50 Years Ago: Bert Ramelson buries Lenin (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What happened when the BBC’s ‘Newsday’ interviewed the industrial organiser of the Communist Party would have been more suitable for the Goon Show, or Monty Python. Bert Ramelson, keeping a perfectly straight face, point-blank denied everything that the Communist Party was founded on and peddled for over thirty years!

True it is, as he said in the interview, that he only joined the CP in 1936; whereas some of us knew it intimately since 1920. However, that should not prevent him (or anybody else) knowing the facts. The interviewer did not know a great deal about the subject, and questioned from a prepared brief.

But even the political department of the BBC had heard that the Communist Parties were founded on ‘Leninism’. That is, seizure of power by an intrepid, resolute minority of ‘professional revolutionists’, leading the working class — who would then lead the ‘toiling masses’ (meaning peasants) to socialist victory. For thirty years a vast mass of pamphlets, books and newspapers flogged the Leninist dogma of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, meaning minority action.

Many able writers waded patiently through Marx’s work to show that, from The Communist Manifesto onward, Marx never used this then-popular French slogan to mean anything else than majority democratic methods. For instance, Lucien Laurat, who in Marxism and Democracy quotes The Communist Manifesto:

‘The first stage in the working class revolution is the constitution of the proletariats as the ruling class, the conquest of democracy.’

No use! For thirty years CP writers and speakers denounced democracy and exhorted the workers to follow ‘Marx’s best disciple’ Nikolai Lenin. Parliament was a useless ‘gasworks’, elections a waste of time (although they regularly took part in them, but ‘only for propaganda, comrade’). The state would be smashed and ‘bourgeois’ parliaments replaced by Soviets, ‘the workers’ democracy’ (…)

Understandably, the interviewer politely raised the question of the CP’s present policy, and its past. ‘Was it not the case that the CP had advocated ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the past?’

‘Not any more’, replied Bert. Not any more! And do you know why, dear reader? Let Bert tell you. Because there has been ‘so much misunderstanding of what Marx really meant’. He actually said this. ‘Marx meant the action of the vast overwhelming majority’, said Bert; the CP has not used the phrase in any document since 1950, to avoid any more misunderstanding.

[From article by Horatio, Socialist Standard, March 1976]

 

 

Blogger's Note: 

Regular readers of the blog will know that 'Horatio' was the pen name of the late Harry Young. Harry Young was especially placed to comment on the early history of the CPGB as he was a founder of member of that organisation, serving for a period on its Executive Committee as a representative of the Young Communist League.  In an article in the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard, entitled 'Why I joined the SPGB', he goes into greater detail. It's worth a read.

Action Replay: Icy conditions (2026)

The Action Replay column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in the Russian city of Sochi (see Action Replay for December 2013 and April 2014). There was plenty of controversy attached to them, with environmental problems prominent and up to a third of the cost of staging the Games lost in corruption and embezzlement. Many cities are now reluctant to bid for the Games, because of the costs involved.

This year’s Games were held last month in Milano Cortina, meaning Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo (which, according to Wikipedia, is ‘an upscale summer and winter sport resort’). Again, there were problems with corruption (Guardian 31 January): in October three men were arrested and charged with controlling the distribution of drugs in Cortina, controlling some of the nightclubs and forcing the local council into awarding Games-related construction contracts (the bill for the Games will be well over £4bn). The methods of intimidation allegedly used included threats and beating people up.

The Open Olympics 26 report managed to get the Games’ organisers to publish their financial dealings online (see PDF – tinyurl.com/nczd45hp). This has shown that much of the money being spent will be on road projects which won’t be completed until after the Games are over.

And it’s not just in Cortina. A new ice hockey venue in Milan was still unfinished at the end of January, with the hospitality boxes and press area far from ready. There had also been complaints that the rink was too small and the ice was unsafe. Demonstrations took place in the city over the environmental impact of the Games, to which the police responded with tear gas and water cannons, and there were reports of sabotage of railway lines.

Another controversy has been over the role that the thuggish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will play. Let’s ignore jokes to the effect that Trump misunderstood the kind of ice needed at the Games. Describing them as ‘a militia that kills’, the mayor of Milan said they would not be welcome in the city. It appears that in fact a separate ICE department, Homeland Security Investigations, will provide intelligence and so on, as it has done at previous large sporting events, but will not conduct any kind of enforcement operations (officially, anyway).

As at some previous Olympics, there will be a new sport at this one, ski mountaineering (skimo), a combination of skiing and mountain climbing. At least it’s more clearly a sport than breakdancing, introduced at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: A more dangerous place (2026)

Editorial from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the world has become a yet more dangerous place with states with nuclear weapons throwing their weight about, bullying weaker non-nuclear states and preparing for war with each other, some are suggesting reviving a campaign for nuclear disarmament so that at least the next world war won’t threaten the future of humanity.

We are all in favour of making the world working class aware of the dangers of nuclear war, but it is futile to expect capitalist states which possess nuclear weapons to agree to give them up, and so it also is futile to support a campaign to demand that they do. To campaign for this impossible demand would divert time and energy from campaigning for world socialism, the only framework within which disarmament, non-nuclear as well as nuclear, will ever be achieved.

Wars are built into capitalism. Preparations for war, the threat of war and actual wars will remain one of capitalism’s features as long as it lasts. Wars are fought between capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, investment outlets, and strategic points and places to acquire and protect these. Initially, such disputes are dealt with through diplomacy.

However, in such diplomatic negotiations, the military strength of the sides plays an important part in the outcome. In international relations between states, ‘might is right’ and always was even before Trump openly admitted this to be the case. All states, therefore, have an interest in equipping themselves with the most up-to-date and most destructive weapons that they can afford, including nuclear.

As long as capitalism continues, it can be expected that more and more states will seek to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Some will succeed despite the efforts of the current nuclear-armed states to try to prevent this, in their own interest to deprive weaker rivals of the added bargaining strength that possessing such weapons would give them.

Even if nuclear weapons were to be outlawed (which they won’t be), wars would still continue and cause the immense destruction and mass killing that they always do, as can be seen from the current non-nuclear wars going on in Ukraine and Gaza.

The only way to get rid of nuclear weapons and the threat of a nuclear war and its consequences for the future of humanity is to get rid of capitalism. This means that the efforts of socialists should be aimed at persuading workers to take political action to end capitalism and bring in its place a world society without frontiers in which the natural and industrial resources of the planet will be the common heritage of all. In short, worldwide socialism.

Then, and only then, will the threat of war, non-nuclear as well as nuclear, be removed and humanity be in a position to set about re-orienting production away from seeking profits and accumulating capital to solely and directly meeting human needs on the basis of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’.

SPGB Snippets: Who do Samaritans call? (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

February 25, 2026

Driven to despair by capitalism? UK workers can always call the Samaritans, a help-line run by unpaid volunteers. Sadly, those volunteers also face capitalism’s cruelties, in the form of money-saving cut-backs, office closures and a requirement to work in isolation at home.

‘Having sacked volunteers who dared voice concerns about the proposed closure of half of its branches, the Samaritans’ HQ has slapped them with serious misconduct charges and imposed lifetime bans…’ Whistleblowers speak anonymously, fearing reprisals: ‘Leadership have used the concerns and complaints process like the thought police. They are on career paths, some of them very well paid… most of them will never have had to talk a caller down from suicide…’ (Private Eye, 5 February 2026).