutzung der Arbeit wirkliche Barrieren im Wege. In einem System, das von der Notwendigkeit einer maximalen Akkumulationsrate beherrscht wurde, wurde die Arbeitsangebotsknappheit (Vollbeschäftigung) bald dauerhaft und sogar ideologisch sanktioniert (Recht auf Arbeit). In der bürokratischen Planwirtschaft war die Arbeitskraft keine Ware, weil es keine Reservearmee der Arbeit gab und die Höhe des Gesamtlohns von vornherein festgelegt wurde (entsprechend der makro-ökonomischen Ziele für Investition und Verbrauch). Sie waren die am rigidesten beachteten Teile des Plans.

Eine gewisse Marktpreisbildung existierte, was das Lohnniveau für verschiedene Berufsgruppen oder Regionen des Landes innerhalb dieser allgemeinen Zuteilung des Lohnfonds begrifft. Arbeiter hatten das Recht, den Job zu wechseln, fanden aber viele Hindernisse in den Weg gestellt. Gleichzeitig hatten Unternehmensmanager ein Interesse daran, soviele Arbeiter wie möglich zu bekommen und achteten darauf, sie nicht zu verlieren. Diese generelle Situation gewährleistete geringes Arbeitsentgelt, relative Immobilität der Arbeit und geringfügige Entlassungsgefahr. Mangel an wirklichen Gewerkschaftsrechten machte auch politischere Protestformen unmöglich oder schwierig. Was dabei herauskam, war ein Regime mit niedriger Moral, geringer Arbeitsdisziplin und daraus resultierender schlechter Produktivität.

Es wurde auch nicht durch wirksameren Gebrauch von Materialien kompensiert. Es gab keine Belohnungen für den optimalen Umgang mit Ressourcen (oder umgekehrt Strafen), aber es gab viel zu gewinnen, wenn man sich große Gütervorräte anlegte, die gebraucht werden könnten (oder nicht), falls die Planvorgaben erhöht oder sich unvorhergesehene Störungen in der Planperiode ereignen würden. Weil es zum einen keine Marktdisziplin gab, zum anderen keinen täglichen Druck der Arbeiterklasse auf die Fabriken, Qualitätsprodukte zu sinkenden Durchschnittskosten zu liefern, ging dieser Prozeß unbeanstandet durch.

Trotzdem gab es im System der Kommandoplanwirtschaft eine Tendenz zur technischen Verbesserung des Arbeitsprozesses selbst. Unternehmen antworteten auf Arbeitskräfteknappheit (nicht wie unterm Kapitalismus, auf die ansteigenden relativen Arbeitskosten) durch Substitution von Arbeit durch Maschinerie. Technische Fortschritte wurden darum gemacht, aber gewöhnlich ahmten sie die kapitalistischen Innovationen nach und wurden nach langen Verzögerungen angewandt.

Eine allgemeine Tendenz zu verbesserter Produktivität würde eine verläßliche und konstante Art von Messung der Produktivitätsgewinne und daher von Kosten erfordern. Das vereitelte wieder das Selbstinteresse der Bürokratie. An erster Stelle beruhte Kommandoplanung im allgemeinen eher auf Mengenindizes (physische Einheiten) als auf Werteinheiten. Jene waren für die Kaste nicht nur leichter zu kontrollieren und durchs System hindurch zu verfolgen, sondern sie entsprachen auch ihren Kasteninteressen. Quantitative Erweiterung führte zu einem stetigen Anstieg in der Organisation und an der Zahl von Bürokraten. Auf qualitativen Produktivitätsverbesserungen beruhende Expansion hätte zu Beschneidungen und zu Verringerungen des Managements geführt - etwas ihren Interessen direkt Abträgliches.

Diese Fixierung auf quantitative Wachstums- und Erfolgsziffern erlaubte keinen realen Vergleich der Kosten alternativer Nutzweisen der Produktionsfaktoren, noch konnte sie ermitteln, ob abnehmende oder wachsende Mengen gesellschaftlich nützlicher Arbeit in der selben Anzahl physischer Produkte (Ge­brauchs­werte) vergegenständlicht waren. Die wahre Besessenheit von quantitativen Ergebnissen führte auch zur Vernachlässigung der Produktqualität (Funktioniert es gut? Funktioniert es überhaupt?), was unmitelbare Auswirkungen auf die allgemeine Produktivität hätte, wenn das Erzeugnis aus dem Kapitalgütersektor für uns bestimmt wäre.

Das Preissystem im bürokratischen Plan verstärkte das. Preise waren administrative Verrechnungseinheiten und gaben nicht die wahren Produktionskosten wieder (d. h. die in ihnen verkörperte gesellschaftliche Arbeitszeit). Teilweise deshalb, weil die Bürokratie das Preisniveau jahrzehntelang aus Furcht vor Inflation niederhielt und sich selbst weigerte, es sich in Linie mit Anstieg oder Sinken der Kosten bewegen zu lassen. Preise folgten den Produktmengen als finanzielle Reflexion des Systems materieller Bilanzen passiv durchs Planungssystem.

Dann litt das bürokratische Plansystem an einem säkularen Produktivitätsverfall; aber innerhalb dieses Niedergangs ist es möglich, zyklische Schwankungen zu beobachten. Erstens stieg die Arbeitsgeschwindigkeit gegen Ende einer Planperiode (besonders beim Jahresplan) dank des mit der Jahresplanerfüllung verknüpften Anreizsystems. Gleichzeitig litt die Qualität am Ende einer Planperiode, die der Produktionseile geopfert wurde. Als Ausgleich erfolgten oft Investitionen zum Start der nächsten Planperiode in einem Versuch, unvollendete Projekte im Bündel fertigzustellen.

Innerhalb der Planperiode gab es eine natürliche Tendenz, die Investitionspläne mindestens zum Teil zu Beginn zu erfüllen. Aber, wenn klar wurde, daß der Plan die Kapazitäten und Reserven in der Wirtschaft grob überschätzt hatte, traten Engpässe ein. Der zentrale Apparat reagierte, indem er Ressourcen aus Sektoren geringer in Sektoren hoher Priorität umschichtete mit den unausweichlich resultierenden Effekten: nicht beendete Projekte, lange Verzögerungen und die daraus folgenden Ungleichgewichte.

Im Wesentlichen war der Ursprung des Kreislaufs dem im Kapitalismus entgegengesetzt. Im Kapitalismus gibt es einen Zyklus aus Ausdehnung und Schrumpfen, der der Überproduktion von Kapital und Waren geschuldet ist. Dies bewirkt als Folge eine zerstörerische Rivalität zwischen Warenbesitzern, die zur Ausschaltung einiger von ihnen führt. In der Kommandowirtschaft war es eine Krise überschießenden Bedarfs (Investitionen), der in einem gewissen Moment nicht erfüllt werden konnte, die Einschnitte und Umverteilungen verursachte. Da jede Plananpassung schlagende Auswirkungen an anderer Stelle im Plan hatte, führte der allgemeine Effekt zum Bruch.

Wie beherrschend auch immer die Planwünsche und wie bürokratisch und rigide ihre Umsetzung, die vom bürokratischen Plan erzeugte echte Strukturkrise rief nach Marktmechanismen, um die von einem teilweise fehlgeschlagenen Plan hinterlassenen Lücken zu stopfen. Manchmal war das ein berechtigter Sektor von Privatherstellern (z. B. kleine Bauern, Anbieter persönlicher Dienstleistungen), öfter war es ein Netzwerk schwarzer oder grauer Märkte. Materalien im knappen Angebot konnten durch persönliche Kontakte ausfindig gemacht, durch Schmiergelder oder Tauschgeschäfte abgeschlossen werden. Obwohl nicht im Wesen des Systems vorgesehen, wurden diese oft institutionalisiert und ein Teil der Arbeitskräfte (in der Sowjetunion die Tolkatschi) wurde sogar dafür abgestellt, sich auf diese Aufgabe zu spezialisieren.

In Abwesenheit demokratischer Verantwortlichkeit, mußte man sich auf halboffizielle Marktkorrektive verlassen, um die Fehler des „allwissenden Wesens„, das der zentrale Planungsapparat war, zu berichtigen. Mit der Zeit verbanden sich die Defizite im Plansystem und der Druck von inner- und außerhalb des Apparats auf Reform und zwangen die Bürokratie, offiziell mit weitreichenderen Marktreformen als Versuch, die Ökonomie zu dynamisieren, zu experimentieren.

 

Marktreformen der Kommandoplanung: Ungarn und Jugoslawien

 

Der erste Anlauf, den Plan mit Marktmechanismen zu beleben, kam in Jugoslawien in den frühen 1950ern. Weitere Versionen markt­sozalistischer Reform kamen in der Tschecho­slowakei (1958), DDR (1963), UdSSR (1965), wiederum Tschechoslowakei (1968), Polen (1960er) und Ungarn (1968). Endlich wurde 1985 in der UdSSR ein weiterer und letzter Versuch unternommen. Politischer Widerstand von Fraktionen der herrschenden Partei oder Unternehmensmanagern brachen die meisten dieser Reformen abrupt ab. Nur in Ungarn und Jugoslawien schlugen die Reformen Wurzeln.

Der Neue Ökonomische Mechanismus (NÖM) in Ungarn fing 1968 an und dauerte bis in die späten 1980er an. Das Reformmotiv war nicht wie in Jugoslawien (oder der Tschechoslowakei), ein „neues Sozialismusmodell„ zu ersinnen, sondern einfach die wirtschaftliche Effizienz zu steigern. Die Reformen enthielten mehrere Komponenten.

Neue Eigentumsformen wurden zugelassen, einschließlich privater Kooperativen und kleiner Unternehmen; verbindliche Zentralplanziele wurden gemeinsam mit der physischen Allokation von Output und Input abgeschafft; Firmen wurde gestattet, gegenseitige bindende Vertragsbeziehungen einzugehen und auf der Basis der Profitmaximierung zu operieren; deshalb waren sie für die Kontrolle ihrer eigenen Kosten und Preisfestsetzung verantwortlich.

Konkurrenz war dazu ausersehen, zu Neuerungen und gestiegener Wirtschaftlichkeit zu führen. Die makro-ökonomischen Resultate dieser Reformen waren nicht signifikant verschieden von jenen in den Ländern, die keine bedeutenden Marktreformen einführten. Das Bruttoinlandprodukt wuchs zwischen 1968 und 1975, eine Verbesserung gegenüber der ersten Hälfte der 1960er, aber zwischen 1975 und 1985 setzten Wachstumsabfall und sogar Stagnation ein. Produktivitätsverbesserungen und -rückgänge spiegelten diese allgemeinen Wachstumsveränderungen wider.

Die Reformen mündeten in eine merkliche Zunahme der Einkommensungleichheiten wie auch des Umfangs an Konsumgütern und größerer Abwechslung unter ihnen. Als Resultat des späteren Nachlassens im Wachstum und der Fortdauer der Einkommensungleichheit in Ungarn nach 1975 war eine viel längere Arbeitswoche (d. h. zwei Jobs) üblich als sonstwo in Osteuropa.

Die Reformen verfehlten dann ihr wesentliches Ziel verbesserter Wirtschaftlichkeit. Dies deshalb, weil die Marktreformen sowohl zuviel wie zuwenig darstellten. Die Reformen übergaben nicht die Wirtschaftskontrolle an die Arbeiterklasse, so daß Produktivität und Erneuerung daraus fließen könnte.

Aber sie erlaubten der Konkurrenz der Unternehmen auch nicht, sich bis zu dem Punkt zu entwickeln, wo die Effizienz gesamtwirtschaftlich dadurch verallgemeinert wird, daß das am geringsten produktive aus dem Geschäft geschmissen wird; oder bis zu dem Punkt, wo der Produktmarkt auf Kapitalgüter (oder Kapital) ausgeweitet wird, so daß die Dynamik alle Wirtschaftsbereiche durchdringen könnte.

Stattdessen blieben in einem System „dualer Abhängigkeit„ (von Markt und Plan) die entscheidenden Schlüsselelemente die zentralen Planagenturen; direkte bürokratische Kontrolle wich der indirekten. Statt zwingende Vorgaben zu setzen, die physische Ziffern gebrauchen, benutzen die Planer finanzielle Instrumente, um den Plan auszuführen.

Diese zentrale Kontrolle wurde auch auf anderen Wegen bewerkstelligt. Auf Unternehmensebene müssen die Manager, obwohl formal Herren ihres eigenen Outputs, „Bitten„ nachgeben, um Anforderungen für den Export oder sogar die Inlandsnachfrage zu erfüllen. Zusätzlich setzte ein System von Quoten und Lizenzen Parameter, innerhalb derer das Angebot „frei„ erworben werden konnte.

Während das Preissystem liberalisiert wurde, blieb eine gewisse direkte Preisfestlegung immer erhalten und beabsichtigte Preisänderungen mußten den Zentralbehörden angezeigt werden. Entscheidend war, daß die Beschäftigungsniveaus in den Fabriken und der Kreditzugang für die Finanzierung von Anlageinvestitionen politischer Verhandlung zwischen Unternehmensmanagern und der Zentralbehörde unterworfen waren. Die wirkliche Verfügungsmacht über den Akkumulationsprozeß verblieb bei den Planern..

Während auf dem Markt beruhende Kriterien für den Output eingeführt wurden (z. B. Profitabilität), war die endgültige Marktdisziplin lasch oder existierte nicht, weil am Ende systematisches Erwirtschaften von Verlusten nicht automatisch zur Schließung führte, ebensowenig wie langfristiger Erfolg hinlangte, die Profite behalten zu können.

Steuerwesen und Haushaltsmaßnahmen wurden als makro-ökonomische Hebel von den zentralen Planern angewandt, um auf mikro-ökonomischer Ebene verursachten Erfolg und Mißerfolg neu zu verteilen.

 

Jugoslawien

 

Zwischen 1952 und 1965 organisierte der jugoslawische Arbeiterstaat seine Wirtschaft um eine Mischung aus Plan und Markt herum, die in vielem so war, wie oben am Fall von Ungarn unter der NÖM beschrieben. Zwischen 1965 und den frühen 1970ern ging die jugoslawische Bürokratie jedoch den Weg der Marktreformen viel weiter als irgendeine herrschende Kaste vorher oder nachher. In gewisser Beziehung wies die ‘weder Plan noch Markt’ - Mischung, die sich in jenen Jahren (vor der teilweisen Rezentralisierung nach 1971) durchsetzte, tatsächlich Ähnlichkeiten mit der politischen Ökonomie der moribunden Arbeiterstaaten in Osteuropa und der Ex-UdSSR nach 1989 auf.

Nach 1965 gab es in Jugoslawien drei zusätzliche Schlüsselreformen. Erstens gaben die zentralen staatlichen Planämter die direkte Kontrolle über die Banken und die Zuteilung von Investivmitteln auf (außer einer übriggebliebenen Funktion in der Zuweisung von Fonds an unterentwickelte Regionen).

An ihrer Stelle wurden autonome Banken errichtet mit den Unternehmen selbst als größten Konteninhabern und stimmberechtigten Direktoren.

Zweitens verfügte der Staat, daß der Brennpunkt aller ökonomischen Entscheidungsfindung über Produktion (und Verteilung der Einnahmen aus ihr) die selbstverwalteten Unternehmen seien. Diese seien vollkommen frei, Verträge zu schließen mit wem auch immer sie wollten.

Alle Investitionsentscheidungen (einschließ­lich Investitionen in anderen Unternehmen in anderen jugoslawischen Republiken) sollten von den Unternehmen in Abhängigkeit vom verfügbaren Kapital, das von den Banken verliehen wurde, getroffen werden.

Zum dritten gab der Bundesstaat das staatliche Außenhandelsmonopol auf, was zu einem riesigen Anstieg der Wareneinfuhren, gemeinsamen Unternehmungen mit dem Imperialismus und der Auswanderung jugoslawischer Arbeiter führte. Preise von Importen wie einheimischen Gütern wurden freigegeben, worauf sie auf Weltmarktniveau kletterten.

Diese Maßnahmen sollten zusammen mit der Währungsabwertung und dem resultierenden Exportanstieg den hauptsächlichen Stimulus für Expansion und Wirtschaftlichkeit bilden.

Ergebnis dieser Reformen war, daß es überhaupt keine wirksame Koordination von Herstellung und Verteilung durch eine Bundesbehörde gab. Einerseits führten die Bankreformen zu einer Explosion verfügbaren Investivkapitals.

Da die Unternehmem Haupteigner der Banken waren und es eine Obergrenze des Zinsfußes gab, schuf das durch einen anderen Mechanismus die permanente Nachfrage nach Investitionen, die typisch für bürokratisch geplante Wirtschaften war.

Andererseits schloß das System selbstverwalteter Unternehmen das Recht auf Arbeit ein und machte es praktisch unmöglich, Arbeiter zu entlassen oder eine Fabrik zu schließen. Unter diesen Bedingungen bauten sich massive Überkapazitäten auf, wie auch Geschäftsverluste.

Die Marktreformen in Jugoslawien taten selbst verglichen mit anderswo überhaupt nichts, um die Produktivität zu steigern. In 20 Reformjahren sank die Produktivitätszuwachsrate um die Hälfte, hauptsächlich der geringen Effektivität neuer Kapitalinvestitionen wegen.

Die Inflation kletterte im Ergebnis der Marktreformen von weniger als 4% in der Periode 1952 - 1962 auf fast 30% in den frühen 80ern. Dies trat ein wegen der ausufernden Kreditexpansion, um die Produktion zu finanzieren. Angesichts steigender Inflation suchten die Arbeiter in den selbstverwalteten Unternehmen Schutz, indem sie eine beträchtliche Portion des Nettoeinkommens eher den Löhnen als den Investitionen widmeten und dadurch den Bedarf nach externem Kredit erhöhten.

Die Arbeitslosigkeit schoß in die Höhe, weil der Bundesstaat seine Verantwortung für die Arbeitsfindung aufgab und die existierenden Betriebe sträubten sich, neue Arbeitskräfte, die auf den Markt drängten, aufzunehmen (besonders Bauern vom Lande) aus Angst, den Lohnfonds zu dünn über eine vergrößerte Belegschaft verteilen zu müssen. Daraus resultierte eine Massenauswanderung.

Endlich führten die Reformen zu groben regionalen Ungleichheiten, da die Investitionen in die entwickelteren Regionen gingen; sie führten zur wirtschaftlichen Unordnung des Landes und bereiteten dem Auseinanderbrechen Jugoslawiens in den späten 1980ern den Weg.

Indem sie jede direkte und manche indirekte bürokratische Regulierung der Ökonomie aufgaben, trugen die bundesstaatlichen Stalinisten in Jugoslawien viel zur Desorganisation und zum Chaos im Lande bei.

Die Marktreformen - im Kontext der verbleibenden Beschränkungen von Betriebsschließungen und Entlassungen, der Abschreckung von wirtschaftlichem Investitionsmittelgebrauch und der Abwesenheit rationeller Preisbildung von Kapitalgütern (einschließlich des Kapitalpreises) - dienten nur dazu, die Wirtschaft weiter zu destabilisieren.

Die Reformen führten große regionale Unterschiede, Massenarbeitslosigkeit, Emigration und zügellose Inflation ein. Schließlich steigerten sie den in der bürokratischen Planwirtschaft inhärenten säkularen Niedergang des Produktivitätszuwachses eher, als ihn umzukehren - so durchkreuzten sie den eigentlichen, an erster Stelle stehenden Sinn, die Marktreformen durchzuführen.

Die durch die Reformen nach 1965 ausgelöste soziale und ökonomische Krise löste riesigen gesellschaftlichen Unmut aus (1968 - 1971), Studentenproteste und Arbeitersolidarität. Der Zusammenhanglosigkeit der Reformen konnte man nicht gestatten, weiter Bestand zu haben.

Entweder mußte der Weg zum vollen Kapitalismus durch Privatisierung, Beendigung der Arbeiterselbstverwaltung, Liquidierung der hauptsächlichen Verlustbringer, eine deflationäre Geldstabilitäts- und kommerzielle Kreditpolitik genommen werden, oder es mußte eine gewisse Umkehr und Rezentralisierung des Plans geben.

Mitte der 1970er Jahre wurde ein Element von Zentralisierung wieder aufgelegt, um die Rutschpartie zum Stillstand zu bringen. Das Zentrum übernahm mehr Verantwortung für die Rationierung der Investitionsfonds. Die Bundes- und Republiksregierungen stellten auch ein Vertragssystem zwischen Betrieben und verschiedenen Staatskörperschaften auf, um der Produktion etwas Lenkung zurückzugeben.

Aber der Schaden war da. Ein großes Ausmaß an Abhängigkeit vom internationalen Handel mit dem Kapitalismus, ein wachsender Schuldendienst und weitere regionale Ungleichheit sorgten dafür, daß es kein Ende der Wirtschaftskrise gab. Als der Stalinismus nach 1989 zusammenbrach, waren Staaten wie Slowenien und Kroatien unter den ersten in der Schlange, die die volle kapitalistische Restauration verlangten.

 

IST SOZIALISMUS MÖGLICH?

 

Die neoliberale Kritik am Sozialismus

 

In den Zwischenkriegsjahren wurde von der österreichischen Schule neoliberaler bürgerlicher Wirtschaftswissenschaftler (z. B. von Mises, Hayek) eine Attacke auf die politische Ökonomie des Sozialismus inszeniert. In kurzer Folge auf das Experiment des Kriegskommunismus argumentierten Hayek und von Mises, es sei unmöglich, ein rationelles Wirtschaftssystem ohne vollen Gebrauch von Geld, konkurrierenden Märkten und Preisen zu organisieren.

Hayek legte dar, der Sozialismus biete keine ökonomische Antwort „auf das allgemeine Problem, das überall entsteht, wo eine Vielzahl von Zwecken um eine begrenzte Anzahl an Mitteln konkurriert„. Für Hayek kann dieses Problem nur auf blinde Art gelöst werden, als Ergebnis der ungeplanten Folgen konkurrierender Entscheidungen seitens einzelner und atomisierter Produzenten und Konsumenten am Markt.

Da für Hayek „Wert„ keine objektive Grundlage in der Arbeit hat, kann er nur in der subjektiven Nutzenbewertung eines Erzeugnisses für verschiedene konkurrierende Hersteller und Verbraucher existieren. Diese kollidierenden Wertschätzungen werden durch das System der Marktpreise koordiniert, das Signale über den relativen Wert von Gütern an alle Produzenten und Konsumenten sendet. Infolgedessen kann ein zentraler Plan, der eines solchen Preissystems und Markts beraubt ist, nicht ermitteln, was der vernünftigste Nutzen für knappe ökonomische Ressourcen ist.

Ein System von Privateigentum an den Produktionsmitteln wurde von der österreichischen Schule für unerläßlich gehalten, so daß die Profitchance auf der einen Seite und das Risiko der Fehlschlags auf der anderen Entscheidungen vorwärtstreiben konnten. Diese allein könnten zu Innovationen anregen und die Arbeitsproduktivität verbessern.

Hayeks Kritik war ursprünglich von theoretischer Natur. In den frühen 30er Jahren folgerte er jedoch, daß das Experiment der Sowjetunion bis zu dieser Zeit sein Argument unterstützte. Er behauptete, daß die UdSSR gemessen an der Höhe der Ersparnisse chronisch unter Unterkonsumtion litt und daß ein kapitalistisches System in Rußland mit diesem Niveau an Rücklagen einen höheren Standard im Endverbrauch geboten hätte. Weiter schlußfolgerte er, daß das Scheitern des Kriegskommunismus und die anschließende Akzeptanz von Märkten unter der NÖP, gefolgt von der Schwierigkeit, die Ziele des ersten Fünfjahresplans zu verwirklichen, alles die Unfähigkeit irgendeines zentralen Plans aufzeigte, eine vernünftige Alternative zu den Märkten zu liefern.

