Motives in the Middle East (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the Iraq coup d'etat, the working class has been subjected to a tremendous amount of propaganda. The press and radio have been calling for varying degrees of support or antagonism according to whichever sectional or national interest they represent. It falls to the Socialist Party, with our unqualified opposition to every capitalist faction, to interpret the events objectively and to state the true position of the workers in relation to them.

Throughout history the Middle East has been invaded or dominated, due to its location as the bridge between Europe, Africa and the Far East. Since the demand for oil has arisen, its strategic importance has been almost eclipsed by this most essential of fuels. These are the causes of the struggle for supremacy in this area. The conflict between American and British oil interests has been overshadowed now by the threat of Russian encroachment. In 1950 the U.S. controlled only 44 per cent. of production against 53 per cent. by Britain and Holland (in Royal Dutch Shell), but by 1956 the American percentage had grown to 57 per cent, while the U.K.'s share had fallen to 35 per cent. The outstanding example is Iran. Before the Abadan incident, all Iranian oil passed through British hands. The agreement reached after the failure of out-and-out nationalisation saw the establishment of an International Consortium to buy the oil from the Iranian Government. The Consortium is divided as between Britain 54 per cent., U.S. 40 per cent., France 6 per cent. Production throughout the Middle East has doubled since 1950 so that U.K. companies are showing increased profits, but this only masks the real decline of British holdings.

In keeping with its status as a world power, the Soviet Union is greatly interested in the Middle East. As with all capitalist states, Russian foreign policy is directed at seizure of the fields. This aim—an extension of Czarist policies—came close to partial achievement following the Second World War. In 1946 a treaty was forced on the Iranian Government, forming a Soviet dominated company with concessions in Northern Iran—this area still being under Russian military occupation. After the troops withdrew Iran, with Anglo-U.S. backing, repudiated the agreement. Now posing as the Arabs' friend, Russia has increased its propaganda in the hope of building Communist parties capable of taking over and attaching the oil nations to the Soviet bloc.

The Egyptian capitalist class, spear-headed by Nasser, is also trying to gain access to the oil sources. To gain this object they have some indisputable advantages over their rivals. Most Arab workers feel that the sole barrier to better conditions is the dominance of Western nations. Exploiting this conviction, Nasser has persuaded many Arabs that he is the only man capable of obtaining and maintaining their departure. He has been greatly assisted by Russia, which has supplied arms and money, and by the abortive Anglo-French Suez landing. Although Russia and Egypt are momentarily allied doubtless time will generate the usual frictions

Although Egyptian policy has won many supporters among the Arab workers, the capitalists of the Middle East oil producing nations are not enthusiastic about coming under Egyptian dominance. This lack of enthusiasm has led to a reluctance to join the United Arab Republic and so share the revenues with the Egyptians. Even the new Iraq Government shows no desire for integration.

Against this sordid background, shorn of the normal camouflage about “safeguarding our national livelihood” or “safeguarding the political independence of the Arab peoples,” the Iraqi rising and the subsequent manoeuvring can be seen in their true perspective. At the overthrow of the monarchy, agreements between the Royal Government and the oil companies were on the standard 50/50 basis. This 50/50 division of the spoils has recently been cracking. Earlier this year contracts between the Japanese and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait led to the Arab States receiving a 56 per cent. and 57 per cent. share respectively. Much speculation has been aroused on the outcome of these and similar agreements. In its March publication the Petroleum Press Service asked, “Are we going to see governments of some of the main producing countries seeking changes in the existing agreements?” Shortly before the revolution the Iraq Minister of Economics held talks with the Iraq Petroleum Co., after which it was announced that the Iraq Petroleum Co. would surrender certain areas held under concession. No doubt Feisal’s Government intended to lease these areas to other companies in keeping with the new rates, but as the 50/50 still applied to the I.P.C., which controls the majority of the output, the net gain was somewhat niggardly. The report on these talks was announced on the 13th July— the coup began on the 14th! Though reports suggest that the revolution was planned in advance, the timing appears more than coincidental. The rebels felt, no doubt, that Feisal and Nuri-es-Said were too bound by their earlier agreements to obtain better terms and a completely new government would have more success. Premier Kassen has stated “the new Iraqi Government would be able better to safeguard oil interests than previous governments.” We can now expect the Republicans to negotiate a fresh agreement with the I.P.C. on a par with the recent precedents.

Western capitalism is probably resigned to this course in moderation (“any Iraq Government will make greater demands on the producing companies" — Financial Times, 16/7/58), but exorbitant demands will be strongly resisted. The landings in Lebanon and Jordan after the revolt were ostensibly to bolster friendly governments, but it has not escaped the attention of the U.K. and U.S. authorities that there are advantages in controlling these countries should discussions break down. The head of the main pipeline from Iraq is situated in Lebanon and could be closed to impede any attempt by the Iraqis to market the oil themselves. And the British troops in Jordan are on hand should intervention be deemed necessary. The stakes are high enough for our masters to contemplate it!

The turnover has been approximately £150 million annually and attempts are being made to double production by 1960. As has been stated, the overwhelming proportion of Iraki oil passes through the Irak Petroleum Co. and its subsidiaries. 95 per cent. of the I.P.C.’s shares are divided equally between British Petroleum, Shell, the Cie. Francaise de Petroles (in which the French Government has a large interest), and the North Eastern Development Corporation—an American company controlled by Socony Mobil Oil and Esso. The remaining 5 per cent. is owned by the Gulkenkian Foundation, although negotiations are afoot to buy 1¼ per cent. of these by the C. F. de P. This would then make the French organisation the largest individual shareholder. The interest of the West in the welfare of the I.P.C. is evident.

Previous examples have shown that when nations are competing for such a richprize open hostilities can result. Although it is by no means certain that armed conflict, either local or world-wide, will immediately arise out of the present situation, it IS certain it will be the working class who will bear the brunt of any fighting—AND FOR NOTHING! It will make no difference to the working class whichever capitalist group controls the oil fields. Arabs, who believe that complete national control of a country’s resources will benefit the workers, are advised to study the contemporary histories of the Sudan, Indonesia, etc. Supporters of the Communist Party should compare current Russian Middle East behaviour with the Soviet/Persian Treaty of Friendship of 1921, before lending support to its imperialist policy. Article 8 of this treaty contains the following: “Federal Russia finally renounces the economic policy pursued in the East by the Czarist Government, which consisted in lending money to the Persian Government, not with a view to the economic development of the country, but rather for the purposes of political subjugation.” Western workers, instead of being bellicose on the masters’ behalf, should be concerned with the struggle against both Eastern and Western capitalism and for the establishment of Socialism; only then will oil cease to feed the flames of hatred.

Essig.

Running Commentary: Too old at 35 (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too old at 35

Capitalist ideology is underpinned by many lies and delusions. Expressed simply, this is one of them: "If you work hard at passing your exams and at your job, security and prosperity will be yours". Along with this delusion goes the notion that a worker can somehow be elevated by passing exams, into an imaginary "middle-class" status. In fact there is no middle-class; anyone who faces the indignity of having to sell their labour power for a wage or a salary is in the working class, no matter what their educational qualifications. A particularly cruel reminder of this appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 25 March 1985:

Fifty advanced computer scientists and technicians carrying out research for Philips Electronics have lost their jobs because "they are too old at 50". The management of Philips Research Laboratories at Redhill. Surrey, are taking on young graduates to replace them. They [union officials] accused the company of following the example of the Japanese electrical firm Hitachi, which tried last December to get all workers over 35 at its Hirwaun colour TV plant in South Wales to take redundancy.

Hitachi said in a letter to all employees that staff over 35 were slow, prone to sickness, had poor eyesight and were more resistant to change.

The article went on to say that "graduates cost less than older staff' — one more example of the ruthless, cost-cutting nature of capitalism.

How inconvenient to the capitalist class that workers still want to go on living — with the expense of redundancy pay, unemployment benefit and pensions this entails — after their abilities have been consumed and they find themselves discarded.

Price of gold

The South African government has recently offered a sop to reform by committing itself to abolition of the obnoxious laws which prohibit sex and marriage between men and women of different racial origin. This reform is rendered virtually meaningless by other laws on racial segregation which remain, such as the Group Areas Act, which segregates residential and business areas along racial lines. This means that despite the abolition of the "immorality" laws, a man and a woman of different races involved in a sexual relationship will still be unable to set up home together.

Those people who see this legal change as the first step towards liberalisation of South African society must surely have had their hopes dashed by another event in South Africa last month which demonstrated yet again the odious policies of the South African ruling class.

