Anti-imperialism is not anti-capitalism (2020)

From the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

We continue our series on the origins of the mistaken view that workers in the advanced capitalist countries share in the exploitation of those in the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ countries.

Link to Part 2 

In his 1920 Preface to Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin comments:

‘Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries’.

 Colonialism is not quite the same thing as imperialism. It entails the annexation of, and direct political control over, other territories by a state which is not necessarily true of imperialism. For Lenin, political independence was indeed achievable ‘within the bounds of world imperialist relationships (A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 1916).The classical Marxist diffusionist view held that, with capitalism’s development and the increasing internationalisation of capital, nationalism would decline as a social force. Unfortunately that hasn’t yet happened. However, here we are focussing on what ought to be the attitude of socialists towards nationalism.

Early twentieth century Marxists, like Rosa Luxemburg, were already arguing that nationalism had become reactionary. Capitalism had outlived its usefulness to progress, having prepared the ground for socialism by raising society’s productive potential to an unparalleled degree. While that potential continues to expand with technological innovation it is increasingly being squandered in all sorts of ways.

Nationalist struggles

Lenin’s take on nationalism was different. The rise of monopoly capitalism associated with imperialism entailed the ‘super-exploitation’ by a few oppressor (imperialist) nations of the oppressed (colonised) nations on the capitalist periphery. Nationalist movements in the latter, were – allegedly – qualitatively different from those in nineteenth century Europe in an era of ascendant capitalism. As Jim Blaut summarises:

 ‘The nationalism of colonies and semi-colonies is called into being by the intensification of exploitation and oppression. In an important way, this is a new phenomenon…, it cannot be assimilated to the theory of national movements which emerge during the rise of capitalism and have as their purpose or goal the simple creation of a bourgeois state. The nature of colonialism is such that producing classes suffer along with whatever young or incipient bourgeoisie may exist. Therefore the national liberation movements in colonies and semi-colonies are profoundly different from the national movements of earlier oppressed nations such as those in non-colonial portions of the Tsarist Empire. It is not innately a bourgeois struggle against feudal forces for the creation of a classical bourgeois state. It is a multi-class struggle directed primarily against imperialism’ (The National Question: Decolonising the Theory of Nationalism, 1987).

Since imperialism and monopoly capitalism were linked, this suggested that ‘national liberation struggles’ could serve as the harbinger of ‘global proletarian revolution’ which would likely erupt first where the impact of imperialist exploitation was harshest – namely, those economically backward countries still transitioning to capitalism. That required workers there to take the lead in this struggle, so it ‘could be turned onto a socialist trajectory or a non-capitalist trajectory which would result in socialism’. National struggle was thus clothed in the rhetorical language of class struggle. Trotsky similarly opined: 

‘The sectarian simply ignores the fact that the national struggle, one of the most labyrinthine and complex but at the same time extremely important forms of the class struggle, cannot be suspended by bare references to the future world revolution’ (Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads, 1939).

For all Trotsky’s labyrinthine attempt to assimilate class struggle to national struggle, he was attempting to square the circle. ‘National struggle’ can only be advanced by watering down, and compromising, the class struggle. It is an attempt to impose from above a fake commonality of interests between classes whose own interests are diametrically opposed.

Though Lenin himself rhetorically committed himself to the concept of ‘proletarian internationalism’ and the repudiation of ‘national chauvinism’, it is difficult to see how one could ever successfully prosecute any ‘national liberation struggle’ without also fostering national chauvinism as its motivating ethos.

In any event, subsequent global developments exposed the fundamental flaws in his thinking. Particularly after the Second World War, vast swathes of the ‘developing world’ were granted political independence from their erstwhile colonial masters. Indeed, since then there have been further – successful – attempts at achieving political independence though these have tended to follow a somewhat different trajectory, resulting in the formation, along mainly ethnic lines, of new breakaway states as the product of civil war within existing states – for example, Southern Sudan. These latter developments do not fit well within the Leninist framework and its simplistic division of the world into ‘oppressor countries’ and ‘oppressed countries’.

In any case, history has emphatically vindicated Luxemburg’s repudiation of Lenin’s argument that socialists should support national liberation struggles to expedite a ‘global proletarian revolution’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, capitalist relations of production along with an accompanying capitalist mind-set has become firmly entrenched in the countries concerned. Hence the unedifying spectacle of erstwhile ‘Marxist’ guerrilla fighters transmogrified into well-heeled business people or corrupt politicians, hobnobbing with multi-nationals in a bid to pimp out the nation’s cheap labour force to overseas investors while cracking down on dissent and spiriting away a sizeable chunk of the nation’s revenue into some private offshore account. If you are going to ride the capitalist tiger don’t be surprised where it takes you.

World revolution

Yet ignorant Marx critics still routinely trot out the ridiculous refrain that Marx ‘got it all wrong’ in that the revolutions he hoped for occurred first, not in the advanced countries, but on the capitalist periphery. What these critics overlook is that these were not the revolutions Marx had in mind. Rather, they were capitalist revolutions enabling the transition to capitalism.

In the German Ideology Marx suggested the coming communist (socialist) revolution would likely be spearheaded by the advanced countries precisely because communism presupposed the advanced development of the productive forces: 

‘Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of the productive forces and world intercourse bound up with them’.

We don’t need to take the idea of instantaneous global revolution too literally. Obviously, there will be some time lags involved in the spatial transformation from global capitalism to global socialism. However, Marx insisted on the absolute necessity of majoritarian socialist consciousness before that could happen. The logic of his diffusionist model suggested that if one part of the world had a socialist majority, other parts would not be far behind.

For Lenin, the ‘law of uneven development in capitalism’ meant it was impossible to achieve socialism simultaneously across the world. But, this was a reference to the objective preconditions for socialism – not the subjective preconditions – and, if anything, it would support Marx’s contention that a socialist revolution would likely occur first in the advanced countries where the productive forces were most developed. But Lenin’s ‘law’ has long been completely irrelevant to the socialist objective, anyway. Socialism can only be a global alternative to capitalism and it is the productive potential of the world as a whole that crucially matters, not any one part of it.

Why then his obsessive preoccupation with this ‘law’? A clue can be found in his article On the Slogan for a United States of Europe (1915):

‘The victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries.’

This implies not only the uneven development of the productive forces but the uneven growth of socialist consciousness itself. Lenin’s view was that workers in the advanced countries, by benefitting from imperialism, would be much more resistant to socialist thinking compared with their counterparts in the backward countries where national liberation struggle would more readily translate into ‘proletarian revolution’.

So when he spoke of organising ‘socialist production’ within a single country initially, the logic of his argument about how he saw a global proletarian revolution unfolding suggested he had in mind an economically backward country. However, it is precisely in such a country that material conditions would be least propitious for socialism. Furthermore, insofar as socialism and capitalism can no more coexist than one can mix oil and water, this would imply severing links with global capitalist supply chains exacerbating the hardships experienced there.

Lenin’s attempt to argue his way out of this impasse was disingenuous. Instead of the ‘victorious proletariat of that country’ literally ‘organising their own socialist production’ what he really had in mind was a process of ‘building socialism’ involving the implementation of state capitalism which he saw as being organically linked to socialism.

Ironically, far from advocating autarky, Lenin favoured closer integration with global capitalism and imperialist investment in the Soviet economy under his New Economic Policy his government was forced to adopt in 1921:

‘Get down to business, all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy’ (The New Economic Policy, 1921).

This partnership with Western capitalists continued under Stalin, the former providing much of the capital and expertise to finance Soviet industrialisation. Prominent among these was Henry Ford to whom Stalin expressed his gratitude, calling him one of the world’s greatest industrialists and obsequiously adding, ‘May God preserve him’ (history.com/this-day-in-history/ ford-signs-agreement-with-soviet-union).

Who is ‘imperialist’?