Die Österreicher bestanden auch darauf, daß Planung nicht in der Lage sei, das 'Informationsproblem' zu lösen, das von Märkten automatisch gelöst wurde. Die Millionen existierender Güter waren alle voneinander verschieden; selbst Güter der gleichen Art befanden sich in verschiedenen Verschleißzuständen. Darüber hinaus erfolgten technische Verbesserungen zunehmend und wiederholt. Kurz, ein zentraler Plan konnte unmöglich die notwendige Information zusammentragen und koordinieren, um einen Plan im Betrieb funktionieren zu lassen. Selbst wenn die Information gesammelt werden könnte, würde es eine Reihe an Gleichungen von solcher Größenordnung erfordern, daß es außerhalb des Horizonts der Mathematikwissenschaft bliebe, eine Plan zu formulieren. Jeder Versuch in dieser Richtung würde notwendigerweise zu einer Senkung der Arbeitsproduktivität im Vergleich zum Kapitalismus führen.

Im Verlauf der Debatte verschob Hayek die Gewichtung seiner Ausführungen, um die Vorstellung zu erwecken, daß ein System disharmonischen Wettbewerbs zwischen rivalisierenden Privateigentümern der einzige Weg sei, auf notwendig fragmentierte Kenntnis von Produktverbesserungen, Nachfrage und ähnliche Faktoren zu reagieren. Er akzeptierte, daß es in einem statischen System von Nachfrage und Angebot sowie Gleichgewichtspreisen (eine Annahme neoklassischer bürgerlicher Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und, so behauptete er, sozialistischer Ökonomen) möglich sein könnte, das Informationsproblem zu lösen. In einem dynamischen, sich stets wandelnden und konkurrierenden System bliebe das Problem jedoch unlösbar.

In diesem Sinne dreht sich das österreichische Argument nicht darum, ob Informationen gesammelt werden können, um eine Allokation zu ermöglichen, sondern vielmehr darum, daß Konkurrenz und Rivalität (und die sich wandelnde Kenntnis, die daher rührt und letztlich über das Preissystem zusammengetragen wird) der einzige Weg sei, um Unternehmertum und wirtschaftlichen Fortschritt zu erreichen.

Die marxistische Antwort auf diese ultra-freimarktlichen Ansichten der österreichischen Schule muß von einer Kritik ihrer methodischen Annahmen über das Wesen des Wirtschaftslebens aus starten. Hayek bezieht den Standpunkt des extremen Individualismus' und Subjektivismus'. Mehr noch, Konsumbedürfnisse werden als Triebkraft jeder Ökonomie betrachtet. Alles im Wirtschaftsleben wird reduziert auf Markttauschvorgänge zwischen freien und gleichen Privateigentümern.

Marxisten leugnen nicht die Bedeutung von Marktbeziehungen im ökonomischen Alltag, aber es ist einfach falsch, zu suggerieren, daß Tauschprozesse am Markt für die hauptsächliche Dynamik verantwortlich sind, die die Zuteilung von ökonomischen Hilfsquellen in einer kapitalistischen Warenwirtschaft. Der Marxismus stellt eine andere Rechnung von Wirtschaft zur Verfügung, die auf dem geschichtlichen und relativen Charakter ökonomischer Bewegungsgesetze beharrt, nicht auf ihrer zeitlosen und unhistorischen Anwendung.

Hayeks extrem subjektivistische Erklärung ökonomischer Antriebskräfte kollidiert natürlich mit der Wirklichkeit kapitalistischer Entwicklung. Für Hayek enthalten Marktpreise alle nötigen Informationen für private Warenbesitzer, um rationelle Entscheidungen über Ressourcenallokationen zu fällen, aber das steht offenkundig im Streit mit der Art und Weise, wie der Kapitalismus funktioniert.

Preise sind nicht für alle Verbraucher Parameter (d. h. gegeben und unabänderlich). Viele Produktionen (z. B. Rüstungsbeschaffung) werden erst nach Ausschreibungen aufgenommen, bei denen Beschaffenheits- und Qualitätsbewertungen der Ware entscheidend sind, und der Preis wird dann für diese Anforderungen gebildet. Noch mehr, Vertrag, Markenname und Lieferzeit bestimmen die Verbraucherwahl genauso, wenn nicht mehr, als der Preis. Was Hayeks Unterstellung angeht, die unternehmerische Risikobereitschaft erzeuge die hauptsächliche Dynamik für wirtschaftlichen Fortschritt im Kapitalismus, so ist es nur notwendig, die wahre Natur von Erneuerungen und technischem Fortschritt mit Hayeks Karikatur auf das 19. Jahrhundert zu kontrastieren.

Unter der Ägide imperialistischer multinationaler Konzerne findet Innovation vorrangig innerhalb der Grenzen riesiger monopolistischer Aktiengesellschaften statt. Zuweilen unterdrücken sie Neuerungen, wenn diese die Profitmargen von Marktanteilen für etablierte Erzeugnisse bedrohen; Forschung und Entwicklung zielen immer darauf, das Risiko zu minimieren und der Konkurrenz zuvorzukommen.

Hayek hantiert mit einem absurd unrealistischen Konzept perfekten Wettbewerbs, wo es freien und unbehinderten Zutritt zu und Ausstieg aus Märkten für die Hersteller gibt und jeder Unternehmer über alle elementar notwendige Kenntnis verfügt, um eine vernünftige Entscheidung über die wirtschaftlich beste Auswahl zu treffen, wenigstens für sich selbst.

In Wirklichkeit ist das bruchstückhafte Wissen des Individuums am Markt nur ein unvollständiger und unangemessener Wegweiser. Es ist für jedes Individuum unmöglich, sich wichtige und möglicherweise entscheidende öffentliche und gesellschaftliche Tatsachen zu vergegenwärtigen, die die Vernunft seiner eigenen rationellen Entscheidungen tangiert. Die Auswirkung einer Entscheidung über die Plazierung öffentlicher Infrastrukturmaßnahmen in der Nähe einer Stadt oder einer Fabrik können nicht vorhergesehen werden. Die individuellen Auswirkungen einer durch andere gefällten Entscheidung mögen in der Folge die Mutmaßungen ändern, unter denen erstere Entscheidung gefaßt wurde.

Insbesondere kann der Wettbewerb zwischen selbstsüchtigen Rivalen auf dem Markt, durch aktuelle Preise gesteuert, nicht zu optimalem Nutzen der gesellschaftlichen Potentiale führen, wenn denn die Reihe an Investitionen und Akkumulation gerät, d. h. zukünftige Erzeugung, da es jenseits der Macht jedes Individuums steht, zukünftige Preisbewegungen vorwegzukalkulieren, die erst gegenwärtige Entscheidungen über Investitionen in rationelle verwandeln werden oder nicht.

Somit können die bruchstückhafte Art des Wissens und seine unvorhergesehenen transindividuellen oder sozialen Kosten Wirtschaftsentscheidungen zu verschwenderischen machen dadurch, daß Kapazitäten unnötigerweise vermehrt werden oder daß der Ausstoß keine Endabnehmer findet. Atomisierte Entscheidungsfindungen sind deshalb irrational, weil sie den wirtschaftlichen Fortschritt hemmen. Alle diese Kritiken an Hayeks ökonomischem Modell kommen auf denselben Punkt zurück: er abstrahiert falsch (idealistisch) vom Kern des Wirtschaftslebens und unternimmt dies eher denn aus Verallgemeinerungen aus dem wahren Klassencharakter der Produktion uim Kapitalismus als aus der einseitig aufgefaßten Art von Individuen im Austauschprozeß heraus.

Es sei hinzugefügt, daß Hayek auch einer idealistischen Abstraktion über das allgemeine menschliche Wesen für schuldig befunden werden kann, die in vollem Widerspruch zu allen Resultaten moderner Psychologie und anderer Wissenschaften steht. Hayek porträtiert menschliche Individuen wesentlich als voll entwickelte Bürger: unabhängig von anderen Individuen; souverän in ihren Entscheidungen; alle menschlichen Beziehungen nur gemäß dem Tauschwert, über den andere verfügen, beurteilend; allein eigene materielle Interessen im Handeln verfolgend.

Direkte menschliche Beziehungen (im Gegensatz zu austauschorientierten), die auf Vertrauen, Liebe, Solidarität beruhen, scheinen in diesem Konzept nicht auf oder sind mindestens vollständig von der 'ökonomischen Sphäre' getrennt. Deshalb paßt für Hayek der Kapitalismus nicht nur zur menschlichen Natur, sondern ist nichts weniger als deren Verwirklichung.

Daraus fließt logisch, daß es kein anderes Gesellschaftssystem geben kann, das perfekter als der Kapitalismus der menschlichen Art entspricht. Natürlich ist es richtig, daß der Kapitalismus, seine Ethik und Moral, tief in die gesellschaftliche und psychologische Erscheinungsform von Individuen hinein Wurzeln treiben. Darüber hinaus befinden sich zwischenmenschliche Verhältnisse im Kapitalismus unter Druck, sich dem Tauschbeziehungsmodell anzupassen. Es stimmt jedoch nicht, daß alles dieses mit dem menschlichen Charakter harmoniert.

Tatsächlich ist das Gegenteil der Fall. Menschliche Lebewesen brauchen direkte soziale Beziehungen, wenn sie ihre Persönlichkeitspotentiale so voll wie möglich verwirklichen sollen. Sie brauchen gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse, die die volle Bandbreite menschlicher Gefühle und Qualitäten ausdrücken, nicht nur die verengte Konzeption von menschlichem 'Wert', wie sie vom Geldzusammenhang des Markts etabliert wird. Dies ist natürlich im Fall bürgerlicher Besitzer nicht so beeinträchtigend, da die (erfolgreichen) Kapitalisten ihre psychische Stärke und Gesundheit auf der sozialen Macht aufbauen, die ihr Kapital darstellt. Weil die gesellschaftliche Stärke durch die unbezahlte Arbeit ihrer Arbeiter vergrößert wird, finden die Kapitalisten sich selbst für die kapitalistische Entfremdung entschädigt.

Im Gegensatz dazu wird den Arbeitern die Gelegenheit vorenthalten, zur gesellschaftlichen und geschichtlichen Entwicklung beizutragen. Ihre Persönlichkeiten sind durch Ausbeutung und Unterdrückung verarmt. Das zunehmende Ausmaß psychischer und psychosomatischer Unpäßlichkeiten innerhalb der Arbeiterklasse ist in letzter Instanz das Ergebnis der zerstörerischen Auswirkung des Kapitalismus auf menschliche Verhältnisse.

 

Marktsozialismus: Neue Utopien für das neue Jahrtausend

 

Die Frühphasen kapitalistischer Entwicklung in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts erzeugten Ideologien, die die Auswirkungen des neuen Systems kritisierten, ohne an seine Wurzeln heranzugehen. Im Grunde repräsentierten diese Ideologien den Klassenstandpunkt des Kleinbürgertums, aber in Ermangelung einer wissenschaftlichen Alternative fielen ihnen auch breite Schichten der Arbeiterklasse und die aufkommende Arbeiterbewegung zum Opfer. Dies war das Zeitalter des utopischen Sozialismus, der nach dem Ableben der französischen Revolution einflußreicher wurde. Owenismus, Proudhonismus und die deutschen Wahren Sozialisten konzentrierten ihre Attacke auf das Geldsystem, die Einführung von Papiergeld, die Ausweitung des Kredits und den Skandal der Zinsabzahlungen oder sie kritisierten einfach die grassierende Ungleichheit und Ungerechtigkeit.

Utopische Schemata für Arbeitszeitzertifikate oder Arbeiterbanken wurden entworfen, aber das Wesen des Kapitalismus, der Austausch privat produzierter Waren einschließlich der Arbeitskraft und das Gesetz der Selbstverwertung des Werts, das daraus entsteht, wurden niemals verstanden und konnten es auch nicht. Die Autoren dieser frühen Versionen von 'Marktsozialismus' waren 'Freunde der Arbeit', verteidigten aber klar die Privateigentümerklassen. Owen begrüßte z. B. "die Militärmacht der französischen Regierung", die Pariser Junirevolution 1848 niedergeschlagen zu haben. Proudhon unterstützte den Schlächter der französischen Arbeiter, Cavaignac, in den Dezemberwahlen 1848 und applaudierte später dem Staatsstreich Louis Bonapartes.

Drum hat der 'Marktsozialismus' eine lange intellektuelle Tradition. In diesem Jahrhundert tauchte er als Kritik an der Wirtschaftsplanung in der UdSSR wieder auf. Die ersten Schreiber argumentierten korrekt, daß frühe sowjetische Annahmen in Bezug auf Planung und die Versuche, Preise und Geldkalkulation vom Beginn des sozialistischen Übergangs an abzuschaffen, falsch waren. Im Gegenteil, diese Marktindikatoren konnten nicht durch 'natürliche' Meßzahlen des Gebrauchs gesellschaftlicher Arbeit ersetzt werden (z. B. Kalorienverbrauch).

In Polemiken mit den Freimarktanhängern konzentrierten sich Marktsozialisten wie Oskar Lange in den 1930er Jahren darauf, wie Preise für alle möglichen Güter in Abwesenheit eines Markts bestimmt werden konnten.

Die Antwort war, daß der Markt für Investitionsgüter imitiert werden mußte (Preissetzung durch die Planstäbe nach dem System von Versuch und Irrtum) und für die Bildung von Preisen für Arbeitskraft und Konsumgüter der Markt selbst ausgenutzt werden mußte.

Das nächste Stadium der marktsozialistischen Debatte erwuchs aus Versuchen, die bürokratische Kommandoplanung in den degenerierten Arbeiterstaaten zu reformieren (z. B. die späteren Schriften von Lange, die Ideen von Brus in Polen und Sik in der Tschechoslowakei, die Selbstverwaltungserfahrung in Jugoslawien von 1965 - 1971 oder der Neue Ökonomische Mechanismus in Ungarn nach 1968; in Britannien die Argumente von Alec Nove). Diesen Theorien ist das Eintreten für Marktmechanismen wie Unternehmensautonomie oder profitmaximierendes Verhalten, um die zunehmend durchscheinenden Tendenzen zur Stagnation, eingeschränkten Konsumauswahl und schlechten Bilanz technischer Erneuerungen zu berichtigen, gemeinsam.

Schließlich haben die aktuellsten Entwicklungen in der Debatte den weitgehendsten Marktgebrauch befürwortet und das eigentliche Konzept von 'Sozialismus' bis zur Bruchstelle strapaziert. Diese westlichen sozialdemokratischen Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und sonstigen Akademiker sind sowohl vom Niedergang und Zusammenbruch stalinistischer Planung wie auch der geistigen und politischen Hegemonie neoliberaler Ökonomen während der 1980er und 1990er Jahre in Europa und Nordamerika beeinflußt worden (z. B. Roemer, Millar, Le Grand).

Im Extremfall haben diese Schriftsteller jede Rolle für zentrale staatliche Regulierung in irgendeinem Herstellungstyp (oder sogar Arbeiterselbstverwaltung des Unternehmens) einschließlich der Investitionsgüter aufgegeben. Statt dessen plädieren sie für einen freien Wettbewerbsmarkt bei der Festlegung von Preisen (und dadurch von Angebot und Nachfrage) aller Güter und Dienstleistungen (einschließlich der Arbeitskraft). Der Anspruch darauf, überhaupt ein 'sozialistisches' Modell darzustellen, beruht auf dem Bekenntnis zu einer bestimmten Form öffentlichen Eigentums (Bürgereigen­tum an Aktiengesellschaften) und dadurch zur gleichmäßigen Verteilung von Profiten.

Obwohl das Lager der Marktsozialisten eine große Bandbreite besonderer politischer Rezepte und institutioneller Arrangements umfaßt, kann von ihnen allgemein gesagt werden, daß sie akzeptieren, daß Konkurrenzmärkte für eine Reihe Güter und ein gewisser Grad an Unternehmensautonomie von zentralen Plandirektiven wesentlich sind, wenn Effizienz und Demokratie sichergestellt sein sollen. Marktsozialisten akzeptieren, daß es kein konzentriertes Privateigentum an den hauptsächlichen Produktionsmitteln geben darf - es muß 'Gesellschaftseigentum' existieren.

Auf makroökonomischer Ebene sollte eine zentrale oder nationale Planungsagentur (wenigstens einige vorschlagsweise) Entscheidungen über größere Investitionen treffen. Auf der anderen Seite erklären Marktsozialisten, daß Arbeitsplätze und die meisten Verbrauchsgüter auf dem Weg über einen Wettbewerbermarkt alloziert werden sollten. Zusätzlich bestehen sie darauf, daß alltägliche Entscheidungen über Output und Preise, effektiv alle Entscheidungen, die die Ausnutzung existierender Kapazitäten berühren, von den Einzelunternehmen gefällt werden sollten. Einige argumentieren, daß die meisten oder alle Investitionsentscheidungen auch auf Unternehmensebene erfolgen sollten außer für öffentliche Infrastrukturprojekte (Verkehr, Kommunikation, Erziehungswesen).

Für Marktsozialisten stellen einzelne Firmen unabhängige Produktionseinheiten dar. Sie entscheiden autonom und verkaufen ihre Erzeugnisse auf offenen Märkten. Der utopische Charakter dieses Schemas wird an der Tatsache erhellt, daß der moderne Kapitalismus - der Ausgangspunkt zum Sozialismus - nicht eine Gesellschaft verhältnismäßig selbstgenügsamer einfacher Warenproduzenten ist, die ihren geringen Überschuß auf dem Markt verkaufen und dann jene Produkte einkaufen, die sie nicht selbst herstellen können. Der Sozialismus wird vielmehr eine komplizierte Arbeitsteilung ererben, innerhalb derer die Ausgangsprodukte einer Firma die Eingangsprodukte anderer ausmachen.

Die gegenseitigen Abhängigkeiten zwischen selbstverwalteten Unternehmungen verlangen nach einem koordinierenden, zentralen Mechanismus - der direkten Assoziation aller Produzenten und Konsumenten.

Die ganze geschichtliche Erfahrung (Ungarns NÖM, Jugoslawiens Selbstverwaltung) zeigt, daß, wenn die Zügel an der Unternehmensautonomie zu bedeutend sind (z. B. das Unvermögen, Investitionen für Zusatzkapazitäten zu genehmigen, den Handel einzustellen oder Arbeiter zu entlassen), diese nicht effektiv dazu führt, Konkurrenzmärkte nachzuahmen und das System ins Chaos abgleitet.

Marktsozialismus ist eine inhärent widersprüchliche Kombination wirtschaftlicher Logiken und Regulierungen. Kapitalistische Wettbewerbsmärkte erfordern eine Vielzahl von privaten Kapitaleigentümern, von denen jeder für Riskoentscheidungen über das Investitionsmuster verantwortlich ist, über die Struktur der Produktionskapazität. Diese Entscheidungen müssen individuell getroffen werden, in völliger Unkenntnis von den Entscheidungen der anderen Produzenten und motiviert von dem Wunsch, langfristig Profite zu maximieren. Nur das Zusammenspiel dieser blinden unpersönlichen Marktkräfte begründet Gleichgewichtsniveaus von Beschäftigung, Preisen und Zinsraten, die alle Privatkapitalisten konfrontieren.

Im Gegensatz dazu ist keine Art sozialistischen Übergangs möglich, wenn das gesellschaftliche Verhältnis zwischen Lohnarbeit und Kapital nicht abgeschafft worden ist und wenn die Arbeitskraft weiterhin eine Ware ist, wenn Lohn- und Beschäftigungshöhen auf einem Wettbewerbsmarkt festgelegt werden.

Zentrale, von Planbehörden ausgegebene Anweisungen bezüglich Einkommen und Beschäftigung würden andauernd von den Entscheidungen, die von autonomen Unternehmen gefällt werden, welche ihrerseits in ihren mikroökonomischen Entscheidungen von Erwägungen über Profitmaximierung geleitet werden, unterhöhlt.

In letzterem Fall wären natürlich Unternehmen unterschiedlich erfolgreich. Welche Reaktion sollte dann aus dem Zentrum kommen, wenn einige Unternehmen bei diesem Wettlauf verlören? Was, wenn die Güter unprofitabel wären, aber ein gesellschaftliches Minderheitsbedürfnis erfüllten? Was, wenn eine Firma anstrebte, Arbeitsplätze einzusparen oder einen Teil ihrer Produktion stillzulegen, um wieder schwarze Zahlen zu schreiben?

Von Anfang an wäre es wahrscheinlich, daß solch unvorhergesehene Entwicklung sofort Teile des Plans überflüssig machen würde und den Rest des Plans aus dem Gleichgewicht würfe. Desweiteren würde jedes Versagen, Arbeitslosigkeit oder Einkommensungleichheiten zu stoppen, der vom nationalen Plan beabsichtigten Nachfragestruktur widersprechen und wäre mit der egalitären Moral des Übergangs unvereinbar.

Selbst die schwächste Ausdrucksform von 'Sozialismus', die Wettbewerbsmärkten völlig die Zügel ließe, um Produktions- und Preishöhen festzulegen, hätte immer noch einen Defekt im Kern; nämlich, daß die kollektive, egalitäre Form der Verteilung von Profit und gemeinsamen Eigentumsrechten mit der Produktionsweise jener Profite in Konflikt käme.

'Marktsozialismus' ist darum eine Form kleinbürgerlichen Sozialismus' im späten zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, die mit den Worten des Programms der Russischen Kommunistischen Partei von 1919 "gegen das Großkapital protestiert, aber im Namen der 'Freiheit' für Kleinunternehmen" (ABC des Kommunismus, London, 1927, S. 78 f.).

Im neunzehnten Jahrhundert war dieses Kleinunternehmen von Handwerksart. Heutige Marktsozialisten predigen die Freiheit der selbstverwalteten oder genossenschaftlich betriebenen Unternehmung; Freiheit nicht nur vom Großkapital (d. h. Monopolen und Banken), sondern auch von zentralen Planrichtlinien. Wir wenden uns jetzt der detaillierten Untersuchung der Argumente und Trugschlüsse von Schlüsselrepräsentanten der marktsozialistischen Ideologie jeden Stadiums zu.

 

Oscar Lange und Fred Taylor

 

Die frühen Verfechter der Vernünftigkeit des Sozialismus, die auf die Kritiken von Hayek u. a. antworteten, starteten ihre Verteidigung aus der bürgerlichen Wirtschaftswissenschaft heraus und lehnten die marxistische Politökonomie und die Arbeitswertlehre ab. Natürlich konnte ihre Verteidigung deshalb nicht konsistent sein, noch können wir uns mit ihr identifizieren.

Taylor und Lange gingen ihre Verteidigung fast ganz vom Standpunkt der Effektivität des Sozialismus aus an. Sie hatte wiederum zwei Bestandteile. Erstens sollte Wirtschaftlichkeit den kostengünstigsten Umgang mit verfügbaren Ressourcen bedeuten; zweitens mußte der Preismechanismus genutzt werden, um Gleich­gewicht zwischen Angebot und Nachfrage zu garantieren.

Für sie war 'Sozialismus' nicht mehr öffentliches Eigentum an Produktionsmitteln und gleiche Einkommensverteilung. Sie mutmaßten, politische Demokratie sei dem bürgerlichen Parlamentarismus ähnlich, aber sie glaubten, ihr Wirtschaftsmodell sei auch mit politischer autoritärer Diktatur, wie sie in der UdSSR existierte, verträglich.

Lange akzeptierte, daß der Marxismus die gesellschaftliche Evolution von einem Klassensystem zu einem anderen erklären konnte, führte aber aus, daß er nicht die 'Alltagswirklichkeit' erklären könne. Für ihn "verstand" die bürgerliche Volkswirtschaftslehre "ein statisches ökonomisches Gleichgewicht unter einem System konstanter Daten, und die Mechanismen, durch welche produzierte Preise und Mengen sich an diese Daten anpassen". Während der Marxismus die Klassenentwicklung in der Produktion erklären konnte, konnte die Arbeitswertlehre nicht die Verteilung von Gütern und Dienstleistungen zwischen einzelnen Verbrauchern und Firmen erklären.