The event was the dismissal of 17,000 black gold miners who were sacked by their employers. Anglo-American Corporation, for causing stoppages and disruption in protest at the sacking of trade union officials. Not only have these workers lost their jobs; they have also been transported back to various "tribal homelands". Under South African law the majority of black gold miners are forced to live as migrants, without their families, in work camps close to the mines.

These gold mines produce the commodity that is the basis of the enormous wealth of the South African ruling class. One of the mines where workers have been sacked — the Vaal Reefs mine in the western Transvaal — is the biggest gold mine in the world and produces 13 per cent of South African gold. In a situation where there are many poor workers, mostly black but increasingly white too. desperate to work, it is only too easy for the capitalist class to replace sacked miners with others who they hope will be less militant.

It is the grossest form of hypocrisy for the South African ruling class to talk of liberalisation in a society in which workers continue to be repressed in this way. No one should be taken in by the cosmetic changes taking place in South Africa at the moment which are intended to appease international opinion and so open up more markets for South African goods. The oppressive structures of both apartheid and capitalism remain intact.

Coup in Sudan

While President Nimeiri was busy trying to rally support for his regime among American leaders the Sudanese army, supported by other sections of the Sudanese ruling class, seized governmental power in a manner that is only too familiar in countries where the absence of democratic institutions means that the only way of changing government personnel is through a coup d'état. Of course this military government, like many others, is promising a quick return to civilian rule as soon as conditions permit the holding of elections.

The complaint of the army and its supporters was that Nimeiri, after sixteen years in power, was mismanaging the economy. The ruling class was also angry at the way in which Nimeiri had imposed the barbaric Islamic code of law in order to secure his own political ends by courting the support of the fundamentalist Moslem Brotherhood. This marriage of convenience was. however, short-lived. Fearing a challenge to his power from Islamic leaders, Nimeiri had purged the Moslem Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders, blaming them for unpopular policies. As a result Nimeiri lost his only real power base in Sudanese society, leaving him vulnerable to a coup from rival sections of the Sudanese ruling class.

Sudan is a desperately poor country currently ravaged by widespread drought which has exacerbated agricultural policies intended to produce quick profits for the landowners at the expense of both land and people. Its scarce food resources are under increasing pressure due to the huge influx of refugees from Ethiopia, themselves trying to escape famine. In the south of the country there has been a civil war in progress led by a rival Christian army officer. The majority of the population are totally dependent on American grain shipments if they are to avoid starvation. This American "aid" is granted in return for Sudan maintaining a pro-western stance in an area that is of great strategic importance because of its proximity to important oil supplies.

What is certain in these murky waters of political intrigue and double-dealing is that the lives of the vast majority of Sudan’s 22 million people will be largely unaffected by these shufflings of official positions among the Sudanese ruling class. Drought now affects 4 million native farmers and relief workers are currently predicting that one million people will die in Sudan in the coming year (The Times, 9 April 1985). It matters not one jot to them, nor will it affect their chances of survival, that they are now being ruled by a military rather than a civilian government.

World View: Seychelles: the strategic stakes (1998)

From the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Seychelles comprise 115 islands and atolls scattered over the western Indian Ocean, with Malé the largest island, 1,000 miles east of the Kenyan port of Mombassa. More than 90 percent of the population of 75,000 live on Malé.

The Seychelles were seized as a French colony in 1768, but were captured by Britain in 1794 and were incorporated as a dependency of Mauritius in 1814. They became a separate colony in 1903, achieved internal self-government in 1975, and gained independence as a republic within the British Commonwealth the following year.

Unlike many other British colonies, the Seychelles never had a strong nationalist movement before independence. The first political party, the Seychelles Democratic Party (SDP), was formed by a flamboyant lawyer, James Mancham, in 1963; two years later, another lawyer, Albert René, formed the People’s United Party (PUP). Mancham campaigned for integration with Britain, whilst Rene argued for independence.The SDP was considered to be left-wing, the PUP right-wing. Both were thoroughly reformist.

By the early 1970s, Mancham was persuaded, on advice from Britain, that integration with Britain was not acceptable, as it would not be tolerated by the former British colonies in East Africa, and would cause friction within the Seychelles. Mancham therefore opted for independence, but demanded that Britain help with the formation of the Seychelles’ security forces.The United States was allowed to construct a nuclear detonation monitoring satellite station on Malé island.

In 1976 James Mancham (who was to be knighted) became President and Albert René became Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of the Seychelles. Meanwhile Mancham had forged strong links with South Africa and René with Tanzania. Within months of Marcham’s election as president, René began plotting his overthrow.

When, at the beginning of June 1977, Mancham departed for the British Commonwealth Leaders’ Conference in London, René’s supporters, armed with AK-47 rifles and accompanied by 500 Tanzanian soldiers who had secretly entered the country, seized control of the principal government buildings, including the barracks and the police station in the capital,Victoria, on Malé. It was a walkover. By the following morning Albert René had complete control of the Seychelles.

René became president in place of Mancham. News was strictly controlled by the Ministry of Information; all residents were obliged to register their personal details with the government. President René took extreme precautions to ensure that he was not ousted from power. He initially recruited a small force of Tanzanian troops to protect the principal buildings and then later, acting on advice from his new Defence Minister, he replaced the Tanzanians with an elite detachment of North Korean guards. The Russian embassy increased its staff, of whom some were KGB and GRU officers, to about 50 “diplomats”. In 1979 René introduced a new constitution under which a People’s Progressive Front declared itself to the 23-member People’s Assembly of the Seychelles to be the sole legal party.

There have been numerous attempts to overthrow René and his government. Two plots involving French mercenaries were uncovered, in 1978 and 1979. In 1981 the infamous Mike Hoare, with a group of South African mercenaries posing as a rugby team, planned an attack on the Seychelles, but were pre-empted by the Seychelles security forces. Hoare and some of his men arrived at the airport of Malé but, after a fierce gun-battle, managed to escape back to South Africa.

In 1992, after the collapse of state capitalism in Russia, René recycled himself as a “democrat” and Sir James Mancham was allowed to return, protected by military bodyguards and, it has been alleged, members of the British SAS.

The strategic position of the Seychelles is the main reason why so many governments interfere and try to control the islands. Their value lies in their proximity to numerous trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, there are more than 80 islands with coves, harbours and mountains that have great military and naval uses. The islanders are mainly concerned with small-scale agriculture and fishing. Many of them, over the last 30 years or so, have been employed in hotels and the ever-increasing tourist industry but, at the moment, due to the recent economic problems across the Indian Ocean to the east, there has been something of a downturn in tourism in the Seychelles as elsewhere.The future is uncertain.

Peter E. Newell

Letter: Mussolini and Parliament. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Editorial Committee:

I read with interest your reply to Kett re “Mussolini and Parliament.”

You state that Mussolini was returned to Parliament with a majority of his supporters. Surely, comrades, you have made a grave mistake, as he gained power through the now well-known “March on Rome.” His majority came at an election after he had changed the election laws of Italy and crushed the organisations which opposed him. He cares little for majorities as he frankly states, as long as his own followers are well armed in support of the present system. However, it does prove the foolishness of supporting leaders, as at the time of the coup d’etat in Italy, his party was more republican, and its home policy different to the present one ; it has changed to suit him and the Capitalist interests.

Although I keenly support the need for a majority of Socialists in Parliament (if possible), yet I see the danger of such methods being used here in this country. The boss class may “close down” the House if it suits their purpose. This may come, as in Italy, through confusion in the working-class organisations.

Yours fraternally,

S. W.

Reply:

The “grave mistake” lies with “S.W.” Had he read the description of the so-called “March on Rome” at the time it took place, he would know that the half-armed rabble that followed Mussolini on that occasion bore no comparison with the better-armed and more highly-drilled body Mussolini commands to-day. When this rabble reached Rome, they were not allowed to enter the city, as the regular soldiers denied them admittance. The commanding officer of these soldiers who offered to clear Mussolini’s crowd out of the place in an hour, found to his disagreeable surprise that not only was he not to drive them out, but received orders to let them in. It suited the Capitalist government to let Mussolini take charge of affairs owing to the strained conditions of the time. It still suits them to let him continue in charge.

When the Capitalists no longer need this opera-bouffe hero as a “smoke-screen” between themselves and the Italian workers, Mussolini will be kicked out like an office-boy.

“S.W.” is also wrong about the election laws. These were altered after Mussolini had been elected by a majority of those voting. Conditions here are different from those existing in Italy, and the “closing down” of the House of Parliament, apart from a special temporary crisis, a much more difficult matter.