This was not just a one-way street, however. Just like the ‘Monroe doctrine’ enunciated by the American president James Monroe in the early nineteenth century, opposing further colonisation in the Americas by European powers only in order to hypocritically assert US imperialistic hegemony over the region, so the same can be said of Soviet imperialism.

The realisation that workers in the West were not going to rise up to support the Soviet regime prompted a strategic shift by that regime towards supporting nationalist struggles in developing countries as a means of undermining its Western rivals. For all its paper commitment to the principle of ‘national self-determination’, this did not stop the Soviet Union exercising its own political (and economic) muscle when it came to those countries falling within its own sphere of influence, installing puppet regimes and threatening or carrying out military intervention in countries like Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

All this prompts the question – what exactly is meant by ‘imperialism’ – and, by extension, ‘anti-imperialism’ – today? Lenin developed his theory of imperialism in opposition to Kautsky’s ‘ultra-imperialism’ which envisaged the major imperialist powers forming a federation which would make military conflict largely redundant or irrational – a pious hope, indeed.

But Lenin’s own theory was shaped by the then existing reality of colonialism which in the post-war era has largely disappeared. At the same time we have witnessed the rise of giant multinational corporations, some with a larger revenue base than most states. If imperialism is about the conflict between nation-states how does this hold up in an era of ‘neo-liberal’ governance?

Concerning Lenin’s distinction between ‘imperialist countries’ and ‘oppressed countries’, Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi, have identified ‘10 countries at the most that fit the bill as imperialist’-– essentially the G7 countries plus one or two small states – by analysing cross-border flows of profit, interest and rent. As Roberts notes, little has changed in the century since Lenin wrote on the subject: ‘it’s still the same countries’ (bit.ly/35j9Y98).

But if being an ‘imperialist country’ means being a net ‘recipient of cross-border income flows’, then it seems improbable you will ever get rid of imperialism while capitalism (and its ‘cross-border income flows’) exists since what we are talking about here is essentially a zero sum game. Eliminating one imperialist power simply creates a vacuum into which another will inevitably step.

Thus, nationalistic ‘anti-imperialism’ has proved to be not only a fundamental distraction from the class struggle for socialism but also fundamentally futile on its terms.

Robin Cox

Emancipation or Palliation? (1931)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

About five years ago the Socialist Party published a pamphlet entitled “Socialism,” which examined the position of the working class and indicated the only way to effect a change in that position. The Communist Party has recently issued a pamphlet, professing to cover similar ground, entitled “Capitalism or Socialism in Britain.”

An old tag has it that comparisons are odious. Let us be odious.

Our pamphlet contains forty-eight pages. Mr. Palme Dutt’s effort consists of only thirty-two similar pages. The Socialist Party’s pamphlet is sold for 2d. The Communist Party charge 3d. In spite of their superior financial resources, they want half as much again for two-thirds of the material. So much for quantity, Now for quality.

The Communist pamphlet contains no actual information that has not been given by the S.P.G.B., but it does contain statements which are false. Mr. Dutt repeats the long-ago exploded legend that Socialism has been established in Russia. We are told that the workers there own and control the means of production, in spite of the fact that the Soviet Government, like other capitalist Governments, has a large and growing national debt upon which it pays high rates of interest to the investors. It has just announced its intention of floating another £160,000,000 loan, upon which it will pay 10 per cent. (Manchester Guardian Weekly, June 12th). Although it is common knowledge that agricultural production in Russia is still largely in the hands of independent peasant concerns, and that the so-called collective and State farms are run on capitalist lines, Mr. Dutt glibly informs us that all production is organised according to a single plan (p. 16). “All production,” he goes on, “is directed solely to supplying the workers’ needs. It is for use, not profit.” Yet a few paragraphs further on he speaks of “the mighty Socialist productive machine flooding the world with cheap goods with which they (the capitalists) cannot compete.” Perhaps next time Mr. Dutt deals with this matter he will be kind enough to explain why British, American and German capitalists in particular are supplying Russia with the machinery upon which the success of its economic plans depends. Is it because they have conceived a laudable desire to assist in the “building-up of Socialism “?

The Labour Party, of course, comes in for a good deal of Mr. Dutt’s criticism, but he keeps judiciously quiet concerning the electoral support which the Communist Party gave to the Labour Party for years. We have yet to hear what the working-class (or even the Communist Party) have gained by this activity. In passing, it is interesting to note that where, as at Pontypridd and St. Rollox, by-elections are fought minus a Communist candidate, the Communist Party have taken to recommending the workers to write “Communist” across their ballot papers. Communist champions have, in the past, been remarkably fond of sneering at this form of action when advocated by the S.P.G.B. Now that their support has been ruthlessly spurned by the Labour Party, they have no choice but “to add” (in their own words) “to the gaiety of returning officers.”

While the Communist Party was busily engaged in 1923 and 1924 in securing the return to Parliament of ex-Coalition. Government office-holders, such as Clynes and Henderson (thus proving false to the Third International’s slogan, “Remember the Imperialist War”), the Socialist Party was consistently opposing the Labour Party. Our withers are unwrung, therefore, by Mr. Dutt’s diatribe against “Socialist Imperialism.” Unlike his party, we have never had truck nor lot with any such monstrous hybrid. We can, therefore, criticise his support of Indian Nationalism with a clean record so far as working-class interests are concerned. The maintenance of the British Empire is no concern of ours, but neither is “the national liberation of the colonial peoples,” which Mr. Dutt describes as “the first duty of free workers of Britain.” Experience of Nationalist movements from Ireland to China convinces us that the workers in these respective countries have nothing to gain by giving them support. Mr. Dutt attempts to deny that national liberation “means the strengthening of the native exploiters against the masses.” “On the contrary,” he says, “it is just British imperialism that maintains, buttresses and builds its power on alliance with the most reactionary blood-sucking native elements in each country—the decaying Indian

princes, the priestly powers, the landlords (often created ariilicially by British rule), the middlemen traders, the moneylenders. Remove the sword of British Imperialism which maintains and protects these, and the working masses will soon deal with them and advance to Socialism” (p. 30). It is necessary to note that he leaves unmentioned the newer industrial capitalist element who are the strongest supporters of the Nationalists and have probably the most to gain from some form of independence in India, and confines himself to attacking the “reactionary,” i.e., the feudal and semi-feudal survivals among the Indian ruling class, and the actual agents of the British Government. He ignores, in other words, the fact that a more modern mode of exploitation is developing in India and giving rise to a demand for political changes in accordance therewith. The Indian capitalists want a place in the sun on an equality with the capitalists of the rest of the world. Mr. Dutt’s pretence that the “working masses of India” are ready to “advance to Socialism,” once the British are out of the way, is the most pitiful childishness.

Those of his readers who are inclined to fall for that sort of thing would do well to ponder upon the fate of the followers of the Chinese Communists in 1927. Having helped the Nationalist Kuo-Min-Tang Party in its struggle with the “reactionary elements,” thousands of workers were butchered in the streets of Shanghai and Canton when the Kuo-Min-Tang was in the saddle. Whether the Indian Nationalists will succeed in acquiring a similar measure of power remains to be seen. One thing, however, is certain : their power will not be that of the workers and peasants.

The rest of Mr. Dutt’s pamphlet betrays a similar conflict between his revolutionary pretensions and reformist proposals. Although he tells us in his preface “that no policy of patching up capitalism can avail,” he cannot resist the temptation to suggest a few patches. Hence (on p. 28) we get the usual “Communist” demands for “minimum wages, seven-hour day, fortnight’s holiday with pay, workers’ control in the factories.” All this, mind, as an immediate result of “workers’ rule,” the capitalists having been “expropriated” on page 24 !