Dafür beriefen sie sich auf die neoklassische Grenznutzentheorie, ein Zweig der bürgerlichen Wirtschaftswissenschaft, der aus den 1870er Jahren herstammte und dessen Wesen darin bestand, die Wirkweise von Angebot und Nachfrage am Markt von der Produktion zu trennen. Als wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Schule drehte sie sich um die subjektive Einschätzung des Werts (Nutzens) von Gütern für das Individuum. So ersetzte die Studie der subjektiven Wertschätzung eines Gegenstands für eine Person das objektive Studium gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse von Menschen in der Produktion und im Warentausch. Diese Theorie gab die Studie 'realer Kosten', die in der Produktion stecken, auf, um den 'Nutzen' zu erforschen.

Trotzdem wurden Taylors „Die Lenkung der Produktion im sozialistischen Staat„ und Langes „Über die Wirtschaftstheorie des Sozialismus„ vor dem Krieg als vollständigste Widerlegung der österreichischen Behauptung angesehen, Wirtschaftsrechnung sei im Sozialismus unmöglich. Sie gingen davon aus, die Produktionsmittel befänden sich im Gemeinbesitz, aber es gäbe eine völlig freie Auswahl beim Verbrauch und bei der Arbeitsplatzsuche. Taylor erörterte, die Methode der Güterzuteilung solle wesentlich die gleiche wie im Kapitalismus sein. Der Staat besäße die Produktionsmittel und wäre für die Einkommensverteilung entsprechend den Erfordernissen sozialer Gerechtigkeit verantwortlich. Die Herstellung würde von Verbraucherwünschen gelenkt, aber diese Vorlieben würden am Markt in 'Nachfragepreisen' ausgedrückt.

Gemäß Lange sollte die Erzeugung von unabhängigen und konkurrierenden Firmen durchgeführt werden, aber sie müßten unter zwei 'Grundregeln' produzieren, die von der Zentralen Planbehörde (ZPB) aufgestellt wurden. Die erste dieser Regeln ist, daß die Auswahl von Faktorkombinationen die durchschnittlichen Produktionskosten senken muß, so daß die Grenzproduktivität der Faktoren egalisiert wird. (Grenzproduktivität ist die Produktivität, die von der Hinzufügung einer Extrafaktoreinheit zur Produktion herrührt.) Zweitens sollte die Ausstoßmenge von dem Niveau bestimmt werden, auf dem die Grenzkosten dem Produktpreis gleichkommen; das bedeutet, wenn die Kosten einer zusätzliche Outputeinheit dem Preis entsprechen, falls der Preis als Durchschnittskosten plus Durchschnittsprofit festgesetzt wird. Wenn die Firmen entsprechend dieser Regeln vorgehen, werden die Preise von Arbeitskraft und Verbrauchsgütern durch den Markt festgelegt.

Preise für Produktionsgüter sollten anfangs von der ZPB auf Grundlage einer Kostenkalkulation für eine Reihe von Alternativen gesetzt werden. Dann wären die angebotenen und nachgefragten Mengen determiniert. Wenn es sich herausstellte, daß die von der ZPB diktierten Preise Angebot und Nachfrage nicht entsprechen, dann würden die Preise nach dem System 'Versuch und Irrtum' angepaßt, bis sie es tun. So, durch die Nachahmung des Wettbewerbsmarkts, gelangte die ZPB zu Schemata für Angebot und Nachfrage aller Güter und Dienstleistungen.

Es gibt viele Kritiken an der Lösung Langes, deren meiste aus seinem Beharren resultieren, das Produktionssystem von der Distribution abzusondern. In diesem 'Sozialismusmodell' kann es keine Möglichkeit geben, entfremdete Arbeit oder den Warenfetischismus zu überwinden. Menschliche Arbeit und ihre allseitige Entwicklung sind nicht Ausgangspunkt für Lange, sondern eher die Wirtschaftlichkeit in der Produktion und die Balance zwischen Angebot und Nachfrage. Deshalb wird Arbeit wie ein Produktionsfaktor behandelt, dessen Preis auf dem offenen Markt ermittelt wird, auf einer von Firmen etablierten Ebene, die gemäß parametrischer Vorschriften arbeiten, die die Effizienz diktieren.

Mehr noch, die Freiheit und Souveränität des Verbrauchers sind tatsächlich hohl und begrenzt. Der Konsument wird auf religiöse Art von seiner oder ihrer Rolle als Arbeiter getrennt und kann deshalb die Herstellung von Produktionsgütern vor der Produktion nicht beeinflussen oder Entscheidungen über die Einführung neuer Güter fällen. Der Verbraucher ist lediglich ein Preisnehmer für eine begrenzte Konsumgüterauswahl, die er 'frei' kaufen kann oder auch nicht. Die Tatsache, daß eine Ware auf dem Markt plaziert wird zu einem Preis, der ihre Produktionskosten deckt, ist kein Beweis, daß sie die Ware ist, die der Konsument vorgezogen hätte, wenn ihm volle Kenntnis der möglichen Alternativen vor der Erzeugung gegeben wäre.

Darüber hinaus ist die Prozedur von 'Versuch und Irrtum' für die Imitation von Konkurrenzmarkt und die Erlangung von Gleichgewichtspreisen ein gänzlich überzeugungsloses Modell der Weise, wie Preise entstehen. Als System basiert es auf Walras' Gleichgewichtstheorie. Dieses Modell macht die komplett unrealistische Annahme, daß Inidividuen ihre Pläne, zu produzieren oder konsumieren, als Reaktion auf Preissignale anpassen können, bevor sie tatsächlich kaufen oder verkaufen. In diesem Modell enthüllen wiederholte Antworten auf verschiedene Preissignale die Verbrauchervorlieben, und der Auktionator (d. h. die ZPB) koordiniert den Vorgang.

Die ZPB ruft eine Ansammlung von Preisen aus, und jedermann entscheidet, der zu diesen Preisen zu erwerben oder zu verkaufen wünscht. Diese Information wird dann vom Auktionator verarbeitet und dann werden Preise neu justiert, um Angebot und Nachfrage auf Linie zu bringen. Erst dann finden Käufe und Verkäufe statt. Die atomisierten, aufeinander folgenden Entscheidungsfindungen assoziierten Probleme werden in diesem Prozeß sauber vermieden. Kurz, dieser Vorgang abstrahiert (fälschlich) von der wirklichen Zeit und daher der Realität. Das Modell präsentiert gleichzeitig ein nicht funktionierendes Marktkonzept im Kapitalismus und eine technokratische und sozialdemokratische Sozialismusvision.

 

Ota Sik

 

Einer der prominentesten marktsozialistischen Theoretiker nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg war der tschechische Ökonom Ota Sik. In seiner Arbeit von 1965 „Plan und Markt im Sozialismus„ steckte er seine Theorie sozialistischer Warenverhältnisse ab. In dieser Arbeit focht er die aus dem Werk von Marx und Engels abgeleitete Idee an, daß die Warenproduktion von Geburt an mit dem Privateigentum verknüpft war und parallel zum Ende des Privateigentums mit ihm verschwinden wird. Er legte dar, daß Lenins Anerkennung der Unvermeidlichkeit von Warenverhältnissen während des Übergangs zum Sozialismus, so lange wie eine umfangreiche private Bauernwirtschaft existierte, eine unzureichende Bestätigung der Rolle war, die Marktverhältnisse beim Aufbau des Sozialismus spielen müssen.

Sik war ein scharfsichtiger Kritiker der Fehler der Kommandoplanung. Um sie zu berichtigen, war es jedoch wichtig, zuerst die Notwendigkeit sozialistischer Marktbeziehungen zu theoretisieren, d. h. ein optimales Verhältnis zwischen Plan und Markt. Er behauptete, daß das Argument einiger Reformer, daß Marktbeziehungen notwendig seien, um das Manko an Information und Wissen in der Kommandoplanung zu korrigieren, falsch war.

Prinzipiell konnten Verfeinerung der Planungstechniken und Überwindung des Bürokratismus dieses Problem lösen. Vielmehr gründete er die Verteidigung des Markts auf der Basis eines Interessenkonflikts, der, so behauptete er, zwischen Individuum und Plan existiere; ein gesellschaftlicher Widerspruch, der nicht durch bessere Kenntnisse ausgeschaltet werden konnte.

Die Wesensnatur dieses Widerspruchs lag im Mangel an ausreichendem Interesse des einzelnen Arbeiters an der Entwicklung gesellschaftlicher Arbeit. Die Erfordernisse des gesellschaftlichen Plans gebieten ein optimales Entwicklungstempo der Produktion, einen vernünftigen Gebrauch knapper Hilfsquellen, der Mengen- und Qualitätsbetrachtungen im Arbeitsprozeß ausbalanciert. Arbeiter und Manager sind nur an der einseitigen Entwicklung der Erzeugung interessiert, nicht an optimaler sozialer Entwicklung.

Die Kommandoplanung bündelte die Aufmerksamkeit auf rein quantitative Entwicklungen und Ziele; technische oder qualitative Entwicklungen wurden vernachlässigt oder ignoriert, weil diese unausweichlich kurzfristige Entgleisungen bei den Mengenzielen nach sich zogen. Allgemein gab es eine eingefleischte Tendenz im Planwesen, daß die verausgabte konkrete Arbeit von der sozial notwendigen Entwicklung abwich.

Die Arbeiter müssen ein Interesse an der optimalen Produktionsentwicklung haben. Aber wie? Moralische Anreize sind für die Arbeitermassen ungenügend und die technische Grundlage der Arbeit war für die meisten Arbeiter so, daß es keine kurzfristige Möglichkeit gab, die Routine und den öden Charakter der meisten Arbeit kurzfristig zu überwinden. Daher konnte man nicht erwarten, daß die schöpferische Natur des Arbeitsprozesses das Zusammentreffen zwischen den Interessen des Individuums und denen gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung sicherstellt. Es war kein böser Wille oder Bürokratismus als solcher, sondern "die objektiven Bedingungen der Verausgabung von Arbeit im Sozialismus", die garantierten, daß es einen Interessenkonflikt gab.

Von daher müssen die Produzenten ein Verhältnis haben, wo jeder die Auswirkungen seiner Entscheidungen aufeinander fühlt:

"Jeder Produzent, der eine einseitige Entscheidung auf Kosten der Verbraucher trifft, sollte die negative Folgewirkung auf ihn selbst als Konsument spüren."

Solcherart waren die sozialistischen Geld-Ware Beziehungen:

"Dies sind die Verhältnisse, mithilfe derer die Interessen der Leute als Verbraucher die Interessen von Leuten als Produzenten dauerhaft beeinflussen können und wirtschaftlichen Anreiz liefern, die Erzeugung auf optimale Weise zu entwickeln". Materielle Konsumanreize sind die Antwort: "...es wird notwendig, die wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen zu schaffen, unter denen ihre eigenen materiellen Interessen Unternehmen drängen, die optimale Produktionsentfaltung zu sichern. Dies müssen Verhältnisse sein, unter denen die Belohnungsfonds aufgestockt werden, wann immer die Arbeit sich der gesellschaftlich notwendigen Arbeit oder Optimumproduktion annähert".

Für Sik helfen darum die Marktverhältnisse, abzusichern, daß die in den Unternehmen konkret aufgewendete Arbeit gesellschaftlich notwendig zu sein bestrebt ist. Wenn ein Unternehmen scheitert, seine Erzeugnisse zu gegebenen Preisen zu verkaufen, dann muß der Lohnfonds entsprechend betroffen sein, um so Veränderungen im Arbeitsprozeß des Unternehmens zu erzwingen. Sik hielt diese Beziehung nicht nur zwischen Firmen, die Konsumgüter herstellen, und der Arbeiterklasse für erforderlich, sondern in Verhältnissen zwischen Firmen, die Kapitalgüter erzeugen.

Obwohl in marxistischen Kategorien ausgegeben, muß Siks geistreicher Versuch, die Erforderlichkeit des Markts zu theoretisieren, zurückgewiesen werden. Im Grunde ist er wenig mehr als Adam Smiths 'unsichtbare Hand' (alle, die ihre eigenen Interessen verfolgen,tragen unbewußt zum allgemeinen Interesse bei), für den Übergang zum Sozialismus neu aufbereitet.

Er leidet an einem allen marktsozialistischen Rezepten gemeinsamen Fehler: das post-festum Urteil des Markts, was als gesellschaftlich nützliche Arbeit zählt, gerät in Konflikt mit den a priori Ansichten, was gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeit ist, wie im nationalen Plan entworfen.

Wenn der Markt Schiedsrichter über das sein soll, was als gesellschaftliche Arbeit rechnet, werden die Planziele zur Bedeutungslosigkeit verwandelt oder suspekt, weil diese Planziffern, wenn man demokratisch zu ihnen hin gelangt, bereits ein Urteil über den gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Arbeit ex ante aussprechen.

Sik sieht in der Übergangsphase einen Konflikt zwischen 'Unternehmen' und 'Konsumenten' enthalten. In jedem Unternehmen, so führt er aus, haben Arbeiter und Manager ein Interesse daran, den Profit zu maximieren, den sie sich dann teilen können. Dies kann entweder geschehen, indem aus einer Monopolposition ein Vorteil gezogen wird oder indem Arbeit und Rohstoffe in der vorteilhaftesten Kombination angewandt werden. Auf jeden Fall werden Entscheidungen unabhängig davon gefällt, ob sie dem Verbraucher nutzen. Die Gegenüberstellung von Herstellung und Verbrauch ist falsch. In der Übergangsperiode ist die Arbeiterklasse beides - Produzentin und Konsumentin. Sik glaubt, daß nur Marktdisziplin garantieren kann, daß der Produzent macht, was der Konsument wünscht, aber bei einem demokratischen Plan braucht es einen solchen Konflikt nicht zu geben.

Sik starrt auf das falsche Problem; es ist natürlich möglich, ja sogar unvermeidlich, daß konkrete Arbeit im Unternehmen von gesellschaftlicher Arbeit abweichen wird. Bei der Kommandoplanung war das Problem, daß die Bestimmung dessen, was gesellschaftlich nützliche Arbeit ist, hoffnungslos vom Bestehen der Bürokratie auf einem Informationsmonopol und ihres Ignorierens der Verbraucherwünsche verdreht war. Optimale ökonomische Entwicklung wurde für willkürliche, überstürzte, rein quantitative (d. h. Gebrauchswert-) Sollvorgaben geopfert. Damit wurde der gesellschaftliche Charakter der Arbeit (d. h. verkörpert sie gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeit oder nicht?) mehr als lieb sein konnte in endemischen Engpässen enthüllt, die zu vertanen und unvollständigen Projekten führten; oder zu Gütern, die die Arbeiter zu kaufen sich weigerten.

In einem demokratischen Plansystem wird der Plan Zielübereinkünfte betreffs Verbesserungen in der Arbeitsproduktivität und des schonenden Umgangs mit knappen Ressourcen widerspiegeln. Daher wird, ob konkrete Arbeit der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit entspricht oder nicht, davon abhängen, ob die Planziele erfüllt werden. Falls nicht, können die demokratischen Planüberwachungsgremien - wenn nötig - Sanktionen verhängen; oder es können Anpassungen der Zuteilung von Hilfsmitteln vorgenommen werden.

In Siks Schema wird nicht berücksichtigt, was zu tun ist, falls die konkrete Arbeit ohne Schuld der Arbeiter im Unternehmen die Optimumentwicklung verfehlt. Warum sollte ihre Vergütung gekappt werden? Wieder einmal sucht Sik eine Antwort beim Markt, wo das was benötigt wird, bewußte Klassenführung im Planverfahren ist.

Mehr noch, Siks Eintreten für Lohnerhöhungen für Arbeiter in einer Unternehmung, erfolgreicher als andere abschneidet, wäre für den Übergang zum Sozialismus verheerend; es würde die Solidarität untergraben und die Ungleichheit steigern. Im Gegenteil, alle Arbeiter müssen aus gestiegener Produktivität einen Nutzen als Ergebnis der Preissenkung für Gebrauchsartikel ziehen - ein kollektiver, klassenweiter Nutzen und einer, der akkurater die Tatsache wiedergibt, daß Produktivitätsgewinne eher Resultate nationaler, kollektiver Entscheidungen über Investitionen in Anlagen und Ausrüstungen als der Anstrengungen einzelner Arbeiter sind.

 

Alec Nove

 

Mitte der 1980er Jahre, als die Kinnock-Führung die Labour Party unter den Parolen vom 'neuen Realismus' nach rechts drückte, veröffentlichte Alec Nove seine Ökonomie des durchführbaren Sozialismus .Es wurde die Bibel der linksreformistischen Intelligenz, die versuchte, die Machbarkeit des 'Sozialismus' gegen den Neoliberalismus zu verteidigen, indem sie ihn jedes marxistischen Inhalts entkleideten. Der Versuch, 'Sozialismus' und Markt in Einklang zu bringen, war letztlich der alte Wunsch, die Klassenantagonismen des Kapitalismus unter der Schirmherrschaft des Kleinbürgertums auszusöhnen: dem 'Großkapital' sollte seine Macht entzogen werden, aber die Arbeiterklasse soll nicht herrschen. Das Ergebnis ist eine Utopie.

Nove läßt alle angeblich 'utopischen' Elemente im marxistischen Sozialismus fallen, z. B. das Absterben des Staats oder das Konzept von 'Überfluß' im Kommunismus. Er erklärt die parlamentarische Demokratie zur bestmöglichen Staatsform und weist jeden alternativen Staat, der auf einem System von Arbeiterräten beruht, zurück. Er beansprucht, ein Realist zu sein, und schlägt als ebensolcher vor, daß fünf Eigentumstypen existieren sollten, entsprechend ihrer jeweiligen Vorzüge für die Umsetzung verschiedener Aufgaben.

In erster Instanz sollten staatliche Körperschaften die strategischen Teile von Industrie, Dienstleistungs- und Finanzsektor leiten. Sie wären nicht von den Belegschaften verwaltet, sondern verwaltungstechnisch und finanziell zentralisiert. Danach würden die 'sozialisierten Betriebe', also in Staatsbesitz befindliche Unternehmen, die volle Autonomie und ein der Belegschaft verantwortliches Management besitzen.

Sie wären Firmen mittlerer Größe und sollten das Gros gesellschaftlicher Produktion und Dienstleistungen abdecken. Sie würden unter 'milden Konkurrenzbedingungen' arbeiten, was bei ihm die Bedeutung annimmt, daß Markterfolg die Verdienste von Managern und Arbeitern beeinflussen würde, aber die Produktionsmittel könnten nicht veräußert oder gekauft werden und der Staat behielte ein Mitspracherecht im Fall eines drohenden Bankrotts.

Als nächstes wären kleine Genossenschaftsbetriebe im Privatbesitz der Belegschaften selbstverwaltet und voll verantwortlich für ihren eigenen Erfolg oder Mißerfolg. Viertens gäbe es Bestimmungen für kleine Privatunternehmen, daß den Kapitalisten z. B. nicht gestattet, mehr als zehn Arbeiter zu beschäftigen. Schließlich könnten sich Individuen (z. B. freischaffende Journalisten, Klempner, Handwerker) als selbstarbeitende Geschäfte niederlassen.

Nove denkt auch, daß zentrale Planung per se ineffektiv ist wegen der damit verbundenen unlösbaren Informationsprobleme. Somit wür­de das 'Zentrum' nicht versuchen, die ganze Wirtschaft zu planen, aber gewisse Funktionen beibehalten.

In erster Linie Entscheidungen, die strategische Investitionen berühren (z. B. den Bau neuer Fabriken, Straßen, Telekommunikation). Die Staatsbanken würden auch dezentrale Investitionen beobachten, aber nur dort intervenieren, wo es wahrscheinlich unnötig doppelte Investitionen durch verschiedene Betriebe des Privatsektors gäbe.

Die nationale Regierung würde natürlich die zentralen staatlichen Korporationen betreiben und die Marktregeln für die sozialisierten und privaten Unternehmungen erlassen - in Ausnahmefällen in diesem Sektor sogar einschreiten. Schließlich würde der Staat den Umweltschutz fördern, die Verkehrsplanung überschauen und wissenschaftliche Forschung sowie Regionalentwicklung subventionieren.

Planung beschränkte sich auf langfristige Empfehlungen für die Outputseite der sozialisierten Betriebe und auf das Steuersystem, das gebraucht wird, um Einkommen und Reichtum zwischen Akkumulation und Konsum zu verteilen.

Nove ist sich sehr im Klaren darüber, daß eine solche Rolle für das Zentrum den überwältigenden Teil der Ökonomie der Herrschaft des Marktes überläßt. Genossenschaftliche und private Geschäfte sollten bankrott gehen dürfen. In den sozialisierten Unternehmen hätte gleichfalls die Belegschaft "die Verantwortung für die Verwaltung zu übernehmen" (und würde im Bankrottfall arbeitslos!) außer in Fällen, wo die Gesellschaft ein starkes und demokratisch ausgedrücktes Interesse hegt, einen besonderen Betrieb zu schützen.

Es gäbe wenige staatlich geregelte Preise für Infrastrukturdienste, aber die meisten wären Marktpreise. Profite sind für Nove nur problematisch, falls sie privat angeeignet werden, aber für die sozialisierten Firmen sind sie schlicht ein Signal für Wirtschaftlichkeit und Erfolg. Die allgemeine Profitrate für jeden Sektor beruht jedoch offensichtlich auf dem Lohnniveau, welches für Nove von politischen und nicht ökonomischen Erwägungen bestimmt werden sollte.

In diesem System gäbe es keine Ausbeutung, sagt Nove, weil die Macht, über Profite zu verfügen, hauptsächlich in gesellschaftlicher Hand bleibt (d. h. des Parlaments). Löhne sollten eng mit der Produktivität korreliert sein, aber gleichzeitig sollten legale Grenzen für Lohnunterschiede existieren. Für Nove ist ein Arbeitsmarkt unverzichtbar, weil nur Lohnunterschiede die Arbeitskraft zugunsten ihrer wirtschaftlichsten Ausnutzung kanalisieren können. Freiwillige Arbeitsverteilung überschätzt nicht nur den menschlichen Altruismus, sondern der einzelne Arbeiter hätte auch die unmöglich tragbare Verantwortung, zu wissen, wo der gesellschaftlich sinnvollste Arbeitsplatz für ihn oder sie zu finden ist.

Alle Erfahrungen mit der Selbstverwaltung zeigen, daß ein Mangel an Interesse für das langfristige Wohlergehen des Unternehmens entsteht, wo es kein Eigentumsverhältnis zwischen dem Geschäft und seiner Belegschaft gibt. Noves Lösung ist, daß es einen Unternehmensfonds geben sollte, der allen Angestellten gleichermaßen gehören sollte und gemäß der geschäftlichen Entwicklung zunimmt oder schrumpft. Jeder neue Arbeiter muß daraus einen Fondsanteil kaufen (zur Not auf Kredit), und jene, die aufhören, erhalten ihren gesunkenen oder gestiegenen Anteil je nach Sachlage.

Mittels dieses Mechanismus, glaubt Nove, werden die Arbeiter den nötigen Unternehmergeist entwickeln, um die Produktion im Falle steigender Marktpreise zu erhöhen (statt sie zu reduzieren, um aus zeitweilig gestiegenen Einkommen einen Vorteil zu ziehen), weil andernfalls ihr Unternehmen Marktanteile verlieren wird, die Einkommen sinken werden, falls die Preise fallen, und auf lange Frist das zu einer Abwertung des Geschäftsfonds führen wird. Um die erfolgreichsten Firmen daran zu hindern, eine Monopolposition zu erreichen und dadurch den Konkurrenzansporn zu liquidieren, schlägt Nove vor, daß Antitrustgesetze notwendig seien.

Laut Nove können Konjunkturzyklen abgewendet werden, die in vom Markt geregelten Wirtschaften unvermeidlich sind. Er denkt, daß Kreditpolitik, strategische Investitionen, Preiskontrollen im zentralisierten Staatssektor, Einkommenspolitik und das Steuerwesen die Hebel sind, die für die Ausschaltung des Konjunkturzyklus gebraucht werden können.

Nove glaubt, sein Sozialismusmodell sei das einzige, das in den nächsten 50 - 70 Jahren in einer Anzahl von Ländern realistischerweise wirksam greifen kann. In zukünftigen Jahrhunderten sei selbst eine vollständig 'sozialistische' Welt möglich, internationale Planwirtschaft aber nicht. Der Außenhandel wird für Nove immer auf Grundlage des Marktes funktionieren.