Editorial Committee

Between the Lines: From Russia With Confusion (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Russia With Confusion

The mind-numbing simplicities of cold war propaganda dominated the British media's coverage of the Russian coup. News programmes offered a cartoon image of events. Gorbachev the Rather Good had been overthrown by The Big Bad Reds who could only be defeated by Boris the Great. As ever in the capitalist picture of history, the workers were depicted as mere spectators — extras in the scene: the BBC News called them "Yeltsin's people". Is that what all the bravery of the crowd was for — the standing in front of tanks and the demand that democratic rights be retained? All that to become Yeltsin's people?

For the media there was no question that the coup was successful. Great Man Gorbachev had been replaced by Judas Yenayev. And that was that. The media never once considered the possibility that people could alter their history — that the power struggle would be more than the in-fighting of a ruling elite. On the first night of the coup both BBC and ITN News broadcast effective obituaries for Gorbachev. When the crowd began to assemble, the media was shocked. But they did not explain this as the action of thousands of workers fighting against a dictatorship. The defence of the Russian parliament was explained entirely in terms of the will of leaders, notably Yeltsin. When the coup was overthrown the BBC and ITN continued to explain the whole affair in terms of a power battle at the top. But this was not so: the collapse of the Communist Party dictatorship after the coup's defeat was not decided by Yeltsin and his political allies (whose political careers had been carved out within that dictatorship), but by the will of the people, the working class majority. From BBC l's children's news programme Newsround to BBC2’s fairly sophisticated Newsnight the analysis of the collapse of state capitalism and the Russian Empire has been over-simplified to the point of utter distortion. Good has prevailed over Evil. Good equals the market which is portrayed as a redeemer. Yeltsin, a political opportunist, nationalist and populist demagogue, compared by those who know him well as a modem Mussolini, is given an uncritical press. Two days after the coup the ITV News at Ten included a ludicrous report about the failure of "Marxist economics" in Russia. This report claimed that Russia had been run according to policies stated by Marx in The Communist Manifesto written in 1848. This unsubstantiated rubbish was put out without a thought given to the long-standing Marxist analysis of Russia as a state capitalist country — which is exactly what Lenin himself called it at the outset. (Speaking of crazy historical claims, the school's supplement to The Guardian in the week after the coup claimed that Marx supported the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 — thirty-three years after he died!) On the day that Yeltsin's elite banned the Communist Party in Russia (an unpromising start to a liberal democratic government) the ever-mistaken CNN opened its midday news with the proclamation that the Russian people were at last free. Indeed, CNN's American hysteria was reflected on the British news broadcasts by reporters making wild comments about the euphoria of the Russian people. In fact with continued empty shelves in the shops, rent food and fare increases on the way and 30 million plus to become unemployed soon, the delight of feeling free was about as great as in the British cities where workers have spent the nights celebrating with street riots.

On 7 September BBC2 had Charles Wheeler introduce a programme showing excerpts from Leningrad's archives of propaganda films. The Orwellian character of what was shown was chilling. Never again, we suspect will such crude propaganda con the wage slaves. But what of the less crude methods of keeping the proles in their place? We expect that Yeltsin's new TV controllers are studying the methods of the BBC and the US networks for newer, more subtle tricks of deceit; less conspicuous forms of ideological doping.

In the modern battle of ideas the media is crucial. The media bosses are accountable to no-one, least of all the workers. They continue to lie, to twist, to omit, to push workers into believing half-truths, non-truths and cartoon views of the world in which we live. It was no coincidence that the first action of the coup organisers in Moscow was to close the TV stations which they could not rely on. If the parish priest was the ideological mouthpiece of feudal rule, the newscaster is the high priest of capitalist ideology.

This writer cheered at the overthrow of the Leninist dictators. Their downfall and the tremendous political fire within the bellies of the workers who took to the streets, who tragically do not know what they do want but only what they don't, was a great moment to live through. As the cheering of the media hirelings started, with all their phoney talk of the downfall of Communism and triumph of Freedom through Market Forces, this writer's cheering slopped abruptly. Solidarity with our fellow workers, yes; but with the cynical pimps whose champagne corks were popping at the thought of new profits to be made — Never!

Steve Coleman

Reflections on revolution (2011)

From the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

What are the lessons of recent events in North Africa?

Revolution is in the air, or at least the word is. The media talked of a “Tunisian Revolution” in January and of an “Egyptian Revolution” in February. In a weak, narrow sense of the word this could be said to be true. In both countries a long-established dictator was overthrown as a first step towards establishing political democracy, the only kind of democracy that capitalism can offer.

Already some changes have been made, even though many of the personnel of the old regime are still in place. There is less arbitrary police repression. There is freedom of speech and to organise into trade unions independent of employers and the government. If this is consolidated it will represent an advantage from a working-class and socialist viewpoint. Workers will have more elbow-room to fight the class struggle and it will be much easier for socialists to express their views.

But it is still only a political change, at most a political revolution, that leaves unchanged the capitalist basis of society. Any more representative government that emerges will be no more able to make capitalism work in the interests of all than can the elected governments of countries where political democracy has long existed.

Political revolution

In his 1970 book on Revolution in the “Key Concepts in Political Science” series Peter Calvert defined ‘revolution’ as “referring to events in which physical force (or the convincing threat of it) has actually been used successfully to overthrow a government or regime”. He concluded by advising political science to retain the word “as a political term covering all forms of violent change of government or regime originating internally”.

This fits in with the popular concept of revolution as a violent act. But it rules out calling a revolution the sort of non-violent overthrow of a government that occurred in Tunisia and Egypt. And not just the changes there but also those in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s where it was also determined but peaceful mass demonstrations that brought about a change of political system.

Calvert’s definition of political revolution would seem to need refining, to take into account such non-violent changes of political system. Not of course any non-violent change of government as the leader of the Fine Gael party in Ireland (now the Prime Minister) absurdly claimed when he described his party’s electoral victory in February as a “democratic revolution at the ballot box” in which “people didn’t take to the streets, they took to the ballot boxes”. The change of government in Ireland was not a revolution in any sense of the term, merely a change of capitalist government brought about through the normal constitutional procedures in a capitalist political democracy.

But even if the concept of political revolution is extended to include a change of government brought about by essentially peaceful but non-constitutional means this still limits the definition of revolution to a political change only.

Social revolution

Socialists too want a revolution but one involving much more than a change of political control. We want a social revolution, a revolution in the basis of society. In that sense our conception of revolution is nearer to that accepted by Martin Oppenheimer (as formulated by Chalmers Johnson) in his 1969 book Urban Guerrilla:

  “A sweeping, fundamental change in political organization, social structure, economic property control, and the predominant myth of social order, thus indicating a major break in the continuity of development.”

On this definition there was no revolution in Tunisia or Egypt, nor in Eastern Europe. But events there are still relevant to the concept of socialist revolution as we see the first step in this revolution as being a political revolution in the sense of a change in who controls the state. We also think that, in established political democracies, this could be done non-violently through the ballot box.

This has been challenged by others, who have argued that the entrenched ruling class would never allow this to happen and that the only way they can be dislodged is through civil war and violent insurrection. Faced with an impending socialist election victory, their argument goes, the capitalist ruling class would abolish political democracy and, even if they let things go so far as an actual socialist election victory, would not respect it and would carry on ruling regardless.

The overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende government in Chile by a military coup in 1973 always used to be cited as confirmation of this. Quite apart from the fact that Allende and his government were not socialist, they never had the electoral, let alone the active, support of a majority of the population – which in our view is an essential condition for the establishment and functioning of socialism.

This is a view our critics do not share. They are not thinking, as we are, in terms of a majoritarian revolution, one involving the active and democratic participation of a majority of the population. They envisage only a minority-led revolution, with an active minority leading a mass of merely discontented but not socialist-minded workers. It is quite true that, faced with such an attempted revolution, the ruling class is likely to resist violently, with a reasonable chance of success.

Even if such a revolution were to succeed it would not, and could not, lead to socialism. As Martin Oppenheimer pointed out, with regard to the majority class of industrial and white collar workers:

 “The revolution rules in their name, but they do not rule. In their absence from effective participation in the revolution, the same thing happens that happens in a peasant-based revolution: gradually the leaders of a minority-led revolution become a new bureaucracy, a new class of rulers… Modern society is ripe for the domination of bureaucracy, in the absence of a revolutionary working class. Perhaps the leader of a minority revolution is not himself irrevocably lost, but his revolution is.”

Unless a majority of industrial and white collar workers want socialism and organise themselves without leaders to get it then socialism is impossible. On the other hand, if they do want it, nothing can stop them getting it, not even a hypothetical abolition of political democracy by a recalcitrant capitalist government. It is this that the recent events in North Africa confirm. Capitalist political dictatorships there couldn’t even stop a determined majority that wanted limited, political democracy. How much less would a capitalist political dictatorship be able to stop the more determined and more organised majority that one wanting socialism would be?

Pro-capitalist coup?