These demands, of course, do not present anything essentially different from the programme of the I.L.P. or the Liberal Yellow Book. Scientific exploitation is quite consistent with minimum rates, shorter hours, regular holidays, and factory committees. In Russia and Germany, where the works councils have statutory rights, they have long ago been subordinated to the Trade Unions and used by the State in capitalist interests. Shop stewards prove as helpless against these interests as do Trade Union leaders. Yet Mr. Dutt, like the Communists generally, goes on chanting the stale old “industrialist” tags about building up the workers’ power in the factories. Ex-shop-stewards who had to join the Communist Party because, with the post-war slump, they lost their industrial jobs, talk with their tongue in their cheeks about “workers’ control” ; not forgetting to mention, however, the necessity for the “leadership” of the Communist Party. That leadership has cost the workers dear wherever it has been accepted. Instead of “the capitalist State” being smashed, it has been the workers” heads, if nothing worse. The way to power is through organisation based upon knowledge. The Socialist Party through its literature assists in supplying’ that knowledge free from the confusing mixture of obsolete and unscientific Radicalism. Emancipation, not palliation, is our watchword.

Eric Boden

The anti-imperialist delusion (1998)

From the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the course of the 20th century socialism, as a word, came to be transformed from a doctrine and aim associated with the emancipation of the working class into a doctrine and aim associated with the coming to power of nationalist, anti—imperialist elites in the economically less developed parts of the world.

The starting point was the coming to power in Russia in 1917 of an elite which had inherited its ideology from the workers movement but which in practice used the state to develop Russia economically and turn it into a power that challenged the domination of the world by America, Britain and France. As such it provided an attractive model for modernizing elites in other countries suffering from economic backwardness and domination by the advanced industrial capitalist states of the West.

The trouble was that this elite continued to use the language and terminology of the workers movement with which it had once been associated. Thus they described their seizure of power as a “workers’ revolution” arid their regime as a “workers’ state”, the first breakthrough by the international workers movement which workers everywhere had a duty to support. And they described the accumulation of capital under the auspices of the state which they were carrying out, not as the state capitalism it was, but as “socialism”.

Marx, who had pointed out that when studying history you should not analyze social and political movements by what they said they were doing but by the material results of what they did, would have been the first to understand (if not to appreciate) how socialism, indeed how his own theories, had become the banner under which a quite different struggle was fought out.

The English Revolution of the 1640s was carried out under an ideology derived from the Old Testament. The French Revolution of the 1790s was carried out under one derived from Roman times. The Russian Revolution, which was the equivalent in Russia of these anti—feudal revolutions, was carried out under an ideology derived from the workers movement but it was no more an attempt to establish socialism than the English Revolution had been to establish the New Jerusalem or the French to revive the Roman Republic.

Although it was Mao who replaced the slogan “Workers of the World, Unite” by “Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite”, the roots of this change of perspective go back to Lenin.

Lenin’s highest stage

In exile in Switzerland in the middle of the First World War Lenin wrote a pamphlet which he entitled Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In it he argued that, through a process which had been completed by the turn of the century, capitalism had changed its character. Industrial capital and bank capital had merged into finance capital, and competitive capitalism had given way to monopoly capitalism in which trusts, cartels and other monopolistic arrangements had come to dominate production. Faced with falling profits from investments at home, these monopolies were under economic pressure to export capital and invest it in the economically backward parts of the world where higher than normal profits could be made. Hence, Lenin went on, the struggle by the most advanced industrial countries to secure colonies where such “super-profits” could be made.

Lenin exaggerated both the degree to which capitalism had become monopolistic and the difference between the rate of profit at home compared with in the economically backward parts of the world. But it was the political implications of his theory that were to prove the more damaging to the workers movement.

When, after 1917, Lenin became the head of the Bolshevik regime in Russia the theory was expanded to argue that the imperialist countries were exploiting the whole population of the backward areas they controlled and that even a section of the working class in the imperialist countries benefited from the super—profits made from the imperialist exploitation of these countries in the form of social reforms and higher wages,

This was nonsense in terms of Marxian economics which does not measure the level of exploitation by how high or low wages are but by reference to the amount of surplus value produced as compared with the amount of wages paid, whether high or low. By this measure the workers of the advanced countries were more exploited than those of the colonies, despite their higher wages, because they produced more profits per worker.

Lenin’s expanded theory made the struggle in the world not one between an international working class and an international capitalist class, but between imperialist and anti-imperialist states. The international class struggle which socialism preached was replaced by a doctrine which preached an international struggle between states.

The Russian revolution itself was situated in an anti-imperialist context. The whole thrust of Marx’s own analysis of capitalism was that the workers movement would first triumph in the economically advanced parts of the world, not in a relatively backward economic area like Russia. Lenin explained away this contradiction by arguing that Marx had been describing the situation in the pre-imperialist stage of capitalism whereas, in the imperialist stage which had evolved after his death, the capitalist state had become so strong that the breakthrough would not take place in an advanced capitalist country but in the weakest imperialist state. Tsarist Russia had been the weakest link in the chain of imperialist countries and this explained why it was there that the first “workers revolution” had taken place.

This was tantamount to saying that the Russian revolution was the first “anti-imperialist” revolution, and in a sense it was. Russia was the first country to escape from the domination of the Western capitalist countries and to follow a path of economic development that depended on using the state to accumulate capital internally instead of relying on the export of capital from other countries.

In the early days of the Bolshevik regime, when Russia was faced with a civil war and outside intervention by the Western capitalist powers, Lenin realised that this was a card he could play to try to save his regime. Playing the anti-imperialist card meant appealing to the “toiling masses” of Asia not to establish socialism but to carry out their own anti-imperialist revolutions. The ‘super-exploited” countries were to be encouraged to seek independence as this would weaken the imperialist states, who were putting pressure on Bolshevik Russia.

This strategy was presented to the workers movement in the West as a way of provoking the socialist revolution in their countries. Deprived of their super-profits, the ruling class in the imperialist countries would no longer be able to bribe their workers with social reforms and higher wages; the workers would therefore turn away from reformism and embrace revolution.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, this strategy of building up an “anti-imperialist” front against the West was continued by his successors. Because it taught that all the people of a colonial or a dominated country had a common interest in obtaining independence, i.e. a state of their own, it was very attractive to nationalist ideologists and politicians in these countries.

They called on all the inhabitants of the country they sought to rule to unite behind them in a common struggle to achieve independence. As a result, in these countries “socialism” became associated with militant nationalism rather than with the working-class internationalism it had originally been. The political struggle there came to be seen as a struggle, not between the working class and the capitalist class, but as a struggle of all patriotic elements – workers, peasants and capitalists together – against a handful of traitorous, unpatriotic elements who would have sold out to foreign imperialists.

Whereas in Europe and North America, and parts of Latin America, socialism was a movement for the emancipation of the working class represented by various different currents in Asia and later in Africa and the rest of Latin America it was the name of a nationalist, revolutionary anti-imperialist movement. Marxism, in its original sense, has never really existed in many of these countries. What passed for Marxism was in fact Leninism and it appealed to revolutionary modernising intellectuals rather than to workers. It has only been towards the end of this century that groups of workers in these countries have come to realise that Leninism and its anti-imperialist ideology had nothing to do with real socialism. But the damage had been done. To millions of workers in these parts of the world socialism still means nationalism and state capitalism which some of them still they see as something positive rather than a barrier to the working-class co-operation across frontiers which is an essential condition for socialism.

Through the influence which state capitalist Russia used to have over a part of the workers movement in Western countries this is what it came to mean to many working class militants in these countries too. The Russian rulers used the Communist parties outside Russia as simple auxiliaries to their foreign policy which was based on the strategic interests of Russia as an up-and-corning (state) capitalist power. What was “progressive” was what coincided with Russia’s foreign policy’ interests.

During the 1950s Russia moved towards a policy of acceptance of the status quo with the West known as “peaceful coexistence”. The Chinese Leninists, who had come to power under Mao in 1949, perceived the interest of their state differently and sought to become the champion of “anti-imperialism” in place of Russia.