Nach der kurzen Zusammenfassung von Noves Hauptideen ist es klar, daß er Gesellschaftseigentum an den Hauptproduktionsmitteln und demokratische Kontrolle über strategische Investitionen sowie die Akkumulationsrate auf der einen mit Marktregulierung von Erzeugung und Verteilung auf der anderen Seite kombinieren möchte. Er denkt, das sei eine harmonische Kombination, und sieht nicht, daß innerhalb dieses Schemas ein scharfer Widerspruch haust. Zwei ökonomische Regelweisen werden in Bewegung gesetzt, die jeweils verschiedenen Klassen dienen. Diese Art Mischwirtschaft würde einen intensiven Klassenkampf gebären.

Das Konkurrenzprinzip würde ständig die politisch bestimmten Investitionsgrößen untergraben, weil das Überleben der meisten Geschäfte (und Arbeitsplätze) von ihrem Investitionsniveau abhinge. Die Konkurrenz würde auch die Lohnhöhen unterhöhlen, weil sie den Akkumulationstrieb unwiderstehlich machen würde, was folglich bedeutete, daß ihm die Arbeiterinteressen systematisch untergeordnet wären. In Noves Modell von 'Sozialismus' entstände eine spontane Tendenz in Richtung offenen Privateigentums.

Ebenso würde der Geschäftsfonds zum Embryo des Privateigentums an den Produktionsmitteln. Die Manager würden argumentieren (v. a. in erfolgreichen Betrieben, die möglicherweise von ihren Arbeitern unterstützt werden), daß sie ihren Unternehmensfonds zu investieren wünschten, um das fixe Kapital ihrer Firma zu erweitern oder zu verbessern, und damit den Prozeß zu starten, Eigentumsrechte an ihr herauszubilden.

Andere Manager würden für das Recht kämpfen, ihren betrieblichen Fonds als Quelle für Außeninvestitionen oder als Leihkapital für andere Unternehmen einzusetzen. Wo Firmen nicht in der Lage wären, solche Leihsummen zurückzuzahlen, wäre die Umwandlung der Schulden in Anteilsscheine eine offensichtliche Option für das finanzierende Unternehmen. Diese würden sich politisch für diese Ziele organisieren, wahrscheinlich gemeinsam mit den kleinen Kapitalisten und Genossenschaften, die eine Aufhebung der Grenzen, die dem Umfang des privaten Kapitals auferlegt sind, verlangen würden. Mit anderen Worten, eine neue Bourgeoisie, die aus der Schicht der leitenden Angestellten aufstrebt, würde anfänglich für mehr Rechte, aber dann für ihre uneingeschränkte Klassenherrschaft kämpfen.

Auf der anderen Seite würden die Arbeiter der erfolglosen Unternehmen, die durch Niedriglöhne und Arbeitslosigkeit bedroht wären, staatliches Einschreiten fordern. Sie würden argumentieren, daß der Fehlschlag ihres Geschäfts nicht ihre Schuld sei, sondern vielmehr dem objektiven Wandel der Marktbedingungen zuzuschreiben sei (z. B. überlegene Konkurrenz seitens einer viel größeren Aktiengesellschaft, der mehr Investitionsmittel zugeteilt worden waren oder aus einem entwickelteren Land), der ihren Erfolg verunmöglichte.

Obwohl Nove glaubt, daß Staatsintervention Rezessionen verhindern könnte, würde das wirkliche Leben demonstrieren, daß die Marktdynamik stärker ist und geschäftliche Fehlschläge einfach Ergebnis sinkender allgemeiner Nachfrage sind. Warum sollten einige Arbeiter unter den Konsequenzen des 'Systemfehlers' leiden und andere nicht? Natürlich würden sich diese Arbeiter auch politisch organisieren, um für eine Verallgemeinerung staatlichen Eigentums zu kämpfen und folgerichtig für durchgreifende zentrale Planung.

Ein weiterer Faktor würde zur Verschärfung des Klassenkampfes beitragen. Unter Marktvoraussetzungen wird in der Gesamtwirtschaft eine Durchschnittsprofitrate gebildet. Da die Profitrate den Profitanteil pro Einheit an vorgestrecktem Kapital darstellt, ist sie unabhängig vom besonderen Ausmaß an Arbeitszeit, das sich auf Einzelbetriebe erstreckt.

Das bedeutet, daß Unternehmen mit der gleichen Arbeiteranzahl völlig unterschiedliche Profitmassen 'verdienen' können, abhängig vom Wertanteil des konstanten Kapitals der betreffenden Unternehmung. Wenn die Arbeiterverdienste oder das Ausmaß des Betriebsfonds auf irgendeine Art mit dem Unternehmensprofit gekoppelt ist, gibt es weit variierende Löhne und/oder Fondsanteile. Offensichtlich wären jene, die von einem solchen System auf die Gewinnerseite gestellt würden, geneigt, es politisch zu verteidigen, während jene, die daran verlören, in Opposition zu ihm ständen.

Das Konkurrenzprinzip würde andauernd die politisch festgelegten Investitionsniveaus unterhöhlen, weil das wirtschaftliche Überleben von Betrieben (und Arbeitern) von ihrem 'eigenen' Investitionslevel abhinge. Die Konkurrenz würde deshalb auch die Lohnstandards untergraben. Aus einem solchen System heraus würde sicher keine Gleichheit entstehen.

Noves 'Sozialismus' ist vom Konzept her unstabil, weil es eine Art Doppelmachtsituation darstellt. Der unvermeidbare politische Kampf zu Beginn einer solchen Doppelmacht müßte mit dem entscheidenden Sieg einer Seite über die andere enden. Entweder würde die Freiheit des Privateigentums restauriert und der Kapitalismus seine vollen Freiheiten wiedergewinnen oder die Arbeiter würden zu Herren über den Markt.

 

Ernest Mandel

 

Ernest Mandel umriß zuerst sein Konzept von Wirtschaft unter den Bedingungen des Übergangs zum Sozialismus in den frühen 1960er Jahren (Marxistische Wirtschaftstheorie), entwickelte es in den späten 1980er Jahren durch seine Kritik an den Ideen Alec Noves weiter.

Er begann seine Verteidigung der sozialistischen Planwirtschaft (New Left Review 159, Sept./Okt. 1986), indem er auf die "zunehmende objektive Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit" im 'Spätkapitalismus' verwies. Konzentration und Zentralisation der Produktion haben das Ausmaß an Arbeit, das vom Markt zugeteilt wird, drastisch verkleinert und den Anteil der direkt allozierten Arbeit gesteigert.

Ähnlich hat der Kapitalismus selbst beständig das Planelement in der Wirtschaft ausgedehnt. Nove hat nicht Recht, wenn er sagt, daß nur der Markt die Millionen von erzeugten Gütern verteilen kann und daß jeder geplante Versuch, das zu bewerkstelligen, unabänderlich unwirtschaftlich und bürokratisch wäre. In Wahrheit vergleichen und bewerten private Verbraucher niemals 'Millionen Güter', sondern höchstens ein paar tausend während ihres ganzen Lebens.

Zweitens werden eine Menge an Zwischenprodukten auf Bestellung gefertigt und nicht auf Märkten erstanden. Drittens werden die meisten Produktionsmittel nicht für einen anonymen Markt hergestellt, sondern gemäß vorbestimmter Merkmale in Folge einer erfolgreichen Bewerbung auf eine Ausschreibung hin. Schließlich gibt die heutige Produktion ein lang feststehendes Verbrauchsmuster wider, das sich langsam und nur langfristig wandelt.

Mandel wies Noves Erkenntnis zurück, daß nur der Preismechanismus die relative Intensität verschiedener Bedürfnisse bestimmen könne. Mandels Bedürfnistheorie legt nahe, daß es unter ihnen eine objektive Hierarchie gibt: es gibt Grundbedürfnisse, zweitrangige und entlegene (oder Luxus-) Bedürfnisse. Zur ersten Gruppe zählen Grundnahrungsmittel, Kleidung, Wohnung, Ausbildung und Gesundheitsfürsorge, Verkehrswesen und Freizeit.

Die zweite Gruppe deckt einen engeren Rahmen an Lebensmitteln, Getränken, Bekleidung, Haushaltsgeräten, gehobeneren kulturellen und Erholungsdienstleistungen wie auch Privatautos ab. Alles andere ist Luxus. Die Nachfrage nach dem Grundbedarf ist verhältnismäßig stabil und steigt mit wachsendem Einkommen nicht an; im Gegenteil, sie neigt dazu, zu fallen. Mandel behauptete damit, Noves Annahme einer endlosen Bedürfniszunahme widerlegt zu haben. Vernünftiges Verbraucherverhalten würde einen vorgeblichen instinktiven Wunsch, das Konsumniveau dauernd zu erhöhen, ersetzen. Mandel zog daraus zwei gewichtigere Schlußfolgerungen.

Erstens, parallel zu steigender Produktivität, würde die Rolle des Gelds in der Gesellschaft geringer, da immer mehr Güter frei verteilt werden könnten, ohne die Nachfrage nach ihnen zu erhöhen. Geld ist nicht notwendig, um zwischen Bedürfnissen und ihrer Erfüllung zu vermitteln; per Marktforschung könnten Leute schlicht gefragt werden, was sie wünschten.

Zweitens würde die subjektive Basis für Warenproduktion und Geldzirkulation entfallen. Konkurrenz bliebe nur in der Sphäre der Luxusgüterproduktion bestehen und wäre weniger intensiv als heute. Eine gewisse 'Bedürfnistyrannei' würde im Sozialismus weiter existieren, solange sekundäre und Grenzbedürfnisse nicht vollkommen zufriedengestellt werden konnten, aber eine solche 'Tyrannei' wäre gerechtfertigter als die im Kapitalismus herrschende.

Mandel argumentierte, daß weder Kapitalismus noch bürokratische Planwirtschaft jemals hätten funktionieren können, wenn es nicht die von ihm so genannte 'objektive informelle Kooperation' gegeben hätte. Verbraucher reagieren bei ihrer Kaufentscheidung nicht einfach nur auf Preissignale. Weder Kauflustige noch Firmen wechseln den Laden oder Vertragspartner jeweils einfach nur wegen kleiner Preisbewegungen.

Etablierte Muster an Zusammenarbeit sind ganz entscheidend. Gleichzeitig gibt es selbst im Kapitalismus Beispiele (z. B. Elektrizitätswerke in vielen Ländern), wo weder Produktion noch Verteilung durch Preise geregelt werden. Die Nachfrage ist in diesen Fällen stark vorhersagbar, die Erzeugung gründlich monopolisiert und Preise werden kalkuliert als Kostpreise plus vorherbestimmte Gewinnspannen. Die freie Verteilung unterm Sozialismus würde sogar im Vergleich zum Kapitalismus an Bürokratie einsparen. Hiermit legte Mandel dar, daß ein dritter Weg zwischen blindem Markt und einer riesigen Bürokratie möglich sei.

Mandel sprach auch die Frage an, ob seine Betonung auf 'objektiv informeller Kooperation' nicht zur Einrichtung von Routine und Gewohnheit verführt und dadurch Kreativität und Neuerertum unterdrückt. Er war überzeugt, daß das Interesse der direkten Produzenten an der Erleichterung ihrer Arbeitslast und Verbesserung ihrer Umwelt genug wäre, um als Anreiz zu fungieren, Kosten zu senken und Unwirtschaftlichkeit im Zaum zu halten.

Die Leute würden wahrscheinlich eine kürzere Arbeitswoche haben und deshalb würden einige nicht nötige Güter nicht hergestellt, aber das würde kein Problem ausmachen. Sozialismus zeichnet sich nicht einfach durch Verbrauchsanstieg aus, sondern durch gehobene Zivilisation. Mandel hat auf die Tatsache hingewiesen, daß viele Erfindungen und Entdeckungen ohne kommerziellen Anreiz getätigt wurden.

Konkurrenz ist kein notwendiges Element von Neuerungen. Die tieferen Impulse für technischen Fortschritt und andere Novitäten stammen aus der natürlichen Neigung der direkten Produzenten, Arbeitszeit einzusparen, und aus menschlicher Neugier im Allgemeinen. Gleichheit ist keine Schranke für wirtschaftliche Effektivität. Mandel bezog sich in diesem Zusammenhang auf das Experiment der israelischen Kibbuze, wo die Arbeitsergiebigkeit höher als in der umgebenden Marktwirtschaft ist.

Mandel hat in seine Darstellung ein Modell eingeschlossen, wie er sich denkt, daß eine sozialistische Wirtschaft funktionieren könne. Jährliche nationale und internationale Kongresse der Arbeiterräte würden über die zentralsten Nöte der Gesellschaft entscheiden, über die Akkumulationsrate wie die Verteilung der Ressourcen zwischen verschiedenen Sektoren wie auch über die Länge der Arbeitswoche. Gleichzeitig würde die Skala der erhältlichen Ressourcen, die über den Markt verteilt werden sollen, festgelegt auf 'nicht lebensnotwendige Güter und Dienstleistungen'.

Auf dieser Grundlage würde ein Generalplan entwickelt, der die notwendigen In- und Outputs aufeinander bezöge. Er enthielte jedoch keine besonderen Betonungen für einzelne Sektoren oder Regionen. Statt dessen würden die Selbstverwaltungskörperschaften jener Sektoren und Regionen (d. h. die entsprechenden Arbeiterräte) den Plan konkretisieren und spezielle Aufgaben an einzelne Wirtschaftseinheiten delegieren.

In Abteilung I (Produktionsgüter) wäre die Produktzusammensetzung hauptsächlich von früheren Entscheidungen abgeleitet. In Abteilung II (Verbrauchsgüter) würden die Produktlinien und der Produktionsumfang in Zusammenarbeit mit den zuständigen demokratisch gewählten Verbrauchergesellschaften festgelegt. Entscheidungen würden mithilfe von Modellen und Prototypen gefällt. Marktforschung könnte die Form annehmen, daß Verbraucher jene Erzeugnisse unter einer Palette an Alternativen ausfindig machen, die ihre Vorstellungen am besten treffen. Die Ergebnisse würden dann die Herstellung lenken. Natürlich gäbe es auch ein bißchen geplante Überproduktion, um Nachfrageschwankungen in den Ansatz einzubeziehen.

Die Fabrikarbeiterräte wären frei, über die Arbeitsmethoden entsprechend den Wünschen der Arbeiter zu entscheiden. Verbesserungen der Arbeitsproduktivität würden den Arbeitern unmittelbar nützen, solange die Qualitätsanforderungen der Verbraucherkontrollgremien erfüllt werden.

Mandels Modell nahm an, daß den Arbeitern gewisse Güter und Dienstleistungen gratis als 'Soziallohn' garantiert werden. Individuelle Geldeinkommen über dieses Maß hinaus hingen von Qualitätskennziffern und Arbeitsbelastungskoeffizienten ab. Es gäbe kein Hindernis für akkurate Informationsflüsse z. B. über Produktqualität und -zuverlässigkeit, weil die selbstverwaltete Arbeiterklasse nichts von Fehlinformationen zu gewinnen hätte.

Mandel behauptete, ein solches System beinhalte einen mächtigen Mechanismus von Selbstkorrektur, weil die Entscheidungsträger (d. h. die Arbeiter) sofort die Konsequenzen falscher Entscheidungen spüren und deshalb schnell Schwächen und Fehler diagnostizieren und beseitigen würden.

Mandels Arbeit ist ein wichtiger Beitrag zur Sache der Planung und gegen Marktsozialismus. Er hat absolut Recht, zu sagen, daß die "zunehmende objektive Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit" bedeutet, daß selbst im Kapitalismus immer größere Anteile der Wirtschaft nach gewissen Plänen organisiert sind. Selbst die neoliberale Privatisierungs- und Deregulierungspolitik der 1980er und 1990er Jahre konnte diesen historischen Trend nicht umkehren.

Obwohl die Staatsintervention in einigen Ländern zurückgedrängt worden ist, haben auf der ganzen Welt neue Wellen von Kapitalkonzentration stattgefunden und den Monopolisierungsgrad der kapitalistischen Ökonomie noch mehr erhöht. Die großen Wirtschaftsimperien der transnationalen Aktiengesellschaften funktionieren intern nicht nach Marktkriterien, trotz aller Neueinführungen von 'Profitzentren' und 'Auslagerungen' unprofitabler Komponenten. Mit strategischen Investitionen, Forschung und Entwicklung neuer Produkte gibt es noch ein zunehmendes Planelement in der 'Politik' der großen Unternehmensgesellschaften.

Obwohl es gewisse Deregulierungen nationaler nichttarifärer Hemmnisse gab und in einigen Sektoren der weltweiten kapitalistischen Wirtschaft Marktmechanismen eingeführt wurden, ist dies alles nicht genug gewesen, um die Ansicht des Marxismus zu widerlegen, daß es eine langfristige Tendenz auf Monopolisierung und Marktmanipulation hin gibt.

Trotz der Ideologie des Neoliberalismus ist die Deregulierung in strikten Grenzen verblieben. Erstens, wenn einige nichttarifäre Hindernisse beiseite geräumt werden, entstehen andere. Der permanente Trend zum Handelskrieg zwischen den großen imperialistischen Blöcken ist eine Auswirkung davon. Zweitens gab es schon vor dem gegenwärtigen Zug in Richtung 'Globalisierung' weltweite monopolistische Strukturen auf einigen Gebieten und dort konnte Konkurrenz offensichtlich nicht einfach per Dekret erzeugt werden.

Drittens, selbst wo Konkurrenz geschaffen worden ist, wird ihre unausweichliche Folge - wie immer - sein, daß erfolgreiche Gesellschaften erfolglose herausdrängen oder übernehmen werden. Was sich geändert hat, ist, daß das jetzt genau wegen der 'Öffnung neuer Märkte' auf noch globalerer Stufenleiter stattfindet als in der Vergangenheit. Mandel befindet sich deshalb ganz im Recht, zu sagen, daß der geschichtliche Trend durch die Wiedergeburt des Neoliberalismus in den letzten 15 Jahren bestenfalls verlangsamt worden ist.

Gleichfalls stellt Mandel korrekt die vermeintlich zentrale Bedeutung von Marktpreisen für den einzelnen Verbraucher in Frage. In zahllosen Fällen würde sich die 'objektiv informelle Zusammenarbeit' über Preissignale hinwegsetzen. Sowohl die zunehmende Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit wie auch informelle Kooperation sind bedeutende Ausgangspunkte für jede sozialistische Wirtschaft, die sich schon im Kapitalismus herausbilden. Sozialismus ist nicht nur eine Idee oder ein Bauplan, die in den Köpfen von Intellektuellen entstehen, sondern stützt sich auf objektive Trends innerhalb des Kapitalismus, die unter der Diktatur des Proletariats weiterentwickelt und verallgemeinert werden.

Schließlich stimmen wir Mandel zu, daß Gewinne und Löhne keineswegs die einzig vorstellbaren Anreize für ökonomische Effizienz und Innovation sind. Tatsächlich würde in einer sozialistischen Gesellschaft die 'soziale Dividende', d. h. anerkannter Fortschritt für die ganze Gesellschaft zur Hauptquelle für Wirtschaftsaktivitäten werden. In einer völlig klassenlosen Gesellschaft würde der Fortschritt fürs ganze zugleich Fortschritt fürs Individuum bedeuten. Erstmals seit dem primitiven Kommunismus gäbe es keinen Widerspruch zwischen beidem.

Nichtsdestoweniger würde das ein enorm hohes Bewußtseinsniveau voraussetzen, das alle individualistischen und partikularistischen Beschränkungen überwindet. Nove erhob gegen Mandel den Einwand, daß es für das Individuum selbst mit bestem Willen unmöglich zu sehen ist, was das 'Allgemeingut' unter allen einzelnen Umständen sein könnte.

Dem Individuum mangelt es immer an Information oder Motivation. Auf dieses Argument entgegnete Mandel nur ungenügend. Für ihn ist es die organisierte Selbstverwaltung der Arbeiter, die die objektive Vergesellschaftung der Arbeit in subjektive verwandeln würde und somit ein Bewußtsein, das auf das Wohlergehen der ganzen Gesellschaft ausgerichtet ist, schüfe.

In Mandels Sozialismuskonzept würde der blinde Mechanismus des Wertgesetzes durch die organisierte Arbeiterselbstverwaltung ersetzt. Märkte, Geld und Preise würden nur in einem kleinen, untergeordneten Sektor überleben. Alle anderen Güter, besonders die zur Befriedigung grundlegender und zweitrangiger Bedürfnisse würden umsonst abgegeben. Die Frage, wieviel von was hergestellt werden soll, würde von der Forschung beantwortet und davon würden Investitionsschemata abgeleitet.

Das ist unangemessen, weil es die Tatsache ignoriert, daß sozialistische Planung einen quantitativen Standard braucht, mit dem die Produktivität von Technologien und Typen der Arbeitsorganisation gemessen, Proportionen berechnet und mögliche Verbrauchsniveaus bestimmt werden müssen. Sozialistische Akkumulation wird noch gewissen ökonomischen Gesetzen entsprechen müssen, z. B. dem Gesetz der Optimumproportionalität.

Mandel akzeptiert, daß Geld und Preise eine Rolle in der Übergangsgesellschaft spielen, aber er scheint vorzugreifen, daß sie im Sozialismus einfach von 'Gebrauchswerten' ersetzt würden. Jeder rationelle Plan muß jedoch konkrete Gebrauchswerte auf den zu ihrer Erzeugung notwendigen Arbeitsaufwand beziehen. Schließlich sollte menschliche Arbeit so schonend wie möglich genutzt werden und das bringt das Bedürfnis mit sich, die Arbeitszeit zu verkürzen. Um die Entwicklung in diese Richtung leiten zu können, können Geld und Preise sich nicht einfach ins Nichts auflösen.

Obwohl wahr ist, daß die Funktion von Geld für einzelne Erwerbszwecke abnehmen wird, weil die sozialistische Gesellschaft die Sphäre sozialer Vorsorge ausdehnt, wird es noch ein Bestreben geben, Arbeitszeit als quantitativen und abstrakten (d. h. statistischen) Spiegel des konkreten Produktionsprozesses zu kalkulieren. Diese Wiedergabe wird einzelnen Arbeitern nicht nur erlauben, ihren eigenen Beitrag innerhalb des übergreifenden Zusammenhangs zu sehen, sondern sie ist die Vorbedingung, damit demokratische Arbeiterkongresse vernünftig über Proportionen, Vorrangigkeiten und Aussichten entscheiden können.

Im Widerspruch zum Kapitalismus gäbe es keinen Gegensatz zwischen abstrakter und konkreter Arbeit. Darum wäre die Arbeitszeitrechnung nicht das Wertgesetz in anderer Form; sie erhöbe weder die Surplusproduktion noch Arbeitszeitverkürzung zu einem abstrakten, übergeordneten und automatischen Prinzip. Im Gegenteil, die lebendige Arbeit würde innerhalb des Wirtschaftsablaufs souverän werden und Arbeitszeitrechnung wäre das Instrument, mit dem die Arbeiter befähigt würden, ihre Ökonomie in Einklang mit den Gesetzen der sozialistischen Akkumulation vorwärtszutreiben.

Jede ausgesuchte Priorität hat Konsequenzen in anderen Bereichen und diese Wirkungen können nur durch Kalkulation der erforderlichen Arbeitszeit, um die vorrangigen Ziele zu erreichen, abgeschätzt werden. Durch Arbeitszeitrechnung und Bestimmung von Schwerpunkten für den Gebrauch der verfügbaren Arbeitszeit wird die sozialistische Gesellschaft in die Lage versetzt, zu den Zielen von Ausgewogenheit und Gleichheit zu gelangen.