No government can continue to govern in the face of active opposition from those they govern. Answering a question from a correspondent who asked what we would do if, faced with a socialist election victory, the pro-capitalist government suspended the constitution and attempted to rule by decree, the Socialist Standard of November 1933 reformulated the question as “Can a capitalist minority which happens to have control of the machinery of Government continue indefinitely to govern and make capitalism function, in the face of the organised opposition of a majority of Socialists?” and answered:

  “It is not possible for a minority to maintain its hold in those circumstances. Faced with the hostility of a majority of workers (including, of course, workers in the civil and armed forces, as well as workers in productive and distributive occupations), the capitalist minority would be unable, in the long run, to enforce its commands and the workers would be able to dislocate production and transport. In such circumstances the capitalists would themselves be divided. Not all of them would be disposed to provoke chaotic conditions in an heroic last-ditch struggle.”

The reply went on to make the point that “a look at the way in which governments do behave in face of a hostile majority under existing conditions will show how impossible it is for any minority to retain cohesion and to act decisively when it is conscious of being actively opposed by the majority”. And invited the correspondent “to name a single instance of a capitalist minority managing to maintain its hold on the machinery of government for any length of time in face of the organised and united opposition of a majority of the population”, adding “We know of no such instance.”

The recent events in North Africa, like those in Eastern Europe twenty or so years ago, confirm this. Faced with the active opposition of the population of their countries the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators quit. The governments there were divided and did at first try violent repression (hundreds were killed) but, faced with the continued courageous determination of the demonstrators, they were not prepared to provoke the chaos that violent repression would have entailed,  especially not mutinies in the armed forces as their members refused to shoot down unarmed demonstrators. Ceausescu in Rumania and Gaddafi in Libya were exceptions that proved the rule. They did stage a last-ditch stand and duly provoked the mutinies and defections and chaos.

We take comfort from these events as they show that, once there is a socialist majority, socialism will be inevitable. Even if a pro-capitalist minority somewhere were to try to prevent a change of political control via the ballot box, the socialist majority will still be able to impose its will by other means, such as street demonstrations and strikes. But we doubt that it will come to that. But if it did, it wouldn’t stop socialism being eventually established, one way or another.

1989 and All That: The Fall of the Russian Empire (2019)

From the November 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thirty years ago this month the Berlin Wall came down marking the end of the Russian State-capitalist Empire. We recall that, right from the start, we realised that Russia was not heading for socialism.

Of all the groups which arose during the Russian Revolution, those who came nearest to getting it right were arguably some of the ‘Mensheviks.’

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had split, before the Bolshevik coup, into Bolshevik (majority), and Menshevik (minority).

The Bolsheviks followed Lenin and their belief, amid the turmoil following the Tsar’s abdication (the Revolution had been underway since March 1917), was that the working class was too weak to make a socialist revolution. This was true, and the Mensheviks agreed. The two factions disagreed over the following.

The Mensheviks said that capitalism must be developed in Russia and industry and technology built up to the level of western Europe. Then, and only then, would the working class grow and achieve the strength in numbers and the awareness to carry out a socialist revolution. Socialism must be global and achieved by the workers themselves. In the meantime, they said, it is important for all to have freedom of press and assembly, and an open parliament, so that the free circulation of ideas can accompany social development. Russia, said the Mensheviks, could not jump over capitalism, but this had to be gone through. Parliamentary democracy was therefore the best option.

The Bolsheviks didn’t want to wait. They said (like the Leninist parties today) that the workers will never become aware of the need for socialism, and must therefore be led to it by a vanguard of intellectuals (meaning the Bolsheviks themselves)

So, in November 1917 (October by the old Orthodox calendar), Lenin, Trotsky, and a handful of Bolsheviks plotted and carried out a minority coup d’etat against the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky, and got workers to support them with the slogans ‘Bread!’ and ‘Stop the war!’ In the countryside, Bolsheviks put forward the slogan ‘Bread and Land!’ as well as ‘Stop the war!’

The Bolsheviks’ campaign to stop the war reached the West, and in 1915 they had attempted to have their anti-war declaration published. Every paper in Britain refused except the Socialist Standard, which published the Russian Bolshevik declaration on its front page, proclaiming solidarity with all workers wanting the war stopped.

Lenin and Trotsky, after seizing power in November 1917, kept their promise to stop the war, winning massive support. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed with Germany, taking Russia out of the war.

Almost immediately, the Western Allies blockaded Moscow and shut out all information concerning Russian events. British and US armies were dispatched to Russia’s north-west; in the south and east, Tsarist armies terrorised the countryside, while in Moscow and Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Lenin and Trotsky gave into hysteria similar to that of the revolutionaries in Paris in 1793.

In Ukraine, Makhno’s Anarchist cossacks defeated the Tsarist army there and made an alliance with Lenin and Trotsky, which the Bolsheviks reneged on later.

Responding to the conditions of the military blockade, the Bolsheviks cracked down with their own terror, abolishing freedom of the press and arresting and executing political dissidents. In the naval port of Kronstadt, the sailors mutinied, demanding the socialism the Bolsheviks had promised, and bread for the workers at least. Trotsky sent raw young frightened Red Army recruits against the sailors and many were killed. Finally the Red Army overran Kronstadt and those sailors who were not killed escaped to Finland.

Fleeing for their lives, many Mensheviks escaped to Georgia and held out briefly there against the Bolshevik government forces. Trotsky then turned his attention to destroying the Ukrainian Anarchistsas Lenin’s government became more secure.

Having seized control of the Russian state, Lenin found himself faced with the enormous task of transforming a vast peasant economy in ruins into a capitalist nation-state. Just as the Mensheviks had told him, Russia wasn’t ready for socialism and had to build a capitalist economy. Now he was faced with the task, having closed parliament outlawed all parties besides his own and established a dictatorship based on tyranny over the working class.

He thus elaborated an ideology which would permit the ruthless development of capitalism under a one-party state and still keep a ‘Marxist’vocabulary.

He renamed the Bolshevik RSDLP the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, redefined socialism as state-capitalism, and said that this ‘socialism’ must be an immensely long ‘transition period’ before communism (real socialism) can become a reality. A transition period which, naturally, would be ruled over by the CPSU.

By 1918, it was obvious to us that what had occurred in Russia was not a socialist revolution, but a coup d’etat by a group of opportunists, paving the way for a semi-feudal economy to be transformed into a modern capitalist state. However it took nearly 70 years before Russia finally dropped the pretence of being socialist and did away with its pseudo-Marxist terminology and emerged as the openly capitalist power it is today.

A.W.

Bolshevik anti-socialism (2018)

From the December 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently, the electronic journal Anti-Capital published a stinging review (issue 13) of our publication Centenary of the Revolution (2017), a collection of articles from the Socialist Standard, dealing mainly with the so-called Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath. We are accustomed to having our views caricatured but this particular review seems to have plumbed new depths of misrepresentation.

Amongst the numerous inaccuracies littering the review one in particular stands out:

  ‘A common theme throughout the SPGB’s writings is an explicit rejection of the class struggle as the motor force of human society (historical materialism) and a rejection of the class struggle as the material basis for the revolutionary movement of the working-class (socialism)’.

Anyone familiar with the Socialist Party would instantly know this is simply untrue. You only have to look at our Declaration of Principles in which the notion of class struggle, far from being ‘explicitly rejected’, is explicitly acknowledged.

What seems to have riled these Leninists is the Socialist Party’s repudiation of the claim that what happened in 1917 was a socialist revolution. We share Marx’s view that the emancipation of the working class must be done by the working class itself, not some Leninist vanguard. For that to happen, workers en masse – not just in one country but across the world – need to want and understand what this basically entails. In other words, there needs to be a conscious socialist majority.

That there was no such majority, or even a significant minority, in Russia (or elsewhere) in 1917 is indisputable. Lenin himself noted that ‘the majority of the population in Russia are peasants, small farmers who can have no idea of socialism’ (speech at Seventh All-Russia Conference of the Party) and that the ‘proletariat and semi proletariat’, had ‘never been socialist, nor has it the slightest idea about socialism, it is only just awakening to political life’. In another speech, he frankly admitted ‘We know how small the section of advanced and politically conscious workers in Russia is’ (Second All-Russia Congress of Commissars for Labour, 1918)

This was precisely Lenin’s justification for his vanguard party, supposedly drawn from this small and politically advanced section of the working class, to take matters into its hands; the great majority of workers and peasants, in his estimation, were not yet imbued with a socialist consciousness so the vanguard had to take power and act on their behalf.