The splits that resulted in the world Communist movement were thus provoked, not as might superficially appear to be the case, by differences over what tactics the workers movement should pursue but over which so-called socialist country’s foreign policy – Russia’s or China’s – should be supported. This was not a dispute which concerned the working class interest at all, but was an argument between states in which workers were being asked to choose whose foreign policy pawns they wished to be.

Lenin’s theory of imperialism had contained the seeds of such a shameful outcome from the start as it made the most significant struggle at world level not the class struggle but the struggle between states, between so-called anti- imperialist and progressive states and so-called imperialist and reactionary states. This was a dangerous diversion from the class struggle and led to workers supporting the killing in wars of other workers in the interest of one or other state and its ruling class.

Adam Buick

World View: Out of Africa? (1998)

From the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a long contribution from journalist Chido Onumah who is the co-ordinator for Nigeria of the West African Human Rights Committee. We publish below the key points together with our comments.

“Washington has been too willing to downplay democracy and human rights for the sake of natural resources or diplomatic alliances”, the New York Times wrote in its editorial of 20 March 1998. Clearly, nobody is better placed to serve this purpose of giving access to Africa’s natural resources and providing a base in support of US diplomatic alliances than the various mad men who have sprung up (often with the help of Washington) within Africa and much of the developing world.

The US supported Mobutu after killing Lumumba and scuttling Congo’s burgeoning democracy; and Mobutu provided a buffer against Washington’s longest standing bogeyman, the USSR. Today, the US has found it convenient to recant and is calling for democracy in the new Democratic Republic of Congo. On February 4 1966, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup. The result was the abortion of Ghana’s fledgling democracy. More than three decades after, the country is still grappling with the rudiments of democracy under a military dictator that is making a travesty of democracy, yet Washington is contented and applauding that “democracy is spreading”.

Just name it! Where has Washington stepped into that she has not messed up? The US-supported Marcos and his murderous gang; provided a slaughter slab for the butcher of Uganda, Idi Amin; aborted democracy in Chile and installed the hydra-headed monster, Pinochet; wrecked Haiti, courtesy of the Duvalier clan. In all these places, the US was looking for a mad man who would preside over the wholesale transfer of natural resources to America’s multinationals and do her dirty job in its so-called war with communism. Nothing mattered beyond the immediate economic and political gains of Washington. Not even the sight of mutilated bodies of defenceless and innocent kids who were victims of the dastardly actions of such scum as Jonas Savimbi and his cohorts who were armed and financed by the US could move her to change her position.

The American society is a predatory society and it can survive only by aggressively expanding and conquering new markets from which to extract profit. What Washington aims at creating in West Africa, as in other areas that are under its sphere of influence, is a club of IMF/World Bank puppets. The reason is simple. West African despots—as always quislings of America and her Western accomplices—who mutate into civilian presidents make all the difference between the acceptance or rejection of the West’s obnoxious economic policies and by extension, the survival or collapse of their businesses. The examples of Ghana, Burkina Faso and The Gambia are indicative of this trend. The IMF/World Bank and their host governments cannot be too sure what the “new man” would do (a case of the devil you know); so why not support a Jerry Rawlings, Blaise Campaore or Yahya Jammeh even where their transition to civil rule succeeds only in furthering neo-patrimonialism. As one of the puppets of international monopoly capital, Washington is sure Abacha will execute structural adjustment, devaluation, privatisation and such other infernal policies the IMF/World Bank may deem necessary to recommend for Nigeria’s underdevelopment. This support and manipulation of Abacha is necessary to prevent the toiling masses from uniting in a revolution that would threaten international monopoly capital.

The basic fallout of Mr Clinton’s visit to Africa is that the world would move into the new century with all the prejudices, including the onslaught of imperialism (courtesy of America) which have made the 20th century a nightmare. It is difficult to imagine what could be a greater threat to world peace in the new millennium than the American establishment which is nothing but a scourge. Fanon wrote that every generation must discover its mission. Africa’s emergent activists, from Cape Coast to Cairo, must enter the new millennium boldly determined to confront the monster of imperialism. Those who are ready to liberate Africa from the clutches of poverty, illiteracy and general underdevelopment and expand the frontiers of democracy cannot look up to the West, America particularly. They must be ready to struggle for these rights. Apologies from the great-grand-children of slave traders would not serve any purpose. In fact, the US has committed too many grave crimes against the African continent that apologies would only serve to obfuscate these crimes.

Imperialism is like the common cold; you either fight it or go to bed with it. There cannot be half measures or a middle course. This is a new era in which people, particularly exploited people, do not look up to any godfather. Certainly, the US will fail in Nigeria as she failed in Vietnam, Cuba and everywhere else she has sought to extend her bloody fang.

Chido Onumah, 

Ghana

Reply: 

We fully accept that American foreign policy is determined by economic (trade, investments, raw materials) and strategic considerations, but so is that of every other capitalist country. To single out America for special opposition is to play the game either of other capitalist powers (such as Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China, etc) or of some would-be African ruling class.

We have to say too that we cannot accept that Ghana under Nkrumah or the Congo under Lumumba were examples of “burgeoning democracy”. Certainly, both Nkrumah and Lumumba were anti-US imperialism but they were not democrats either in practice or in theory. They favoured and tried to establish one-party regimes, on the model that then existed in Russia. In fact, they perfectly illustrate our point above about opposition to one particular “imperialist” power playing the game of its rivals—in their time, “anti-imperialism” was the ideology under which state-capitalist Russia sought to further its economic and strategic interests.

If we have put the word “imperialism” in the previous paragraph in inverted commas this is because we don’t accept Lenin’s theory of imperialism (which sees the struggle at world level as being between imperialist and anti-imperialist forces) with its implication that “imperialism” is something different and worse than capitalism. World capitalism, not the “imperialism” of particular capitalist powers, is the cause of the problems workers all over the world suffer from, and the solution to the problems of workers in Africa lies not in kicking American imperialism out of Africa but in uniting with workers in the rest of the world to replace the world capitalist system by world socialism. This is the aim of the World Socialist Movement. –Editors.

Socialism and Empire. (1925)

From the October 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patriotism and the problems of Empire have always proved stumbling blocks to the workers and to their immature organisations, and nothing has more clearly shown the danger of half-knowledge than the ease with which the ruling class have been able to muddle their minds and inflame their passions by raising such issues. The world war and late developments of capitalist imperialism have given the question prominence by making more numerous and more bitter the struggles for independence of colonies and subject races, and in the verbal dispute between Communists, the I.L.P., the Labour Party and others the air is thick with charge and counter-charge of treachery to the Empire and treachery to the working-class. The dispute, however, leads to no simple conclusion because, as so often happens, the disputants have neglected first to decide whether they can agree on a few elementary Socialist principles. Before we examine the various proposals we must have a clear idea of the economic position and class interests of the workers, because it is from this foundation that they ought always to approach the issues presented to them.

The Position of the Workers. 

Wealth (excluding the air and other things abundantly supplied by nature) is produced by work. The work is performed by the great propertyless mass, the working class, but the means of wealth production, the machines, the land and so on, are owned by a class of non-workers, the capitalists. From this arises a great cleavage of interests, for it makes the workers dependent upon the owning-class since they cannot live except by entering the service of the owners. Out of the total wealth produced by their labour the workers receive but a part as wages, the remainder being retained by those who employ them. The one class lives by selling its services and the other by owning property. The everyday struggle over the division of the product sets these classes in perpetual antagonism, but the Socialist urges the workers to aim consciously not merely at increasing their share but at destroying the system of society which compels them to maintain a propertied class at their expense.

For the Socialist all forms of “living by owning,” rent, interest and profit are in effect nothing more than forms of exploitation, or robbery, of the wealth producers.

If this is correct, then it follows naturally that it is to the interest of the workers all over the world to act jointly in resisting any attempt to heighten the degree of that exploitation, and in overthrowing the system which is based upon exploitation. The enemy of the working class is the capitalist class.