Letztlich wird die Arbeitszeit auch eine Rolle bei der Verteilung nebensächlicher Güter spielen. Unterhalb des kommunistischen Über­flusses hat die (niedrigere) sozialistische Epoche die Aufgabe, die gesamte Welt auf vergleichbare Entwicklungsniveaus und Lebensstandards zu hieven. Dies setzt eine enorme Produktivitätssteigerung voraus, die nur über einen merklich langen Zeitraum erreicht werden kann. Solange das Güterangebot für 'sekundäre Zwecke' hinter der Nachfrage zurückbleibt und bis zu dem Ausmaß, das die Gesellschaft für das Zulassen 'freier Verbraucherauswahl' möchte, gibt es einen Bedarf an 'Arbeitszeitcoupons', um den Zugang zu diesen Gütern zu regeln.

Zusammenfassend schlußfolgern wir, daß Mandel wie viele andere bedeutende Zentristen vor ihm einen positiven Beitrag zur Debatte über die politische Ökonomie des Sozialismus leistete. Dies trifft besonders auf seine Hervorhebung der objektiven Tendenzen innerhalb des Kapitalismus zu, die gleichzeitig den Weg für dessen Abgang bahnen wie die Voraussetzungen der zukünftigen Gesellschaft legen.

Gleichzeitig vereinfachte Mandel die Probleme der sozialistischen Wirtschaftsorganisation und gab somit das sozialistische Projekt für bürgerliche Kritik frei. Er versäumte, sich von utopischen Sozialismuskonzeptionen wie der einer 'Gebrauchswertökonomie' - oder wie Varga es 1919 formulierte - "einem System von Naturalwirtschaft" abzugrenzen.

Mit dem berechtigten Streich sowohl gegen  den neoklassischen Angriff auf den Sozialismus wie die marktsozialistische Kapitulation vor ihm kippte Mandel das Kind mit dem Bade aus. Während er Recht hatte, die ewigen Rollen für Wert, Preis und Geld abzustreiten, ignorierte er fälschlich die Notwendigkeit quantitativer Standards für den sozialistischen Plan. Er erklärte nicht, wie der Widerspruch zwischen abstrakter und konkreter Arbeit unterm Kapitalismus in eine korrespondierende Beziehung zwischen ihnen im Sozialismus transformiert werden sollte. So bliebt Mandels Erwiderung auf die Marktsozialisten unvollständig.

 

DER ÜBERGANG ZUM SOZIALISMUS

 

Für Adam Smith war Arbeit "Adam's Fluch". Die klassische Ökonomie setzt Glück und Freiheit damit gleich, vom Zwang zum Arbeiten frei zu sein. Die Vorstellung, daß die Arbeit eine befreiende Tätigkeit und nicht, wie es unter kapitalistischen Verhältnissen für die meisten Leute der Fall ist, eine von außen auferlegte Notwendigkeit sein könnte, war für die bürgerliche politische Ökonomie ein Unding. Nicht so für Marx:

"Als Bildnerin von Gebrauchswerten, als nützliche Arbeit, ist die Arbeit daher eine von allen Gesellschaftsformen unabhängige Existenzbedingung des Menschen, ewige Naturnotwendigkeit, um den Stoffwechsel zwischen Mensch und Natur, also das menschliche Leben zu vermitteln." (Kapital, Bd. 1, S. 57)

Die Arbeit, die zweckbestimmte Umwandlung der Natur stellt das Wesen der Menschheit dar. Als solche kann sie durch die Aufhebung der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise grundlegend transformiert, aber nicht vermieden oder abgeschafft werden - ein unmögliches und utopisches Unterfangen.

Die sozialistische Revolution bedeutet den Übergang der politischen Macht in die halb-staatlichen Institutionen des Proletariats (Räte, Arbeitermiliz) und die zeitgleiche Durchführung grundlegender ökonomischer Maßnahmen. Es ist dabei nicht wahrscheinlich, daß ein neu geschaffener Arbeiterstaat sofort alle Privateigner von Produktionsmitteln expropriieren wird. Ein Arbeiterstaat wird jedoch mit der Enteignung der großen Banken, der Kreditinstitute, der Fabriken und Handelsorganisationen beginnen.

Gleichzeitig wird der Staat damit beginnen, eine Wirtschaftsverwaltung und Planungsmechanismen zu schaffen, deren Wirkungsbereich nach und nach ausgedehnt werden. Die Zeit, in der die große Masse der Produktionsmittel nationalisiert werden wird, wird vom Entwicklungsstand des Landes abhängen. In diesem Prozeß wird die Ausbeutung einer Klasse mehr und mehr beseitigt und die private Aneignung von Mehrarbeit abgeschafft.

Vom Beginn dieses Übergangs an wird die große Masse des Mehrprodukts der Gesellschaft, das heißt der demokratischen Assoziation der Produzenten, gehören. Daher wird die Entfremdung des Arbeiters vom Produkt seiner Arbeit verschwinden. Die Arbeit wird nicht mehr durch den Tausch auf einem anonymen Markt gesellschaftlich, d.h. hinter dem Rücken der Produzenten, sondern in unmittelbarer und direkter Form und selbst Gegenstand demokratischer Diskussion und Debatte.

Gleichzeitig werden die Arbeiter aufhören, vom Arbeitsprozeß entfremdet zu sein. Sie werden nicht mehr das Objekt der Ausbeutung und Unterdrückung am Arbeitsplatz sein, der Despotie des Kapitals und seiner Agenten. Die Maschinerie wird nicht mehr dem Arbeiter das Tempo vorschreiben, sondern umgekehrt. Gleichzeitig werden die Produzenten nicht mehr auf eine bestimmte Art der Tätigkeit für ihr ganzes Leben beschränkt sein. Der Zugang zu Ausbildung und Erziehung wird nicht mehr von der Klassenherkunft- und zugehörigkeit geprängt sein. Eine solche Ausbildung wird die Entwicklung vielfältiger Fähigkeit ermöglichen, die jeden Menschen in die Lage versetzen, während seines oder ihres Lebens verschiedene Tätigkeiten auszuüben.

Eine solche Gesellschaft, die sich zum Sozialismus entwickelt, wird sicherstellen, daß die Möglichkeiten jeder Person im größtmöglichen Ausmaß geweckt und entwickelt werden - frei von der Unterdrückung , die sich heute aus der Geschlechtszugehörigkeit, der Klassenherkunft, der Ethnie oder der sexuellen Orientierung ergibt. Nervtötende, langwierige und monotone Arbeit wird, so weit möglich, automatisiert werden, die Teilung zwischen Hand- und Kopfarbeit und ihre Verfestigung in bestimmten Berufen Schritt für Schritt überwunden werden. Schließlich wird die Teilung zwischen Arbeit und Freizeit selbst mehr und mehr aufgehoben. All diese Überlegungen und Zielvorstellungen bestimmten die marxistische Vorstellung vom Sozialismus bzw. vom Übergang zu dieser Gesellschaftsformation: Aufhebung der Entfremdung und des Warenfetischismus, die Schaffung der Möglichkeit wirklicher Freiheit mit dem Ende der Vorgeschichte der Menschheit.

Auch wenn Marxisten die Notwendigkeit des Sozialismus nicht einfach mit dem Verweis auf seine größere ökonomische Effektivität (im Vergleich mit dem Kapitalismus) begründen, so ändert das nichts daran, daß Sozialismus eine bestimmte Produktionsweise ist. Jeder Schüler, der zum ersten Mal von wirtschaftlichen Problemen hört, wird schnell mit "dem" ökonomischen Problem konfrontiert werden, dem sich bisher jede Gesellschaft stellen mußte: Wie kann eine scheinbar grenzenlose Masse von Bedürfnissen mit, in Relation dazu begrenzten Ressourcen befriedigt werden?

Die Produktion und Konsumtion dieser Güter fand bislang im Rahmen einer Reihe von Klassengesellschaften statt. Jede Produktionsweise (asiatische, antike, feudale und kapitalistische) hat in der Regel zu einer Steigerung der Produktivität der Arbeit im Rahmen antagonistischer und widersprüchlicher Produktionsverhältnisse geführt. Der Sozialismus wird die erste progressive, nicht-klassen­anta­gonistische Produktionsweise sein und dadurch in der Lage sein, die Produktivität der menschlichen Arbeit enorm zu steigern.

Nichtsdestotrotz wird oben genanntes "ökonomisches Problem" in den ersten Phasen des Übergangs fortbestehen. Was soll angesichts eines bestimmten Mangels produziert werden? Unter welchen Bedingungen und in welchen Proportionen? Wie werden Produktion und Konsumtion ins Gleichgewicht gebracht? Demokratie und Macht allein reichen nicht aus, um auf ökonomischer Ebene zum Sozialismus fortzuschreiten.

 

Wirtschaftliche Ziele und Regulation

 

Nachdem Freiheit die Einsicht in die Notwendigkeit ist, wird auch das Wirtschaftsleben in der Phase des Übergangs zum Sozialismus durch die bewußte Anwendung einer Reihe von Entwicklungsgesetzen bestimmt werden, die Produktion und Konsumtion regulieren, die Gleichgewicht und Expansion der Ökonomie sichern. Daher weisen wir die Vorstellung Bucharins zurück, daß es keine politische Ökonomie des Übergangs, sondern nur eine Art "Sozialtechnik" gebe. Wir lehnen uns vielmehr an die weiter gefaßte Definition der "politischen Ökonomie" an, die Engels gibt:

"Die politische Ökonomie, im weitesten Sinn, ist die Wissenschaft von den Gesetzen, welche die Produktion und den Austausch des materiellen Lebensunterhaltes in der menschlichen Gesellschaft beherrschen." (MEW, Bd. 20, S. 136)

Heißt das, daß das Wertgesetz auf die eine oder andere Art weiter den Übergang zum Sozialismus reguliert oder daß es "transparent" und "transformiert" wird, sobald die Produktionsmittel nicht mehr in der Hand von Privateigentümern sind (wie Stalin argumentierte)? Nein, keines von beiden!

Für Marx und Engels war das Wertgesetz eine ökonomische Kategorie, die "die ausgedehnteste Unterordnung der Produzenten unter ihre Produkte ausdrückt". Im Sozialismus können sich die Beziehungen zwischen den Individuen, die gemeinschaftlich arbeiten, nicht in der Form des "Werts" der "Sachen" ausdrücken, also auch nicht von einer Art "Wertgesetz" bestimmt werden. Sobald die Arbeitskraft aufhört, eine Ware zu sein, kann auch kein "Ding", das von dieser Arbeit produziert wird, dem Wertgesetz untergeordnet sein.

Wir leugnen damit keineswegs, daß das Wertgesetz in der Übergangsphase zum Sozialismus als untergeordneter und in seiner Bedeutung geringer werdender Regulator existiert. Solange Warenproduktion und -tausch existieren, wird das Wertgesetz existieren. In industriell rückständigen Ländern mit einem hohen Anteil an privater agrarischer Produktion und Austausch wird die Diktatur des Proletariats die Akkumulation in der Industrie zum Teil durch die Manipulation des Wertgesetzes im Privatsektor voranzutreiben versuchen. Das war die Grundlage des Gesetzes der ursprünglichen sozialistischen Akkumulation, das von Preobrazenskij in den 1920er Jahren in der UdSSR entwickelt wurde. Es wird auch weiter dort zur Anwendung kommen, wo die technische oder politische Basis für die freiwillige Kollektivierung der Landwirtschaft fehlt.

Diese Situation wird wahrscheinlich in keinem OECD-Land eintreten. Dort ist es unwahrscheinlich, daß es (außer der Bereitstellung von persönlichen Diensten, bei der keine Lohnarbeiter beschäftigt wird) ein signifikantes Ausmaß an Warenproduktion geben wird. Aber zumindest die ersten Phasen des Übergangs zum Sozialismus werden per definitionem einen mehr oder weniger systematischen Austausch von Gütern und Diensten zwischen Arbeiterstaaten und kapitalistischen Ländern mit sich bringen.

Daher wird das Wertgesetz, unter dessen Herrschaft die Waren in den kapitalistischen Ländern produziert werden, auf verschiedene Weise auch die Arbeiterstaaten tangieren. Erstens wird es die Entscheidung beeinflussen, ob Ressourcen auf die Produktion bisher importierter Güter verwendet werden sollen oder ob diese weiter eingeführt werden.

Zweitens wird ein Arbeiterstaat, sobald er mit kapitalistischen Unternehmen konkurriert, um Exporteinkünfte zu erzielen, durch eben diese Konkurrenz gezwungen sein, die Produktivität der Produktion auf Weltmarktniveau zu halten oder zu heben. Dieser Schritt ist gerade heute, angesichts des hohen Grades der Internationalisierung des modernen Kapitalismus, notwendig. Die Konsequenzen eines totalen Rückzugs vom internationalen Handel wären für jedes Industrieland, in dem die Herrschaft des Kapitals gebrochen ist, katastrophal.

Drittens kann es für eine bestimmte Periode notwendig sein, ausländischen Unternehmen Konzessionen zur Ausbeutung von Arbeitskraft im Austausch für einen Teil der Profite zu machen, um eine Unterauslastung ökonomischer Ressourcen zu vermeiden. Das Wertgesetz wird erst im Sozialismus aufhören, irgendeine Rolle zu spielen.

Unter Sozialismus verstehen wir ein weltweites System der Produktion, das von einem einzigen, wenn auch dezentral strukturierten, ökonomischen Mechanismus organisiert wird. Bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt können einzelne Arbeiterstaaten nur versuchen, das Wertgesetz zur sozialistischen Akkumulation zu nutzen und zu manipulieren.

 

Die Rolle des Geldes beim Übergang zum Sozialismus

 

Im Kapitalismus sind die Preise Erscheinungsformen des Werts der Waren, d.h. des Quantums der gesellschaftlich notwendigen Arbeit, die sie beinhalten. Obwohl der Wert jeder individuellen Ware sowohl dem Kapitalisten als auch dem Arbeiter unbekannt ist, da die Produktion selbst von den Wünschen und Bedürfnissen der Gesellschaft getrennt ist, werden am Markt die in den Waren verkörperten Werte, wenn auch indirekt, verglichen. Der Tauschwert ist keine natürliche Eigenschaft, sondern ein gesellschaftliches Verhältnis. Die Tatsache, daß die Warenproduzenten nicht wissen können, wieviel gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeit in ihnen vergegenständlicht ist, resultiert selbst aus dem privaten Charakter der Aneignung der Produktion. Der Wert kann nur annähernd über den Marktpreis aufscheinen.

Marx zeigt in Band 1 und 3 des Kapitals außerdem, daß der Marktpreis nicht nur vom Wert abweichen kann, sondern sogar muß. Abgesehen von Verzerrungen des Marktes und der Oszillation der Preise muß dieses Phänomen als Resultat einer die ganze Gesellschaft durchziehenden Ausgleichsbewegung der Profitraten eintreten. Aufgrund sehr unterschiedlicher organischer Zusammensetzungen der Kapitale, wie sie in allen entwickelten Industrieländern existieren, produzieren verschiedene Unternehmen und verschiedene Branchen spontan mit unterschiedlichen Profitraten.

Millionen von Tauschakten bringen sie der Tendenz nach zur Ausgleichung und transformieren damit die Warenwerte zu Produktionspreisen. Die Marktmechanismen führen dann dazu, daß die Marktpreise um die Produktionspreise, nicht um die Warenwerte oszillieren. Das findet im Kapitalismus systematisch statt und ist eine wichtiger Grund, warum die kapitalistische Produktionsweise einer Preiseinheit bedarf, die formell vom Wert komplett unabhängig ist.

Das Geldsystem ist daher nicht nur historisch an den Kapitalismus gebunden, sondern auch eng mit der Herrschaft der toten über die lebendige Arbeit verbunden. Es reflektiert nicht nur die Unsichtbarkeit des Wertes, sondern verfügt auch über die nötige Flexibilität, um die systematische Abweichung der Preise von den Werten zu reflektieren. Die Ausgleichung der Profitraten stellt sicher, daß die Kapitale mit höherer organischer Zusammensetzung einen Extra-Mehrwert über dem Mehrwert, den "ihre" eigenen Arbeitskräfte schaffen, realisieren. Das ist eine andere Ausdrucksform der Diktatur des Kapitals über die Arbeit, bei der das Geld als das Schmieröl der kapitalistischen Maschinerie fungiert.

In der Übergangsökonomie eines Arbeiterstaates führt die Abschaffung des Privateigentums an den Produktionsmitteln sofort zu wichtigen Veränderungen der Rolle von Geld und Preisen. Aber beide sind noch weit davon entfernt, "abgeschafft" zu sein. Im Gegenteil. Diese vom Kapitalismus geerbten Instrumente müssen in der Übergangsperiode so lange verwendet werden, wie Warenproduktion und Austausch existieren, sei es innerhalb des Arbeiterstaats oder mit kapitalistischen Ländern. Der Markt und das Geld sind in der ersten Phase der Diktatur des Proletariats die einzigen Methoden zur Bemessung von Ressourcen und verbleiben daher in dieser Phase die Basis der wirtschaftlichen Kalkulation.

Die Planung wird mit bestimmten zentralen Projekten beginnen und in der Folge in immer mehr Branchen verallgemeinert werden. Im Frühstadium werden sich daher die Planungsergebnisse mit den Standards des Marktes messen.

"Zwei Hebel müssen der Regulierung und Anpassung der Pläne dienen: ein politischer - die reale Beteiligung der interessierten Massen selbst an der Leitung, die ohne Sowjetdemokratie undenkbar ist - und ein finanzieller - die reale Prüfung der apriorischen Berechnungen mit Hilfe eines allgemeinen Äquivalents, was ohne stabiles Geldsystem undenkbar ist. (Trotzki, Verratene Revolution, in: Trotzki, Schriften, 1.2., S. 761)"

Daher wird ein Arbeiterstaat in der ersten Phase der Entwicklung der Planung Geld als Wertmaßstab verwenden. Das Wertgesetz wird in den Sektoren dominieren, die nicht von der Planung erfaßt sind, und es wird in der gesamten Ökonomie eine wichtige, wenn auch beschränkte und kontrollierte, Rolle spielen.

Dennoch wird es schon von Beginn an Veränderungen der Funktion des Geldes geben. Im Kapitalismus stellen die Marktpreise einen Indikator dafür dar, in welchem Verhältnis verschiedene Güter am Markt ausgetauscht werden. Das stellt eine sehr eingeschränkte Information dar. Beim Übergang zum Sozialismus müssen daher Preise konstruiert werden, die die Kosten alternativer Formen der Nutzung der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit ausdrücken. Ohne diese wäre es unmöglich, Produktivitätsfortschritte zu messen oder über alternative Investitionsmöglichkeiten rational zu urteilen.

Private Warenproduzenten sind an einer Reihe "externer" (d.h. gesellschaftlicher) Kosten nicht interessiert. Ebensowenig interessiert sie normalerweise der langfristige Effekt ihrer Entscheidungen. Wirkliche "Kostpreise" in der Übergangsgesellschaft können die verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Kosten, die über den Rahmen der einzelnen Firma hinausgehen, einbeziehen. Während die durchschnittlichen Kostpreise in der technisch fortgeschrittenen kapitalistischen Welt einen Vergleichsmaßstab für die Kostpreise in der Übergangsgesellschaft geben sollten, so werden nach-kapitalistische Gesellschaften Kostpreise für Güter und Dienstleistungen konstruieren müssen, die die kurz- und langfristigen Kosten dieser "externen Faktoren" (z.B. Zerstörung der Umwelt, Kosten von Importproduktion) mitreflektieren.

Mit Hilfe von simultanen Gleichungen werden Preise entwickelt werden, die eine Reihe von Variablen aufgreifen können (wie veränderte Investitionsraten in verschiedenen Sektoren über einen bestimmten Zeitraum), die kapitalistische Marktpreise nicht widerspiegeln können.

Ein solches System wird sich nicht nur von Geldpreisen im Kapitalismus unterscheiden, sondern auch von der Verwendung der Preise in der bürokratischen Planwirtschaft. Versuche, künstliche, ja willkürliche Preise zu schaffen (z.B. der Brotpreis in vielen bürokratischen Planwirtschaften), um die Nachfrage zu stimulieren, sollten unterlassen werden. Diese Methode hat nicht nur den Nachteil, daß die Preise die wirklichen Kosten der Gesellschaft nicht reflektieren, sondern sie fördert auch die Verschwendung (z.B. indem "billiges" Brot an Schweine verfüttert wird). Auch wenn ein Arbeiterstaat in seinen ersten Entwicklungsphasen die Nachfrage nach bestimmten Konsumgütern und Dienstleistungen durch steuerliche Maßnahmen und durch Subventionen beinflussen wird, wird es noch immer notwendig sein, die wirklichen Arbeitskosten (d.h. die Arbeitzeit) in bestimmten Gütern und Dienstleistungen genau zu messen. Natürlich werden auch solche Unterstützungsleistungen überflüssig werden, je mehr eine egalitäre Einkommensverteilung realisiert ist.

Als Tauschmittel wird die Bedeutung des Geldes beim Übergang zum Sozialismus mehr und mehr verschwinden. (Geld wird jedoch seine Funktion als Tauschmittel im internationalen Handel mit kapitalistischen Ländern in der Übergangsperiode beibehalten, was die Existenz eines international anerkannten Geldes notwendig macht.) Das heißt erstens, daß viele Produkte von der Gesellschaft als notwendige Güter anerkannt werden, die zu erhalten ein Recht aller Gesellschaftsmitglieder ist und die direkt aus dem Mehrprodukt gezahlt werden (z.B. ein bestimmtes Mindestniveau an Wohnraum, Kleidung und Nahrungsmitteln). Es gibt keinen Grund, daß dieser Güter nicht direkt an die Konsumenten verteilt werden. Sie müssen weder gekauft noch verkauft werden und Geld ist für diese Transaktion nicht notwendig.

In der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft konsumieren die meisten Menschen nur einige tausend verschiedene Waren während ihres ganzen Lebens. Mit der Zeit werden mehr und mehr von diesen Gütern automatisch verteilt. Mit der Steigerung der Arbeitsproduktivität werden die Preise dieser Produkte gegen Null gehen. Sie werden so billig werden, daß es sich nicht mehr lohnt, ihren Preis zu kassieren, und daher zu einer Ausdehnung der nicht-monetären Sphäre führen. Auf dem Weg zum Kommunismus wird die Rolle des Geldes (als unabhängiger physischer Ausdruck verschiedener Mengen gesellschaftlicher Arbeit) verschwinden und durch reine Rechnungseinheiten wie z.B. Einheiten für die gesellschaftliche Arbeit ersetzt werden.

In den späteren Phasen des Übergangs zum Sozialismus, die wahrscheinlich in den hoch industrialisierten Ländern früher als in den rückständigen erreicht wird, werden auch neue "sozialistische" Methoden der Kalkulation entstehen. Wir müssen uns dabei vor Augen halten, daß im planwirtschaftichen ("sozialistischen") Sektor die Kategorie des Wertes in dem Maß ihre Bedeutung verlieren wird, in dem der Plan tatsächlich zur Verteilung der Arbeitskraft nach gesellschaftlichen Bedürfnissen führt. Der "Wert" (d.h. abstrakte Arbeit) als etwas von der Menge der konkreten Arbeit, die auf ein bestimmtes Produkt verwandt wird, geschiedenes wird im Ausmaß verschwinden, in dem die Arbeit direkt gesellschaftlich wird.

Daher besteht die Aufgabe auch nicht darin, solche Geldpreise zu konstruieren, die den Wert möglichst extakt, d.h. genauer als der Marktmechanismus, wiedergeben. In dem Ausmaß, in dem der Markt durch die Planung zurückgedrängt wird, kann er auch nicht mehr die Rolle eines Korrektivs spielen. Daher würden am Wert orientierte Geldpreise mehr und mehr verzerrend wirken. Daher muß eine andere Methode der wirtschaftlichen Messung etabliert werden.

Innerhalb des planwirtschaftlichen Sektors der Ökonomie eines Arbeitstaates ist kein Mechanismus notwendig, der zu einer Ausgleichung von Profitraten und zur Entstehung von Produktionspreisen führt. Es wird keinen automatischen Mechanismus geben, der produktiveren Unternehmen eine zusätzliche Premierung in Form von Extra-Profiten gibt. Entscheidungen darüber, wo investiert, welche Produktion ausgeweitet und welche eingeschränkt werden soll, werden die Arbeiterräte auf der Basis sozialer und ökologischer Erwägungen sowie der Kenntnis der vorhandenen gesellschaftlichen Arbeit fällen.