Yet, oddly enough, the Leninist reviewer in Anti-Capital rebukes us for saying much the same thing as Lenin in this case – namely, that there was no mass support for socialism – and goes on to assert: ‘In place of the living dynamics of the real-existing class struggle as it actually exists and the course it actually takes at the heart of Marxist materialism, the SPGB substitutes metaphysics.’

But how is it ‘metaphysics’ to question whether the majority of the Russian population in 1917 were mentally prepared for socialism? If anything seems ‘metaphysical’, it is the belief that you can somehow conjure a stateless non-market socialist society into existence without a majority wanting and understanding what that means beforehand. On the other hand, if you agree that a socialist majority is first needed in order to implement socialism how can you then go on to describe a revolution as ‘socialist’ when demonstrably – as in 1917 – such a majority was conspicuous by its absence?

The plain fact is, given the paucity of socialists at the time, the Bolsheviks, with the best will in the world, had only one course of action open to them, given their determination to seize power – namely, to embrace some form of capitalism. Furthermore, there is only one way in which capitalism can be administered – that is, in the interests of capital and against the interests of workers. That is why the 1917 uprising was nothing like the idealistic picture that Anti-Capital paints.

This is the conclusion any ‘Marxist materialist’ would draw yet, according to the Anti-Capital reviewer, it is precisely ‘Marxist materialism’ that the Socialist Party has renounced. We are accused of ‘crass economic determinism’ for erasing from history the ‘millions of organized workers who were fighting under the red flag for socialism’. How we can be charged with the crime of ‘economic determinism’ while attaching such importance to the subjective preconditions for socialism, is not explained.

Class struggle
The reviewer shows a complete lack of understanding of the relationship between the goal of socialism and the process of class struggle itself – the suggestion that propagating the former somehow ‘substitutes’ for the latter. On the contrary, the former arises out of the latter just as Marx’s ‘class-for-itself’ arises out of his ‘class-in-itself’. Socialist consciousness separates the one from the other. Far from being divorced from the class struggle, putting forward the case for socialism is, in fact, the most politically efficacious way of prosecuting that struggle from the workers’ standpoint. What could possibly be more revolutionary than advancing an objective that directly challenges, and calls into question, the rule of capital itself?

Moreover, the whole point of the class struggle is surely to end it, not indefinitely prolong it out of some misguided masochistic desire to be endlessly exploited by our capitalist employers. You can only end it by eliminating class ownership of the means of producing wealth and establishing socialism and for that, as stated, you first need a conscious socialist majority. There is nothing noble or edifying about the idea of class struggle for its own sake. We demand the right to live as human beings, not mere ‘hands’.

How little the Anti-Capital reviewer understands our perspective is also borne out by the comments about our supposed views on industrial struggles. According to the reviewer this is further evidence that we reject the class struggle:

  ‘There are a series of bizarre contradictions arising from this rejection of the class struggle. At the same time that they claim that struggles for higher wages, shorter hours and improved working conditions are inevitable and necessary under capitalism, they also claim that the workers’ party has no role in these struggles.’

This is a complete muddle. If anything, the contradiction lies with the reviewer in admitting that the Socialist Party says such struggles are ‘inevitable and necessary’ under capitalism and then bizarrely claiming that it rejects the class struggle. The fact that we do not think it is appropriate to directly engage, as a political party, in the industrial conflicts that workers are embroiled in, in no way means it repudiates class struggle itself. That is a completely unwarranted inference to draw which, moreover, is entirely at odds with our own stated position of principled support for industrial militancy along sound lines.

It is simply that, unlike opportunist Leninist sects that have a habit of wanting to cynically exploit industrial disputes in order to recruit more members, the Socialist Party recognises that workers engaged in such disputes come from many different political backgrounds. Consequently, to sow political divisions among workers (which is precisely what direct party political intervention would do), rather than concentrate on the immediate issue at hand would, ironically, weaken the collective strength and unity of the trade union itself. As individuals, however, many members of the Socialist Party are active trade unionists and there is no contradiction whatsoever between this and their espousal of revolutionary socialism.

Revolution
However, it is the question of what constitutes a ‘revolution’ that perhaps most sharply separates us from the Leninists. For us, and fully in line with Marxian usage, what this term denotes is, simply, a fundamental change in the socio-economic basis of society.

It is not about how you achieve that change – the methods you use. For the instance, the use of violent force does not necessarily signify a revolution if all it results in is the overthrow of one particular ruling class and its replacement by another. If nothing has really changed substantively in terms of the basic social relationships that define a given society then you have not really had a revolution; merely a pseudo-revolution.

Nor does a revolution have to do with the class character of its agents or participants. No capitalist revolution was ever effected solely, or even mainly, by members of the capitalist class. Invariably, the capitalists called upon the assistance of the far more numerous subordinate classes – like the proletariat or the peasantry – in their bid to overthrow the then existing pre-capitalist social order.

This is true even when the overwhelming majority of the participants in a ‘revolution’ were workers – as in Russia, 1917 – when traditional bourgeoisie were dispossessed only for the Bolshevik regime to step into their shoes, functionally speaking. Indeed, in almost uncanny anticipation of the outcome of that particular event, Marx once noted how the mass mobilisation of workers in a struggle against the bourgeoisie can, in the end, serve only to entrench the rule of capital:

  ‘If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeoisie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule’ (Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality, 1847).

So it is not the methods or the class character of the participants, involved in a revolution that determines its nature but, rather, its outcome – whether it results in a fundamental change in the organisational structure of society. There are basically two ways you can talk about a ‘revolution’. You can call it an ‘event’ – like the political act of replacing capitalism with socialism – or you can call it a ‘process’ (providing such a process is consciously aligned, or congruent, with the desired outcome of establishing socialism). In this latter sense, we can say ‘the revolution’ has already begun and will (hopefully) gather momentum in the form of an expanding movement for socialism, leading up eventually to the revolutionary ‘event’ of capturing political power.

According to Anti-Capital, however, we allegedly maintain that ‘Marx never saw fit to promulgate the seizure of power by the organized working-class in their conception’ – meaning a revolution in the sense of an ‘event’. This is simply untrue. Of course we are fully aware that Marx advocated the capture of political power. Moreover, this is something we advocate ourselves and, again, this is enshrined in our Declaration of Principles. We insist, however, that this political act must be carried out democratically by an organised working class that is genuinely socialist in outlook. Otherwise it cannot possibly amount to a socialist revolution. It cannot possibly usher in socialism.

Again, according to Anti-Capital:

  ‘For the SPGB, every revolution is a coup d’etat. February 1917 was a capitalist coup d’etat (Ibid, ‘The Russian Situation’, June 1917, p. 23), October 1917 was a Bolshevik coup d’etat (Ibid, p.31); 1905 was a “capitalist movement” (Ibid, ‘The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails’, August 1918, p. 37).’

This too is misleading. We do not say ‘every revolution is a coup d’etat’. There have been revolutions in the past fully deserving of the term ‘revolution’. These brought about a fundamental change in the socio-economic basis of society – such as from feudalism to capitalism. However, capitalism is now thoroughly global. Consequently, the only legitimate use of the term ‘revolution’ today (at least in Marxian terminology) must entail a social transformation that culminates in genuine socialism. Anything short of that would not truly constitute a ‘revolution’ in our view.

This is why the Socialist Party was, technically, perfectly correct in describing the 1917 Bolshevik ‘revolution’ as a merely a coup d’etat. Capitalist relations of production based on generalised wage labour were not introduced under the Bolsheviks but merely consolidated and extended under their rule in the guise of state capitalism. At best, you could describe 1917 as a culminating moment in a protracted process of capitalist revolution that had begun earlier.

After all, even under the Tsar, capitalist industry was making headway in the towns and some of the factory complexes, like the giant Putilov works, were amongst the largest and most modern in the world. Moreover, at the time, Russia was the most heavily indebted country in the world with capital pouring in from countries, like France and Britain, to finance industrial development. The Bolsheviks’ decision to renege on these foreign debts was one reason for the subsequent invasion of Russia by various foreign powers in alliance with the white armies during the turbulent civil war that followed.

In any event, there can be no justification whatsoever from a Marxian standpoint for describing the events of 1917 as a ‘socialist’ revolution. As we have seen, genuine socialism was simply not on the political agenda. What initially attracted the Russian workers – and the far more numerous peasants – to the Bolsheviks was the promise of sweeping capitalist reform, not socialist revolution. Indeed, under the influence of the Bolsheviks the very term ‘socialism’ itself came increasingly to mean something quite different to the original Marxian concept. Instead of signifying a stateless non-market system of society it came to be redefined by Lenin as a form of ‘state capitalist monopoly’.