But certain complications exist which prevent many workers from seeing where their interests lie. Lack of knowledge and race prejudices prevent those in one country from realising how essentially similar is their condition to that of workers in foreign countries. There are too real differences between the present circumstances of the workers in the more advanced and the more backward countries. Standards of living, of education, of political and personal freedom, and of political knowledge vary from, say, England or America to the hardly developed Asiatic dependencies of Great Britain; this in spite of the quite marked tendency towards a general equalising of conditions as industrial developments become more uniform all over the world under the pressure of competition.

Again, this very competition leads many workers astray. Exceptional prosperity in the British coal industry at a given time is gained at the expense of some foreign competitors. Viewing the matter from an individual and local standpoint, the miners are only too liable to agree with their employers who argue that the interests of British workers and owners are as one against those of their German or American rivals. Extending our view from one section of a capitalist industry to the whole of the industries of a country or group of countries, national rivalry often presents itself in such a form—war, for instance—as to induce great numbers of workers to join their own section of the ruling class against other sections which are likewise supported by their workers.

The Position of the Capitalist.

Capitalist countries—all of them—must organise their forces and direct their policy to ends which are vital to capitalist society, they must seek markets for surplus products, endeavour to monopolise sources of supply of raw materials where these are geographically limited, and protect ocean and overland communications to these areas. Britain holds tenaciously to her practical monopoly of tropical rubber producing areas, sits tight in Egypt in order to guard the routes to India, and keeps firm hold on the latter because it is a market of first importance and an area for the profitable investment of surplus profit gained by the exploitation of workers at home. The necessities of such imperialist policy bring our ruling class into inevitable conflict with other imperialist powers who also seek markets and monopolies, and into conflict with the colonial and native capitalists who resent having to share with foreign investors the profits of the exploitation of their own working class ; hence the war of 1914, and the independence movements in Ireland, India, Egypt, Canada and elsewhere.

Now let us examine the various parties in this country which claim to represent the working class.

The Labour Party.

The Labour Party openly and unashamedly supported the war in 1914 and associates now with its German patriot prototypes, the Social Democrats. It interests itself in the political and economic difficulties of the British capitalists, offers remedies to solve their industrial problems, assists in maintaining armed forces to defend capitalist property, loyally supports the Empire and opposes the grant of unconditional independence to any part of it. It is unnecessary to labour this point or answer the assertion that the Labour Party has changed for the better since the war because Mr. H. N. Brailsford, Editor of the New Leader, has recently written of the position now occupied by his party.

“We must face our own record as frankly. (I speak, of course, only for myself.) From the date of Mr. MacDonald’s first letter to the Indians on the eve of taking office, down to the recent debates on China, India, and our rubber monopoly, he and his closest associate, Mr. Thomas, have been leading the Party, openly and plainly, towards a reconciliation with Imperialism. His Indian record in office was worse than negative. Not only did he do nothing to advance Home Rule or to help the sweated Indian worker : he sanctioned the shameful Coercion Act in Bengal. His most recent speech gave reasons for doing nothing in India of which an old-fashioned Liberal would have been ashamed. There were other symptoms—the attitude to Mexico, the curt refusal of the Cypriote petition for union with Greece. But the gravest matter was his plain rejection of the League of Nations as the arbiter in our dispute with Egypt over the Canal and the Soudan. . . . We stand, as the French Party stands, a buttress of capitalist Imperialism.” (New Leader, August 21st, 1925.)

Leaving aside the influence of Liberal tradition and the habitual unthinking acceptance of capitalist ways of regarding politics, the ultimate explanation of this Labour Party attitude is that they have no basic quarrel with the capitalists or capitalism. They regard “profiteering” (or excessive profits) as “unjust,” but they do not hold all profit-making to be robbery of the workers. When they speak of “exploitation” what they mean is the payment of exceptionally low wages, they do not recognise that there can be no wage-earning, no wages system without exploitation. Thus Mr. Thomas, in “When Labour Rules,” Mr. MacDonald in “Socialism— Critical and Constructive,” Mr. Sydney Webb in “A Constitution for a Socialist Commonwealth,” all justify private property and the payment of profits, or interest to property owners. As Mr. Clynes says, “It is no part of Labour’s policy to establish revolutionary Socialism or to confiscate private property” (Glasgow Evening News, Oct. 4, 1923). Thus again in 1914 the workers of this country were urged by the Labour Party to fight lest they should, through a German victory, become slaves; and when the French occupied the Ruhr the same Party protested on the ground that it would make the German workers slaves. We, on the contrary, recognise that all the workers in a capitalist world are already wage-slaves to the propertied class, and that no fortune of war, whether victory or defeat, can alter the essentials of that situation. As we propose to deprive the capitalists of their property and do not admit that they have any rights whatever, it matters nothing to us that capitalist groups strive to plunder each other. The Labour Party recognise those property rights and therefore quite consistently seek to defend those whom they consider to be the rightful owners. It is consistent with their views of property but it is decidedly not consistent with working class interests and with Socialism.

“The Communist Party." 

This attitude does not meet with the approval of the Communists who oppose to the patriotism of the Labour Party an inverted patriotism of their own. They can see clearly enough that the interests of British workers clash with those of British capitalists but they cannot rest content with urging the workers everywhere to concentrate on resisting exploitation and on fighting their exploiters. They accept the false reasoning used by Mr. Francis Meynell when he edited the Communist. He urged support of the Indian native capitalists in their struggle against the British Government, on the ground that all enemies of the latter are the friends of the Communist Party. They proclaim the necessity and practicability of disrupting the British Empire, and ally themselves accordingly with every independence movement. What they forget or intentionally gloss over, is that national independence for Irish, Indians or Egyptians is no more a concern of the workers in those countries and should no more be fought for by them than national defence should concern workers here. To exchange Irish exploiters for English ones does not better the condition of Irish workers in the slightest degree; in actual fact, by stressing racial differences it adds to the obstacles preventing international co-operation in the trade union and political world. The enemies of the British ruling class are not necessarily friends of the British workers. We want to increase, not to obscure, the antagonism between one class and the other, and this cannot be done by urging Indian wage-slaves to waste precious years chasing the will o’ the wisp of nationality. Their masters alone will gain from such a course.

The Communist mind is also perverted by the determination not to read the signs of the times in Russia. British governmental hostility to the Russian Government leads the Communists to completely uncritical praise of the latter’s actions, oblivious of the extent to which those actions are driven by pressure of circumstance against working class interests. The Communists know quite well that there is no solution for the unemployment problem to be found in developing foreign trade, yet they have for years lent themselves to the anti-working class propaganda which promises untold benefits for British workers if only full trading relations with Russia are opened up. At present much of the hostility to the Bolshevik Government arises from the wish of foreign capitalists to have free access to this relatively undeveloped field for investment and exploitation. But whether that field is developed with or without the direct control of foreign capital, the entry of this new competitor into the world’s markets can only result in a worsening of the industrial conditions of workers generally, and an aggravation of the clashing of interests between capitalist groups. The Communists, too, like the Labour Party, refuse to recognise that exploitation is the necessary accompaniment of wage-labour. When the Labour Government proposed a £40,000,000 loan to Russia, the Communists were overjoyed, and Russian trade papers in their anxiety to attract foreign capital are full of reports of high profits earned by foreign traders and concessionaires. They decline to face the plain fact that interest on loans and profits on investments can come only from the exploitation of the Russian workers.