Natürlich existiert auch dann eine Differenz zwischen der Menge konkreter Arbeit, die zur Produktion eines bestimmten Produktes im allgemeinen, d.h. im Durchschnitt, notwendig ist, und der Menge, die dazu an einer bestimmten Produktionsstätte aufgewandt werden muß. Erstere Information ist für jede nationale oder globale Planung notwendig, während letztere die Basis für die individuelle Konsumtion darstellt. Es ist daher sinnvoll, zwischen dem individuellen und dem gesellschaftlichen "Arbeitswert" jeder Produktion zu unterscheiden. "Arbeitswert" hat in diesem Zusammenhang nichts mit dem Wert in der Warenproduktion zu tun. Er ist vielmehr mit der konkreten Arbeitszeit identisch und daher ex ante bekannt.

Arbeitscoupons werden das Geld auch dort mehr und mehr ersetzen, wo der Tausch zwischen Löhnen und Konsumgütern noch immer stattfindet. Solche Coupons, d.h. Zertifikate über das geleistete Quantum an Arbeitsstunden nach Abzug der Kosten für gesellschaftliche Leistungen, werden für alle jene Produkte und Dienstleistungen nicht notwendig sein, auf die alle Gesellschaftsmitglieder automatisch Anspruch haben. Hier kommt es nur darauf an, über die Gesamtmasse und einzelne Güter, den Fluß von Produkten aus Departement I nach II bis hin zum Konsum dieser Produkte Buch zu führen.

Die Arbeitscoupons werden den Arbeitern im Gegenzug zur Arbeit, die sie verausgabt haben, gegeben und stellen ein bestimmtes Quantum Arbeitszeit dar. Die Coupons können gegen Güter getauscht werden, die dasselbe Quantum Arbeitszeit verkörpern. In diesem Fall ist der Coupon eine rein passive Repräsentation derselben Menge gesellschaftlich notwendiger Arbeit, wenn auch in verschiedener Form.

Der Coupon kann allerdings unter bestimmten Bedingungen auch als Geld fungieren, nämlich dann, wenn sich der vorausgeplante "Wert" eines Produkts als falsch erweist. Wenn z.B. der geplante "Wert" zwei Stunden gesellschaftlich notwendiger Arbeiter wäre, die Arbeiter jedoch wegen zu geringen Angebots bereit wären, dafür Coupons im Wert von drei Stunden zu bezahlen, so würde auf diese Weise ein Fehler in der Planung (zu wenig Ressourcen, dh. gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeit auf die Produktion eines bestimmten Gutes verwendet zu haben) aufgezeigt werden. Dieser übrig gebliebene Marktmechanismus würde, in den Worten Trotzkis, dazu dienen, den "Plan zu verifizieren". In diesem Fall wäre der Tauschakt nicht bloß passiv, sondern würde post festum die Menge gesellschaftlich notwendiger Arbeit determinieren, die in diesem Produkt vergegenständlicht ist. Klarerweise wäre ein solcher Fall ein Zeichen dafür, daß der Plan korregiert, d.h. das Angebot für diese Produkte erhöht werden müßte.

 

Regulation durch Arbeitszeit

 

Der Aufbau einer Planwirtschaft schließt notwendigerweise die bewußte Allokation von Ressourcen ein, um bestimmte Ziele zu erreichen. Obwohl die Kalkulation auf Basis der Arbeitszeit das Mittel und das Maß zu dieser Allokation bereitstellt, so reguliert sie nicht selbst das Funktionieren der Ökonomie in der Weise, wie das Wertgesetz im Kapitalismus. Die wirtschaftliche Regulation folgt statt dessen aus den Entscheidungen im politischen System des Arbeiterstaates.

Ziel der gesellschaftlichen Produktion muß es sein, die Arbeitsproduktivität mit der Zeit zu steigern, indem alle Produktionsfaktoren optimal (nicht notwendigerweise maximal) genutzt werden. Unter einem optimalen Niveau des outputs verstehen wir hier ein solches, das mit anderen Zielen wie Verkürzung der Arbeitszeit, Ausdehnung der Zeit für Erziehung und Erholung ebenso vereinbar ist wie mit einer rationalen Nutzung nicht erneuerbarer Rohmaterialien und der Reproduktion erneuerbarer Ressourcen.

Ohne eine immer größere Ausdehnung der frei disponiblen Zeit jedes Gesellschaftsmitglieds wird es für die Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen unmöglich sein, sich als Individuen frei und allseitig zu entfalten. Bildung und Ausübung einer Vielzahl von Tätigkeiten werden eine notwendige Voraussetzungen für die aktive Teilnahme an einem enorm ausgedehnten Entscheidungsprozeß sein, der ein Merkmal der Übergangsperiode darstellt. Es erfordert Zeit und Studium, gemeinschaftlich das eigene Leben am Arbeitsplatz und in der örtlichen Gemeinde zu kontrollieren und zu bestimmen sowie am vielschichtigen wirtschaftlichen und politischen Entscheidungsprozeß teilzunehmen.

Daraus folgt, daß die Gesellschaft wahrscheinlich versuchen wird, Produktivitätsverbesserungen auf jene Industrien zu konzentrieren, die der Herstellung von Konsumgütern dienen, um die notwendige Arbeitszeit zur Reproduktion der Arbeitskräfte zu reduzieren. Das Ziel dieser Reduktion ist jedoch nicht, wie im Kapitalismus, die Maximierung der Mehrarbeitszeit. Es ist vielmehr die Ausweitung der disponiblen Zeit. Mit anderen Wort: Die Mehrarbeitszeit ist nicht die unabhängige Variable, die um jeden Preis ausgeweitet werden muß, sondern eine abhängige Variable.

Ist einmal eine bestimmte durchschnittliche Arbeitzeit (die Dauer des Arbeitstages) festgelegt - und damit auch das Ausmaß der disponiblen Zeit -, stellt sich klarerweise die Frage nach dem Umfang und der Struktur der materiellen Produktion. Das Ziel der Produktion ist nun nicht mehr Produktion um ihrer selbst Willen, zur Maximierung des Profits. Vielmehr muß die Produktion der Konsumtion, den Bedürfnissen der assoziierten Produzenten dienen.

Im Kapitalismus sind die einzigen "Bedürfnisse", die als legitim anerkannt werden, jene, die über den Austausch am Markt erscheinen und für die bezahlt werden kann. Die einzigen Bedürfnisse die daher als "rational" anerkannt werden, sind jene, die am Markt existieren. Das ist selbst dann der Fall, wenn Nahrungsmittel aus Hungerregionen exportiert werden oder wo Ferienparadiese der Reichen neben Slums und Obdachlosigkeit existieren. Im Gegensatz dazu bezieht sich ein rationales "Bedürfnis" vom sozialistischen Standpunkt auf die Garantie von Lebensmitteln, Wohnung, Kleidung und den Zugang zu Bildung und Erholung.

Um das zu erreichen, wird es notwendig sein, die Produktivkräfte massiv zu steigern. In diesem Sinne ist die Produktion durch das Gesetz der sozialistischen Akkumulation bestimmt. Es wird notwendig sein, die Akkumulationsrate (besonders bei Investitionen in die modernste Industrie) Hand in Hand mit dem Konsumtionsvolumen zu steigern. Das kann durch eine Reihe von Maßnahmen erreicht werden.

Erstens wird die Reorganisation der Arbeitsteilung im internationalen und nationalen Maßstab zu einer Steigerung der Skalenerträge und einer Effektivierung der Produktion führen. Das schließt sowohl die Vorteile ein, die aus der Beseitigung kostspieliger Handelsbarrieren erwachsen, als auch die zügige und rationale Weitergabe technischer Innovationen in der gesamten Industrie, die nicht länger durch das Privateigentum verhindert wird.

Zweitens wird die massive Reduktion unproduktiver Ausgaben (z.B. Waffen, Bürokratie des kapitalistischen Staates und der Unternehmen, Vermarkungskosten der meisten Produkte, verschwenderische und sozial nachteilige "Luxus"ausgaben) eine Umverteilung der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit zur produktiven Nutzung ermöglichen. Drittens wird die Expropriation der Privateigner an den Produktionsmitteln die Beschäftigung aller Arbeitskräfte und somit eine massive Steigerung der Produktion von Gütern und Dienstleistungen ermöglichen.

Viertens kann eine massive Zunahme der Arbeitsproduktivität von der Aufhebung des unterdrückerischen und erzwungenen Charakters der Lohnarbeit erwartet werden. Der Initiative und Kreativität der gemeinschaftlichen Arbeit werden sich neue Dimensionen eröffnen. Fünftens wird ein revolutionäres Programm der Landreform in vielen Ländern ebenfalls zu Steigerungen der Produktion führen.

Die Produktion muß so expandieren, daß sichergestellt ist, daß verschiedene Güter und Dienste in solchen Proportionen hergestellt werden, daß ein Gleichgewicht zwischen den verschiedenen Sektoren der Produktion und zwischen Produktion und Konsumtion sichergestellt ist, um Engpässe wie auch Überangebote zu vermeiden. Dazu ist Wissen über die Struktur der vorhandenen und zu befriedigenden Bedürfnisse der Konsumenten erforderlich, um über Rate und Struktur der Investitionen zu entscheiden.

Die Struktur der zu befriedigenden Bedürfnisse wird die Zusammenstellung der zu produzierenden Produktionsmittel und Konsumgüter bestimmen und die Investitionsentscheidungen werden auch bewußt festlegen, welche Konsumtionsgüter in einer später Produktionsperiode hergestellt werden, um die zukünftigen Konsumtionsmöglichkeiten auszuweiten. Eine geplante Überschußproduktion wird notwendigerweise ein Teil solcher Kalkulationen sein, um für die Befriedigung im ursprünglichen Plan nicht einberechneter, plötzlich gestiegener Nachfrage vorzusorgen.

Wenn solche Entscheidungen gefällt werden, müssen auch objektive ökonomische Kriterien einbezogen werden. Eine Übergangsökonomie würde versuchen, ihre Investitionsprogramme bis zu dem Punkt zu steigern, wo keine weiteren Produktivitätsgewinne mehr möglich sind durch die Ersetzung lebendiger Arbeit durch Arbeit, die in Produktionsmitteln vergegenständlicht ist, und der gesamte Nettooutput für die Konsumtion verwendet wird.

Die Investitionsrate wird von den Bedingungen bestimmt werden, die in der Zeit des Übergangs herrschen. Klarerweise können gegenwärtige Bedürfnisse nur bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt zugunsten künftiger aufgeschoben werden. Dieser Punkt würde überschritten werden, wenn die momentane Konsumtion eingeschränkt oder eingefroren und alle Ressourcen dazu verwendete würden, möglichst rasch ein maximales Produktivitätsniveau zu erreichen.

Es kann jedoch ganz im Gegenteil notwendig sein, kurzfristig die Investitionsrate zu drosseln, um den Lebensstandard rascher zu erhöhen. Anderseits kann es gerade in Ländern mit einem geringen Industrialisierungsgrad zu Beginn notwendig sein, einen Kompromiß zwischen letzteren Bedürfnissen und einer relativ hohen Investitionsrate zu finden, da ein bestimmtes Mindestniveau an Industrialisierung eine notwendige Voraussetzung für die Entwicklung eines zentralen Wirtschaftsplans für das ganze Land darstellt.

Eine Föderation von Arbeiterstaaten (und noch viel mehr eine weltweite sozialistische Föderation) würde versuchen, den Industrialisierungsgrad dieser Länder möglichst rasch anzugleichen. Das schließt auch ein bestimmtes Maß an Verlagerung von Ressourcen aus den industrialisierten Teilen der Erde in die Länder der sog. "Dritten Welt" ein, um die vom Imperialismus geschaffenen Zustände zu überwinden.

Das bedeutet aber nicht, daß der Lebensstandard in den entwickelteren Ländern in dieser Phase sinken wird. Er würde nur langsamer wachsen, als das ohne diese internationale Kooperation der Fall wäre. Zweitens soll das Tempo der industriellen Entwicklung in den rückständigeren Ländern nur so hoch sein, daß die Veränderung der Kultur ohne Zwang und Unterdrückung Schritt halten kann. Eine vernünftige Umverteilung der Ressourcen muß durch die Organe der Arbeiterdemokratie bestimmt werden.

 

Ökonomische Effizienz

 

Eine rationale Reorganisation der Produktion und Konsumtion wird nur die ersten Erfolge bringen. Mit dem Fortschreiten zum Sozialismus wird die Produktivität systematisch gesteigert werden müssen. Es wird notwendig sein, die Arbeit zu ökonomisieren, effektiver zu werden. An dieser Stelle griffen schon die frühesten Kritiker des Sozialismus den Marxismus an.

Marxisten haben immer behauptet, daß die Reduktion der Länge des Arbeitstages und die Ausdehnung der disponiblen Zeit ausreichende Motive zur Steigerung der Effektivität der Ökonomie sind. Aber in diesem Jahrhundert sind verschiedene Kritiker weiter gegangen und haben behauptet, daß der Sozialismus nach der Abschaffung der Regulation durch den Markt über kein zuverlässiges Instrument zur Messung wirtschaftlicher Effektivität verfüge. Die Wiener Schule (von Mises, Hayek) argumentierte, daß der Sozialismus aufgrund des Fehlens eines Systems von auf dem Markt gebildeten Preisen keinen Mechanismus hätte, um die Verteilung der produktiven Ressourcen auf verschiedene Funktionen rational zu kalkulieren. Es wäre unmöglich, zu bestimmen, welche von zwei beliebigen Produktionsmethoden "ökonomischer" wäre, da jeder Vergleich ihrer Kosten hinsichtlich ihrer Wert-Produktivität unmöglich wäre.

Es stimmt, daß qualitativ verschiedene Güter auf gemeinsame quantitative Maßstäbe reduziert werden müssen, um die Effektivität unterschiedlicher Verwendung von Ressourcen zu vergleichen. Aber es ist falsch, daß diese Kalkulation nur mit Marktpreisen gemacht werden könnte. Daran stimmt nur, daß die Bewegung der Preise für Zwischen- und Endprodukte in einer atomisierten und auf individueller Konkurrenz beruhenden Wirtschaft das einzige Mittel ist, um das Problem der Verteilung der Ressourcen zu lösen. Die Unternehmen müssen sich diesen von außen aufgezwungenen Bedingungen gemäß verhalten.

Aber das ist nur ein Mittel, das Problem zu lösen. In der Übergangsperiode zum Sozialismus wird die Reduktion qualitativ verschiedener Produkte auf ein gemeinsames Maß zum quantitativen Vergleich durch die Berechnung der in den verschiedenen Produkten und Dienstleistungen verkörperten Arbeitszeit erfolgen.

Alle Gegner des Marxismus (einschließlich der sogenannten Markt-Sozialisten) gehen davon aus, daß das unmöglich sei. Von Mises, Tugan Baranowsky und Böhm-Bawerk wiesen die Arbeitswerttheorie in ihrer Gesamtheit zurück und damit auch die Möglichkeit, ökonomische Berechnungen auf Basis der Arbeitszeit durchzuführen. Selbst Karl Kautsky glaubte, daß es in der Praxis unmöglich wäre, das Quantum der in einer bestimmten Ware verkörperten gesellschaftlich notwendigen Arbeit zu bestimmen.

Im Gegensatz dazu stand die Marxsche Auffassung:

"Die Arbeitszeit würde also eine doppelte Rolle spielen. Ihre gesellschaftlich planmäßige Verteilung regelt die richtige Proportion der verschiednen Arbeitsfunktionen zu den verschiednen Bedürfnissen. Andrerseits dient die Arbeitszeit zugleich als Maß des individuellen Anteils des Produzenten an der Gemeinarbeit und daher auch an dem individuell verzehrbaren Teil des Gemeinprodukts. (Marx, Kapital Bd. 1, S. 93)"

 

Verteilung der Produktion gemäß der Arbeitszeit

 

Die Arbeitszeit dient sowohl der Allokation der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit auf die verschiedenen Spären der Produktion wie auch der Verteilung der Konsumtionsmittel auf die Bevölkerung als Basis der Kostenkalkulation. Wenden wir uns zuerst der Verteilung der Ressourcen auf die gesellschaftliche Produktion zu.

Zuerst müssen wir bestimmen, auf welche Arbeitszeit wir uns beziehen. Mit der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise ist die Scheidung von konkreter und abstrakter Arbeit verbunden. Der Tauschakt selbst reduziert im Kapitalismus jede konkrete Arbeit auf ein bestimmtes Quantum abstrakter Arbeit - den Wert. Dieser Wert kann wiederum nur in der Form eines Tauschverhältnisses (des Tauschwertes) zwischen einem bestimmten Quantum einer Ware und dem bestimmten Quantum einer anderen Ware erscheinen. Geld ist eine Verkörperung dieses Tauschwertes.

Im Kapitalismus bildet sich infolge des permanenten Tausches auf dem Markt und der Konkurrenz eine klare Vorstellung heraus, welche Arbeit in einer Industrie Arbeit durchschnittlicher Intensität, d.h. gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeit, darstellt. In der Übergangsperiode zum Sozialismus wird diese "blinde", d.h. im Nachhinein stattfindende Bestimmung gesellschaftlich notwendiger Arbeit im Zuge der Aufhebung der Warenproduktion eliminiert. Diese Bestimmung erfolgt nun bewußt und direkt durch die Gesellschaft.

Was als Richtmaß für Arbeit von durchschnittlicher Intensität gilt, wird dann durch die Organe der Arbeiterdemokratie bestimmt und kontrolliert werden müssen. Die Diskussion über diese Standards wird offenkundig Vergleiche mit dem Kapitalismus einschließen, aber sie wird sich keinesfalls sklavisch an ihnen orientieren.

Die wissenschaftlich festgelegten Standards der Arbeitsintensität werden sowohl physische wie psychologische Elemente zur Bestimmung von Streß und Anstrengung einschließen. Falls z.B. eine bestimmte Art der Arbeit mit besonders hoher Anstrengung und Erschöpfung verbunden ist, sollte das noch nicht als "mehr Wert" schaffend betrachtet werden. Vielmehr sollte diese konkrete Arbeit der Arbeit durchschnittlicher Intensität dadurch angeglichen werden, indem z.B. zusätzliche Ruhepausen in die kalkulierte Arbeitszeit einbezogen werden.

Die Bestimmung der Arbeitszeit, die in einem bestimmten Produkt vergegenständlicht ist, wird Aufgabe der Arbeitskräfte sein, die sie produzieren. Dazu müssen die Arbeiter nur die voraussichtlichen Arbeitsstunden, die ihre Brigade oder ihr Team dazu brauchen wird, mit der Summe der Arbeitsstunden addieren, die in den zu verwendenden Rohmaterialien und Vorprodukten vergegenständlich sind. Dazu kommen die Zahlen für den Verschleiß der Maschinen, den Energieverbrauch usw. Die Gesamtsumme wird dann mit den entsprechenden Zahlen aller Unternehmen, die dasselbe Produkt erzeugen, verglichen.

Die durchschnittlich notwendige Arbeitszeit repräsentiert den gesellschaftlichen Arbeitswert, der vom individuellen Arbeitswert in beide Richtungen abweichen kann. Die erstere Größe stellt eine wichtige Grundlage für die Planungsstellen dar. Die Arbeitscoupons (Scheine) werden im Verhältnis zu den geleisteten indivuellen Arbeitsstunden verteilt, aber die wirtschaftlichen Berechnungen werden sich an den gesellschaftlichen Arbeitswerten orientieren müssen. Diese Kalkulationen (und damit auch die Entscheidungen, die auf ihnen basieren) werden allen Arbeitern leicht verständlich in Arbeitszeiteinheiten ausgedrückt werden.

Dieses System wird die Grundlage der Kostenberechnung und der Verteilung der Ressourcen auf verschiedene Gebiete sein. Der "Preis" der Güter und Dienstleistungen wird in Arbeitszeiteinheiten gemessen werden. Der Preis von Produktions- und Konsumgütern setzt sich aus den Produktionskosten (Rohmaterialien, Abnutzung der Maschinerie, ...) und den Arbeitskosten (ebenfalls in Arbeitszeiteinheiten gemessen, die zur Herstellung der Güter zur Reproduktion der Arbeitskraft zu einem bestimmten Mindeststandard notwendig sind) zusammen. Die Zeit für die Mehrarbeit über diesen Kostpreis hinaus wird von der Gesellschaft gemäß einer bestimmten Investitionsrate festgelegt.

Sobald eine Prioritätenliste von den Produzenten nach einer kollektiven Debatte festgelegt wurde, muß die Produktivität der Ressourcen in den verschiedenen Branchen berechnet werden. Dazu ist es nicht notwendig, zuerst die "Kosten" der Ressourcen zu bestimmen und dann ihre relative Produktivität herauszufinden. Die Planungsorgane würden im voraus wissen, wieviele Arbeitsstunden notwendig wären, um z.B. eine weitere Tonne Stoff zu produzieren, oder wieviele Autos durch den Einsatz von derselben Anzahl Arbeitsstunden fabriziert werden können.

Dadurch wäre es möglich herauszuarbeiten, mit welcher Verteilung der Gesamtarbeit die größte Nettoproduktivität zu erzielen ist. Außerdem würden Vergleiche mit den unmittelbar zurückliegenden Produktionsperioden herangezogen werden. Diese können, ein entsprechendes Informationssystem vorausgesetzt, von landesweiter bis hin zur betrieblichen oder gar Abteilungsebene durchgeführt werden. Der "Geld"- oder "Preis"-Ausdruck dieser relativen Produktivitätsgrößen wäre ganz und gar sekundär. Der wichtige Aspekt besteht vielmehr darin, daß jeder Vergleichsmaßstab stabil und auf die ganze Ökonomie anwendbar sein muß.

 

Verteilung der Konsumgüter gemäß der Arbeitszeit

 

Das Prinzip, das die Verteilung des gesellschaftlichen Produkts unter den Arbeitern reguliert, wird von der Gesellschaft der unmittelbaren Produzenten selbst konkret ausgearbeitet werden müssen. Marx und Engels legen folgendes Prinzip nahe:

"Demgemäß erhält der einzelne Produzent - nach den Abzügen - exakt zurück, was er ihr (der Gesellschaft, Anm. der Red.) gibt. Was er ihr gegeben hat, ist sein individuelles Arbeitsquantum. Z.B. der gesellschaftliche Arbeitstag besteht aus der Summe der individuellen Arbeitsstunden. Der individuelle Arbeitstag des einzelnen Produzenten ist der von ihm gelieferte Teil des gesellschaftlichen Arbeitstags, sein Anteil daran. Er erhält von der Gesellschaft einen Schein, daß er soundso viel Arbeit geliefert (nach Abzug seiner Arbeit für die gemeinschaftlichen Fonds), und zieht mit diesem Schein aus dem gesellschaftlichen Vorrat an Konsumtionsmitteln soviel heraus, als gleich viel Arbeit kostet." (Karl Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms, MEW 19, S. 20)

Marx sprach sich für dieses Prinzip aus, da er die Unmöglichkeit erkannte, unmittelbar zu einer Gesellschaft ohne verallgemeinerten Mangel und damit ohne die Notwendigkeit, die Verteilung begrenzter Ressourcen zu regulieren, überzugehen. Er war sich schon darüber im klaren, daß die konkreten Ver­teilungsnormen- und methoden der Konsumtionsgüter vom Entwicklungsstand der Produktionskräfte der Gesellschaft abhängen.

Je entwickelter eine Ökonomie am Beginn des Übergangs zum Sozialismus, desto mehr wird sie die Bedürfnisse der Bevölkerung direkt zum Ausgangspunkt machen. Es ist daher in den entwickelten kapitalistischen Ländern wahrscheinlich, daß die sozialistische Transformation mit einem recht hohen Niveau garantierten ,d.h. einem von der individuellen Arbeitsleistung unabhängigen, Zugangs zu den Konsumgütern beginnen wird.