The Bolsheviks, for their part, opportunistically and cynically exploited the civil unrest at the time to catapult themselves into power but we should not romanticise the unrest itself as something other than it was. It was driven by such desperate concerns as securing waged employment in a context of widespread factory closures and financial collapse. It was certainly not the opening salvo of a socialist revolution, determined to fashion a completely new kind of society on the ruins of capitalism. That is just naïve fantasy, a retrospective construction put on events by ideologues in love with flowery rhetoric.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Bolshevik regime, having first curried favour with the workers, viciously turned upon them, imposing upon them its brutal dictatorship of the vanguard over the proletariat. The roll call of anti-working class measures implemented by the regime is long and impressive: the crushing of the factory committees, the subordination of the trade unions to the state, the imposition of top-down ‘one-man’ management in the factories, the ruthless suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion on fabricated charges, the introduction of the notorious ‘militarisation of labour’ programme under Trotsky and the systematic elimination of all political opponents both inside and outside the Party.

Pathetic
It is, frankly, quite pathetic in this day and age, especially given the benefit of hindsight, that there are still some people around, like those involved in the Anti-Capital project, so deluded as to feel it incumbent upon themselves to glorify and defend the Bolshevik coup as ‘a necessary obligation for all who work toward the emancipation of labor from capital’. All the available evidence suggests the very opposite was the case. It resulted in the ruthless subordination of labour to the goal of capital accumulation – a classic feature of capitalism. Indeed, according some estimates, the rate of capital accumulation out of surplus value in the early Soviet Union, with its concomitant suppression of working class consumption, was among the very highest in the world at the time (Peter Binns, ‘State Capitalism’, Marxism and the Modern World, 1986).

The development of soviet state capitalism prepared the ground for the emergence of the corrupt corporate capitalism of Putin’s Russia today. Indeed, many of the obscenely rich oligarchs of modern Russia were themselves once high-ranking members of the Soviet ruling class. All they wanted in their ‘revolution from above’ that overthrew the old Soviet system was to modernise the conditions of capitalist exploitation to make it more ‘efficient’ and beneficial to themselves.

If we could turn the clock back to 1917, as our Leninist conservatives, wallowing in their misplaced nostalgia, would have us do, the eventual outcome would still be little different to what it unfortunately happens to be today.

Robin Cox

Shadow Boxing with the Ghost of Lenin (2018)

Book Review from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

L’Ombre d’Octobre (‘The Shadow of October’) by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval (Lux, Montreal)

The centenary of the Russian revolution of 1917 turned out to be a singularly uneventful year in the social calendar of the Left in Europe and elsewhere. In many ways this was only to be expected: our images of the Russian revolution have been so saturated by the vision of the horrors of political repression, civil war and labour camps that it has become difficult for the supporters of the Russian adventure to put forward a more positive thematic just as it has been difficult for the more sceptical to form a clear picture of what actually went on. Many opt for a studied indifference to what was an attempt to foster a haphazard form of social reform in the unforgiving environment of a backward society stuck on the losing end of a brutal war. However, the continued existence of Leninist parties makes it somewhat incumbent upon socialists to reiterate the important points at issue between the mainstream Marxist approach to the movement for socialism and what Lenin and his acolytes considered – against all the evidence – to be the one best road to socialism. 

This task, however, is accomplished by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval in L’ombre d’Octobre (‘The Shadow of October’) (Lux, Montreal). The authors demolish the myth that the Bolshevik movement established an economic system rooted in the autonomous activity of the working population as a whole, the supposed object of the whole enterprise. From the outset this outcome was unlikely as many of the leading students of Marx of the period had already pointed out. The Russian empire contained a small but growing industrial working class and a huge mass of peasants living on the edge of subsistence. Illiteracy was the lot of the vast majority. Revolutionary parties tended to be miniscule and divided on many issues although many expressed a growing fascination with the somewhat scholastic Marxism of the day. Nonetheless, there were  many signs that the working population in the period preceding the Bolshevik takeover were taking the political situation very much into their own hands by establishing independent trade unions, strike committees, peasant groupings, tenant organisations, village councils, military committees and Soviets (workers’ councils) The hierarchical vanguard party led and inspired by Lenin enthusiastically tapped into this activity, fanning the flames of discontent whilst insinuating themselves into a mutinous army. The party was structured in such a way that its military wing could have made a successful bid for state power at any time in the dying months of 1917.

The important point made by the authors is that the peculiarly zig-zag itinerary traced by the Bolsheviks in their relationship to these popular movements laid the foundations for the subordination that the working population would subsequently experience at the hands of the state following the coup d’état in October. The Bolsheviks’ explicit support for the Soviets – which went from lip-service to highly vocal and back again – ultimately operated as a convenient smoke-screen behind which Lenin and his acolytes created sufficient room for manoeuvre in their bid for the monopoly of state power. It allowed him to neutralise his opponents – other anti-Tsarist revolutionaries like the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries – in the Soviets whilst using the threat of a renewal of the war effort to overthrow the Provisional Government under Kerensky. The actual takeover of power concerned, at most, a few hundred armed militants in Petrograd, a febrile and short-lived insurgency in the streets, and many more arms crossed among a bemused and impatient civilian population. Whilst we can credit the Bolshevik takeover with a large degree of passive support, subsequent support for the emerging Leninist state was increasingly brow-beaten out of the coerced masses. A government lacking a state – that of Kerensky – had been replaced by a fully armed state with a government lacking democratic legitimacy. Pretty soon there would be no room for dissenting voices.

Against this consider that the various Soviets represented a plurality of political orientations and a potential for an active and growing democracy. Prior to the takeover, there was even something of a movement towards a government centred on them. The fact that this considerably complicated the task for the hardliners in the leadership of what became the Communist Party largely explains Lenin’s ambivalent attitude toward the Soviets. Indeed, their popularity was the reason why militants and the population at large were encouraged to believe that the Bolshevik takeover was an attempt to defend them. However, many of the more active elements in the population – and even some Bolshevik leaders – had misgivings about the Leninist cornering of state power by military means. That this was the principal goal of Lenin explains the inconvenient fact that he was more concerned that the takeover should take place prior to the Pan-Russian Congress of Soviets on 25 October than he was about fostering their autonomy. On this day he issued his famous proclamation taking power in the name of the Soviets. But he was also far-sighted enough to remove from the draft of the text any mention of the constitution of power based on the Soviets (as the authors point out on pages 56-7). Indeed, the ‘Soviet government’ (Soviet of Commissars of the People) issuing from the coup was appointed prior to the Congress of Soviets. It emerged in the absence of any consultation with the Soviets themselves and resulted from a back of an envelope list drawn up by a small group within the Central Committee of the Communist Party; henceforth the unique source of all power in Russia.

In the subsequent period, the train of events rolled along the rails laid down by a miniscule party leadership. Delegates to the Soviets were vetted by would-be civil servants, electoral rolls were modified to suit the government and the complexion of what was left of autonomous political tendencies within them came to reflect the economic priorities identified by the state. The Constituent Assembly – the object of the widest election in Russian history – became irrelevant and was closed down. The press was muzzled despite laws guaranteeing freedom of the press, a secret police was set up and a haphazard and arbitrary policy of terror paralysed what was left of political life. Bolshevik leaders moaned about the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the state they were creating; bureaucracy being the code-word for a political set-up which strangled all autonomous political activity at birth. Oceans of ink would be wasted on whether this state was a degenerated workers’ state, a state which had capitalist leftovers, an incomplete workers’ state, the first incomplete stage of communism, or whatever. For the workers, Taylorist production methods were recommended; a detailed subdivision of tasks, the division of management from the shop-floor and even military-style industrial discipline. State capitalism in short.

M. M.

The Bolshevik Revolution (1967)

From the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution is now with us, and again dramatic and romantic descriptions of the Bolshevik seizure of power will circulate. Lurid official paintings of the event, with Stalin well to the fore and Trotsky nowhere to be seen, will appear in the glossy magazines. In fact the events that took place in Petrograd on November 7 1917 (October 26 by the old Russian Calendar) were largely a noisy farce. What little bloodshed occurred was unnecessary, the result of muddle and hysteria.

The grand climax, the storming of the Winter Palace and the capture of the Provisional Government, had all the makings of a legend—the ultimatum, brought by two armed cyclists across the river from the fortress of St Peter and St. Paul, the opening of the bombardment from the fortress and from the cruiser Aurora, while the cruiser’s searchlights swept the city. Finally the Red Guards closing in to storm the place. All the time, of course, Lenin from the Smolny Institute was directing operations with an iron hand.

In reality the cruiser fired only blanks, while most of the shells from the fortress went anywhere but the Winter Palace. The defending troops had been melting away all day, and the remnants gave up without a fight. In the final scene the cabinet made a pathetic pretence of being in session when the Red Guards broke in and captured them. The real work of the revolution had lain in the months that had preceded it, and in the ruthless period of consolidation and repression that was to follow. On November 7 the only well organised body in Russia, the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, took the power from the nervous hands of a government whose writ hardly ran beyond the committee rooms of Petrograd.