T. Johnston, I.L.P. member of Parliament and Editor of the Forward, takes the Communists to task for what he calls their “Whiggery in a Red Cravat.” He rightly condemns the obscured vision which can draw distinctions between sections of the capitalist class and see a friend of the workers in every exploiter who happens to have a quarrel with the British Empire. But Johnston himself is open to equal condemnation. He also is prepared to support schemes for the improvement of Empire trade, schemes, that is, to assist Empire capital in driving competitors from the world’s markets. Neither he nor anyone else has ever yet explained how this will benefit the world’s workers. The poverty in work, and greater poverty out of work, of the wage-earner is not dependent on the temporary ups and downs in particular industries or of all industries together. However, the total product of industry may vary with foreign trade fluctuations, there always has been, and is now, an enormous residue over and above wages, doles and relief, which is retained and consumed by the propertied class. What idiocy it is to tell the workers they must revive trade in order to get work and increase their wages, while an idle class is living on the product of the workers’ labour. When the workers wish they have the power on their hands to cut into that existing surplus whether trade is good or bad, or getting better or worse. While there is a single able-bodied property-owner living without working, only ignorance or treachery could ask the workers to devote thought to the increase of production, or to the quickening of foreign trade.

Johnston, again, owes his confusion to his inability to grasp what is meant by exploitation. Thus in Forward (Sept. 19) he writes in favour of the Labour movement here giving more attention to and entering into more cordial relations with Queensland which has a Labour Government. On the strength of this latter feature, Johnston, while repeating parrot-like the necessity of fighting exploitation, dubs Queensland a proletarian State. Actually, Queensland Government publications and the speeches of Labour Ministers and Members of Parliament demonstrate the incontrovertible fact that capitalist profits and the degree of exploitation of the workers in Queensland are greater, and the proportion of total production received by them as wages is less, than in any other Australian State now, and than was the case in Queensland when the Labour Government first took office ! (See Socialist Standard, Dec., 1923, and Feb., 1924.)

The Socialist Position.

The only safe rule of conduct for the workers is to stand firmly on the basis of their class economic interests. From this standpoint there can be no circumstances requiring them to participate in capitalist wars or trade rivalries. Even the supposed hardships resulting from military defeat do not outweigh the arguments in favour of the Socialist course of action outlined above. We have always urged that Reparations like rates and taxes are and must be a burden only on the propertied class. We are therefore not surprised to learn from the Ministry of Labour Gazette (June, 1925, Page 217) that an enquiry by the International Labour Office shows that real wages in Germany are approximately what they were in 1914 as are also wages in London. In victory and defeat the workers are still wage slaves, their poverty and insecurity are their only lifelong possession. They should not fight for “country and empire,” because they have nothing to fight for. They should refuse to help solve the economic problems of capitalist industry, or the political problems of capitalist empires and concentrate all their energies on the fight for Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

SWP give critical support to Saddam Hussein (1991)

From the March 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "If it does come to a bloody land war, we argue Bush and Major are to blame and hope their forces are defeated. Some people see this simply as uncritical support for Saddam Hussein."

Socialist Worker Review, February 1991

Blogger's Note: 

This wee dig at the vanguardist Socialist Workers Party appeared alongside the 'Is a fourth world war inevitable?' article.

Citizen Smith in focus (2019)

Book Review from the October 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Violent Extremist Tactics and the Ideology of the Sectarian Far Left. Daniel Allington, Siobhan McAndrew and David Hirsh. 2019.

Lovers of 1970s TV will remember Citizen Smith, he of the mythical Tooting Popular Front, exhorting his comrades to ‘smash the state’. Dave Spart still does the same in Private Eye, forever hitting out at the ‘running-dog lackeys of US imperialism’.

With the resurgence of terrorism inspired by fundamentalist religion and also the far right, three academics have now decided to take a look at those on the far left and their attitudes to terrorism and violence. Their research project was funded by a grant from the UK Commission for Countering Extremism, set up by Theresa May’s government in 2017 in the wake of the Manchester bombing.

Their primary data generation took place with help from polling company YouGov’s online panel of respondents – with those who self-identified as ‘very left-wing’ being of particular interest. They found that while people who self-identify as being very left-wing are more likely to be sympathetic to violent extremism in some shape or form than the general population, it was still only a view held by a minority (29 percent as opposed to 9 percent more generally). Most of the other results of the research are perhaps not generally surprising, including the estimate that an elderly woman in the very left-wing category is far less likely to show sympathy for any of the types of political violence listed than a young man in the same category (9 percent as opposed to 56 percent).

One of the more interesting questions they looked at was what respondents said when asked to identify the countries they think are the ‘greatest threat to world peace’. In the general population sample, Russia was top followed by North Korea and the United States. In the very left-wing sample, the US was top, followed by Russia and then Israel. The placement of Russia in the top three was clearly less expected by the researchers as it doesn’t slot as neatly into the traditional left-wing pantheon of ‘imperialist’ states, and presumably features largely because it is both authoritarian and aggressive about this in ways that would not find favour on the left (including attitudes to women, gay rights, etc).

In carrying out this research, the writers needed a good understanding of what might be termed the ideological components of the far left, in particular Leninism. Indeed, the first chapter is a deconstruction of Leninist theory that is very accurate in the main, including its identification of why Leninists of various stripes historically take ‘anti-imperialist’ positions that end up leading them towards either open or tacit support for terrorist organisations like the Provisional IRA, Hamas, etc.

There is one minor caveat to this though, in that given the current media coverage of anti-semitism and anti-zionism on the left, the writers seem keen to integrate this into their analysis – and perhaps a little too keen. There can be little doubt that the rise of the internet and the conspiracy theories promulgated there has led the far right and the far left to borrow ideas and ‘tropes’ from one another, often with some of their perhaps less sophisticated and more naive advocates not always realising their origin. Nevertheless, it is historically accurate to say that anti-semitism emanates from the political far right as it is a theory of racial supremacy, whereas anti-zionism emanates from the far left as part of its ‘anti-imperialist’ perspective, with Israel effectively being seen as the aircraft-carrier in the Middle East for the world’s dominant imperialist power (the US).

This paper does not make the distinction between the two clear enough and seems to imply that Leninists are often anti-semites without actually realising they are, simply because of the association they make between imperialism and ‘finance capital’, with the connotations the latter sometimes has with supposed Jewish cabals. But to be fair, we could add that what is often forgotten is that so many founders of Leninism were themselves of Jewish origin (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc) that the Bolshevik revolution was denounced by countless numbers – including Churchill – as a Jewish plot of some sort. In the UK since, many of the leading figures in the Communist Party of Great Britain have been Jewish, as were the leaders of what became the SWP, Tony Cliff (Ygael Gluckstein) and Militant, Ted Grant (Isaac Blanc), among a great many others.

Irrespective of this issue, though, we would contend that their illogical belief as Leninists that an enemy of an enemy must be a friend as well as their inherent authoritarianism make them unfit enough to be genuine advocates of ‘power to the people’.

Dave Perrin

Anti-imperialist rhetoric (2018)

Book Review from the September 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Indefensible. Democracy, Counter-Revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism. By Rohini Hensman. Haymarket Books. 2018.  380 pages.

This book sets out to expose the hypocrisy of those the author calls ‘pseudo-anti-imperialists’.  She criticises them for their opposition to Western imperialism only and for supporting all sorts of oppressive regimes on the grounds that they are opposed to the West. When the West is involved in military action, these ‘anti-imperialists’ support the opposing side whatever the nature of their regime. She instances and goes into detail about Serbia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Argentina, Libya and North Korea could be added.

What is odd is that, although Russia doesn’t claim to be socialist any more, some continue to exclude it from anti-imperialist criticism, as she documents in detail over Ukraine and Syria. She has no illusions about the former USSR. It was, she says, state capitalism, making the additional point that a socialist revolution was not possible there in 1917. Not that knowing that Russia was state capitalist necessarily rules out pseudo-anti-imperialism. The Stop the War Coalition is supported by people who know this, yet while it loudly criticises bombing in Syria by the West, Turkey and Israel it is not very vocal about bombing there by Russia and the Syrian government. She mentions Corbyn as being in this tradition.

This is a fair criticism, and one we have long made ourselves.