Obwohl das für all jene Güter unmittelbar angewandt werden kann, die ohnehin von Branchen mit sehr hoher Produktivität erzeugt werden und wo auch die freie Verteilung die Nachfrage nicht über die Produktionskapazitäten steigern würde, so sollte man nicht erwarten, daß das für die Mehrzahl der Güter in naher Zukunft möglich ist. Wenn wir uns den Sozialismus als weltweites System vorstellen, dann wird die Nachfrage (d.h. die Bedürfnisse der Bevölkerung, nicht die Fähigkeit zu zahlen) nach Gütern über Jahrzehnte so groß sein, daß sie die Produktionskapitazitäten übersteigt, selbst wenn wir ein beschleunigtes Wachstum für die meiste Zeit der Existenz eines Arbeiterstaates annehmen.

Das impliziert die Tatsache, daß Arbeits-Coupons entsprechend der von einem Individuum geleisteten Arbeit verteilt werden, daß ein bestimmtes Ausmaß an sozialer Ungleichheit in der Übergangsperiode existiert. Diese Ungleichheit wird unter anderem die Notwendigkeit widerspiegeln, gesellschaftliche Anreize zur Durchführung bestimmter Aufgaben (anstrengende oder eintönige Arbeit, Nachtarbeit, ...) zu schaffen.

In anderen Fällen werden es Arbeiter vorziehen, zusätzlich disponible Zeit gegen Arbeits-Coupons zu tauschen. Diesen Tendenzen zur Ungleichheit müssen Grenzen gezogen werden und, wo möglich, sollen andere Möglichkeiten entwickelt werden, um dieselben Ziele mit anderen Mitteln zu erreichen. So kann z.B. eine regelmäßige Jobrotation - was eine Ausbildung voraussetzt, die die Ausübung sehr verschiedener Tätigkeiten im Laufe eines Lebens ermöglicht - dazu führen, daß alle Arbeiter für eine befristete Zeitspanne bestimmte "unbeliebte", besonders anstregende oder eintönige Aufgaben als gesellschaftliche Verpflichtung verrichten müssen, womit nicht mehr eine Minderheit für ihr ganzes Leben zur Ausübung ebendieser Tätigkeit gezwungen wäre.

Marxisten lehnen von vornherein die Vorstellung ab, daß die Arbeiter Lohnzuschläge für Produktivitätzuwächse ihres Unternehmens erhalten sollten. Erstens sollten verschiedene Produktiviätsniveaus generell nicht die Grundlage für verschiedene individuelle Entschädigungen sein, da die Produktivitätsunterschiede selbst das Resultat makro-öko­no­mischer Investitionsentscheidungen der gesamten Gesellschaft sind. Produktivitätszuwächse sollen nicht nur individuellen Arbeitern oder Unternehmen, sondern der Gesellschaft insgesamt in Form niedrigerer Preise, höherer Qualitität und Auswahl an Produkten zugute kommen. So hat jeder Arbeiter dasselbe, kollektive Interesse an einer, in ihrer Gesamtheit möglichst effektiven Ökonomie, um so die Kosten der Produkte möglichst zu reduzieren. Die Arbeiter als Konsumenten werden daher direkt von ihren Errungenschaften als Arbeiter in der Produktion profitieren.

 

Das Problem der qualifizierten Arbeit

 

Alle Formen konkreter menschlicher Arbeit, egal ob qualifiziert oder nicht, sind von einander qualitativ verschieden und als konkrete Arbeit nicht durch ein gemeinsames Maß vergleichbar. Das ist auch der Grund, warum im Kapitalismus jede konkrete Arbeit, einschließlich der qualifizierten, aus über den Tausch auf abstrakte Arbeit reduziert wird.

Marx betrachtete die qualifizierte oder "komplizierte" Arbeit als ein Vielfaches der einfachen Durchschnittsarbeit. Heißt das, daß die qualifizierte Arbeit im Sozialismus höher entlohnt werden soll oder daß sie mehr Wert als die einfache Arbeit produziert?

Im Kapitalismus, wo die Kosten der Ausbildung und Reproduktion der qualifizierten Arbeit privat getragen werden müssen, erhält die qualifizierte Arbeit höhere Löhne. In der Übergangsperiode zum Sozialismus ist das immer weniger der Fall. Dazu Engels:

"In der sozialistisch organisierten Gesellschaft bestreitet die Gesellschaft diese Kosten, ihr gehören daher auch die Früchte, die erzeugten größern Werte der zusammengesetzten Arbeit. Der Arbeiter selbst hat keinen Mehranspruch." (Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dührung, MEW 20, S. 187)

Die Bezahlung der qualifizierten Arbeit muß also dieselbe wie für alle Arbeit sein. Der Egalitarismus ist das leitende Prinzip. Es besteht auch keine Grund dafür, diese Sicht mit Hinweis auf (angeblichen) größeren physischen oder geistigen Verschleiß der qualifizierten Arbeit zu relativieren.

Ebensowenig schafft die qualifizierte Arbeit mehr Wert pro Arbeitsstunde. Dies würde einer Verwechselung des Tauschwerts einer Ware mit ihrem Gebrauchswert gleichkommen. Ihr "Tauschwert" mag aufgrund höherer Reproduktionskosten höher sein, aber das schafft noch keine mysteriöse Kraft, mehr Wert zu schaffen als die einfache Arbeit. Aber die höheren Reproduktionskosten müssen im Planung und Kalkulation während der Übergangsperiode eingehen.

Nehmen wir z.B. eine Projekt, das für 10 Tage Arbeit von 100 Arbeitern erfordert, von denen 10 eine spezielle Ausbildung brauchen, die insgesamt 200 Arbeitstagen entspricht. In diesem Fall muß die Gesellschaft die 200 Tage in Rechnung stellen und das Projekt verkörpert daher 1200 Arbeitsstunden. Daher verkörpert die qualifizierte Arbeit in diesem Sinne ähnlich dem konstanten Kapital im Kapitalismus eine Proportion vergegenständlichter Arbeit, die auf den Wert des Endprodukts übertragen wird, obwohl sie nicht mehr Wert als die unqualifizierte Arbeit schafft.

 

Wahl

 

Es wurde immmer wieder behauptet, daß die Auswahl an Produkten und Dienstleistungen ebenso wie die Zufriedenheit der Konsumente abnehmen würde, sobald die Waren nicht über den Markt verteilt würden. Selbst die Markt-Sozialisten meinen, daß der Markt und das Preissystem die besten Mechanismen wären, um die riesigen Informationsmengen über die Bedürfnisse und Wünsche der Konsumenten zu verarbeiten. Ihrer Ansicht nach ist es unmöglich, diese Informationen in einem planwirtschaftlichen System zu verarbeiten, ohne sie zu verfälschen. Daher könne der Plan nicht sicherstellen, daß die Produktion der (immer wieder wechselnden) Bedürfnisstruktur entspreche.

In Wirklichkeit wird die Befriedigung der Konsumenten im Kapitalismus angebotsseitig durch das Streben nach Profitmaximierung und die Konkurrenz, nachfrageseitig durch die Einkommensstruktur eingeschränkt. Zum ersten ist der Konsument (im modernen Kapitalismus) wegen der enormen Distributionskosten zur Vermarktung jeder Ware (ein­schließ­lich der Werbung) gezwungen, die Produkte über ihren Produktionskosten zu kaufen. Überlicherweise machen diese um die 50% des Marktpreises aus. In der Übergangsperiode werden diese Kosten eliminiert oder auf ein Bruchteil reduziert werden, um eine Reihe von Verkaufsstellen und Informationszentren für die Konsumenten zu schaffen.

Zweitens werden im Kapitalismus die Konsumgewohnheiten nicht von den Konsumenten, sondern von den Produzenten bestimmt. Die zunehmende Monopolisierung der Produktion ermöglicht den Unternehmen z.B. Produkte mit geringeren Profitspannenen durch solche mit höheren zu ersetzten, was gleichzeitig mit einer Verringerung der Wahlmöglichkeiten für die Konsumenten einhergeht (z.B. die Ersetzung der LP durch die CD). Die Bekleidungsindustrie bestimmt die Saisonmoden nach den Bedürfnissen der Unternehmen, ihren Umsatz zu erhöhen.

Andererseits ist die Wahlmöglichkeit für den Konsumenten irrelevant, solange er über kein entsprechendes Einkommen verfügt. Der Wohnungsmarkt z.B., eine wichtiger Sektor der modernen Industrie- und Dienstleistungsbranchen, expandiert aufgrund der Nachfrage einer ganzen Schicht von Zweitwohnungs- bzw. hausbesitzern, während die Obdachlosigkeit wächst. Die Vorstellung, daß die Marktpreise ein adäquates, ja gar das beste Mittel wären, um die Konsumentenwünsche aufzuzweigen, ist daher grotesk. Alles was sie zeigen ist eine bestimmte Einkommensstruktur, die durch Ausbeutung und kapitalistische Eigentumsverhältnisse bestimmt ist.

In der Übergangsperiode zum Sozialismus wird die Befriedigung der Bedürfnisse sowohl hinsichtlich ihrer gesellschaftlichen Breite, d.h. hin zu den heute Verarmten, wie auch hinsichtlich ihrer Vielfältigkeit und Qualitität massiv ausgeweitet werden (z.B. durch die Herstellung von Produkten, die den Bedürfnissen einer Minderheit der Konsumenten entsprechen und die bisher nicht profitabel gewesen ist).

 

Die Lösung des Informationsproblems

 

Das Problem, wie Veränderungen der Konsumbedürfnisse in einem sozialistischen Verteilungssystem behandelt würden, führt eine Reihe bürgerlicher Ökonomen (besonders Hayek) zur Behauptung, daß kein sozialistisches Planungsorgan jemals ein hinreichend komplexes Gesamtbild der vereinzelten Konsumentenbedürfnisse erlangen könnte, um für wechselnde Bedürfnisse kreative Lösungen hervorzubringen.

Demgegenüber verweisen wir erstens darauf, daß "konstruierte Preise" in der ersten Phase des Übergangs notwendig sind und diese leicht als Signal verwendet werden können, das bestimmte Schwankungen der Konsumnachfrage widerspiegelt. Daher kann auf Veränderungen des Lagerbestandes folgendermaßen reagiert werden: (a) durch Preisbewegungen, die ein kurzfristiges Ungleichgewicht zwischen Angebot und Nachfrage kompensieren und (b) durch Veränderungen in den jeweiligen Produktionsabläufen. Das Wertgesetz würde in keinem Fall eine Rolle spielen, da sich höhere Preise nicht in Extra-Profite verwandeln und dadurch den Produktionsprozeß regulieren könnten.

In einem späteren Stadium des Übergangs, wenn der Sozialismus schon in greifbare Nähe gerückt und elektronische Arbeitscoupons verwendet werden, um den Zugang zu den verbleibenden Konsumgütern zu regulieren, die noch nicht im Überfluß vorhanden sind, wird die computergestützte Verarbeitung der Informationen über die Lagerbestände in den meisten Fällen ausreichen, um möglichen Güterengpässe noch vor ihrem Auftreten entgegenzuwirken. Daher werden in diesem Stadium keine "Preisschwankungen" mehr notwendig sein, um Angebot und Nachfrage zu regulieren.

Hinsichtlich des allgemeinen "Informations­problems", das von Hayek und andere ausgemacht haben, ist noch anzumerken, daß sich kein gesunder Arbeiterstaat auf ein überzentralisiertes Planungssystem stützen würde. Die Überzentralisierung und die chronischen Verwerfungen des Planungssystems in den degenerierten Arbeiterstaaten spiegelten die Bedürfnisse der parasitären Bürokratie wider und kein "Prinzip". Im Gegenteil: die Planung in einem proletarischen Staat muß gleichzeit zentralisiert und dezentralisiert sein.

Wie kann das erreicht werden?

Die proletarische Planung impliziert eine Hierarchie der Entscheidungsprozesse. Jede Entscheidung sollte auf der Ebene getroffen werden, die am besten zu ihrer Durchführung geeignet ist bzw. die von ihr betroffen ist. Mit anderen Worten: jede Entscheidung soll auf einer Ebene getroffen werden, die so hoch wie notwendig und so niedrig wie möglich ist. Daher würde z.B. eine Einscheidung über Verbesserung des Produktemix einer bestimmten Fabrik auf lokaler (d.h. betrieblicher) Ebene gefällt werden, wenn sie die gesamte regionale oder staatliche Produktionsstruktur nicht grundlegend tangiert. Das vor Ort vorhandene Wissen kann so genutzt werden, um diese Entscheidungsfindung zu optimieren.

Andererseits wird eine übergeordnete (re­gionale, nationale oder internationale) Ebene zur Entscheidungsfindung dann am günstigsten sein, wenn technologische oder ökologische Entwicklungen eine bestimmte Anpassung der Produktionsabläufe in einer Reihe von Fabriken erfordern. Im Prinzip existiert keine Schwierigkeit damit, die Entscheidungsfindung auf den Problemen angemesse Ebenen zu übertragen, solange es keine Bürokratie gibt, die versucht, die (zentrale) Macht in ihrer Hand zu konzentrieren und solange keine embryonische Bourgeoisie existiert, die die ökonomische Entscheidungfindungen in ihren privaten Händen dezentralisieren will.

 

Innovation und Wettbewerb

 

Viele Autoren, die einer zentralisierten Planung wohlwollend gegenüberstehen (z.B. Itoh, Elson), und alle Marktsozialisten argumentieren, daß eine dezentralisierte Planwirtschaft Schwierigkeiten hätte, die Innovation zu stimulieren, wenn es keinen Wettbewerb zwischen den Unternehmen gäbe. Sie treten dafür ein, die Verbesserung der Technik aber auch der Qualität der Produkte dadurch zu stimulieren, daß es den Unternehmen gestattet wird, über eine Art "Monopolprofit" zu verfügen, wenn sie eine neue Produktionsreihe oder neue Produktionsprozesse entwickeln.

Diese Sicht muß zurückgewiesen werden. Statt individuelle und gesellschaftliche Bedürfnisse miteinander in Ausgleich zu bringen, bringt sie sie miteinander in Konflikt. Es würde, wenn nicht de jure, so doch de facto bedeuten, das Privateigentum anzuerkennen (z.B. an einem Patent für ein neues Produkt oder einer neuen Technik). Es würde die schnelle Verbreitung neuer Erfindungen in der gesamten Gesellschaft bremsen und einen Teil der Industrie zu Ineffektivität und relativer Rückständigkeit verurteilen.

Ähnlich wie in der "Lohn"frage muß die Innovation so belohnt werden, daß die gesamte Bevölkerung davon profitiert, einschließlich des Teils, der sie hervorbringt. Darüberhinaus werden Forschung und Entwicklung mehr und mehr aufhören, die Aufgabe eines spezialisierten Teils der gesellschaftlichen Arbeitskraft zu sein, und Teil der Arbeit aller Beschäftigten werden.

Nichtsdestotrotz kann der "sozialistische Wettbewerb" eine kreative Rolle spielen. Nicht alle Formen der Konkurrenz sind destruktiv und unterminieren die Solidarität der Produzenten.

 

Planung in der Übergangsperiode: Das Beste vom Kapitalismus übernehmen und verbessern!

 

Das Ziel der Regulation der Ökomomie muß darin bestehen, "das Planungsprinzip über den ganzen Markt auszudehnen, ihn dadurch zurückzudrängen und zu eliminieren" (Trotzki 1923). Im Grunde ist die Erfahrung des Kapitalismus im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert das beste Argument für den Übergang zum Sozialismus. Es ist wichtig, diese Entwicklung zum Ausgangspunkt unserer Überlegungen zu machen.

Die inneren Tendenzen der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise selbst beweisen die Möglichkeit der Planung auf immer umfassenderer Stufenleiter und demonstrieren zugleich die Notwendigkeit, das Privateigentum an Produktionsmitteln zu zerstören, um die inneren Möglichkeiten der Planung zu entfesseln.

In den letzten 20 Jahren fanden im Rahmen der globalen kapitalistischen Produktion Entwicklungen statt, die unter dem Namen "Qualitätsrevolution" bekannt wurden und überhaupt erst die sogenannte "schlanke Produktion" möglich gemacht haben. Der Erfolg des japanischen Kapitals in den 1970er Jahren aufgrund dieser Technik und die zunehmende Konkurrenz am Weltmarkt in den 1980er Jahren zwangen diese Technologien allen Produzenten auf.

Die "Qualitätsrevolution" basiert darauf, den Arbeitern mehr Kontrolle über den Produktionsprozeß zu geben. Die bis dahin seit den 1920er Jahren vorherrschende Produktionsmethode war das Fließband. Diese Produktionstechnik reduzierte die Arbeiter auf einfache Handgriffe, die von Band bestimmt waren.

Während das Fließband die Produktivität enorm erhöhte, so tat sie das auf Basis einer geringen Qualität der Produktion. Qualitätskontrollen mußten am Ende der Bänder installiert werden, um Fehler zu korregieren, die durch diese geisttötende und verschleißende Produktionsmethode verursacht wurden. Im Rahmen der Fließbandproduktion wurden die Arbeiter auf Automaten reduziert, ohne Kontrolle über den Produktionsprozeß oder gar das Arbeitstempo.

Die "Qualitätsrevolution" mußte versuchen, eine der spezifischen Entfremdungseffekte des Fließbandes zu überwinden. Die Arbeiter werden nun in Teams organisiert, die eine größere Bandbreite unterschiedlicher Aufgaben erfüllen. Vor allem sind sie jetzt für die Qualität der Produkte verantwortlich und das bedeutet auch, daß sie mehr gehört werden und größere Kontrolle über den unmittelbaren Arbeitsprozeß ausüben.

Aber die größere Kontrolle der Arbeiter über den Arbeitsprozeß erfordert gleichzeitig erhöhte Loyalität zum "eigenen Betrieb", da sie ansonsten zu einer Gefahr für den Kapitalismus selbst wird. Sie erfordert eine Harmonie der Klassen in der Produktion. Angesichts des Klassenkampfes infolge wirtschaftlicher Krisen bricht diese auf. Die Qualitätsproduktion gerät im Kapitalismus in Widerspruch zur Konkurrenz und zum anarchischen Charakter des Kapitalismus.

Die Qualitätsrevolution trägt auch zur Überwindung der Trennung von Hand- und Kopfarbeit bei. In der Vergangenheit wurden Produkte ohne viel Rücksicht auf den Produktionsprozeß entworfen. Sie wurden dann von den Ingenieuren modifiziert, um mit existierenden Maschinen produziert zu werden.

Bei der "Qualitätsproduktion" werden die Arbeiter schon im Entwicklungsstadium einbezogen. Die Produkte werden so entworfen, daß sie von der Planung weg fehlerfrei sind. Das ist nur möglich, wenn Konstruktion, Entwicklung und Produktion als gemeinsames Team zusammenarbeiten. Das hat auch die traditionellen Herrschaftsbereiche der Manager zum Einsturz gebracht. Früher mußte in jeder Phase eine Reihe von Abteilungen durchlaufen werden, von denen jede irgendetwas zu sagen hatte, um ihre Existenz zu rechtfertigen. Als Resultat der neuen Methoden konnte nicht nur der Entwicklungszeitraum der wichtigsten Produkte halbiert werden - sie sind auch besser konstruiert und für die Arbeiter leichter zu produzieren.

In ihrer entwickeltsten Form nimmt diese Integration die Form der gleichzeitigen (simultanen) Konstruktion an, die zeigt, daß der Kapitalismus gezwungen ist, die von der gesellschaftlichen Teilung der Arbeit verursachten Störungen zu minimieren. Bei der gleichzeitigen Konstruktion werden die Probleme von Planung, Entwicklung und Produktion simultan behandelt. Die Entwicklung wird gleichzeitig mit den Produktionsmethoden zu ihrer Realisierung betrachtet, womit sich beide wechselseitig beeinflussen. Das erfordert die Integration von Entwicklung, Materialbeschaffung und Produktionstechnik. Es erfordert immer engere Kooperation zwischen den Planungszentren, den Zulieferfirmen und unterstützenden Dienstleistungen.

So wie die "Qualitätsproduktion" und die "schlanke Produktion" die zunehmende Vergesellschaftung des Arbeitsprozesses im Rahmen der Fabrik oder des Unternehmens beinhalten, so tendieren sie auch zur Vergesellschaftung der Produktion zwischen den Fabriken, den Zulieferern und allen anderen Vertragspartnern, die sie unterstützen.

Die Produktionsunternehmen verlangen nicht nur fehlerfreie, sondern auch die Bedürfnisse der Produktion möglichst nicht übersteigende Zulieferungen - just in time-Lieferungen. Die besten japanischen Fabriken lagern nur Bestandteile für zwei Stunden im voraus. Um dieses Effektivitätsniveau zu erreichen, müssen die Zulieferer an die Computer der Produzenten angeschlossen sein, den Produktionsfluß und damit die angeforderten Teilprodukte kennen und sicherstellen.

Das nächste Ziel des kapitalistischen Arbeitsprozesses ist die computerintegrierte Produktion (CIM). Diese- die automatisierte Fabrikhalle, die elektronisch mit Kauf, Verkauf und Lagerhaltung verbunden ist - ist bis heute nicht realisiert. Das eigentliche Problem dabei stellt die Komplexität dieser Aufgaben dar - und diese Komplexität resultiert aus der Anarchie des Marktes. Falls die Käufe und Verkäufe im voraus bestimmt werden könnten, wäre CIM durchführbar. Ihre volle Realisierung erfordert das Ende des Konjunkturzyklus - eine Unmöglichkeit im Kapitalismus.

Selbst die Millionen, die Unternehmen in die Marktforschung und Vermarktung der Produkte stecken, um die Konsumentenwünsche vorauszusehen, können diese Schwierigkeit nicht lösen, da das eigentliche Problem nicht in den Wünschen der Konsumenten, sondern in ihrer Kaufkraft besteht. Dieses Element ist das unberechenbarste von allen, da es selbst vom Konjunkturzyklus und der Akkumulationsbewegung abhängt. Je mehr sich die Veränderungen des Arbeitsprozesses weiterentwickeln, um so mehr erfordert ihre effektive weitere Entwicklung die Überwindung des Widerspruchs zwischen privater Aneignung und gesellschaftlicher Produktion.

 

Planungsstrukturen und der Halb-Staat

 

Die Einwände gegen die Planwirtschaft haben mehrere Ausgangspunkte. Während einige von der Behauptung ausgehen, daß Innovation und Effektivität mit diesem Wirtschaftssystem unvereinbar wären, insistieren andere darauf, daß es ohne Markt unmöglich wäre, die notwendigen Informationen über Konsumentenbedürfnisse zu aggregieren, da die Zentralisation, die mit dem Staatseigentum einhergeht, den Informationsfluß behindert und eine besondere Funktionärsschicht erzeugt, die eigene Interessen entwickelt und die Operation des Plans behindert.

Dieser Einwand beruht auf einem Unverständnis des Charakters des Staates in der Übergangsperiode. Dieser Staat ist ein Halb-Staat. Als solcher behält er charakteristische Züge aller Staaten bei: eine zentralisierte bewaffnete Macht, um die Revolution gegen innere Gegner und äußere Drohungen zu verteidigen. So lange es Mangel und Ungleichheit gibt, wird die eine oder andere Form notwendig sein, die die Distributionssphäre reguliert.

Doch dieser Staat ist nicht länger "außer Kontrolle", nicht mehr von der Gesellschaft gesondert und ihr entgegengestellt. Es ist nun vielmehr ein Staat, der mit der Gesellschaft verbunden und ihr nicht mehr gegenübergestellt ist. So sind z.B. die Staatsbediensteten keine permanente Kaste mehr, sondern besehen nun aus Individuen, die für bestimmte Aufgaben ausgebildet sind und in diesen Funkionen rotieren müssen. Darüber hinaus sind sie der Bevölkerung verantwortlich und von ihr jederzeit abberufbar, womit die Möglichkeiten zur Entwicklung irgendwelcher Sonderinteressen, die denen der Masse der Produzenten und Konsumenten entgegenstehen, sehr wirksam eingeschränkt sind.