The overthrow of the Tzar, in the February insurrection, had revealed a country in a state of complete collapse, politically and economically. When the Tzar departed the whole machinery of government went with him. The completely unbending nature of the autocracy had made it impossible for any of the opposition parties to obtain real political experience; consequently nobody had any clear idea of what to do. All authority had centred on the Tzar, so with the monarchy gone loyalties shifted about and swung from one rallying point to another.

The army, the mainstay of the Tzarist State, had been broken by the unparalleled slaughter of the past three years. The economy was in ruins. Once the lid was off, the repressed grievances of the workers and peasants burst out in numerous acts of violence. It was predictable that the first organised body strong enough to rally substantial support would take control. That body was the Bolsheviks.

The revolution had been quite spontaneous and unplanned, and while the victorious soldiers and workers thronged the streets there emerged what has become known as the dual power. Two centres of power arose in opposite wings of the Tauride Palace, both of them relics of the 1905 revolution.

One was the State Duma or Parliament, which was the only institution of the old autocratic government to survive. It had been very limited in its powers, it was based on an extremely restricted electorate, and had been set up as a sop to revolutionary feelings in 1905. Like the Parliaments in Tudor England it was called only when there was trouble such as the outbreak of war, and very little notice had been taken of it. The Duma was to become the nucleus of the new Provisional Government. Its members were drawn from the landowning and embroyo capitalist classes, and its principal party was the Constitutional Democrats or Kadets. The Kadets had also come into being in 1905, and they favoured a Constitutional Monarchy. They were “progressive liberals”, but in any other place they would have been considered extreme reactionaries.

The other body was the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies that had been set up in imitation of 1905. Soviet is merely the Russian word for council. Its members were Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks with a few Bolsheviks and other minor parties. The Soviet held the real power, through the fact that the revolutionaries would take orders only from them. No train would run, no telegram would be sent, and nothing would be printed without the Soviet permission. The War Minister, A. I. Guchkov, in a letter to a general, wrote

The Provisional Government possesses no real power and its orders are executed only insofar as this is permitted by the Soviet of the Workers and Soldiers Deputies, which holds in its hands the most important elements of actual power, such as troops, railroads, postal and telegraph service. It is possible to say directly that the Provisional Government exists only while this is permitted by the Soviet. (A Short History of the Russian Revolution, Joel Carmichael.)

But the great irony was that, although the Soviet held the real power, they refused to exercise it. They held the view that a bourgeois government must first take power and engineer a capitalist revolution before a Socialist Revolution could follow. This, combined with their inexperience and the suddenness with which they had been pitchforked into power, led them to bolster up the Provisional Government, rather than make use of the power they held. Such an arrangement would have been difficult in any circumstances; in the Russia of 1917 it was doomed to failure from the start, and served to paralyse things still further.

Meanwhile the peasants throughout Russia were taking the law into their own hands, seizing land and burning down manor houses. This led to a further deterioration in the supply of food. And all the time the war was dragging on. It was into this mess that Lenin, a master of political organisation and intrigue, arrived in April. He began, with the able assistance of Trotsky—his equal in these matters— to organise the Bolsheviks, a despised minority party, into the only effective body in Russia.

The Provisional Government was determined to carry on with the war and in mid-summer Kerensky launched the long awaited offensive. It was a ghastly failure; the Germans smashed through the Russian lines and the Russian army was at an end as a fighting force. Men began to desert in droves, flocking back from the front and giving rise to the much-quoted expression of “voting with their feet”. The workers and soldiers of St. Petersburg outdid the Bolsheviks in revolutionary fervour. In the July Days, the uprising that led to the temporary suppression of the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks had been dragged along, rather unwillingly, behind events. It was to cash in on these feelings that the slogan, “Bread, Peace, Land" was devised.

In late August the Commander of Petrograd, General Kornilov, attempted to march on Petrograd and overthrow the Provisional Government. He had massed troops half way between Petrograd and Moscow, and began a serious attack on Petrograd. But once again the unreliability of the army was apparent and the troops just melted away. The immediate effect was to swing opinion, that had built up against the Bolsheviks after the July Days, back towards them.

When the Bolsheviks finally moved in October, it was quick. In Petrograd it was soon over. In Moscow resistance was greater, and fighting lasted for over three days, but the result was never really in doubt. The take over was quite easy, but the Bolsheviks’ troubles were only just beginning. The events in Petrograd had happened so quickly that the newspapers on October 26 came out with leading articles written the night before, talking of the “isolation of the Bolsheviks.” The Bolsheviks immediately began to show their hand, and on the first day the entire bourgeois press was shut down.

This was the shape of things to come. The Bolsheviks had used the revolutionary fervour of the masses, but they had no intention of acting in a democratic way. The long awaited Constituent Assembly was called, but as it gave a large majority to the opponents of the Bolsheviks, it was dissolved the same day. One by one the other political parties went down, and the murderous civil war, that was to rage for two years, was fought by as vicious an autocracy as ever the Tzar had been. In 1918 the Cheka, the new political police, were established and they soon acquired absolute powers. It was not in the gay, romantic, brave uprising of the legend, that Russia was to be changed, but in the grim butchery of the civil war, in the quiet killings in the cellars of the Cheka, and the famines which followed the attempts to collectivise the land. Workers will be well advised to study that grim chapter of history, known as the Russian Revolution, when they are confronted with glib invitations to solve their problems with violence.

Les Dale

Turkey: Background to a Failed Coup (2016)

From the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

A personal view of the recent attempted coup in Turkey based on talking to people there.

Writing three weeks after the attempted coup d’etat on 15 July 2016 in Turkey, my initial reaction was one of complete rejection of its validity – it had to be a ‘false-flag’ because, based on early reports, the Turkish armed forces are quite simply not that inept!

As the days passed reports and information emerged that explained why the coup had failed so quickly and dramatically. It was clear that many in the higher echelons of the armed services and MIT (state intelligence service) were not aware of the plotting and would not have supported the plotters if they had been.

Young conscripts when faced with orders to shoot on crowds of civilians protesting against the coup refused, laid down their weapons and surrendered to the people or police. The mistreatment and even murder of these conscripts by the crowds and the failure of the police to prevent it were in many ways astonishing.

A sergeant shot himself dead rather than obey an illegal order to fire on a crowd.

A junior officer, when he realised what was happening, shot dead a brigadier who was a senior commander on the ground for the coup plotters.

Thousands of people answered the call from the president via social media and the mosques’ loudspeakers to fill the streets and stop the coup. Tanks were stopped by people laying down in front of them or by having socks stuffed in the exhaust pipes. Even so, hundreds were gunned down or died in the bombing by helicopter gunships and F16 fighter aircraft.

Perhaps the single most telling reason for the failure of the coup is to be found in the actions of the Russians. Relations between Turkey and Russia nose-dived after Turkish aircraft shot down a Russian plane over Syria (eventually even NATO agreed that the Russian aircraft had not crossed into Turkish airspace). Erdoğan’s bombast and refusal to apologise led to crippling sanctions that have deeply damaged the Turkish economy. Such was the damage that eventually Erdoğan swallowed his pride, admitted responsibility, apologised and agreed to pay the Russian government and families of the dead crew compensation.

Russia’s advanced electronic warfare and surveillance post at the Hmeimim Air Base in NW Syria intercepted communications between helicopters that indicated that a coup was about to be launched against the government of Turkey. That information was channelled to President Putin via the FSB (formerly KGB) who authorised that it be passed to MIT (Turkish Intelligence Service). Russia’s action has been ignored by Western media but has been openly acknowledged by the Turkish government. The head of MIT, Hakan Fidan, a staunch Erdoğan loyalist, immediately met with the chiefs of the armed services and an order grounding all aircraft and forbidding any movement of troops or armour followed.

The coup plotters, realising that they were exposed and would face a long jail sentence whether they surrendered or not, decided to bring their plans forward by six hours and execute the coup. Russia’s timely warning enabled those opposed to any coup time to prepare. The president was evacuated from his holiday hotel and rushed to an aircraft just forty minutes before renegade troops backed by helicopters attacked the hotel. His plane was escorted by two fighter aircraft from Dalaman in the South West to Istanbul on the advice of the General Staff as Ankara was too dangerous. En route two putschist F16s locked their weapon  systems on to Erdoğan’s plane but for whatever reason failed to fire.

Who was behind the coup?

I doubt that there is a single Turk who does not believe that the US was behind the coup attempt. Why? They will tell you . . .