Anti-imperialism is a slippery concept because its meaning depends on how you define imperialism. This ought to mean the policy of acquiring an empire, which European states joined by the USA and Japan increasingly pursued in the latter part of the 19th century. This was a development that needed analysing. Those in the Marxist tradition tended to give an economic explanation (acquiring a protected market, need to export capital). Lenin elevated imperialism to ‘the highest stage of capitalism’ and that’s when the rot set in.

It wasn’t that his analysis of the First World War as a war between imperialist powers for the re-division of the world was wrong, but the political implications he drew from this once he himself was in control of the Russian state. First, he developed into a full-blown theory his idea that the parties of the Second International had supported their governments in the war because the section of the working class they represented benefitted from imperialism in terms of higher wages and social reforms. Then, the revolution in Europe having failed to materialise (it was never on the cards anyway), he saw in the rising of ‘the peoples of the East’ against imperialism a way to relieve pressure on the Bolshevik regime in Russia.

Hence ‘anti-imperialism’ became the policy of the Russian state and its supporters abroad. Under Stalin after the Second World War, it became opposition to the West, the US-led bloc that was its rival. It was hypocritical because by then Russia too was manifestly an imperialist power, having acquired the Baltic states and parts of Poland under the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact and, after the Second World War, Eastern Europe, apart from the empire in Central Asia it had inherited from Tsarism. Hensman aptly writes of ‘the Russian State Capitalist Empire.’

Her starting point is that, as Rosa Luxemburg put it out in a passage she quotes:

  ‘Democracy is indispensable to the working class because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and its historic task.’

From which she concludes that it is in the interest of workers in countries which do not have political democracy to obtain it, whether or not the government there is ‘anti-imperialist.’ True, but the way to do this is not to support one capitalist group against another either in politics and certainly not in war, nor by the various changes to the UN she naively suggests in the final chapter.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Why Socialists Oppose the Vietcong (2018)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vietnam is the latest of the leftwingers’ adopted fatherlands. Before Vietnam it was Algeria, before that it was Cuba, and so on back to Russia. This support for the Vietcong does not depend on what is actually going on in Vietnam, but is rather an expression of the leftwingers’ dissatisfaction with certain aspects of modern society. To that extent it is irrational.

Nevertheless those who support the Vietcong imagine that they are Marxists and it is in pseudo-Marxist terms that they rationalise their support for this nationalist movement whose aim is to set up a state capitalist regime in the South similar to that in the North. The Vietcong is not a socialist movement, and by no stretch of the imagination can it be said to have anything to do with Socialism. But since those who shout for “Victory for the Vietcong” have dragged in Marx and Socialism, we must at least refute their arguments and state why Socialists do not support the Vietcong. (. . . .)

It is not true that the Vietcong and workers are fighting the same enemy. The Vietcong are fighting American capitalism. The interests of workers are opposed not only to American capitalism but to capitalism everywhere including Russia and China. Victory for the Vietcong, as we have already explained, would shift the world balance of power from America to other capitalist powers. This is not something that is in the interests of workers, or something that they should support. There is no issue at stake in Vietnam worth a single worker’s life.

The Socialist Party, then, is opposed to the Vietnam war, as to all wars. We do not take sides. Nor are we hypocrites like those who cynically use all normal people’s abhorrence of the burning of women and children (as if the Vietcong did not use flame-throwers) to get them to support one

side in this war. Such people do not really want an end to the killing; they want it to go on till the side they support has won. Let them at least be honest and stop trying to fool people with their phoney anti-war sentiments.

(Socialist Standard, October 1968)

Capitalism victorious in China. (1926)

From the December 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our issue of August, 1925, we set out our view of the situation in China and explained why Socialists cannot share the extravagant hopes raised in certain quarters by the progress of the Kuomintang Party. As in the pioneer capitalist countries, so also in those which have been subject to foreign imperialists, the capitalists are always anxious to obtain the help of the workers in the fight against their own enemies, whether those enemies be feudal proprietors or foreign capitalists. No doubt there was a gain in the grant to Ireland of “self-government." That gain is a gain in clarity. It is no longer possible for the Irish defenders of capitalism to pretend that the poverty and unemployment suffered by the Irish workers are due to “foreign” government. So also in China. It is better that the Chinese workers should be able to realise that they suffer from exploitation just as much whether at the hands of Chinese exploiters or European and Japanese exploiters. The rise of a strong independent capitalist Chinese Republic will enormously hasten the economic and political development of the Eastern workers. But we must at the same time point out that nothing is gained and much is lost by misinterpreting the outcome of these national struggles.

If the Chinese workers are encouraged to see in national independence a solution of their economic problems they will—like the Irish, the Poles and many others—suffer a grievous disappointment. It is the duty of the Socialist to work to destroy the present illusion and thus avoid the future disillusion. Let the Chinese workers organise not as Chinamen alongside their home capitalists, but as workers. They should reject the fallacious argument of foreign political parties which urge them to do otherwise. In England this fallacy is based on an old saying that “The enemies of my enemies are my friends.” In truth the capitalist enemies of the British capitalists are not, and cannot, be the friends of the workers, British or non-British. If the Chinese capitalists happen to be at loggerheads with the British capitalists, that is no reason why British or Chinese workers should imagine they have a friend in the Chinese employing class.

In the Sunday Worker (November 14th) the position in China with all its pitfalls to the workers is shown in a nutshell :

  The native merchant class saw the trade of the country growing under the domination of the foreign financial groups while their own share of the booty grew smaller. The foreign imperialists had to be fought.
  Unable to fight the battle alone the native capitalists sought salvation in the Kuomintang. They planned to use the revolt of the Workers and Peasants to drive out the foreign imperialists and to establish a new imperialism of their own.
  The right wing of the party has therefore grown to an alarming extent, and unless the Left Wing can retain control the Workers of China and Europe will find that when European imperialism has been smashed a Chinese imperialism will have risen in its stead. This is the real “Yellow Peril.”

And not only does the approaching victory of the Kuomintang lead the Chinese capitalists to prepare for the inevitable future clash with their own exploited classes, but it seems likely also that they will follow the path already trodden by their fellow capitalist-nationalists in Ireland and India. In the long run they will find that as capitalists they have lasting and important interests in common with some or other of their late capitalist enemies. The Sunday Worker correspondent reports that the British Foreign Office is now in favour of supporting the Kuominatung capitalists, who in turn will no doubt be glad of this outside help in time of trouble at home with the Chinese workers. The real task of the Chinese workers is that of the workers everywhere—to fight against capitalism whatever the national flag under which it hides. The duty of Socialists is to keep this issue always to the fore, not to rouse deadly national hatreds which obscure the class divisions in society and retard the growth of Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Will Independence Help India? (1930)

From the July 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who reads the English newspapers and also the journals which put the point of view of the Indian Nationalists, will find himself presented with two pictures of Indian affairs and Indian problems which clash very violently with each other. From the Indian side we are told that the 320 million people who live in that huge area are suffering great wrongs at the hands of tyrannical British authorities, and are united in a desire to overthrow foreign rule and establish their right to govern themselves outside or inside the British Empire as they may freely desire. It is admitted on all sides that millions of the peasants and workers in India are desperately poor, permanently undernourished, and subject to devastating diseases in time of famine. In 1918-1919, during an epidemic of influenza, the loss of life reached the enormous total of 12 millions, equal to about a quarter of the population of this country. And poverty is not the only evil which persists in India after generations of paternal British government and innumerable promises of benefits to be showered on the Indians by their foreign masters.

The Indian Central Committee (a body of influential Indians appointed to sit in conjunction with the Simon Commission) last year submitted its report (published by H.M. Stationery Office, 1929, Cmd. 3451). The Committee have something to say about the neglect of the British Government to fulfil its pledges in regard to education.

   The primary education of the masses has . . . been repeatedly declared, during the last 75 years, to be the special care of the British Government in India. It is, therefore, worth while to examine the progress achieved in this direction during that period and to see how far it has kept pace with the repeated declarations of policy . . . In 1917, that is, 63 years after the despatch of 1854, only 2.59 per cent. of the total population were receiving instruction in recognised primary schools. . . . It is not surprising in the face of these facts that public opinion in India was profoundly disappointed with the rate of progress achieved, and became openly sceptical as to the professed intention of the Government in the matter. (Para. 24.)