Kurz gesagt, der Prozeß politischen und wirtschaftlichen Austausches zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft ist flüssig. Selbst die Marktsozialisten können sich einen derartig demokratischen Staat nicht ausmalen. Alle von ihnen vertreten ein System der parlamentarischen Demokratie und die Trennung der politischen Sphäre vom Management der Wirtschaft. Damit verteidigen sie die Notwendigkeit einer Bürokratie, die zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft vermittelt.

Die Strukturen des Planungsapparats arbeiten nach dem Prinzip der gewählten repräsentativen Demokratie. Mitglieder der Arbeiterverwaltungskomitees und Vertreter der Konsumentenassoziationen bilden auf allen Ebenen (lokal, regional, national) gemeinsame Ausschüsse. Die nationalen Planungskommissionen sind für die Entwicklung allgemeiner Parameter für die gesamte Investion und Konsumtion verantwortlich, einschließlich der geplanten Proportionen zwischen verschiedenen Sektoren (z.B. Transport, Produktion, Dienstleistungen).

Diese werden zur Diskussion und Detailbetrachtung an regionale und lokale Komitees wie auch an die einzelnen Sektoren weitergeleitet. Die Verwaltungskomitees in den Fabriken, in der Landwirtschaft und den Büros werden dann die Implikationen dieser allgemeinen Planungsziele für ihren Bereich diskutieren.

Auf regionaler und lokaler Ebene werden die Organisationen bestimmte Ziele für einzelne Industrien ausarbeiten, darunter Vorschläge für den Produktenmix für den Endverbrauch. Diese Vorschläge gehen dann an die zentralen Institutionen zurück, wo ihre Implikationen für die Herstellung von Halb-Fertigprodukten und Rohstoffen herausgearbeitet werden.

Der Plan sollte so dezentralisiert wie möglich sein. Das heißt, daß bindende Entscheidungen auf der untersten Ebene, die für ein bestimmtes Problem sinnvoll ist, fallen sollen. So kann z.B. dieselbe Menge Holz zur Befriedigung einer Reihe verschiedener Konsumbedürfnisse verwendet werden. Die Fabriken, die das Holz verarbeiten, verfügen über Maschinen, um eine ganze Reihe verschiedener Produkte aus diesem Rohstoff herzustellen. Welche Gebrauchswerte mit diesen von einem bestimmten Quantum menschlicher Arbeitskraft hergestellt werden, sollte so weit wie möglich von den Endverbrauchern bestimmt werden.

Klarerweise haben aber die Bedürfnisse des Endverbrauchs Auswirkungen auf davor liegende Schritte der Produktion und damit auf die Planung. Der Aufwand für Transport, Lagerhaltung, Verpackung usw. wird je nach Entscheid über die zu produzierenden Gebrauchswerte wechseln und das wird daher mit den dazu notwendigen Unternehmen abgesprochen und verhandelt werden müssen, bevor eine endgültige Entscheidung gefällt wird.

Der Grund für die Dezentralisierung liegt darin, daß das Zentrum nicht allwissend ist. Die notwendige Information zur Entscheidung über die Allokation der Ressourcen können angesichts des Charakters ebendieser Informationen und des Tempos, mit dem gehandelt werden muß, prinziell nicht vom Zentrum gewußt werden.

Selbst der beste Plan der Welt, der mit vollkommenen freier Information, ohne jedes bürokratische Eigeninteresse und mit den besten Computern ausführt wird, bleibt eine Annäherung an die tatsächliche Tätigkeit, eine Hypothese.

Er bedarf permanenter Kontrolle und Anpassung. In letzter Instanz ist die Ökonomie der Übergangsperiode von den Bedürfnissen der Konsumenten bestimmt, d.h. die Akkumulation wird durch die Wünsche und demokratischen Entscheidungen der Masse der Arbeiter, den Konsumenten ihrer eigenen Produkte, gesteuert. Die Konsumenten müssen daher auch die Resultate des Plans beurteilen.

Es gibt viele Wege, wie der Plan verifiziert und korregiert werden kann. Einige Produkte werden ohne große technische Probleme durch Qualitätskontrollen tagtäglich als ganzes oder in Teilen verbessert und an die Bedürfnisse angepaßt werden können. CIM-Technologie und die Kontrolle der Lagerbestände können dazu verwendet werden, die Produktion mit der Nachfrage in Einklang zu bringen, auch wenn das nicht vollständig mit den ursprünglichen Planvorhaben übereinstimmt.

Auch der Markt (d.h. der Austausch von Konsumgütern gegen Löhne) wird hier am Beginn eine Rolle spielen. Dafür gibt es zwei Gründe. Erstens fällen Konsumenten tagtäglich eine Reihe von Entscheidungen (z.B. bezüglich der Nahrungsmittel). Diese Wahlmöglichkeit muß auch weiter sichergestellt werden. Aber es wird hier nur möglich sein, in Trendgrößen zu planen, d.h. gestützt auf die Erforschung der Konsumentenwünsche und vergangenen Konsums. Doch klarerweise müssen die Arbeiter das Recht und die Möglichkeit haben, ihre Konsumbedürfnisse täglich zu ändern (und zu befriedigen).

Außerdem ist es möglich, daß sich die Konsumwünsche für bestimmte Produktarten in der Periode zwischen der Planformulierung und der Fertigstellung ändern.

Hinzu kommt, daß die Kontrolle der Lagerbestände und just-in-time-Produktionstechniken bei manchen Produkten die Herstellung nur mittel- oder langfristig mit der Nachfrage in Deckung bringen kann.

In diesen Fällen müssen sich die Konsumenten entscheiden, ob sie die Produkte zu dem Preis, der den Produktionskosten entspricht, kaufen wollen. Falls sie das nicht tun, müßte der Preis der Nachfrage angepaßt werden.

Da der Plan bereits auf der Basis einer erwarteten Nachfrage und dementsprechender Produktionsketten ausgearbeitet wurde, kann es nur eine Veränderung im Rahmen dieser Nachfragestruktur geben. Die Preise würden dann über den Kostpreis steigen bzw. unter diesen fallen, um die Produkte an die Verbraucher zu bringen.

Diese Phänomene können dann zur Erstellung der Planungsvorgaben für die nächste Periode in Rechnung gestellt werden. Marktpreise müssen in diesem Kontext Preise sein, die dazu dienen, den Markt zu bereinigen.

Sie dürfen - anders als bei den Markt-Sozialisten - nicht zu automatischen Produktionssteigerungen als Folge erhöhter Profitabilität eines Unternehmens führen. Falls das gestattet wäre, würde es zu beachtlichen Störungen des gesamten Plansystems und zu Disproportionen in der Ökonomie kommen. Daher müssen für die nächste Planungsperiode immer Überlegungen, die von der Gebrauchswertsseite und der Kalkulation der Arbeitszeit ausgehen, zentral sein.

 

Nachsatz: Der Triumph des Sozialismus und der Übergang zum Kommunismus

 

Der Sieg des Sozialismus - des niederen Stadiums des Kommunismus - kann unmöglich in einem Land errungen werden. Er wird auf globaler Ebene entstehen oder gar nicht. Der Sozialismus setzt schon voraus, daß ein bestimmtes grundlegendes Niveau der Befriedigung ökonomischer und kultureller Bedürfnisse für die gesamte Weltbevölkerung durch die Anwendung der oben dargestellten Mittel erreicht wurde.

Im Kommunismus geht die politische Ökonomie in die Verwaltung von Sachen über. Es gibt dann keinen Bedarf für eine gesonderte Sphäre der Politik mehr - die Demokratie selbst hat sich überlebt. Die Gebrauchsgüter existieren in einem derartigen Überfluß und werden mit so wenig menschlicher Arbeit hergestellt, daß die Menschen ihre Persönlichkeit in anderen Formen kreativer Verausgabung frei entfalten können.

In der Linken ist es üblich geworden, die marxistische Konzeption des Überfluß als den üblichen Zustand auf dem Sektor der Güterproduktion im Kommunismus lächerlich zu machen.

Das alte Argument, daß die menschlichen Ziele und Wünsche prinzipiell unbegrenzt und daher niemals voll befriedigbar sind, wird gegen die Möglichkeit des Überflußes in der kommunistischen Gesellschaft ins Treffen geführt.

Dieses Argument geht fälschlicherweise davon aus, daß die sozialistische Gesellschaft einfach die im Kapitalismus vorherrschenden Konsumgewohnheiten fortschreiben wird. Erstens wird die kommunistische Gesellschaft die Arbeitsproduktivität so sehr erhöht haben, daß nicht nur die grundlegenden Bedürfnisse aller, sondern auch ein gut Teil der darüber hinausgehenden für jedermann befriedigt werden können. Das wird eine Vertiefung der menschlichen Beziehungen erlauben, neue Formen des kulturellen Ausdrucks werden entstehen. Der Entwicklung der menschlichen Persönlichkeit wird generell mehr Gewicht zukommen.

Zweitens werden die langfristigen Veränderungen der Sozialstruktur im Kommunismus auch eine ganz und gar andere Psychologie der Menschen hervorbringen. Mit dem Verschwinden des Warenfetischs, der allgemeinen Konkurrenz und der heute bestehenden Notwendigkeit materieller Kompensation für die Entfremdung wird auch die heute mit den materiellen Produkten verbundene Wichtigkeit (Prestige etc.) verschwinden.

Drittens ermöglicht die bewußte Selbstverwaltung der Gesellschaft im Kommunismus die Schaffung eines langfristigen Gleichgewichts zwischen der Menschheit und der restlichen Natur.

Es wird für alle einsichtig sein, daß der Ausdehnung der Industrie (zumindest in dem Sinn, wie sie heute verstanden wird) aus ökologischen Gründen bestimmte Grenzen gesetzt werden müssen. Diese drei Elemente werden zusammengenommen eine Situation schaffen, wo der materielle Reichtum, selbst wenn es keinen absoluten Überfluß gibt, ein Niveau erreicht, wo die Akkumulation aufhört, der Motor der Gesellschaft zu sein. Statt dessen wird die menschliche Entwicklung wesentlich sozial, kulturell und psychologisch bestimmt sein.

Theses: The Anti-Imperialist United Front (1987)

Published by the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International (predecessor organization of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency) in 1987, www.thecommunist.net

 

 

 

The overthrow of Marcos, the growth of Sinn Fein, the struggle of the Tamils for Eelam all involve a conflict with imperialist or a fight for bourgeois democratic demands rights. These theses of the MRCI outline the tactics of communists towards non-proletarian classes in this struggle.

 

1. The tactics of communists in relation to bourgeois and petit-bourgeois led movements coming into struggle with imperialism was outlined in essence at the Second Congress of the Communist International (CI). Lenin's theses put forward the possibility of forming an 'alliance' with these forces on two conditions. One, that they were in practice leading a struggle against imperialism and two, that such an alliance placed no restrictions on the communist's independent activity aimed at organising the workers and peasants against imperialism. The theses sowed no illusions in either the willingness or the ability of the 'national revolutionary' movement i.e. the bourgeoisie, to take the struggle through to the end, to break the stranglehold of imperialism. They emphasised that 'a determined fight' needed to be waged against painting these movements in communist colours. Independence of propaganda, organisation and action was necessary because the national bourgeoisie would vacillate and compromise in the struggle against imperialism.

 

2. The tactic of the united front in the colonial and semi colonial world was developed more fully at the Fourth Congress of the CI. Its development was part of the discussion and elaboration of the united front tactic undertaken between the Third and Fourth Congresses, in particular in relation to the social democratic parties and their trade unions in Europe. In the period directly after the Russian Revolution and during the revolutionary crisis which gripped Europe after World War I there was little stimulus to develop the Bolsheviks' 1917 practise into generally applicable tactics for the CI, since the mass influence of the social democratic leaderships appeared to be on the point of collapse. As Trotsky said 1f we consider the party is on the eve of the conquest of power and working class will follow it, then the question of the united front does not arise.' Within the CI the creation of communist parties, the building of soviets and the armed insurrection were the tasks central to a revolutionary situation. By 1921, however, it was clear that this revolutionary situation had passed. Capitalism, aided and assisted by the treacherous social democratic and labour leaders, had managed a temporary stabilisation. Recognising the changed situation and the strength of reformism in Western Europe, CI launched the united front tactic at the Third Congress under the slogan 'to the masses'. After this Congress the ECCI developed the tactics that became known as the united front.

 

3. The workers' united front was a tactic, or a series of related tactics, aimed at winning the mass of the working class to revolutionary communism, to the programme of the revolutionary party and for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not through propaganda alone but through action, and in struggle:

 

'Only by leading the concrete struggles of the proletariat and by taking them forward will the communists really be able to win the broad proletarian masses to the struggle for dictatorship.' (Theses on Tactics 3rd Congress).

 

As a tactic the united front was subordinate to this strategic goal. To turn the united front from a tactic to a strategy, where bringing it into being (or its maintenance once achieved) becomes the perpetual long term goal, can only lead to the liquidation of the revolutionary programme; a necessary consequence of the continuation of a long term alliance with the non-revolutionary parties or organisation.

 

4. Not withstanding the common method of the united front which underpins both the workers united front and the anti-imperialist united front (AIUF), there are important differences between them. The workers united front in the imperialist nation rests on the unity in action of the workers organisations and their parties. Communists fight within such united fronts, however limited, to develop the demands of the common struggle, through the use of transitional demands, to a struggle to overthrow capitalism. This necessitates the fight to develop the united front, in acute periods of class struggle, into soviets and the struggle for the workers government. The AIUF however develops on the terrain of minimum or democratic demands-the struggle against imperialist domination, for national independence and unity, for democracy and democratic rights. Into this struggle it seeks to draw, not only the workers' organisation, but those of the petit-bourgeoisie – the organisations especially of the peasantry, the small urban property holders, the professionals, teachers etc-and even sections or elements of the national bourgeoisie itself, where ever the latter is compelled to resist imperialism by the pressure of the masses. The fight by communists to win the workers, poor peasants and the urban petit-bourgeoisie to the perspective of socialist revolution, to transform the struggle for democracy and against imperialism into a struggle against capitalism and for the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the extent that it is successful, must break up and replace the AIUP. The fight to win the masses from the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaders and their parties, the struggle to create workers soviets in the towns and soviets of poor peasants and agricultural proletarians in the countryside, is part of the struggle for a workers and peasants government; a government where the peasants have been broken from their bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaders and won to the support of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

5. The united front by its very nature is a temporary agreement. Nine times out of ten, where there exists no especially favourable relation of forces or political situation, the reformist or nationalist leaders will refuse it and do their utmost to prevent their rank and file from participating. Where it is struck it will be around clear, precise and limited objects of real struggle. Its primary aim is not to produce joint propaganda (if it did it would be a propaganda bloc not a united front) but agitation around the action goals of the united front.

 

6. The Communist International made clear that the united front was not just an 'appeal to leaders'; even less was it a proposal for a purely parliamentary combination or bloc:

 

The united front means the association of all workers, whether communist, anarchist, social democrat, independent or non-party, or even Christian workers, against the bourgeoisie. With the leaders if they want it so, without the leaders if they remain indifferently aside, and in defiance of the leaders and against the leaders if they sabotage the workers united front.' (ECCI April 1922)

 

Thus the appeal for the united front was both from 'above and below'. But, 'the real success of the united front depends on a movement "from below", from the rank and file of the working masses' (Theses on Tactics 4th Congress).

 

7. The striking of the united front does not for one moment mean agreeing to end criticism. For the CI there were to be no diplomatic silences or glossing over of past or present vacillation and betrayals by the reformist leaders. Communists within the united front;

 

‘While accepting a basis for action must retain the unconditional right and possibility of expressing their opinion of the policy of all working class organisations without exception, not only before and after the action is taken but also if necessary during its course. In no circumstances can these rights be surrendered.' (ECCI December 1921) Further more to maintain the united front in a bloc with reformist leaders during or after a betrayal in action, would be to become complicit in it. If it is important to know when to make a united front, it is equally important to know when to break it and thus issue an immediate warning to the rank and file workers that treachery is afoot.

 

8. The type of organisation appropriate to the united front is an organ of struggle not of propaganda for a programme. As such, a trade union is in one sense a united front. More correctly a united front creates ad hoc fighting bodies commensurate to the task in hand. These may be strike committees, councils of action and at the highest level soviets. Such bodies, vital for the struggle, strengthen the pressure on the reformist leaders to 'break with the bourgeoisie'. A united front can therefore take many forms, it can be extremely episodic-for a single demonstration, rally, strike---or it can be of a 'higher' form, involving a series of actions and agreements-a military bloc, a rank and file opposition in the trade unions like the British 'Minority Movement' of the 1920's. Whatever form it takes, it is a block for action in defence of working class interests, in which the communists neither boycott nor submerge their own programme, and they 'march separately, strike together'.

 

9. The united front is not limited to defensive trade union or extra-parliamentary struggles. It is taken on to the electoral arena where reformist parties dominate the working class. It also takes up the question of government and governmental demands. The resolution on tactics at the Fourth Congress makes clear that the slogan for a workers' government 'is an inevitable consequence of the united front tactic'. The partial struggles of the working class inevitably run up against the structures of the capitalist state, against the government of the day and its policies. The communists have to provide society wide answers to the problems facing workers, they place demands on the workers' leaders, put forward a programme for a workers' government. But these are not just left as demands; they are fought for within the rank and file of the working class belonging to all workers' parties and none, in a united front struggle to implement them via workers' control in the factories, through the fight for soviets, via the general strike etc.

 

10. The basis of the anti-imperialist united front rests on the clash of interests between the peoples of the imperialised countries and the imperialist bourgeoisie. Imperialism promotes industrial development in the imperialised countries but in a stunted and lopsided form. The imperialist banks and monopolies dominate their economies, extracting super-profits in the form of repatriated profits and usurious interest payments on loans. They impose their constrictions on the economies through the imperialist agencies such as the IMP, World Bank, etc, and inevitably because of the impossibility of imposing such exactions democratically over any period, in alliance with the most reactionary elements tied to imper­ialism-the military hierarchy and landed oligarchy. The demand for 'independent economic development', for alleviation from debt, for state capitalist industrialisation, protectionism, land reform, and constitutional democracy, reflects the needs of those sections of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie which suffer most from the straight jacket of imperialist domination. These demands can lead to episodic clashes between the bourgeoisie of the semi­ colony and the imperialist bourgeoisie (or its agents within the country) as in the case of the struggle against Somoza in Nicaragua.

 

11. However, because of the weakness of the bourgeoisie in the semi-colonial world, the degree to which important sections of it are tied economically to imperialist capital itself, and most importantly, because of its fear of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses, which threatens its own rule as well as that of the imperialists, the national bourgeoisie only exceptionally leads or throws its weight behind serious struggles against imperialism. As a result in many countries in the twentieth century the leadership of the anti-imperialist movements has fallen to the petit­ bourgeoisie. But in the vast majority of cases its programme has remained faithful to that of the bourgeoisie despite the attempt to delude the workers by cloaking itself in socialist or communist colours - Nyrere's 'African Socialism', Mugabe and the Ethiopian Derg's 'Marxism-Leninism', the FSLN's Sandinism, etc.

 

12. Where the bourgeoisie or sections of it, or the petit­ bourgeoisie, enters into a struggle with imperialism it is obliged to draw and lean on the mass of workers and peasants. In such cases it is the duty of communists to enter such a struggle alongside these forces. The anti ­imperialist united front aims to break the hold of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalists over the masses, in struggle. The communists neither stand aside in a sectarian fashion nor do they hide their criticisms of these leaderships or the goals for which they struggle. Unlike the popular front which is a cross class coalition subordinating the interests of the working class to the programme of the bourgeoisie, the AIUF confines itself to concrete joint actions, specific agreements which take forward the struggle against the imperialists, within which the communists retain both freedom of criticism and propaganda. Such united fronts, given the compromising role of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalist, are likely to be extremely episodic and temporary. There is no question of tailoring the slogans of struggle to those considered acceptable to the bourgeoisie, let alone 'reserving a seat' in the united front.

 

13. The conclusions Trotsky drew for the International Left Opposition from the Chinese revolution of 1923-7 were not that the tactic of the AIUF had to be abandoned but that its opportunist distortion led to disaster. Under the leadership of Bukharin and Stalin the tactic had been gutted of its revolutionary content The Chinese Communist Party abandoned its independence and submerged itself inside the bourgeois Koumintang (KMI). It had, under the guidance of the Comintern painted up the KMT leadership in communist colours, lauding its anti-imperialist credentials and abandoning all criticism of it. It had boycotted the demands of the workers and peasants which threatened to rupture its alliance with the bourgeoisie. It had turned the AIUF into a popular front which delivered the Chinese proletariat into the hands of the counter-revolution.

 

14. Stalin and Bukharin were aided in this by the lack of clarity of the governmental slogans put forward by the CI in its discussions of the AIUF tactic. The Chinese revolution proved the slogan of the 'Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry' not only redundant but capable of being perverted into a call for a separate bourgeois stage of the revolution. In this sense, in Trotsky's words, the slogan became a 'noose' hung round the neck of the proletariat. It implied that a bourgeois solution to the struggle against imperialism was the goal which the proletariat fought for with the united front. The Chinese events reaffirmed the necessity of the perspective of the permanent revolution, the struggle for soviets and the workers and peasants government Such a perspective does not mean that the AIUF can only be struck around such demands. In periods of defeat or where the masses are emerging from long periods of dictatorship, the united front may well be agreed around democratic demands, rights of free speech and demonstration, release of all political prisoners etc. The fight for a democratic constituent assembly can become an important goal of an AIUF where it is part of the struggle to overthrow an imperialist backed dictatorship. The fight for the expropriation of the landowners and for an agrarian revolution would figure centrally in the struggle for such an assembly in most parts of the imperialised world. The fight for these demands are above all conducted to strengthen the independence of the working class and its organisations alongside those of the peasants-via demonstrations, strikes, committees of struggle, soviet type organisations, etc.

 

15. The AIUF in no way implies giving support to so called 'anti-imperialist governments'. Communists give no support to bourgeois governments. We support any serious action of such governments taken against imperialist interests, e.g. the nationalisations or expropriations of imperialist holdings. Communists would support and participate in military actions taken against imperialism i.e. in Nicaragua against the contras and US advisors, in Argentina against Britain in the Malvinas, fighting in such a struggle for the arming of the workers, for democratically controlled workers militias. Similarly where the political struggle reaches the stage of civil war against a dictatorship, communists might enter a military united front, whenever possible as an independent armed force accepting a common discipline in battle, making agreements under a common discipline. Aiming to strike a united front around common goals of struggle-immediate elections to a constituent assembly, legalisation of trade unions and strikes, etc. We recognise that military blocs are one form of the united front-a form not qualitatively different to united action for political goals, 'war is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means'. When we call for the military victory of such movements as the FMLN, FSLN, etc, fighting against imperialism, its agents or a dictatorship, normally a slogan raised where the civil war or revolutionary crisis has reached a decisive stage, we are not endorsing the victory of their political programme. Within such a united front we struggle for our programme, to break the workers and peasants from the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois leaderships and enter onto the road of struggle for a workers and peasants' government

 

16. It is therefore not permissible to give the AIUF in a governmental form since the proletariat cannot share with bourgeois forces the goal of a common government. While we can join a common struggle for the convening of a constituent assembly along with petit-bourgeois and even bourgeois forces, our governmental slogan remain the workers and peasants' government. No bourgeoisie will tolerate a genuine working class government i.e. one that rests upon the armed workers and serves their immediate and historic interests, and the proletariat must under no circumstances support a government of its own exploiters. Any government which claims to be 'above classes' or to represent 'the people as a whole' is a deception. The proletariat can indeed defend or seek to bring about a democratic regime, utilising democratic slogans insofar as these mobilise for a struggle against dictatorship and for the rights of the workers, poor peasants and the oppressed petit-­bourgeoisie. But such struggles and slogans should never be erected into a self-contained or self-limiting stage. Soviets must replace the freest parliament, and the workers' dictatorship the democratic republic. From the moment that democratic liberties have been won-de facto as well as de jure - they become an arena for the proletariat's struggle for power.