•           History! It is hard to find a coup anywhere in the world that the US was not behind. All previous coup d’etats in Turkey were backed by the US.

•           Silence from the US as they awaited the outcome of the coup. Russia and Iran, for example, condemned it immediately.

•           The refusal of the US to extradite Fethullah Gülen from his self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania to face charges of conspiracy and sedition. Gülen is seen as a tool of the CIA, his application to reside in the US was backed by three senior CIA officials.

Many Turks believe that either the US government, or the CIA acting as a rogue element, whilst happy to keep the AKP government in place wants rid of Erdoğan whom they see as erratic and unreliable.

Fethullah Gülen is central to much of what has happened in Turkey since the AK Party came to power. The Gülen Movement is known as Hizmet which means Service and it can be divided into two distinct parts.

The part that is seen and openly supported by millions around the world promotes tolerance, openness, moderate Islam, acceptance of differences, education, etc., transparency in all things. It operates thousands of schools and colleges in many countries. It raises billions of dollars annually from its business operations, donations, gifts, legacies and tithing – it is immensely wealthy.

The part that you do not see functions in a very different way and has very different objectives. Turkey has been the target of Gülen for many years. In a leaked video of one of his sermons, which is still available on YouTube, he can be seen and heard saying the following: ‘You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centres. You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the constitutional institutions in Turkey’.

As the Gülenists patiently infiltrated all the components of the Turkish state from the army to the judiciary to the police to the education system to the general bureaucracy they were able to facilitate the rise of their own into the highest posts. After the video came to light many accused Gülen of infiltrating the state with an illegal organisation. Soon after Gülen fled to the US Hanefi Avcı , who was a police commissioner at the time, stated: ‘People spoke about the presence of Gülen’s followers inside the police force, but there was no apparent criminal activity. Only after 2006 did certain police officers start to show deeper allegiances to the movement than to the state’.

When the AK Party came to power in the 2002 general election it allied itself with Gülen and together they set about drawing down the power and influence of the secular military. The sensational Ergenekon (Deep State) and Balyoz (Sledgehammer) investigations purported to expose what the military were up to. There followed a series of show trials of the officer corps on trumped-up charges. Many spent up to three years or more in prison without trial. As the secular Kemalist officers were weeded out the Gülenists filled their boots. The military was devastated and deeply wounded. Throughout other elements of the state the same process was going on.

As the AK Party government established its writ throughout much of the country the ambitions of then Prime Minister Erdoğan began to dominate. He no longer desired the ‘guidance’ of Gülen and the two fell out very publicly.

When Gülenists inside the system, almost certainly acting on Gülen’s instruction, leaked evidence of massive corruption within the government and Erdoğan’s family the rift became total and a war of attrition began. The generals and senior officers of the armed forces were pardoned and released with an apology from Erdoğan and an explanation that it was the corrupt elements of Hizmet that had infiltrated the judiciary that were to blame for the huge miscarriage of justice. Many were reinstated because Erdoğan now needed different ‘friends’ within the system.

Purges of the Gülenists have been ongoing for some time and no doubt many of them saw the coup as a last-ditch chance to retain influence. Many outside of the Hizmet organisation believe that had the coup succeeded Gülen would have returned to Turkey rather like Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979.

Hizmet Structure

The structure of that element of the Hizmet organisation that functioned secretly within the state apparatus is interesting. Most organisations are hierarchical – they are ‘up-down’. The secret, deep-state Hizmet structure is best described as horizontal. A member of Hizmet will know only one other person. This person is his abi or older brother and his instructions are to be followed through without question. Secrecy is paramount to protect the organisation and the people within it. So, within the military for example, one can find the interesting example of a senior non-commissioned officer issuing instructions to a general and those instructions being carried out to the letter. This level of secrecy contributed to some of the disarray during the coup attempt. If there is no ‘abi’ to pass on changes of plan then chaos can reign. Add to that the ineptitude of the putschist use of the Whatsapp social media application and you have a recipe for failure. That said, the coup attempt came within a forty minute ace of succeeding. Without the Russians passing on the information they had intercepted Erdoğan would likely have been killed or captured.

State of Emergency

Following the failed coup great swathes of the armed services and the bureaucracy are being purged. All government employees have had their passports cancelled and are forbidden to leave the country. Within the judiciary anyone who voted against Erdoğan’s ‘reforms’ of that element of state structure has been automatically fingered as a Gülenist and suspended until investigated and proven innocent. All private universities, colleges and schools have been closed or taken under state supervision whilst their affiliations are examined. Any member of the bureaucracy whose bank records show they have made donations or gifts to the Hizmet or its various subsidiary organisations has been suspended pending investigation. Many of those who have made donations will have been fulfilling their obligations as Muslims unaware of the links to Hizmet and will be innocent of any ‘disloyalty’. They could also very well be AK Party supporters.

Although tens of thousands have been detained or suspended there is a steady flow of those who have been investigated and released or reinstated.

The Future – is Erdoğan Weaker or Stronger?

There are no crystal balls and Turkey is a very complicated and fractured society at present. What has united people across the board is their opposition to the coup attempt. Erdoğan was as bombastic and belligerent as ever immediately after the event. His position has mellowed considerably since he no doubt realises that he is hated by half the country’s population, all of his so-called NATO allies and most of the populations of the neighbouring states. He has withdrawn all of the thousands of libel actions against those who have ‘insulted the president’ (with the exception of the largely Kurdish HD Party – a tactical failure that he may live to regret). He has started a process of rapprochement with two of the main opposition parties but again his obsessive hatred of all things Kurdish has clouded his judgement and he has excluded the HDP. He has stepped back from reintroduction of the death penalty. He has drawn back from his plans for forcing through constitutional change and an executive presidency. He is heading to Russia for private talks with Putin. There are now friendly overtures towards Iran. The prime minister has said that Turkey wants to mend fences and normalise relations with Assad and Syria – Erdoğan has not contradicted this. If, or more likely when, this happens it will nail the lid on the coffin of the US’ project to Balkanise the Middle East and secure Kuwaiti gas pipelines to Europe which would have undermined Russia. As a result of his recent toning down I think that Erdoğan believes he is in a weaker position, at least in the short term.

Within a fairly short time frame it is possible that Turkey might leave NATO and, together with Iran, accept a Russian invitation to join the Eurasia Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The officer corps that is rising within the armed forces after the abortive coup is most definitely not Atlanticist like the Gülenist-CIA faction. They believe that Turkey’s future lies not in the EU-NATO-Western alliance but eastwards within Eurasia. This is a vision of the future that I believe Erdoğan shares.

Turkey has applied for Gülen’s extradition (again) and has presented the evidence that they have accumulated. If the US fails to comply then it will confirm the Turkish government’s view that the US/CIA/Gülen was indeed behind the coup. If they do extradite him then it will show that his ‘sell by date’ has passed and the NATO Gladio Operation in Turkey is at an end.

In closing it has to be said that Turks of every political persuasion seem optimistic about the future. ‘Things will be much better in Turkey now’ is a constant refrain. There are some who believe that Erdoğan will face charges in court for his corrupt and illegal practices within three years. Turks are amazingly optimistic people! That this coup attempt and Erdoğan’s counter-coup would lead to such an optimistic outcome was hard to understand. There is a feeling that ‘democracy’ and the people have triumphed. People believe that Erdoğan realises that he was saved not by those who support him but by those who support democracy. He was saved because of the people who laid down in front of tanks or paid with their lives for resisting on the streets as bullets flew. He was saved because an army sergeant killed himself before he would fire on his countrymen and women. He was saved by the young who used Facebook and Facetime to inform their fellow citizens of the coup threat (perhaps now he will reconsider his opposition to – and constant attacks on – social media). He was saved by the Chief of the General Staff who was kidnapped by his Gülenist ADC and, when invited to speak with his ‘older brother’ Fethullah Gülen, flatly refused. Above all, he was saved by Russia and President Putin who saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Turkey and the West, and in doing so relieve some of the unrelenting pressure by NATO at Russia’s borders.

For the majority of the population life remains ‘normal’, on the surface nothing much has changed. Behind the scenes much is changing and as the country moves forward more will follow. In the West the media has distorted, exaggerated and lied about what has happened and is happening. Erdoğan is authoritarian and autocratic and his political involvement is contrary to the existing constitution, according to which power should really lie with the prime minister and cabinet. That said he is not a dictator and he is the first directly elected president of Turkey. If, as seems likely, his erstwhile friends and allies in the various western alliances are indeed found to have been involved or even neutral to the events leading up to his attempted overthrow then the break up and realignment that will surely follow will be monumental and game-changing. US Secretary of State Kerry is due in Turkey shortly, his welcome is likely to be very cool!

(Name supplied but withheld)