The Committee rather cuttingly point out that the expenditure on education is about one-sixteenth of the expenditure on the army —“the true measure of the interest displayed by the Government in mass education."

According to the Indian Economic Enquiry Committee, which reported in 1925, only 8% of the population are literate.

Who Is To Blame?
Those who defend the British occupation of India do not deny that there is great poverty. They admit this and many other evils, but they reply that if British troops and British Government officials were withdrawn, India would cease to have any central government, and would lapse into anarchy. It would be at the mercy of the more warlike native races at home, or invading troops from outside. They point to the multiplicity of races and languages which exist in India; the bitter hatred between the conflicting religions; and the rigid caste system which prevails among the Hindus, and which results in millions of the so-called “Depressed Classes” occupying a position of the utmost degradation, aptly indicated by their name, “untouchables." British officials show that the methods of carrying on agriculture are shockingly primitive, and that any improvement is hindered by the native customs and religious observances. Ideas of sanitation and medicine are largely lacking, and in these and other respects the Indians as a whole grain much from the British occupation. So say the defenders of the present system of government. All of this is set out at length in the Simon Commission Report, 1930.

What, then, are we to believe? Ought we to side with Gandhi, the leader of the Indian Nationalists, in condemning the English Government (as many well-meaning people in this country do), or ought we to take up the attitude which is maintained by successive British Prime Ministers, that it is necessary to remain in India for the good of the Indians? Let us consider the matter a little further, and start by asking ourselves why the British Government is in India at all. When we know why the World Powers are all of them anxious to acquire colonies and spheres of influence abroad, we shall be better able to see the Indian problem in its proper light.

Why are British Troops in India?

The ultimate answer to this question is simply: “foreign trade and foreign investments." Every developed capitalist nation is faced with the same desperate problem of disposing abroad the surplus goods which its workers produce, but are too poor to buy. In every country there are a minority of rich people so wealthy that they cannot spend their vast incomes, and are perpetually seeking new foreign fields of profitable investment of the wealth which they cannot help saving. Every capitalist power needs, therefore, to find foreign markets and places for investment. This it is which leads to imperialism; to the conquest of the territory of “backward races ”; to armaments; and finally to war.

Read what the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said on the subject in a speech delivered in 1890, before the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce—

  All the great offices of State are occupied with commercial affairs. The Foreign Office and the Colonial Office are chiefly engaged in finding new markets and in defending old ones. The War Office and the Admiralty are mostly occupied in preparations for the defence of those markets and for the protection of our commerce.

This explains the British Colonial Empire. And what is true of Britain is just as true of other great powers—France, for example.

Listen to Marshal Lyauty, the French General who conquered Morocco-

  French soldiers are fighting in Morocco to acquire territory in which rise rivers capable of supplying power for electrification schemes which will prove of great advantage to French trade. When we have acquired the last zone of cultivatable territory; when we have nothing but mountains in front of us, we shall stop.
  Our object is commercial and economic. The military expedition in Morocco is a means, not an end. Our object is the extension of foreign trade. (“Star," 31 October, 1922.)

Now let us turn to India and read what the Liberal “Manchester Guardian” has to say (30th December, 1929).

  There are two chief reasons why a self-regarding England may hesitate to relax her control over India. The first is that her influence in the East depends partly upon her power to summon troops and to draw resources from India in time of need . . . The second is that Great Britain finds in India her best market, and that she has a thousand million of capital invested there.

Lastly, think over the bombastic utterance of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, now Lord Brentford (quoted in the “Daily News" 17th October, 1925).

   We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians. I know it is said at Missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We conquered India as the outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we should hold it. (Shame.) Call it shame if you like. I am stating facts. I am interested in missionary work in India, and have done much work of that kind, but I am not such a hypocrite as to say that we hold India for the Indians. We hold it as the finest outlet for British goods in general, and for Lancashire cotton goods in particular.

When you add to this the influence of the English families who look to the Indian civil and military services to provide posts for their sons, it is easy enough to understand why a capitalist British Government does not want to lose India.

Indian Capitalists or Indian Workers?

We have seen why British capitalists are interested in Indian affairs—a £1,000 million is an accumulation of property worth fighting for. But now let us see what are the interests on the other side. Who are the interests behind Gandhi?

Sir Basil Blackett, an authority on Indian Finance, in a speech at New Delhi on March 19th, 1929, pointed out that the capital invested in India is rapidly being concentrated more and more into the hands of Indian capitalists. He said that between 60% and 70% of the shares in Indian jute mills are Indian-owned. Indian capitalists are investing in Government loans, developing India’s production of steel and other goods, financing India’s foreign trade, and even investing money in other countries such as Brazil.

The Simon Commission in Volume I. of its Report (page 23) says :—

   It was British capital that began the modern process of industrialism in India, but more and more commercial enterprise is falling into Indian hands. Most of the share capital in the jute mills on the Hooghly is Indian; the vast majority of the cotton factories of Bombay are Indian; and, while it was British enterprise which first established and developed the tea gardens of Assam and elsewhere, these undertakings are now carried on side by side with many that are Indian owned. India is now one of the eight most important industrial areas in the world. . . . Industrialism . . .  is displacing the village craftsman, so that large-scale manufacture is being superimposed on the ancient fabric of an elaborately sub-divided and predominantly rural society.

Here we have the problem in a nutshell. Indian capitalists want to have the profits of the developing Indian capitalism for themselves. They wish to be able to control the Indian system of taxation, and the Indian system of tariffs, and use them to further their own interests. They do not object to the exploitation of the Indian workers, but they do object to British investors getting the lion’s share; and they do object to British traders, exporting British-made goods to India, enjoying preferential treatment.

Fundamentally, the Indian Nationalist movement represents the interests of Indian capitalists. It is naturally supported by the Indian educated castes, who see the promise of fat jobs in the Indian Army or Civil Service, and in the legal profession.

As the “Manchester Guardian’s” special Indian correspondent wrote on 7th February, 1930, Indian independence “would mean the government of India by men drawn almost entirely from the urban Hindu capitalist and professional classes.” These are the men who control the Indian Nationalist movement.

What Should The Socialists Do?

What, then, should be our attitude? We can give a plain and definite answer. On the one side we are in no way whatever responsible for or defenders of the actions of the British 'Government; nor do we associate ourselves in any way with the British Labour Party. We are working for Socialism, and for that alone. We claim that only the establishment of Socialism can solve the Indian problem, and all other problems of national rivalries. Only Socialism will rid the world of this murderous scramble for foreign markets, and thus remove the need for colonies and for armaments to seize and retain them.

To the Indian workers we extend our sympathy in the sufferings which fall to their lot. We ask them, however, to recognise that their poverty is the result not of foreign rule—which is merely one of the evil by-products of capitalism—but of the capitalist system itself. Dominion status or Independence for India will not solve any working class problem. It will merely be a substitution of “India for the Indian capitalists” in place of “India for the British capitalists.” The only sound policy for the Indian workers, the only policy in line with their class interests, is to keep clear of the Nationalist movement, and carry on steadily with the task of organising themselves on the economic field for the defence of their interests against their employers, and organising on the political field for the ultimate achievement of Socialism in co-operation with the rest of the world’s workers. There is nothing in the programme of Gandhi and the Indian Nationalists deserving of working class support. Therefore, just as we urged the British and German workers in 1914 to refuse to be drawn into the quarrel between British and German capitalist Governments, so now we urge the workers of this country and of India not to allow themselves to be led into conflict by the parties of capitalism in their respective countries. Our watchword is not “Britain for the British” and “India for the Indians,’’ but “the world for the workers."

Edgar Hardcastle